Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. This is a Countdown Boulton podcast. I'm Keith Oldreman. The racist purge has escalated at MSNBC. We told you this morning about Joy Reid getting fired and no pretense being made about why it was done, and Alex Wagner not going to return to her own show, though supposedly staying on as a correspondent. The number is now five. Katie Fang is out. Her show has been canceled outright. Jonathan k
Part's show and Iman's show have also been canceled. They may or may not stay on at the network. So that is five Reid, Wagner, Iman, Katie Fang, and Jonathan k Parts. What do they all have in common? This on top of the previous firings of Meddi Hassan and
Tiffany Cross and others long before that. They did not even attempt to cover this up with a fig leaf by firing an unnecessary non person of color, somebody like Stephanie Rule, who show is actually still on the air at eleven o'clock, even though MSNBC would make more money by simply replaying a Mattow rerun or a Hayes rerun or an O'Donnell rerun, or a joy Read rerun. Well, that's right, she's gone now, isn't she. After tonight, they didn't even fire somebody as a fig leaf. That is
how truly naked. To continue the analogy, this racist purge is. And there has not been a word from any of the three main liberal anchors, my former guest hosts who constitute the MSNBC primetime lineup. Because I'd like to think they're thinking about it, I'm afraid I think they're thinking about the money. There is a problem that happens to someone who becomes a success suddenly and unexpectedly in their
life after failure. I've discussed it many times previously. You suddenly wonder if it could all go away tomorrow, and if you've had enough success and if you have had enough money. Even if you have it doesn't register. But back to the main point here, why on earth would
they do this? Why on earth would they do this on the same day that NBC announces that less your Holt is stepping down as the anchor of NBC Nightly News, Although that had been rumored for a long time and was apparently his choice, or at least partially his choice to stay with the network and stick to dateline. The nightly news format is dying finally, as we have seen at CBS. That's perhaps separate of this, but to do it all in a span of one day reeks of
we don't care if you think we are racist. And the only people who would do something like that would be people who were following the CNN game plan from three years ago. The people who took over CNN, Warner Bros. Discovery, led by David Zaslav and Chris Lick, who used to be in the broadcasting business, decided rather openly to try to make the thing right wing to please they're leading
new right wing investors. And if it didn't work, since people simply stopped watching CNN, well so much the better. You've neutralized CNN as a liberal outlet, or a partially liberal outlet, or an occasionally liberal outlet, or even just a neutral outlet, the way Twitter was neutralized by Elon Musk. And now it comes to MSNBC. You don't go and fire meadow. You can't. That would be the tent pole
collapsing and any value of the network completely vanishing. You can't probably fire Hayes and O'Donnell, And what would the difference be if you did but fire all the minorities around the place, and you are signaling to the viewers that you do not care about diversity of opinion in a time in which the word diversity is suddenly like the word communist was in the nineteen fifties. I've told many times the story about what these networks really mean
to their corporate officers and owners. In two thousand and nine, when Jeff Immelt, the chairman of GE, which I believe was the sixth largest corporation in the world at that point, was bothered by a reporter from Fox News who trailed him and bothered him because I was critical of Fox News and Bill O'Reilly on MSNBC. The reporter, by the way,
was named Jesse Waters. If that name rings a bell when he was followed Immelt, that is, and he was criticized on O'Reilly's show and accused of manufacturing parts GE was manufacturing parts to make into IED's to kill Americans
in Iraq. When that happened, Jeff Immelt's mother, a Bill O'Reilly fan, a Bill O'Reilly fan, called him up and yelled at him, And after being harassed by Jesse Waters and by his own mother, Jeff Immelt called Jeff Zooker, the president of NBC, and said, take MSNBC off the air. If I am bothered again by this, I am discontinuing the network. Immediately, pay everybody off, and everybody is fired,
all at once. We were at that point perhaps profiting two or three hundred million dollars a year, which seems to you and me to be a lot of money. But if yours is the fourth or fifth or sixth largest corporation in the world, it's pocket change. You can do without it. And even now, Comcast could spin off MSNBC, which has been profitable through all of its travails the last few years, and would be as profitable again as it was during the first Trump administration with a little
care and feeding. They have spun it off with the design to sell it and the other less than productive cable networks to sell it, or as we are seeing here, to kill it. But the doing of it this way when you don't even as I said before, you don't even offer the fig leaf of firing somebody who isn't Mehdi Hassan or Katie Fang or Jonathan cape Hart or Joy Reed or Alex Wagner or Eiman or any of them, when you don't even bother to cover up what you
are doing. What you are doing is racism bluntly. If I were Mado, if I were still working at MSNBC, I would either go on the air and announce I am leaving and will not return until these people are restored or this is corrected in some other way, and get up from the chair and let the network go to blank, darkness or tone and bars. I would do that. I almost did that on several occasions in two thousand and eight, in two thousand and nine, but the crisis
was averted. I hope somewhere behind the scenes, Mattow is doing something like that, or Hayes or O'Donnell or all three of them. God knows. Matto and I put that possibility to MSNBC and NBC executives several times in two thousand and eight, nine and ten, and we prevailed. But you have to go and do it. And if you don't do it, Rachel, Lawrence, Chris, you are complicit in this. And this is racism, and this is this is what
Joe Scarborough would do. I talked for half an hour in today's episode of the podcast about the Joy Reid firing and the Alex Wagner demotion or firing before we knew about the rest of the purge on Monday afternoon. I'd like to if you haven't heard that, play it for you again. If you've heard it, feel free to hit stop right now. This has been a countdown bulletin podcast on the racist purge at MSNBC. I heard the new Saturday Night Joy Reid out at MSNBC, and it turned
out to be much bigger than that. Joy Reid per The New York Times to be replaced from her seven PM show by moving a weekend show on MSNBC featuring Michael Steele, who is a politician and brand salesman, although he has not been active recently in the Republican Party, He's a salesman. Simone Sanders a politician and brand saleswoman from the Democratic Party. She's a saleswoman. Alicia Menendez, who
is the daughter of the senator from New Jersey. You may have heard about him, who's a different kind of salesman and she has largely been a party salesperson. Nothing wrong with that show. It's been on for several years on the weekends on MSNBC, and it's kind of interesting. I suppose there's nothing wrong with it unless you want insight or commentary or new people you have not heard from before. It is textbook MSNBC. They lost the idea I gave them and thought this is what it was,
salesmanship as opposed to commentary or insight. They're also offering Alex Wagner in addition to Joy Read. Alex Wagner will not return after what happens to Mattow happens at the end of the one hundred days, they may replace her with Jen Saki. And if anybody on television besides her counterparts who are all on Fox, anybody is a salesperson as opposed to an analyst or a commentator, it's Jensaki.
Jensaki who recently said that she was wondering if maybe maybe she had oversold Merrick Garland and if perhaps she regretted She was beginning to wonder if she regretted doing such a good job convincing people Merrick Garland should be the Attorney General of the United States and one wonders if everything that we're going through now ends up in the worst possible place, if as we all get marched into the camps, Jensaki will be still wondering if she
made a mistake supporting Merrick Garland. These people are salespersons. Salespersons doctrinaire, and often it's doctrinaire bullshit. If you have been a salesperson, a press secretary for a politician these days, you have sorry lied. Some people managed to swerve back from this to become decent human beings, believe it or not. One of Bush's secretaries, Scott McClellan, actually one day woke up and said I'm better than this and wrote a
tell all book and promptly disappeared from politics. And I'm sure he's had a happy life since. Because if you're going to sell politics to people, if you're actually going to sell things that you don't believe in, that you haven't analyzed, that you can't find flaw in, that you feel like you shouldn't mention the flaws in, you're irrelevant. Michael Steele was the chairman of the Republican Party, and as much as he's come to be an anti Trump voice and a useful one. Every time I see him,
I think, what is this guy trying to sell me? Also, that's a nighttime version three hosts of The Scarborough Show in the morning. But I'm wandering off the main topics here. I've had lots of problems with Alex Wagner. I've told you the stories. I told you that she was not when I tried to bring her in as the guest host who would have succeeded Lawrence O'Donnell after Laurence o'donald succeeded Rachel Mattow as the guest host on my show.
I told you that it was apparent from the beginning she was not interested in doing the harder parts of the job. Very smart, insightful, obviously very good on television, but just not interested. I told the story about how she did not want to learn how to use the
teleprompter and was confident she would pick it up. And that's when we sort of bailed out on her, and on her first show on MSNBC just twelve years later, the prompter failed and she did not know what to do and stood there for several moments waving at the prompter as if she could get it to move by waving at it and nobody would notice. So I have lots of problems with her. But Alex Wagner was not a salesperson for some politician or political point of view.
That political points of view you might have coincided with her opinions. Yes, that was true of me too. I was not a salesperson for the Democratic Party and all things Democrat. And if you doubt that, ask Hillary Clinton how she feels about me as a salesperson for all things Democrat. But I am moving away from the main topic here. Joy Reid was fired by MSNBC. There's lots of other ways to phrase this, and I'm sure they will dress this up to some degree, and I'm sure
she will get some money out of the deal. But I don't think we are really understanding the impact this is going to have on the MSNBC brand inside, the new company that's running NBC or MSNBC and the ex NBC cable networks inside that this is a big day for them because they've just removed a pain in the ass, just like when I agreed to leave after they breached my contract, even though they had to give me roughly twenty million dollars over the course of several years because
they've breached my contract. They were so happy that I went. They are still happy, even though we spent the next ten years dancing about possibly me coming back because things were so bad over there. But where is the reaction here? Where's the reaction from the MSNBC host who didn't get fired in a Saturday night massacre? In all small letters, the reaction from the MSNBC hosts is no surprise. It's no surprise because there's been no reaction. Mattow, nothing, Al Sharpton.
Have we heard anything from Al Sharpton? Because there's something about Joy read that I haven't gotten to yet. That's kind of important here, in addition to the fact that, just practically speaking, the conduit to bring people to MSNBC and thus to what remains of mainstream television news. The conduit the person who said, let's book this guest, and let's bring in that guy, and let's bring in this woman, and let's talk about this topic, which would have been
different than everything else on the air on MSNBC. That was Joy Reid. And I had lots of problems with lots of stuff she said, and I thought lots of stuff she said was absolutely crazy, and so what going back and looking at my shows from two thousand and seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, I don't agree with everything I said then myself, let alone what other people said. It's not supposed to be
like that. It's supposed to be inconsistent. It's supposed to be poking different areas to see what holds up and what doesn't. It's supposed to be saying, yeah, I like this Occupy Wall Street thing. No, this is bullshit. It's supposed to be like that. It's not supposed to be here is today's show. We could record this and play it back to you two years from now and you wouldn't know the difference. That's not what it's supposed to be.
And unfortunately the entirety of the MSNBC lineup has become that, except the Morning Show, which is of course MSNVS. Because there's a problem here, larger problem, and nobody is going to say this. Do you remember Melissa Harris Perry, she used to be on My Show, later known as Melissa Harris Lacewell. They gave her her own show in large part because she did such a good job as an analyst on Mine and a couple of other shows, and she got her own show and they fired her. You
remember Tiffany Cross. Now, there was somebody who liked to poke at things and see whether or not they were true. And again, lots of things she said, I went holy crap wrong. But so what you have to have room for that, and what they're saying in MSNBC is we're not going to have room for that anymore. She got fired. So Melissa Harris Lacewell, Perry or Melissa Harris Perry Lacewell, I'm sorry, Melissa. I could never keep it straight. She
got fired. Tiffany Cross got fired. Remember Tiffany Cross, among the other things, Tucker Carlson attacked her. She was the one who would go back and say, this was on Fox the way I used to. Tucker Carlson claimed that Tiffany Cross was inspiring genocide like Rwanda. Seriously, MSNBC's response, rather than to come at Tucker Carlson with five million
metaphorical machine guns, was to fire Tiffany Cross. Because you can have controversy as long as it's controversy trademark, and you can sell it trademark, and you can put a smile on its face trademark, and you can give it a little silly grin or a kind of sad grin, or a feel good grin, and then you can say, now here's Laurence O'Donnell. They fired her, They fired Melissa Harris Lacewell. Now they fired Joy Reid. Now they fired Alex Wagner. Humm, Melissa Harris, Perry, Tiffany Cross, Joy Reid,
Alex Wagner. For women, what did they have in common? Well, let's see, they all had their own shows solo hosts on MSNBC, and they were all women of color, and they've all been fired. I believe I'm not certain of this. I didn't I spent enough time wondering about MSNBC firings. I don't need to go through the list again. Forgive me if I've gotten this wrong, but I do know they're the last, four, if not the only four women
of color who have hosted shows on MSNBC. And they've all been fired, and they've all been replaced by Well, but you're what's Michael Steele was a man of color, and Simon Sanders is a woman of color, and Alicia Menendez is a woman of color. Yeah, they are official, they are safe. They are not going to do crazy things or bring on people you've never heard of before who turn out to be better than the people you've
heard of. And they also may hire a professor from Columbia's a woman of color, and they fired the only remaining women of color who were solo anchoring political commentary shows on prominent national television networks. Alex Wagner I think probably is relieved by this. And it doesn't mean that just because you're a woman of color or a person of color, your show should be held to a lower
standard and you should get twenty five years to improve it. No, at some point, guess what, I don't care who it is. I don't care if it's Jesus Christ fresh off the cross, a man of color that you would say, hey, you know, Jesus, I'm sorry. It doesn't quite work. And the new woodworking segments they weren't any good either. That's not the point.
The point is not you must protect all people of color who get television shows, but if the show is of value, and the ratings for Joy Reid's show went up and down, just as MSNBC's overall ratings went and is it possible that maybe she wasn't best for the seven o'clock slot, Maybe maybe later in the evening, maybe there might have been a greater audience, maybe at ten o'clock. Now what they saw was people have been sharing clips of the nightmare that is the Scott what's his name? Show?
Scott Jennings on CNN, which is nominally Abby Phillips show, and poor Abby Phillips goes out there, Abby Phillip, excuse me, Abby Phillip goes out there and gets tortured by this racist Scott Jennings. It's his show, and it's a bunch of people talking about how much of a racist he is. And he leans back in the chair and rocks back and forth and mugs to the camera and creates viral clips.
And somebody at MSNBC said, wouldn't we rather have that than Joy Reid, who's now bald, appearing on television every night at seven o'clock? Don't we want this? Won't this make it easier to sell this company when we want to? Won't it make it easier? The next time Trump threatens NBC and MSNBC for us to say, but we fired Joy Reid. More Practically, MSNBC's problems in terms of its profitability and its ratings had nothing to do with Joy Reid.
As I said, her ratings went up and down exactly as Chris Hayes's ratings went up and down, and Maddow's ratings went up and down, and Maddow's replacements like Wagner, their ratings went up and down. Lawrence O'Donnell went up and down. A Weekends went up and down, including the Simone Sanders, Michael Steele Alisha Menendez show ratings went up
and down, all in the same sign curves. The problem at MSNBC is Joe Scarborough and until you fire Joe Scarborough and get rid of msn V, she and what that told people who watch that network, which I'm talking about largely because A. I did invent it. B. It is the only liberal network. It is the only thing even close to being a liberal network. And the better it is, the better it is for our society as we attempt to keep democracy or some shred of democracy alive.
We need a strong, vibrant, loud, fearless MSNBC and not the view forgive me at seven o'clock night. We need people like Joy Reid. Even if you sit there and go, I'm not watching that, it's important that she's there for the people who want to identify with somebody who looks like Joy Reid and say that woman is out here trying to argue my point and is talking to me, and is bringing people who look like me and look like her onto television for the first time, and some
of them are going to become superstars. And if we ever get out of this goddamned mess caused by lack of courage, often on places like MSNBC, often in places in the public discourse, we're ever going to get out of this mess and restore this democracy, it's gonna be because of people like Joyreaid. Even if you don't agree with the goddamn word she said. No, keep Joe Scarborough um now supporting Chump again. You've heard me talk about Chump being Hitler all this time. I guess I was wrong.
Remember when I was trying to be his vice president. Take somebody off his show to put him on in primetime Michael Steele. Not take somebody off his show, Joe Scarborough and put anything on, including bugs bunny cartoons, would be a better political statement at seven o'clock in the morning on MSNBC, and much more consistent and eloquent, and
bugs Bunny did not have a deviated septum either. One last procedural thing about this about MSNBC and it is I think of it the way I do ESPN, not like an ex spouse, but really as and it's a little pretentious, but as a child, as a child that sometimes I have had good relationships with and sometimes I have not. And to some degree it's the same thing in limited doses with ESPN. I did not father ESPN.
It was well established before I got there. But there are aspects to that relationship in which I go, oh, boy, that's not going to work out for you later on. Take it from an old man, and I feel that way about MSNBC. And the other part about this is, okay, you have turmoil now. At nine o'clock, Mattow retired. Mattow went to once a week. They didn't know what to do about Mattow. Mattow's going to be replaced four days week by Alex Wagner. Oh no, that's not working. We're
going to bring Mattow back for five days week. She's not going to do it long term. We'll bring Alex Wagner back after this in April. Oh no, we're not bringing her back. It's probably going to be Jensaki. You know what. Jensaki is going to prove to not really be a television person. There's going to be somebody else
needed at nine o'clock. Oh and what's now create chaos at seven o'clock Because, honest to God, the first thing I thought of when I was told on Saturday night that they might get rid of joy Read, or that it was done already, the first thing I thought of. You now they're going to try to bring back Chris Matthews, because they've tried to bring back Chris Matthews in the
Morning with Joe Scarborough. Because we need Chris Matthews right now, because the shallow, random firings of the few electric in his brain, something actually getting across those synapses knocking his references to himself out of the way for a brief second. That's exactly what MSNBC and the political dialogue needs right now, Joe Scarborough and Chris Matthews. When we go to the camps and the doors open, the guys in the hats with the keys will be Joe Scarborough and Chris Matthews.
But back to the point about Joy Reid, and I would love to see I would love to come to you again on Thursday and say, you know what, I apologize to this MSNBC anchor, and I apologize to Al Sharpton, and I apologize to this group that I said they were going to say nothing. And look at this. There's a five thousand person encampment outside thirty Rock protesting Joy Reid getting fired. I'd love to say that to you.
I do not expect to have to do it. I'm not writing notes down for Thursday's show about the big backlash within MSNBC about Joy Reid because Joy Reid threatens all their money. Joy Reid says something controversial. Rachel Maddow thinks I have twenty five million dollars coming to me. I want my money. But the chaos is the real legend, the real history of MSNBC. I don't know that I've ever shared this with you. It took a friend of mine named Rainy and I several days' worth of going
through old memos to compile this list. I've told you many times that I worked and this is my story about Joy Reid getting fired. It of course comes back to me. I worked at MSNBC from its second year nineteen ninety seven through the end of its third year nineteen ninety eight. I did the eight o'clock show. It is the first show anybody paid attention to on MSNBC,
and eventually I couldn't stand doing it anymore. It was all about Bill Clinton, and I couldn't do it anymore, and they sold me to Fox and I got out, and then that didn't work and I went to see it in for a while and they Connie Chung to host their eight o'clock show instead of me, so that didn't work out, and NBC was short an anchor at MSNBC and invited me to come over for a couple of days, and the next thing I knew, I signed a contract to do the eight o'clock show again five
years later, and my friend Rany and I before it was a parent that I was going to stay there when it looked like I was just there for a couple of days filling in because they were short of anchors. We compiled this list of all the shows that had been on after I left the network. On December fourth, nineteen ninety eight. And this is my fear of what is going to happen at MSNBC in the next couple of years. The Revolving Door, the Game of Musical Chairs.
Just listen to this. So they had started the network with a show called Internight, which had like sixteen different hosts. They'd try to get somebody to sit down and do an hour long interview, and they had everybody from Bob Costas to Bill Moyers. They had sixteen different hosts and it was filmed. It was on at eight o'clock at night, and nobody watched it. So they needed a live television news show before the Brian Williams newscast at nine o'clock.
And I was it October first, nineteen ninety seven to December fourth, nineteen ninety eight, and then I escaped and they replaced me with a guy who they thought was exactly the same kind of show, John Hockenberry. John lasted from December of ninety eight all the way through to February of ninety nine, and then eventually they moved him to the afternoon and when they fired him in August of nineteen ninety nine, and his last show. He asked rhetorically how much does cable suck? And the answer is
still being played out. John had all kinds of problems dealing with women, as in he was a sexual harriser. Okay, anyway, so he gets fired. The show that replaced me lasted three months. Then they put on two half hour shows, Equal Time with Oliver North premiering in February of nineteen ninety nine and the McLaughlin Special Report John McLoughlin from the McLoughlin Report, wrong that guy. They did two half
hours that lasted a month. They decided Oliver North needed half an hour, but he needed a rotating set of co hosts. Now, I want to clear this up. None of the co hosts sat there and rotated. They had different hosts. They were on a rotational basis. I think in retrospect they regret this that it should have been Oliver North with a co host who rotated. The co hosts included Cynthia Axney, Peter Fenn and Keky Moore. I
can picture two of these three people. And at eight thirty they replaced Special Report from McLaughlin that was canceled and they brought in Time and Again, which was reruns of old NBC news features in April of nineteen ninety nine, so a month later it became a permanent hour long show with Oliver North and Paul Begala as co hosts. May thirtieth of nineteen ninety nine, so six weeks later it became North and Begala shortened to half an hour, and time and again came back. So it was time
and again, and it's time and again. Another month later, in June nineteen ninety nine, they replaced the whole thing Oliver North out special Edition with Ann Curry in filmed recuts of Ann Curry pieces from Dateline and other shows. Now, I love Ann Curry. I worked with her in Los Angeles. A great person, a wonderful human being to my mind. And again at eight thirty, time and again. Then they
expanded in about a month. In July of nineteen ninety nine, the Special Edition with Ann Curry went to an hour. Then Ann Curry left the program in May of two thousand and they made it special Edition with Louri dou Then in August, so now what three months later it became MSNBC Investigates and the Joke, WASSC and NBC Investigates, What happened to Lori dew On September twenty eighth, two thousand, they made MSNBC Investigates a four day a week show,
so Monday through Thursday it was MSNBC Investigates again. This is all the eight o'clock out after I left, We're on Show twelve so far year two, Show twelve in the eight o'clock slot MSNBC Investigates. But on Friday it wasn't MSNBC Investigates. It was a weekly show called Missing Persons with Diane Diamond. Soon it was Missing Missing Persons with Diane Diamond. It was canceled after one month, so they go back to an hour of MSNBC Investigates, a
pre tape show every night in October two thousand. Then as the election approached, it became News Force with Forests Sawyer. News Force. I don't want to know who thought Force was a good name to put in a newscast. So that evolved into Decision two thousand in December because there was no decision in the election, and it became Decision two thousand with Forest Sawyer. And when they finally to
MSNBC's great regret resolved the Gore Bush election. In January two thousand and one, it became MSNBC Investigates again till July, and in July two thousand and one they solved the crisis of what to do at eight o'clock, only two and a half years after I had left the news with Brian Williams at eight o'clock for nearly fourteen months, and then he said I don't want anything to do
with MSNBC ever again. In September two thousand and two, at eight o'clock they premiered The Phil Donahue Show, which lasted until February two thousand and three because the show cost more money than they could possibly make in advertising, and they replaced it with Countdown Iraq with Lester Holt
and segments with Pat Buchanan and Bill Press. In the middle of a show Getting America Ready for War at eight o'clock, MSNBC had Countdown Iraq with lester Holt and Buchanan and Press, and then they had to move lester Holt to the network and so Operation Iraqi Freedom with Keith Olberman. Soon that was not enough. The news from Iraq was no longer interesting, and we made it Countdown with Keith Olberman March thirty first, two thousand and three.
So that was twenty shows me twenty new shows in four years, and then me again because you can't have this. And then after I left in twenty eleven, it was the last word with Lawrence O'Donnell for a while, like nine months. Then they put ed Schultz on instead. Then they put in Chris Hayes in twenty thirteen. The idea here is to return finally to the subject of Joyread.
You put people on TV who you, the executives can control when the chips are down, when the company is in trouble, when the boss goes to the anchor and says, don't say this, they say, don't say what, and then they don't say anything. When the company is in trouble, when a dollar might not be earned, you won't hear crap out of Maadow or O'Donnell or Hayes or Sanders
or Steel or Menendez or Jensaki. My version of this, and it might have been stylistically philosophically it might have been the only thing I shared with joy Read was that when the chips were down in this circumstance and a dollar was at risk, I felt it was my job to say what they did not want me to say. Not always, there are sometimes management is right. But if they don't want you to touch a controversial topic, grab
it with both hands. That's your job. If not, if you're not willing to do that, you can be replaced. You can be replaced by missing persons with Diane Diamond. Nothing against Diana used to work with her in radio Lovely Woman. You could be replaced by news force. News force, we break down your door and drag you away. It is your job as a political commentator to get yourself into trouble whenever possible, now, whenever necessary. I did that.
Joy Reid did that. I'm sure she looked at my times in trouble and went, what are you doing that for? And I know I've looked at her in some occasions and gone, what are you doing that for? Doesn't matter.
The other thing you're supposed to do is you are supposed to spend your political capital, your small p political capital, your business capital inside your own operation, defending your colleagues, or becoming a pain in the ass to management, develop a reputation with management, to get people they didn't want hired hired or to get people they didn't want on the air on the air. Madam is a perfect example
of that. I'm not going to belabor that point, but Joy Reid did that with a dozen people, and they might as well have been all of them might as well have been Huey Newton from the eyes of MSNBC management from the day they put her on the air on the weekends to the day they put her on at eight o'clock with the current executives who just sold the thing off so they could distance themselves from anything
good in television news. Again, I will be delighted to come out here and apologize profusely and for an hour, and this has been half an hour. Here, I will profusely apologize to anybody at MSNBC who stands up in defensive Joy Reid and says this stinks, this makes us white. This is contributing to the entirety of the Trump racism enveloping this country, and it is part of a stampede to see which formerly liberal company can get to the head of the racism line, the approved racism line, as
fast as possible. And Joy Read getting removed from the primetime lineup of MSNBC is MSNBC's biggest contribution yet, although Scarborough could top it at any moment, but honestly, what do you expect to hear about Joy? Read from the other people who count at MSNBC you want to hear it again. Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.