Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death. Patrick Henry said that two hundred and fifty years ago, yesterday, to galvanize Americans against the tyranny growing around them, brought by an insane dictator king, not whatever was manifesting near Saint John's Church in Richmond, where the Second Virginia Convention he was addressing was meeting, Not what threatened them individually, not what was at their door, but what they knew would be at their door soon or late, because it was already inside the homes of their fellow Americans in far off Boston. Give me Liberty or give me death, because whether or not, the tyrant is here for us now, he is here already for our brothers and sisters. He will be here for us soon enough, and soon the Virginia Militia embroidered their battle shirts with Liberty or Death, and soon an entirely new concept. Americans had destroyed those who intended to enslave them, and they had won a liberty that lasted two hundred and fifty years, well nearly closer to what twenty twenty five minus eight two one hundred and forty two years, give me liberty or give me death March twenty third, seventeen hundred and seventy five. And what would our Patrick Henry have said on March twenty third, two thousand and twenty five, Give me liberty or give me a free twelve ounce coffee with the purchase of a dozen donuts while supplies last at participating outlets only. Our collective selfishness and self obsession is virtually total. Our collective incapacity to see anything further than our own needs. For that matter, our own needs for no span of time longer than a couple of weeks, is so powerful, so ritualized, so rewarded, that we barely see it anymore. Even when our laws, our courts, our institutions, our leaders, our media, our political parties, our handful of responsible corporations, even when they fold under pressure or just the fear of pressure, or worst of all, even without any pressure whatsoever, we sit there, pointing at them and at those of applying the pressure, as if pointing at them were somehow enough, as if shame would be enough to make them stiffen and fight back and risk something, risk anything to save democracy. And in that word, hour I include myself, and I exclude literally no more than a handful of others like Alexandria Ocasio Cortez and Bernie Sanders, who are at least out there yelling and warning and being the focal points for the crowds and inviting the hatred and the pressure of the fascists, and inviting worse than just pressure. The rest of us are celebrating the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of Patrick Henry by proclaiming, give me liberty or give me unlimited text and data when I trade in my iPhone. The institutions that made their bones in this country, that grew their gravitas that we're supposed to do this when we needed them to do this, that earned some trust, even as trust shrank in every corner with every passing year, are now racing each other to capitulate and to collaborate before their rivals do. Columbia University, whose board of trustees co chair is one of my oldest professional friends and one of the reporters I had the most respect for, was barely done humiliating and prostrating itself in front of Trump in hopes of getting back four hundred million dollars in federal grants out of five billion in federal grants, when Colombia's endowment is fourteen and a half billion. Columbia was barely done getting the public praise yesterday from the idiot former head of wrestling who is now Secretary of Education without telling her to shove the four hundred million dollars up Trump's ass, one silver dollar at a time, without the student body walking out, or taking over Upper Manhattan, or shutting down the entire goddamned city of New York. Columbia was barely done collaborating when the entire infrastructure of my alma mater, Cornell, did nothing about ice the Gestapo demanding that one of Cornell's students turn himself in for deportation today because of anti Israel protests. And let me tell you, shutting down Inthaca, New York, would be a lot goddamned easier than shutting down half of Manhattan. And when I was still there, the majority of the faculty and even some students had witnessed the response to rampant racism, including a cross burning at a black women's dorm, and the response was for students to take over the student union while carrying long guns and wearing bandoliers. And even in nineteen seventy nine when I graduated. A decade after that and a group of low income minority students felt they had been discriminated against because their degrees were being withheld because they hadn't fully paid back tuition extensions when they were black, even they peacefully and without weapons, took over an administration building for a few hours just to say this is wrong. You didn't do this with the white students who were late with their money just to do something, to do anything but obey in advance. Then I don't give a damn if the protesters at Cornell and Columbia or anywhere else are anti Semites, or are defending a really unpopular cause, or seemingly have carefully chosen every possible strategic move to make themselves and their causes more unpopular and less palatable in this country. I don't care who they are or what you think you have to do to establish parameters for them. The parameters Columbia cannot include establishing a campus thought police that can now arrest the protesters it and you do not like, and Trump does not like, and not arrest the protesters who are demanding faster transfer of academic records for postgraduate applications or job interviews. And I don't care who they are or what you think you have to do to establish parameters for them. The parameters Cornell cannot include completely ignoring the demand that one of you gets yanked off campus in the middle of the goddamned spring semester and deported to where where they sent the gay barber they decided was a terrorist, or where they sent the god with the real Madrid soccer tattoo. It cannot, Cornell include ignoring the disappearing of a Cornell student because it doesn't effing matter which Cornell student they are disappearing for which unpopular opinion, because next time that Cornell student could be you, and at this rate, eventually it will be you. And it doesn't matter what your campuses did not do when they came for these mistaken and incompetent protesters, because your collaboration will earn you nothing except the Trump dictatorship's recognition that Cornell and Columbia are officially pushovers, and the next time they need somebody for a show trial, they will go to Cornell and Columbia first, because Cornell and Columbia will help you round up whoever you want, whether it's a student, a professor, or the head of the board of trust.

Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death. Patrick Henry said that two hundred and fifty years ago, yesterday, to galvanize Americans against the tyranny growing around them, brought by an insane dictator king, not whatever was manifesting near Saint John's Church in Richmond, where the Second Virginia Convention he was addressing was meeting, Not what threatened them individually, not what was at their door, but what they knew would be at their door soon or late, because it was already inside the homes of their fellow Americans in far off Boston. Give me Liberty or give me death, because whether or not, the tyrant is here for us now, he is here already for our brothers and sisters. He will be here for us soon enough, and soon the Virginia Militia embroidered their battle shirts with Liberty or Death, and soon an entirely new concept. Americans had destroyed those who intended to enslave them, and they had won a liberty that lasted two hundred and fifty years, well nearly closer to what twenty twenty five minus eight two one hundred and forty two years, give me liberty or give me death March twenty third, seventeen hundred and seventy five. And what would our Patrick Henry have said on March twenty third, two thousand and twenty five, Give me liberty or give me a free twelve ounce coffee with the purchase of a dozen donuts while supplies last at participating outlets only. Our collective selfishness and self obsession is virtually total. Our collective incapacity to see anything further than our own needs. For that matter, our own needs for no span of time longer than a couple of weeks, is so powerful, so ritualized, so rewarded, that we barely see it anymore. Even when our laws, our courts, our institutions, our leaders, our media, our political parties, our handful of responsible corporations, even when they fold under pressure or just the fear of pressure, or worst of all, even without any pressure whatsoever, we sit there, pointing at them and at those of applying the pressure, as if pointing at them were somehow enough, as if shame would be enough to make them stiffen and fight back and risk something, risk anything to save democracy. And in that word, hour I include myself, and I exclude literally no more than a handful of others like Alexandria Ocasio Cortez and Bernie Sanders, who are at least out there yelling and warning and being the focal points for the crowds and inviting the hatred and the pressure of the fascists, and inviting worse than just pressure. The rest of us are celebrating the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of Patrick Henry by proclaiming, give me liberty or give me unlimited text and data when I trade in my iPhone. The institutions that made their bones in this country, that grew their gravitas that we're supposed to do this when we needed them to do this, that earned some trust, even as trust shrank in every corner with every passing year, are now racing each other to capitulate and to collaborate before their rivals do. Columbia University, whose board of trustees co chair is one of my oldest professional friends and one of the reporters I had the most respect for, was barely done humiliating and prostrating itself in front of Trump in hopes of getting back four hundred million dollars in federal grants out of five billion in federal grants, when Colombia's endowment is fourteen and a half billion. Columbia was barely done getting the public praise yesterday from the idiot former head of wrestling who is now Secretary of Education without telling her to shove the four hundred million dollars up Trump's ass, one silver dollar at a time, without the student body walking out, or taking over Upper Manhattan, or shutting down the entire goddamned city of New York. Columbia was barely done collaborating when the entire infrastructure of my alma mater, Cornell, did nothing about ice the Gestapo demanding that one of Cornell's students turn himself in for deportation today because of anti Israel protests. And let me tell you, shutting down Inthaca, New York, would be a lot goddamned easier than shutting down half of Manhattan. And when I was still there, the majority of the faculty and even some students had witnessed the response to rampant racism, including a cross burning at a black women's dorm, and the response was for students to take over the student union while carrying long guns and wearing bandoliers. And even in nineteen seventy nine when I graduated. A decade after that and a group of low income minority students felt they had been discriminated against because their degrees were being withheld because they hadn't fully paid back tuition extensions when they were black, even they peacefully and without weapons, took over an administration building for a few hours just to say this is wrong. You didn't do this with the white students who were late with their money just to do something, to do anything but obey in advance. Then I don't give a damn if the protesters at Cornell and Columbia or anywhere else are anti Semites, or are defending a really unpopular cause, or seemingly have carefully chosen every possible strategic move to make themselves and their causes more unpopular and less palatable in this country. I don't care who they are or what you think you have to do to establish parameters for them. The parameters Columbia cannot include establishing a campus thought police that can now arrest the protesters it and you do not like, and Trump does not like, and not arrest the protesters who are demanding faster transfer of academic records for postgraduate applications or job interviews. And I don't care who they are or what you think you have to do to establish parameters for them. The parameters Cornell cannot include completely ignoring the demand that one of you gets yanked off campus in the middle of the goddamned spring semester and deported to where where they sent the gay barber they decided was a terrorist, or where they sent the god with the real Madrid soccer tattoo. It cannot, Cornell include ignoring the disappearing of a Cornell student because it doesn't effing matter which Cornell student they are disappearing for which unpopular opinion, because next time that Cornell student could be you, and at this rate, eventually it will be you. And it doesn't matter what your campuses did not do when they came for these mistaken and incompetent protesters, because your collaboration will earn you nothing except the Trump dictatorship's recognition that Cornell and Columbia are officially pushovers, and the next time they need somebody for a show trial, they will go to Cornell and Columbia first, because Cornell and Columbia will help you round up whoever you want, whether it's a student, a professor, or the head of the board of trust.

Please.

Please.

And if you didn't learn all this at Cornell, Cornell, and if you didn't learn all this at Columbia Columbia, go out of business and close Columbia and close Cornell and sell the campuses, and do it today, because that what you just did not do, That was your purpose, that was why you existed, to teach that liberty requires us to defend our liberty and the other guy's liberty. And if you didn't learn all this at every college and university and juco and community college in this country, close them too. You have all lost the plot. Happily, the students imperiled can always call the noted law firm of Paul kama Weiss and its chairman Brad S. Karp, advocate for corporations and protesters alike, and rich and poor alike. Except mister Karp and Paul kama Weiss tried to challenge a threat from Trump and have a pro Trump firm called Quinn Comma, Immanuel Kamma, Erkut Kamma and Sullivan joined them and when those pro trumpists saw the opportunity to destroy a rival, and so what if it destroyed the rule of law in the process, And when that rival said no, Paul kama Weiss capitulated. Paul kama Weiss will now bribe Trump with forty million dollars in free lawyer hours to help Trump, because you know, somebody's got to litigate whatever Trump's version of the Nuremberg Race laws turns out to be. Thank you all for your patience during this time, said Karp of Paul kama Weiss to his staff. With this behind us, we can devote our complete focus as we always do, to our clients, our work, our colleagues, and our firm. Mister Carp, you are an idiot With this behind us. It is not behind you. You have assured that it will forever be in front of you. Trump will be back soon, mister Carp, to tell you who you can and cannot hire, and who you can and cannot represent, and which other clients' confidential records Trump does and does not want because hours after this idiot, self interested, self deluding lawyer told the thousand lawyers who worked for him that it would all be fine now now that he had old their souls to the devil. The White House sent out a memo Saturday to the little witch now running the Department of Justice, which reads, in part quote that she should seek sanctions against attorneys and law firms who engage in frivolous, unreasonable, and vexatious litigation against the government. The slave overseers who work for Trump also instructed the dog murdering head of Homeland Security dress up Barbie with a thousand different action adventure outfits in her closet to quote prioritize enforcement of those regulations governing what lawyers can do inside the immigration courts. That is a somewhat cloudy way of saying, represent somebody we are trying to deport, and if we can, we will deport you with them, or we will deport you or employee or your friend or another student at Cornell or Columbia. The Columbia case was Trump testing how much educational money would need to be threatened before the universities were willing to sell their core values. That figure turned out to be four hundred million dollars, not very much if your endowment is fourteen point eight something billion. The Paul comme a wis case was Trump testing how much litigational money would be needed to be threatened before the big law firms were willing to sell their core values. That turned out to be forty million dollars. Lawyers are cheaper than universities, turned out, though in both cases they're very cheap, and the cost wasn't very much at all. By the way, lawyers all lawyers. The cowardice, the complicity of Paul kama Weiss has now emboldened Trump to tell Pam Bondi to try to punish law firms who take asylum cases pro bono, to give her the right to start to poll security clearances for firms she doesn't like, and to try to prosecute lawyers who sued the government starting in oh twenty seventeen, you know, the year when Trump took over the first time, four years before we napoleoned him instead of putting him in prison, because give me liberty or I'm not going to pay a lot for this muffler. And so we can add the universities and the lawyers to the list. The list of the guard rails that turned out to be made out of paper mache filled with oatmeal, The list that includes pretty much every American institution of any importance except the Visiting Nurse Association, the owners of the television networks for instance, the other news organizations, more on them presently. The Republican Party obviously, I mean, why should any of them risk what they have the increased power Trump's dictatorship has given them. It's not like Trump's going to deport me or take away my power yet. On the list, of course, the Democratic Party leadership. And thank you to the TV networks for putting on Chuck Schumer every goddamned day since he sold out this country so he can keep selling his effing book without having to face one single protester or obviously on the TV political shows, having to face one difficult question. Thank you to the Democratic leaders out of office who have joined this list. Has any man squandered his post presidency more than Barack Obama? No one in this country could enrage Trump faster or more thoroughly than Barack Obama. He stops Trump so thoroughly in his tracks that Trump thinks he ran a presidential race against Obama. Almost no one in this country, no, no one in this country, despite his flaws. Rally, the dispirited and confused opposition begging for leadership now than could Obama. Well, happily, he is all over the news at the moment with his college basketball picks South Carolina over Southern I don't know, because give me liberty or give me a two hundred dollars bonus bet. When I sign up with sports Betting, Inc. Must be twenty one or over gambling problem called one eight hundred gambler. And most importantly on the list, the law on the courts, the Supreme Court, the Chief Justice. I begin to think his family name is justice, because there's nothing justice about his work. Trump as President, as he did before, publicly demands the removal of a judge who thwarted him at in so he is testing to see if he can get away with that, and John Roberts comes out with a robust, profound, dramatic warning in response, I'm kidding. He issued boiler plate Pablom quote. For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision. The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose. There's got to be something else on this sheet. That's all he said, thank you, Justice, Thank you, Chief Justice Roberts, thank you for the three three and a half minutes you devoted to this statement trying to defend democracy in the rule of law. Not the faintest glimmer of understanding that Roberts as Chief Justice, as the supposed restraint against the corrupt influence peddling religious nuts on his own court. Roberts still immunized Trump against virtually any prosecution for virtually any crime, and now seems surprised when Trump decides to try out the crime of threatening judges and dismantling the judiciary and arresting political opponents. Oh, dismantling the judiciary, arresting political opponents. I'm sorry, I'm getting ahead of myself. I'm reading one of my commentaries from next fall when Trump tries to arrest Chuck Schumer or AOC or Sonya Sotomayor or Mehdi Hassan. Actually, I'm just reading the news from Turkey. The same day the opposition voted for its choice to run against the quasi dictator Ereuwan. In twenty twenty eight, Erewan had that man, the mayor of Istanbul, formally arrested and charged with corruption ekkrem Imama Glue can still run for president even if they keep him in detention until twenty twenty eight. But if he's convicted of anything, and how could he be convicted of anything in a Turkish judicial system that at minimum exaggerated the severity of the twenty sixteen quote coup quote against Erdiguan. If he's convicted of anything, he cannot serve Now, of course Erdiguan is prevented from running again in twenty twenty eight. But of course he can't run again in twenty twenty eight because of term limits in the constitution, which is why he's now trying to change the constitution. Why does this all sound so familiar? The Turks have been protesting for five nights. It now seems, after years of this, as if they will have only one option, which would be to remove their dictator by force. I assume they are at this point because ten or twenty or whenever years ago, when celebrating the anniversary of their Patrick Henry, it came out, give me liberty or give me up to thirty percent on rooms that select Disney resort hotels when I stay five nights or longer while I am burning things to the ground on your time. Back to the media for a moment, please. We have both long since discovered and paid for the incompetence of the modern insulated self referential, sealed in both a bubble and in bubble plastic political media complex. But here's something new and terrible, even for them. Hot off the presses, as it were, the ground zero of world in which access is the only thing that matters or is understood, and in which there is no comprehension of the dangers to which that access provides front row seats. The ground zero of that world is not the Washington Post. It's not even the New York Times. It's Politico. Its lead item day before yesterday was a breathless account, a doubly fake scoop, a book excerpt. It's from a book by Jonathan Allen and Amy Parnes, and Politico can't decide which is the bigger news, an anecdote about Joe Biden's memory or the fact that it somehow obtained a copy of this book long before it's supposed to be available. It's only supposed to be available April first, and they got it here at the March twenty second or something. As to that second point. It is amazing but deeply symbolic that political writers keep pulling this done year after year after year, and expecting anybody to fall for it. And there's always somebody at Politico to fall for it. You got a copy of a book before the publication date, you must be the greatest reporter since Woodward and Bernstein. How is such a mighty feat possible by mere humans? The answer is, of course, that proof copies of a book come out months before publication. I used to get a box of them at least six weeks before publication, two months, mailed them to friends. If I'd found a way to sell them on eBay, I would have done it. These inexplicable pre publicity pre publication leaks happen as follows. Hey, Politico, says the author, my book is coming out in a month. I need some pub The Politico guy replies, well, what's good in it? And the author responds, why I can give you this anecdote because I already promised the other good one to the post. Take that axios, The Politico guy says quietly to himself, another scoop for yours. Truly, I bet my European bosses will give me a five dollars bonus. The new one Saturday from Politico has the added embarrassment of underscoring how the authors do not understand politics, or America, or in fact life. I'll just read what Politico excerpted about how one Democrat who had run for the Democratic nomination in twenty nineteen, quote became concerned about Biden's mental acuity at a June twenty twenty three White House picnic for members of Congress. Quote when they came face to face, Biden did not immediately recognize his one time rival for the party's nomination. Quote. The candidate quote had to Biden with personal details to remind him that sounds bad about last year's big story which X would be nominee was so supposedly struck that Biden didn't remember that both of them had run for president, could not identify his former rival on the debate stage. Which one of them Eric Swollwell, now, if you're anything like me, your response to hearing this anecdote was, wait, Eric Swowell ran for president? The congressman, right, good, good guy, but congressman from Illin, New York, California, California. Yes, I can almost picture him in my mind, I had no memory at all that Swalwell had run, just like Biden had no memory at all that Swalwell had run. I'm guessing just like you had no memory that Swalwell had run. In fact, my surprise is that Swalwell remembered that he had run, writing Jonathan Allen about how somebody forgot he ran, and I'm still taking his word for this. That he did run is not the negative flex against Joe Biden you think it is. But wait, there's more. The official Swallwell response to Politico was that there was no White House party for members of Congress on the date Allen has given June twenty twenty three, And it turns out he's right. There was none. Politico then dives into showing how great it is by proving that there was one in July of twenty twenty three, and Swallowell was there. See where journalists, we and the authors and the editors forgot when the party was got it wrong. But it's Biden who was already having trouble remembering things in twenty twenty three, and Swawell didn't go public about it. See we're smarter than they is. Wait, there's even more. Politico's Adam Wren foolishly took credit for writing this. He managed to please his new neo fascist European owners by turning this story into a story by the way of an author getting a date wrong about a piece of trivia at at which somebody forgot a piece of trivia. He turned this into a Democrats lied about Biden, and now everybody hates the Democrats and the Democrats is dead story quote Adam Wren, Politico. Biden's refusal to pass the torch until more than a year later still looms over the party, and the Democrats are still facing questions about who knew what and when about Biden's faculties. It's not difficult to see more of these anecdotes surfacing in the coming weeks and months. What's harder is seeing how the party regains voters trust trust Adam wrenn trust Politico, trust Jonathan Allen. Joe Biden and the Democrats aren't the ones who can't tell the difference between a president for getting an actual campaign rival and an utterly and literally forgettable vanity campaign for the nomination that lasted exactly three months and out of which the guy himself bailed two hundred and eleven days before the first primary, and Biden wasn't the one who got the month of the party wrong and published it anyway, And none of us out here let our Politico White House Bureau Chief conduct an official on stage event at Sea pack Nazi Party memberships for people who don't like the letter Z. The real memory loss about Politico that Politico should address is after it goes out of business, will anybody remember it was? Ever? There also of interest here because believe it or not, I have some venom left, if not much voice. There's also something up at NBC. I'm not sure what it is, but Trump has now threatened them again about MSNBC. And it's four months since Scarborough rehoard himself to Trump, and it's a month tomorrow since they fired Joy Reid and the other hosts of Color. So NBC is preparing to throw somebody or something out the windows at the fifty second floor corporate offices at thirty Rock. What is it? Who is it? That's next? This is countdown? This is Countdown with Keith Olberman host scripts to the news, some headlines, some updates, some stark still ahead of course worse persons, and you know why you need a Department of Education so idiots like the South African Elon Musk can learn English correctly and not wind up publicly misspelling the words Department of education. First, this is the Countdown podcast, and these are the places where there's news. Date line thirty Rock. I live a few blocks from where I used to work. This, of course, is an evergreen statement almost anywhere I've ever lived in New York. I could say that about one of the places I used to work, but this time I am being specific about thirty Rock, thirty Rockefeller Center, thirty Rockefeller Plaza, the heart of New York City, the home of the National Broadcasting Company and the corporation that owns it. I'm not sure what specific ass kissing they have planned for Trump as our business quasi humans rush for the exits to get the best deal from the fascist state, but I can tell from the looks on their faces they're thinking about it. In the month just closing, Trump was nice enough to declare that MSNBC and CNN are illegal. He used the word three times in his reichs Parthai tog at the Ministry of Love. I'm sorry the Department of justice. The Ministry of Love was in the book nineteen eighty four. Anyway, When indictments did not immediately follow his thrice use of the word illegal, he brought the subject up again last week and blocks away. I can smell the fear from the fifty second floor at thirty Rock. It's not all I smell from there, but mostly it's fear. They are planning to fold to Trump. It's just a question of which way. I don't think they're literally going to do what he suggested last week, because frankly, that would not be enough for Trump at this point. He doesn't want that. He doesn't want MSNBC switched off. He wants them to go all Scarborough. He wants msn VS keep the brand name, keep a lot of the same people, pretend they are being critical of him, and the Republicans become the official authorized controlled resistance, which offers no resistance at all, except maybe complaining that Trump hasn't praised his own bitcoon brand recently enough. God knows NBC has done it before with Republicans. When Republicans have said something like this, we just.

And if you didn't learn all this at Cornell, Cornell, and if you didn't learn all this at Columbia Columbia, go out of business and close Columbia and close Cornell and sell the campuses, and do it today, because that what you just did not do, That was your purpose, that was why you existed, to teach that liberty requires us to defend our liberty and the other guy's liberty. And if you didn't learn all this at every college and university and juco and community college in this country, close them too. You have all lost the plot. Happily, the students imperiled can always call the noted law firm of Paul kama Weiss and its chairman Brad S. Karp, advocate for corporations and protesters alike, and rich and poor alike. Except mister Karp and Paul kama Weiss tried to challenge a threat from Trump and have a pro Trump firm called Quinn Comma, Immanuel Kamma, Erkut Kamma and Sullivan joined them and when those pro trumpists saw the opportunity to destroy a rival, and so what if it destroyed the rule of law in the process, And when that rival said no, Paul kama Weiss capitulated. Paul kama Weiss will now bribe Trump with forty million dollars in free lawyer hours to help Trump, because you know, somebody's got to litigate whatever Trump's version of the Nuremberg Race laws turns out to be. Thank you all for your patience during this time, said Karp of Paul kama Weiss to his staff. With this behind us, we can devote our complete focus as we always do, to our clients, our work, our colleagues, and our firm. Mister Carp, you are an idiot With this behind us. It is not behind you. You have assured that it will forever be in front of you. Trump will be back soon, mister Carp, to tell you who you can and cannot hire, and who you can and cannot represent, and which other clients' confidential records Trump does and does not want because hours after this idiot, self interested, self deluding lawyer told the thousand lawyers who worked for him that it would all be fine now now that he had old their souls to the devil. The White House sent out a memo Saturday to the little witch now running the Department of Justice, which reads, in part quote that she should seek sanctions against attorneys and law firms who engage in frivolous, unreasonable, and vexatious litigation against the government. The slave overseers who work for Trump also instructed the dog murdering head of Homeland Security dress up Barbie with a thousand different action adventure outfits in her closet to quote prioritize enforcement of those regulations governing what lawyers can do inside the immigration courts. That is a somewhat cloudy way of saying, represent somebody we are trying to deport, and if we can, we will deport you with them, or we will deport you or employee or your friend or another student at Cornell or Columbia. The Columbia case was Trump testing how much educational money would need to be threatened before the universities were willing to sell their core values. That figure turned out to be four hundred million dollars, not very much if your endowment is fourteen point eight something billion. The Paul comme a wis case was Trump testing how much litigational money would be needed to be threatened before the big law firms were willing to sell their core values. That turned out to be forty million dollars. Lawyers are cheaper than universities, turned out, though in both cases they're very cheap, and the cost wasn't very much at all. By the way, lawyers all lawyers. The cowardice, the complicity of Paul kama Weiss has now emboldened Trump to tell Pam Bondi to try to punish law firms who take asylum cases pro bono, to give her the right to start to poll security clearances for firms she doesn't like, and to try to prosecute lawyers who sued the government starting in oh twenty seventeen, you know, the year when Trump took over the first time, four years before we napoleoned him instead of putting him in prison, because give me liberty or I'm not going to pay a lot for this muffler. And so we can add the universities and the lawyers to the list. The list of the guard rails that turned out to be made out of paper mache filled with oatmeal, The list that includes pretty much every American institution of any importance except the Visiting Nurse Association, the owners of the television networks for instance, the other news organizations, more on them presently. The Republican Party obviously, I mean, why should any of them risk what they have the increased power Trump's dictatorship has given them. It's not like Trump's going to deport me or take away my power yet. On the list, of course, the Democratic Party leadership. And thank you to the TV networks for putting on Chuck Schumer every goddamned day since he sold out this country so he can keep selling his effing book without having to face one single protester or obviously on the TV political shows, having to face one difficult question. Thank you to the Democratic leaders out of office who have joined this list. Has any man squandered his post presidency more than Barack Obama? No one in this country could enrage Trump faster or more thoroughly than Barack Obama. He stops Trump so thoroughly in his tracks that Trump thinks he ran a presidential race against Obama. Almost no one in this country, no, no one in this country, despite his flaws. Rally, the dispirited and confused opposition begging for leadership now than could Obama. Well, happily, he is all over the news at the moment with his college basketball picks South Carolina over Southern I don't know, because give me liberty or give me a two hundred dollars bonus bet. When I sign up with sports Betting, Inc. Must be twenty one or over gambling problem called one eight hundred gambler. And most importantly on the list, the law on the courts, the Supreme Court, the Chief Justice. I begin to think his family name is justice, because there's nothing justice about his work. Trump as President, as he did before, publicly demands the removal of a judge who thwarted him at in so he is testing to see if he can get away with that, and John Roberts comes out with a robust, profound, dramatic warning in response, I'm kidding. He issued boiler plate Pablom quote. For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision. The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose. There's got to be something else on this sheet. That's all he said, thank you, Justice, Thank you, Chief Justice Roberts, thank you for the three three and a half minutes you devoted to this statement trying to defend democracy in the rule of law. Not the faintest glimmer of understanding that Roberts as Chief Justice, as the supposed restraint against the corrupt influence peddling religious nuts on his own court. Roberts still immunized Trump against virtually any prosecution for virtually any crime, and now seems surprised when Trump decides to try out the crime of threatening judges and dismantling the judiciary and arresting political opponents. Oh, dismantling the judiciary, arresting political opponents. I'm sorry, I'm getting ahead of myself. I'm reading one of my commentaries from next fall when Trump tries to arrest Chuck Schumer or AOC or Sonya Sotomayor or Mehdi Hassan. Actually, I'm just reading the news from Turkey. The same day the opposition voted for its choice to run against the quasi dictator Ereuwan. In twenty twenty eight, Erewan had that man, the mayor of Istanbul, formally arrested and charged with corruption ekkrem Imama Glue can still run for president even if they keep him in detention until twenty twenty eight. But if he's convicted of anything, and how could he be convicted of anything in a Turkish judicial system that at minimum exaggerated the severity of the twenty sixteen quote coup quote against Erdiguan. If he's convicted of anything, he cannot serve Now, of course Erdiguan is prevented from running again in twenty twenty eight. But of course he can't run again in twenty twenty eight because of term limits in the constitution, which is why he's now trying to change the constitution. Why does this all sound so familiar? The Turks have been protesting for five nights. It now seems, after years of this, as if they will have only one option, which would be to remove their dictator by force. I assume they are at this point because ten or twenty or whenever years ago, when celebrating the anniversary of their Patrick Henry, it came out, give me liberty or give me up to thirty percent on rooms that select Disney resort hotels when I stay five nights or longer while I am burning things to the ground on your time. Back to the media for a moment, please. We have both long since discovered and paid for the incompetence of the modern insulated self referential, sealed in both a bubble and in bubble plastic political media complex. But here's something new and terrible, even for them. Hot off the presses, as it were, the ground zero of world in which access is the only thing that matters or is understood, and in which there is no comprehension of the dangers to which that access provides front row seats. The ground zero of that world is not the Washington Post. It's not even the New York Times. It's Politico. Its lead item day before yesterday was a breathless account, a doubly fake scoop, a book excerpt. It's from a book by Jonathan Allen and Amy Parnes, and Politico can't decide which is the bigger news, an anecdote about Joe Biden's memory or the fact that it somehow obtained a copy of this book long before it's supposed to be available. It's only supposed to be available April first, and they got it here at the March twenty second or something. As to that second point. It is amazing but deeply symbolic that political writers keep pulling this done year after year after year, and expecting anybody to fall for it. And there's always somebody at Politico to fall for it. You got a copy of a book before the publication date, you must be the greatest reporter since Woodward and Bernstein. How is such a mighty feat possible by mere humans? The answer is, of course, that proof copies of a book come out months before publication. I used to get a box of them at least six weeks before publication, two months, mailed them to friends. If I'd found a way to sell them on eBay, I would have done it. These inexplicable pre publicity pre publication leaks happen as follows. Hey, Politico, says the author, my book is coming out in a month. I need some pub The Politico guy replies, well, what's good in it? And the author responds, why I can give you this anecdote because I already promised the other good one to the post. Take that axios, The Politico guy says quietly to himself, another scoop for yours. Truly, I bet my European bosses will give me a five dollars bonus. The new one Saturday from Politico has the added embarrassment of underscoring how the authors do not understand politics, or America, or in fact life. I'll just read what Politico excerpted about how one Democrat who had run for the Democratic nomination in twenty nineteen, quote became concerned about Biden's mental acuity at a June twenty twenty three White House picnic for members of Congress. Quote when they came face to face, Biden did not immediately recognize his one time rival for the party's nomination. Quote. The candidate quote had to Biden with personal details to remind him that sounds bad about last year's big story which X would be nominee was so supposedly struck that Biden didn't remember that both of them had run for president, could not identify his former rival on the debate stage. Which one of them Eric Swollwell, now, if you're anything like me, your response to hearing this anecdote was, wait, Eric Swowell ran for president? The congressman, right, good, good guy, but congressman from Illin, New York, California, California. Yes, I can almost picture him in my mind, I had no memory at all that Swalwell had run, just like Biden had no memory at all that Swalwell had run. I'm guessing just like you had no memory that Swalwell had run. In fact, my surprise is that Swalwell remembered that he had run, writing Jonathan Allen about how somebody forgot he ran, and I'm still taking his word for this. That he did run is not the negative flex against Joe Biden you think it is. But wait, there's more. The official Swallwell response to Politico was that there was no White House party for members of Congress on the date Allen has given June twenty twenty three, And it turns out he's right. There was none. Politico then dives into showing how great it is by proving that there was one in July of twenty twenty three, and Swallowell was there. See where journalists, we and the authors and the editors forgot when the party was got it wrong. But it's Biden who was already having trouble remembering things in twenty twenty three, and Swawell didn't go public about it. See we're smarter than they is. Wait, there's even more. Politico's Adam Wren foolishly took credit for writing this. He managed to please his new neo fascist European owners by turning this story into a story by the way of an author getting a date wrong about a piece of trivia at at which somebody forgot a piece of trivia. He turned this into a Democrats lied about Biden, and now everybody hates the Democrats and the Democrats is dead story quote Adam Wren, Politico. Biden's refusal to pass the torch until more than a year later still looms over the party, and the Democrats are still facing questions about who knew what and when about Biden's faculties. It's not difficult to see more of these anecdotes surfacing in the coming weeks and months. What's harder is seeing how the party regains voters trust trust Adam wrenn trust Politico, trust Jonathan Allen. Joe Biden and the Democrats aren't the ones who can't tell the difference between a president for getting an actual campaign rival and an utterly and literally forgettable vanity campaign for the nomination that lasted exactly three months and out of which the guy himself bailed two hundred and eleven days before the first primary, and Biden wasn't the one who got the month of the party wrong and published it anyway, And none of us out here let our Politico White House Bureau Chief conduct an official on stage event at Sea pack Nazi Party memberships for people who don't like the letter Z. The real memory loss about Politico that Politico should address is after it goes out of business, will anybody remember it was? Ever? There also of interest here because believe it or not, I have some venom left, if not much voice. There's also something up at NBC. I'm not sure what it is, but Trump has now threatened them again about MSNBC. And it's four months since Scarborough rehoard himself to Trump, and it's a month tomorrow since they fired Joy Reid and the other hosts of Color. So NBC is preparing to throw somebody or something out the windows at the fifty second floor corporate offices at thirty Rock. What is it? Who is it? That's next? This is countdown? This is Countdown with Keith Olberman host scripts to the news, some headlines, some updates, some stark still ahead of course worse persons, and you know why you need a Department of Education so idiots like the South African Elon Musk can learn English correctly and not wind up publicly misspelling the words Department of education. First, this is the Countdown podcast, and these are the places where there's news. Date line thirty Rock. I live a few blocks from where I used to work. This, of course, is an evergreen statement almost anywhere I've ever lived in New York. I could say that about one of the places I used to work, but this time I am being specific about thirty Rock, thirty Rockefeller Center, thirty Rockefeller Plaza, the heart of New York City, the home of the National Broadcasting Company and the corporation that owns it. I'm not sure what specific ass kissing they have planned for Trump as our business quasi humans rush for the exits to get the best deal from the fascist state, but I can tell from the looks on their faces they're thinking about it. In the month just closing, Trump was nice enough to declare that MSNBC and CNN are illegal. He used the word three times in his reichs Parthai tog at the Ministry of Love. I'm sorry the Department of justice. The Ministry of Love was in the book nineteen eighty four. Anyway, When indictments did not immediately follow his thrice use of the word illegal, he brought the subject up again last week and blocks away. I can smell the fear from the fifty second floor at thirty Rock. It's not all I smell from there, but mostly it's fear. They are planning to fold to Trump. It's just a question of which way. I don't think they're literally going to do what he suggested last week, because frankly, that would not be enough for Trump at this point. He doesn't want that. He doesn't want MSNBC switched off. He wants them to go all Scarborough. He wants msn VS keep the brand name, keep a lot of the same people, pretend they are being critical of him, and the Republicans become the official authorized controlled resistance, which offers no resistance at all, except maybe complaining that Trump hasn't praised his own bitcoon brand recently enough. God knows NBC has done it before with Republicans. When Republicans have said something like this, we just.

Need honest journalism and we don't have it.

Need honest journalism and we don't have it.

When you have a CNN. I watch.

When you have a CNN. I watch.

You have to watch these people every once in a while just to see where they're coming from.

You have to watch these people every once in a while just to see where they're coming from.

And it's so dishonest.

And it's so dishonest.

MSNBC is, I think, probably worse, and they're both doing horribly in the ratings.

MSNBC is, I think, probably worse, and they're both doing horribly in the ratings.

I think they're going to be turned off.

I think they're going to be turned off.

I don't think they're not doing any ratings.

I don't think they're not doing any ratings.

Wow, does this crap sound familiar? NBC corporate NBC is in reruns. They were already blackmailed once by the Republicans, long before Trump was sent here by the devil. And boy did this flash me back? Because this happened to me at MSNBC in two thousand and eight, courtesy the supposed sane Republicans, and it underscores that they have never been sane. There have never been sane Republicans. They have always longed to dictate to the media what it can and cannot say about whichever asshole is its presidential candidate, and thanks to people like Tom Brokaw, they often get away with it. Chris Matthews and I were co anchoring the Republican Convention on MSNBC in two thousand and eight. He was there at the convention in Minnesota. I was in the studios at thirty Rock in New York, ostensibly so I could also anchor hurricane coverage, though it was pretty clear that at least half the reason I was not in Minneapolis was because the Republicans had threatened NBC or said they could not guarantee my safety there or something like that. So I was the one on September two, two thousand and eight, who had to throw it to a video that we had been told by the Republicans was a tribute to the dead of nine to eleven that they were playing in the theater in their convention in Minnesota. It was not a tribute. It was a snuff film. All of the images that the net works had stopped showing of nine to eleven within weeks or even days of the attacks, all of them were in this snuff film. People jumping, falling to their deaths from the World Trade Center, endless replays of the planes hitting the towers, dismembered bodies in the plaza, the building collapses, the equally terrifying scenes at the Pentagon, and all with the grotesque voiceover from that Fink Robert Dove, emphasizing that this was all the Democrats fault. The message was they might as well have praised it this way. Elect Obama and you will die, and you will die like this. I was angry just on that base level. For that five and a half years I had been back at MSNBC, we had been rigorous about not showing any of that video that the Republicans had just forced upon us by lying to us about it. There were rules that if we had to for some reason sneed some snippet, we would show only still images, and even then only with extensive warnings to the viewers. But I knew from my conversations with the president of MSNBC, Phil Griffin, who I had known for twenty eight years at that point, that he would insist that on the scene in Minneapolis, Matthews and Tom Brokaw, whose career at NBC I had resuscitated after Brian Williams had buried him alive two years earlier. I knew from what Griffin told me that one or both of them would rebuke the GOP for showing not a nine to eleven tribute, but, as I just said, a nine to eleven snuff film. The snuff film ended, we came out to Brokaw and Matthews and Brokaw kind of coughed, and Matthews said wow. And he turned to Brokaw and said, in that loose fire hose delivery he had tom that kind of scores terrorism, big thing for Republicans. They try stuck Obama. Brokaw droned on approvingly the Republican sneaking a snuff film, a banned video onto MSNBC and by the way, also onto CNN, onto NBC proper, onto CBS, onto ABC without any warning. That was not mentioned back to New York to Keith, I was supposed to add liberates about what we were expecting from the Republican convention for the rest of the night and then throw to a commercial instead, I said, and this is a paraphrase, the original tape disappeared that night that before we moved on, I felt I needed to apologize that we at MSNBC and for that matter, at NBC News, at extremely strict rules about not showing the video the Republicans had just shown you via our network, without any warning, without any context, and by lying to us, and we certainly would not have shown the horror and death and blamed it on the Democrats, or for that matter, on the Republicans. I said, if we had done such a thing ourselves, there would have been people fired. The public program the GOP provided said that was going to be a nine to eleven tribute film, I said, and so did the private conversations with the network, which included the reminder from NBC and MSNBC that we had rules against showing the scenes of horrible death and mutilation and destruction. So I apologized on behalf of whoever trusted the Republicans to live up to their word that MSNBC viewers were forced to see the video our network had promised never to show them. So three nights later, without as much as an email to me, this Griffin had called my agent and told her I was fired and Matthews two from our coverage of the upcoming McCain Obama debates. I happened to be off that night in the press box watching a Mets Phillies game at Shay Stadium, so she had to relate these details to me by phone. As I walked down the many ramps in the stadium's bowels and headed towards the subway, I told her to call Griffin back and tell him I was quitting on the spot. Right then, and he could work his way out of the ensuing disaster by himself. Liberal network MSNBC fires liberal host Alderman for criticizing Concerns Servatives for sneaking nine to eleven snuff film onto MSNBC. He could work his way out of that disaster any way he chose, and then he could wait for my response on Good Morning America, CBS, This Morning, the PBS News Hour, any other news program that bothered to ask and in court. I made a few phone calls to friendly voices within the NBC management structure, got from them a clearer picture of what had happened. And despite the spotty cell service along the elevated train line heading back into Manhattan, I got a message from a newspaper reporter friend who neatly tied together all that I was hearing elsewhere. Tom Brokaw is going around NBC saying he got you fired from the debates because the Republicans told him to. Nine maybe ten months earlier, the same Phil Griffin had come to me and asked me if I would be okay with Brokaw appearing during our weekly coverage of the Democratic and Republican primaries. Just a couple of minutes, buddy like from a perspective desk. That's all he wants to do. He's so unhappy Brian Williams has frozen him out of everything. I was appalled, but not surprised. The power had gone to Brian's head, and of course there it had not met very much resistance. Plus, as I said to Griffin, you're asking me if i'd like to add Tom Brocaw's experience and Tom brocaws gravitas to stuff I'm anchoring when I'm not sure I know as much as I really know to do this the right way. Tom to be fair fit in beautifully, and twice after those long Tuesday evenings during the primaries, he sent me brief emails awarding me what he called the game ball, because he was so impressed by my ability to balance the roles of political anchor and political commentator. Having tried this myself, he wrote, I know of a perilous tightroup. This is game ball to Koh. I mock them now, but they meant so much to me then that I print them out and carried them in my wallet until September. And now Brokaw had gotten me fired because, as my newspaper friend said, the Republicans told him to Well, that wasn't hard to unpack either. Tim Russard had died on the third of June that year. I anchored that night until two in the morning. It was still an open wound. There were still tears. We didn't know it then, but the structure of NBC News and the perilous tight group balancing NBC and MSNBC had died with Tim Russard. So did the role of moderator of the second debate between John McCain and Barack Obama, scheduled for about a month. From my subway ride on October seventh, two thousand and eight in Nashville, Tim had not even been buried yet when Brokaw began to angle to get that assignment that was now vacant, along with brushing away the dirt of his Penny Anti role on the MSNBC Perspective desk, leaving us in the in order to take over Tim's spot as Brian's sage sidekick on Big NBC. The one before August, there had been a story coming out of the east end of the third floor at thirty Rock, where NBC News managers sat around not doing much of anything. That a Republican goon named Ed Gillespie had been in there with Griffin and the idiot NBC News president Steve kappis trying to get me silenced or fired or off the convention coverage or something, and that somebody prominent from NBC News was in there with Gillespie or was invoked by Gillespie. The rumor mill was not confident in who it was or what exactly they were doing. That Friday night in September two thousand and eight, as I switched from the elevated seven train to the underground f the whole thing came together. Before my comments about the GOP Convention nine to eleven snuff film, Gillespie had come in and had somehow vaguely threaten and Campus and Griffin about me using as leverage the debate which Tom Brokaw was now supposed to moderate, the one that had been Russots, And when I apologized for their snuff video on our air, Gillespie must have turned it into an either or get rid of me, or McCain would refuse to participate in any debate moderated by Brokaw. Tom Brokaw had already come back from the dead once in two thousand and eight, I had made that happen, and he would be damned if he would be forced to do it a second time. But as the train took me home to an apartment, I was now going to have to sell since I had quit MSNBC on the spot for folding to such obvious blackmail, something else now occurred to me. Why would MSNBC or NBC or our parent corporation GE actually think that they could remove me from the debate coverage on MSNBC, where the Rachel Meadow Show had not yet been born, was only going to premiere the next week, and the three times a night my show ran accounted for something like sixty percent of the entire day's network audience and all of its profits. How did they think they were going to get away with that without a really bad reaction from our audience. Plus, if a newspaper man already knew the Brokaw part, how could this story be avoided something like this? MSNBC has announced it had removed its liberal star Keith Alderman from coverage of the McCain Obama presidential debates. Sources confirmed former NBC News anchorman Tom Brokaw now an MSNBC commentator had helped the Republican Party to blackmail NBC into the decision. Olderman immediately resigned, saying, quote in succumbing to this coercion on behalf of John McCain, NBC has now forfeited any further right to be called a news organization, and I'm sad to say MSNBC, which I built, is now dead. At that point, it dawned on me that the only thing that could save the credibility of the whole NBC News debate vision and the careers of Griffin and Cappus and NBC Network president Jeff Zucker and especially Tom Brokaw was for me to publicly state to lie that I had asked to be removed from anchoring the debates because the whatever was just too much blah blah blah for me, and I felt I should just stick to the post debate analysis in commentary and blah blah blah blah blah. In short, they would have a choice. They could fire me from the debates and destroy everything, including the one hundred million dollars a year or so in profits NBC was suddenly making off MSNBC after years of losing about that much, or I could lie and claim it was my idea and I could save everybody's ass and their money, including my own. I got out of the subway and raced home. I called my agent. I explained it to her. I'm not quitting. In fact, I'm going to get a huge raise. Listen carefully, you call Griffin back and explain to him I will now personally save his job, even though he doesn't deserve it, and campuses and Zooker's and bro cause in everybody else's I'll take the fall instead of letting them get fired by the MSNBC audience. I'll say this was my idea, and it will cost him only twelve million dollars. Oh, and he has to leak the fact that it cost him twelve million dollars. That's the deal. And she paused for a second, and she said, hey, that's genius. It might not quite be twelve, but I bet I get at least nine million. On Sunday, several news organizations reported I had asked to be taking off the anchor desk for the debates. Two months and one week later, The New York Times wrote, quote Keith Oldraman, the anchor of countdown on MSNBC has extended his contract through the next presidential election season. The networking outs mister Olderman and MSNBC essentially tore up the four year, four million dollars a year contract they signed last year and replaced it with one worth about seven and a half million a year. So that was a three and a half million dollar raise for four years to a total of fourteen million dollars. Except the new contract added two years to my old deal, so the rais was actually twenty two million dollars. All stories have punchlines. This punchline is about Brokaw. We would have gotten away with this. NBC would have gotten its money's worth for the twenty two million in hush money it had to pay me because it had rolled over for Republican Party blackmail. Except Brokaw couldn't keep his mouth shut. So proud was he of preserving his role as moderator of the October seventh debate that he had to explain in explicit detail how he went to his bosses at NBC News and threatened them on behalf of the GOP. I mean on the record, he said this September twenty ninth, a lengthy and glowing Brocaw profile in the New York Times. Quote, mister Brocaws said that over the summer he'd quote advocated within the executive suite of NBC News to modify the anchor duties of the MSNBC hosts Keith Olberman and Chris Matthews on election Night and on knights where there were presidential debates. Mister Brocaw said he had also conducted some shuttle diplomacy in recent weeks between NBC and the McCain campaign. His mission, he said, was to assure the candidate's aids that despite some negative on air commentary by mister Olderman in particular, mister McCain could still get a fair shake from NBC News. Unquote. That was his mission. The hell, that was his mission. Happily, Rocaw just could not resist boasting even further. The next sentence reads quote, mister Brocaws said he had been told by a senior McCain aide whom he did not name, that the campaign had been reluctant to accept an NBC representative as one of the moderators of the three presidential debates until his name was invoked. One of the things I was told by this person was that they were so irritated they said, if it's an NBC moalorator for any of these debates, we won't go. Mister Brocaw said, my name came up, and they said, oh hell, we have to do it, because it's going to be Brokaw. No insufferable person in all of broadcasting history has a better rep and a better and more undeserved rep than Tom Brokaw. So when a Trump leans on NBC management because the coverage that he got was not the coverage he wanted, don't think it won't have an effect. Because in two thousand and eight.

Wow, does this crap sound familiar? NBC corporate NBC is in reruns. They were already blackmailed once by the Republicans, long before Trump was sent here by the devil. And boy did this flash me back? Because this happened to me at MSNBC in two thousand and eight, courtesy the supposed sane Republicans, and it underscores that they have never been sane. There have never been sane Republicans. They have always longed to dictate to the media what it can and cannot say about whichever asshole is its presidential candidate, and thanks to people like Tom Brokaw, they often get away with it. Chris Matthews and I were co anchoring the Republican Convention on MSNBC in two thousand and eight. He was there at the convention in Minnesota. I was in the studios at thirty Rock in New York, ostensibly so I could also anchor hurricane coverage, though it was pretty clear that at least half the reason I was not in Minneapolis was because the Republicans had threatened NBC or said they could not guarantee my safety there or something like that. So I was the one on September two, two thousand and eight, who had to throw it to a video that we had been told by the Republicans was a tribute to the dead of nine to eleven that they were playing in the theater in their convention in Minnesota. It was not a tribute. It was a snuff film. All of the images that the net works had stopped showing of nine to eleven within weeks or even days of the attacks, all of them were in this snuff film. People jumping, falling to their deaths from the World Trade Center, endless replays of the planes hitting the towers, dismembered bodies in the plaza, the building collapses, the equally terrifying scenes at the Pentagon, and all with the grotesque voiceover from that Fink Robert Dove, emphasizing that this was all the Democrats fault. The message was they might as well have praised it this way. Elect Obama and you will die, and you will die like this. I was angry just on that base level. For that five and a half years I had been back at MSNBC, we had been rigorous about not showing any of that video that the Republicans had just forced upon us by lying to us about it. There were rules that if we had to for some reason sneed some snippet, we would show only still images, and even then only with extensive warnings to the viewers. But I knew from my conversations with the president of MSNBC, Phil Griffin, who I had known for twenty eight years at that point, that he would insist that on the scene in Minneapolis, Matthews and Tom Brokaw, whose career at NBC I had resuscitated after Brian Williams had buried him alive two years earlier. I knew from what Griffin told me that one or both of them would rebuke the GOP for showing not a nine to eleven tribute, but, as I just said, a nine to eleven snuff film. The snuff film ended, we came out to Brokaw and Matthews and Brokaw kind of coughed, and Matthews said wow. And he turned to Brokaw and said, in that loose fire hose delivery he had tom that kind of scores terrorism, big thing for Republicans. They try stuck Obama. Brokaw droned on approvingly the Republican sneaking a snuff film, a banned video onto MSNBC and by the way, also onto CNN, onto NBC proper, onto CBS, onto ABC without any warning. That was not mentioned back to New York to Keith, I was supposed to add liberates about what we were expecting from the Republican convention for the rest of the night and then throw to a commercial instead, I said, and this is a paraphrase, the original tape disappeared that night that before we moved on, I felt I needed to apologize that we at MSNBC and for that matter, at NBC News, at extremely strict rules about not showing the video the Republicans had just shown you via our network, without any warning, without any context, and by lying to us, and we certainly would not have shown the horror and death and blamed it on the Democrats, or for that matter, on the Republicans. I said, if we had done such a thing ourselves, there would have been people fired. The public program the GOP provided said that was going to be a nine to eleven tribute film, I said, and so did the private conversations with the network, which included the reminder from NBC and MSNBC that we had rules against showing the scenes of horrible death and mutilation and destruction. So I apologized on behalf of whoever trusted the Republicans to live up to their word that MSNBC viewers were forced to see the video our network had promised never to show them. So three nights later, without as much as an email to me, this Griffin had called my agent and told her I was fired and Matthews two from our coverage of the upcoming McCain Obama debates. I happened to be off that night in the press box watching a Mets Phillies game at Shay Stadium, so she had to relate these details to me by phone. As I walked down the many ramps in the stadium's bowels and headed towards the subway, I told her to call Griffin back and tell him I was quitting on the spot. Right then, and he could work his way out of the ensuing disaster by himself. Liberal network MSNBC fires liberal host Alderman for criticizing Concerns Servatives for sneaking nine to eleven snuff film onto MSNBC. He could work his way out of that disaster any way he chose, and then he could wait for my response on Good Morning America, CBS, This Morning, the PBS News Hour, any other news program that bothered to ask and in court. I made a few phone calls to friendly voices within the NBC management structure, got from them a clearer picture of what had happened. And despite the spotty cell service along the elevated train line heading back into Manhattan, I got a message from a newspaper reporter friend who neatly tied together all that I was hearing elsewhere. Tom Brokaw is going around NBC saying he got you fired from the debates because the Republicans told him to. Nine maybe ten months earlier, the same Phil Griffin had come to me and asked me if I would be okay with Brokaw appearing during our weekly coverage of the Democratic and Republican primaries. Just a couple of minutes, buddy like from a perspective desk. That's all he wants to do. He's so unhappy Brian Williams has frozen him out of everything. I was appalled, but not surprised. The power had gone to Brian's head, and of course there it had not met very much resistance. Plus, as I said to Griffin, you're asking me if i'd like to add Tom Brocaw's experience and Tom brocaws gravitas to stuff I'm anchoring when I'm not sure I know as much as I really know to do this the right way. Tom to be fair fit in beautifully, and twice after those long Tuesday evenings during the primaries, he sent me brief emails awarding me what he called the game ball, because he was so impressed by my ability to balance the roles of political anchor and political commentator. Having tried this myself, he wrote, I know of a perilous tightroup. This is game ball to Koh. I mock them now, but they meant so much to me then that I print them out and carried them in my wallet until September. And now Brokaw had gotten me fired because, as my newspaper friend said, the Republicans told him to Well, that wasn't hard to unpack either. Tim Russard had died on the third of June that year. I anchored that night until two in the morning. It was still an open wound. There were still tears. We didn't know it then, but the structure of NBC News and the perilous tight group balancing NBC and MSNBC had died with Tim Russard. So did the role of moderator of the second debate between John McCain and Barack Obama, scheduled for about a month. From my subway ride on October seventh, two thousand and eight in Nashville, Tim had not even been buried yet when Brokaw began to angle to get that assignment that was now vacant, along with brushing away the dirt of his Penny Anti role on the MSNBC Perspective desk, leaving us in the in order to take over Tim's spot as Brian's sage sidekick on Big NBC. The one before August, there had been a story coming out of the east end of the third floor at thirty Rock, where NBC News managers sat around not doing much of anything. That a Republican goon named Ed Gillespie had been in there with Griffin and the idiot NBC News president Steve kappis trying to get me silenced or fired or off the convention coverage or something, and that somebody prominent from NBC News was in there with Gillespie or was invoked by Gillespie. The rumor mill was not confident in who it was or what exactly they were doing. That Friday night in September two thousand and eight, as I switched from the elevated seven train to the underground f the whole thing came together. Before my comments about the GOP Convention nine to eleven snuff film, Gillespie had come in and had somehow vaguely threaten and Campus and Griffin about me using as leverage the debate which Tom Brokaw was now supposed to moderate, the one that had been Russots, And when I apologized for their snuff video on our air, Gillespie must have turned it into an either or get rid of me, or McCain would refuse to participate in any debate moderated by Brokaw. Tom Brokaw had already come back from the dead once in two thousand and eight, I had made that happen, and he would be damned if he would be forced to do it a second time. But as the train took me home to an apartment, I was now going to have to sell since I had quit MSNBC on the spot for folding to such obvious blackmail, something else now occurred to me. Why would MSNBC or NBC or our parent corporation GE actually think that they could remove me from the debate coverage on MSNBC, where the Rachel Meadow Show had not yet been born, was only going to premiere the next week, and the three times a night my show ran accounted for something like sixty percent of the entire day's network audience and all of its profits. How did they think they were going to get away with that without a really bad reaction from our audience. Plus, if a newspaper man already knew the Brokaw part, how could this story be avoided something like this? MSNBC has announced it had removed its liberal star Keith Alderman from coverage of the McCain Obama presidential debates. Sources confirmed former NBC News anchorman Tom Brokaw now an MSNBC commentator had helped the Republican Party to blackmail NBC into the decision. Olderman immediately resigned, saying, quote in succumbing to this coercion on behalf of John McCain, NBC has now forfeited any further right to be called a news organization, and I'm sad to say MSNBC, which I built, is now dead. At that point, it dawned on me that the only thing that could save the credibility of the whole NBC News debate vision and the careers of Griffin and Cappus and NBC Network president Jeff Zucker and especially Tom Brokaw was for me to publicly state to lie that I had asked to be removed from anchoring the debates because the whatever was just too much blah blah blah for me, and I felt I should just stick to the post debate analysis in commentary and blah blah blah blah blah. In short, they would have a choice. They could fire me from the debates and destroy everything, including the one hundred million dollars a year or so in profits NBC was suddenly making off MSNBC after years of losing about that much, or I could lie and claim it was my idea and I could save everybody's ass and their money, including my own. I got out of the subway and raced home. I called my agent. I explained it to her. I'm not quitting. In fact, I'm going to get a huge raise. Listen carefully, you call Griffin back and explain to him I will now personally save his job, even though he doesn't deserve it, and campuses and Zooker's and bro cause in everybody else's I'll take the fall instead of letting them get fired by the MSNBC audience. I'll say this was my idea, and it will cost him only twelve million dollars. Oh, and he has to leak the fact that it cost him twelve million dollars. That's the deal. And she paused for a second, and she said, hey, that's genius. It might not quite be twelve, but I bet I get at least nine million. On Sunday, several news organizations reported I had asked to be taking off the anchor desk for the debates. Two months and one week later, The New York Times wrote, quote Keith Oldraman, the anchor of countdown on MSNBC has extended his contract through the next presidential election season. The networking outs mister Olderman and MSNBC essentially tore up the four year, four million dollars a year contract they signed last year and replaced it with one worth about seven and a half million a year. So that was a three and a half million dollar raise for four years to a total of fourteen million dollars. Except the new contract added two years to my old deal, so the rais was actually twenty two million dollars. All stories have punchlines. This punchline is about Brokaw. We would have gotten away with this. NBC would have gotten its money's worth for the twenty two million in hush money it had to pay me because it had rolled over for Republican Party blackmail. Except Brokaw couldn't keep his mouth shut. So proud was he of preserving his role as moderator of the October seventh debate that he had to explain in explicit detail how he went to his bosses at NBC News and threatened them on behalf of the GOP. I mean on the record, he said this September twenty ninth, a lengthy and glowing Brocaw profile in the New York Times. Quote, mister Brocaws said that over the summer he'd quote advocated within the executive suite of NBC News to modify the anchor duties of the MSNBC hosts Keith Olberman and Chris Matthews on election Night and on knights where there were presidential debates. Mister Brocaw said he had also conducted some shuttle diplomacy in recent weeks between NBC and the McCain campaign. His mission, he said, was to assure the candidate's aids that despite some negative on air commentary by mister Olderman in particular, mister McCain could still get a fair shake from NBC News. Unquote. That was his mission. The hell, that was his mission. Happily, Rocaw just could not resist boasting even further. The next sentence reads quote, mister Brocaws said he had been told by a senior McCain aide whom he did not name, that the campaign had been reluctant to accept an NBC representative as one of the moderators of the three presidential debates until his name was invoked. One of the things I was told by this person was that they were so irritated they said, if it's an NBC moalorator for any of these debates, we won't go. Mister Brocaw said, my name came up, and they said, oh hell, we have to do it, because it's going to be Brokaw. No insufferable person in all of broadcasting history has a better rep and a better and more undeserved rep than Tom Brokaw. So when a Trump leans on NBC management because the coverage that he got was not the coverage he wanted, don't think it won't have an effect. Because in two thousand and eight.

They loved me then as they love Meadow now. But what they loved about each of us was not the truth we provided, but the money.

They loved me then as they love Meadow now. But what they loved about each of us was not the truth we provided, but the money.

Believe it or not, there are still more new idiots to talk about the roundup of the misgrants, morons and Dunning Krueger effects specimens who constitute today's other worst persons in the world. Here are the nominees, the brons worse the perpetrators, in this case, Canadian anger towards that nation's hockey immortal, well former immortal, Wayne Gretzky, has re redoubled and here comes the feces smeared on the nine foot tall statue of Gretzky outside the hockey rink in Edmond, where Gretzky played the bulk of his career. Feses, a lot of feces. The Edmonton Oilers executive vice president of UH statue defecising or something, a man named Tim Shipton telling the news division of CTV quote, it's unfortunate over the past several years we've had to deal with issues of disorder in our downtown core.

Believe it or not, there are still more new idiots to talk about the roundup of the misgrants, morons and Dunning Krueger effects specimens who constitute today's other worst persons in the world. Here are the nominees, the brons worse the perpetrators, in this case, Canadian anger towards that nation's hockey immortal, well former immortal, Wayne Gretzky, has re redoubled and here comes the feces smeared on the nine foot tall statue of Gretzky outside the hockey rink in Edmond, where Gretzky played the bulk of his career. Feses, a lot of feces. The Edmonton Oilers executive vice president of UH statue defecising or something, a man named Tim Shipton telling the news division of CTV quote, it's unfortunate over the past several years we've had to deal with issues of disorder in our downtown core.

Sir.

Sir.

That is not disorder, it's feces. They have not defaced or done any disordering. They have defecis. Or to put it in terms that invokes two of Gretzky's teams and probably his best known teammate, it's messy. A that's a hockey joke. The runner up worser New York Mayor Eric Adams, who's just a joke joke. His re election campaign has raised this year thirty six thousand dollars. Oh wait, that's before he had to give eighteen thousand dollars back to donors who were over the legal limit. For comparison, eight hundred and forty five thousand dollars has been raised this year by the campaign of Zoran Mamdani. Who is Zoran Mamdani. I had no idea and I live here until I looked him up. He is the Socialist candidate for mayor. He outraised the mayor mayor same time span by a factor of forty seven. On the other hand, Mayor Adams doesn't seem to understand the implications here. He held a town hall in the ocean side neighborhood of the Rockaways and decided instead of talking about what he could do to save the city and himself, he decided to reminisce about riding the subways without paying so he could visit his quote Shorty unquote who lived in the distant Rockaways. Shorty means many things in the urban lingo. This time it appears to be a reference to a girlfriend, possibly a girlfriend on the side of another relationship. Or it's Eric Adams, who the hell knows what he means.

That is not disorder, it's feces. They have not defaced or done any disordering. They have defecis. Or to put it in terms that invokes two of Gretzky's teams and probably his best known teammate, it's messy. A that's a hockey joke. The runner up worser New York Mayor Eric Adams, who's just a joke joke. His re election campaign has raised this year thirty six thousand dollars. Oh wait, that's before he had to give eighteen thousand dollars back to donors who were over the legal limit. For comparison, eight hundred and forty five thousand dollars has been raised this year by the campaign of Zoran Mamdani. Who is Zoran Mamdani. I had no idea and I live here until I looked him up. He is the Socialist candidate for mayor. He outraised the mayor mayor same time span by a factor of forty seven. On the other hand, Mayor Adams doesn't seem to understand the implications here. He held a town hall in the ocean side neighborhood of the Rockaways and decided instead of talking about what he could do to save the city and himself, he decided to reminisce about riding the subways without paying so he could visit his quote Shorty unquote who lived in the distant Rockaways. Shorty means many things in the urban lingo. This time it appears to be a reference to a girlfriend, possibly a girlfriend on the side of another relationship. Or it's Eric Adams, who the hell knows what he means.

There's a real history for me.

There's a real history for me.

I had a shorty that lived out here, you know, used to come out, come out, taking that long a train, right, you know, and the cold, you know, love is blind, and you know, taking that long, long a train I did not have a car, and one or two times I didn't have a tokens. So yes, I did jump up with the turnstile. I'm not gonna it's over. The statue of limitation is over.

I had a shorty that lived out here, you know, used to come out, come out, taking that long a train, right, you know, and the cold, you know, love is blind, and you know, taking that long, long a train I did not have a car, and one or two times I didn't have a tokens. So yes, I did jump up with the turnstile. I'm not gonna it's over. The statue of limitation is over.

Statue of limitations. Statue of limitations. The Mayor of the City of New York, everybody but the winner worst Ellen Musk wait I may have mispronounced that. Yeah at Elon, Elon Musk. Now that he and Trump have eliminated the Department of Education, which Mayor Adams so desperately needed, who knows how much more stupid we will each become. Musk, of course, does not have much further to descend. He celebrated the thing that will increase those non college white trash men for Trump numbers by doing the graveside meme with the guy kneeling in front of the tombstone giving the two finger piece or V for victory sign. Only in this one the guy is Trump and on the tombstone it reads Department of Education. Yes, depart men d E P R T M E N. Because Musk has misspelled department because he's a clucking idiot. Elon Department of Education. Musk. The law of proving Darwin was right. This has to come into play with this loser at some point, doesn't it. I mean, he's got to try to get the toast out with a fork sooner rather than later, doesn't he Elon Musk two days worse person and no word. I've done all the damage I can do here. Thank you for listening. Ryan Ray and John Phillip Chanel, the musical directors have Countdown, arranged, produced, and performed most of our music. Mister Chanelle handled orchestration and keyboards. Mister Ray was on the guitars, bass and drums, and it was produced by Tko Brothers. Our satirical and pithy musical comments are by the best baseball stadium organists ever, Nancy Faust. The sports music is the Olberman theme from ESPN two, written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN Inc. Other music arranged and performed by the group No Horns Allowed. And my announcer today is my friend Larry David. Everything else was as ever my fault. That's countdown for today, just three hundred and ninety nine days. We've cleared fourteen hundred until the scheduled end of his lane Duck lame reigned term unless Musk removes him sooner or the actuarial tables due. The next scheduled countdown is Thursday. Voice still tentative. As always, Bolton's as the news warrants, remember im peach Trump. It won't work now, it will win the Democrat. It's the midterms if there are midterms, and remove Schumer immediately. Until next time, I'm Keith Olberman. Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and good luck.