Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. Which of these stories will you be talking about tomorrow? The good news is Pete Hegseth was interrupted three times by Heckler's at the hearing for his nomination as Secretary of brill Cream. The bad news is it was not three hundred times. He might be the smartest of them. Pam Bondi apparently did not hear a single threat Trump made during his campaign, and Tulsey Gabbard has no idea what
her new job even is. Trump goes full Reagan, tries to grab credit for Biden and b Lincoln's hostage deal and ceasefire times running out? Is the New York Times actually intentionally following the self destructive path of the Washington Post and CNN? This is not a boat accident. You don't know Jack Smith going out with a whimper, not a bang. Love him, but what the hell was that? And oh, by the way, Monday, it's doomsday and on
doomsday we are committing national suicide. All that and more now on Countdown a timely reminder that what would become The Confederate States thought that secession was constitutional. They were a further reminder that three and a half years before that, the Supreme Court of the United States had ruled that Congress had no right to ban slavery and that the slaves and even the ex slaves, had no rights at all. I was thinking of that and this as President Biden
gave his farewell speech last night. Wherein the Constitution does it say that the nation must commit suicide because a slim majority of its voters have been fooled into believing it is not committing suicide. Where in the law does it say that a criminal has to be protected from all laws by judges he corruptly appointed. Where in the law does it say that one man is above all law.
Where in our agency over our own lives does it say that we must defer to a traitor who has corrupted politics, voting, the judiciary everything that we must defer to him just because he's good at being bad. And
where does a president's loyalty to his people rest. Is that loyalty taking the form of protecting the forms and rules of a broken system, or is it in the form of protecting those people from the greatest threat they have ever faced, the threat of his successor, who has perverted that broken system to serve himself at a few cronies and a few whares and to condemn the rest of us. Is it Joe Biden's constitutional responsibility to not declare a state of insurrection and put them all behind bars?
Or is it his constitutional responsibility to declare one? And what is his moral responsibility? As I've said before, I do not have either enough words nor enough time to tell you how much this isn't going to happen. The morass in South Korea, opposite in intent but similar in structure, at least reminds us that a bureaucracy, especially a governmental bureaucracy, will always protect itself first. But it still needs to be addressed this point, and no one will address it.
When is it necessary for a president to go outside the constitution to save the constitution and to save the nation? Abraham Lincoln thought it was necessary pretty much every day for four years. In short, it is both morally unconsonable and unconstitutional for the sitting president of the United States to take these weapons with which representative government will be destroyed, and hand them to a madman whose entire platform is
to destroy representative government. But is it a moral and constitutional imperative for Joe Biden to instead take these weapons while they are still not in the hands of an insane autocrat, and declare that the emergency that mad man will someday foment is here now, the insurrection is at hand.
To say that the Constitution says what it means, and that an oath Biden took nine separate times to defend this nation against all enemies, foreign and domestic, might require him to declare that Trump and his cultinate gang, and most importantly, his current active co conspirators, are preparing to do what they have said they would do and what their corruption has enabled them to do, to destroy the form of government of this country, to revoke its freedoms
and shatter its laws and norms and protections, and threaten the lives of every patriotic citizen of this nation. What's right and what's wrong here? Which is this? Declare that the insurrection is here and that these are the men and the women who constitute it and prevent them.
Is that right? Or is it wrong?
If my hypothetical is insufficiently clear, and I have fuzzed it up a little bit for dramatic effect, let me make it more timeless and more simple. And I acknowledge in advance that on the surface it is almost certainly identical to the hypothetical offered insincerely and dishonestly by Trump's plotters in twenty twenty one. But try this version of it. You are responsible for the defense of freedom in this world. You have the only gun in this world, a gun
which you have never used. Certainly you have never used it. First, you have sworn an oath to use it to defend your people and your world. And there is a man who has said he tends to kill you and freedom and everybody and everything else you are supposed to defend. But he doesn't have a gun. And this man who intends to kill you and freedom walks up to you with a piece of paper and he says, this piece of paper says, you have to give me your gun. He intends to kill you. He intends to kill freedom.
He has repeatedly promised to kill you and freedom. He has previously tried to kill you and freedom. And he's never shown any respect for a life, or for anyone or anything but himself. He has hired people to help him kill you and kill Freedom. He has spent billions of dollars to make sure he can kill you and kill Freedom. But he now can only accomplish it if you, the one who has the gun, gives him the gun. By what logic, by what common sense, by what oath,
by what law, by what morality? Should your response to this be to give him the goddamn gun. You give him the gun, he shoots you and kills you, and as you die, you see him walk over your bleeding body so he can go and kill Freedom. And your last thought is what, well, at least I followed the rules.
If you were president, and you had sworn that oath, and every move of the man to whom you are to hand the country next Monday elucidates and amplifies his insanity and foretells his destruction of our country, and you had utter immunity from the Supreme Court he bought and destroyed. What would you do? I'll repeat what I said. I do not have enough words to explain to you how much this is not going to happen. Back on the
planet of stuff that could actually happen. When Marco Rubio, a dyspeptic fish with a bad comb over looks like the smart one in the room. Trump really has done a superb job of rounding up every servile, amoral, gutless idiot he could find to nominate to be something. Pete hegseeth does not know what ACIAN is the Association of Southeastern Asian Nations Philippines, Vietnam, Singapore, Indonesia, et cetera. Senator
Duckworth asked him about it. He must have thought she said Asian, like let's go get drunk at the Asian restaurant. Oh oh, oh, assion oh, I thought you said beer.
You talked about the Indo Pacific a little bit, and I'm glad that did you mention it up?
Mention it?
Can you name the importance of at least one of the nations in the Ossian in Ossian and what type of agreement we have with at least one of those nations, and how many nations are in Ossian?
By the way, I couldn't tell you the exact equations is, but I know we have allies in South Korea and Japan and in August with Australia and trying to work on submarines with.
Them, Miss France.
None of those countries as none of those three countries that you've mentioned are in Ossian. I suggest you do a little homework before you prepare for these types of negotiations.
But Hegxeth looks like an actor playing a defense official in a movie Trump saw once, And since Trump doesn't actually know how to interact with people, that's how he's done this. Many conservatives have pointed this out. He's not nominating people, he's casting them. I like the guy with the bro cream. The FBI background check on Hegseeth does not include interviews with his ex wives or the woman who accused of sexual assault. Why does that sound familiar?
Trump has instructed his puppets in the Senate that even they don't get to see that background check or anything else from the FBI Armed Services Chair Roger Wicker and the ranking Democrat Jack Read were given a briefing. There was a Trump lackey monitoring the briefing. These two senators could not take any notes, let alone a copy of the file or photograph, as opposed to Trump, who could of course take the file home and keep it in
his collection. As to Pam Bondy, they ran a bunch of Trump's most heinous statements, threats, and promises passed her yesterday, and what do you know, she'd never heard him say any of them. She was one of his lawyers who tried to overturn the election. Does she now admit he lost twenty twenty? No, won't say that Biden is president.
That's as far as she'll go. Are the January sixth defendants, hostages and political prisoners, as Trump said, Madam Oh, She's unfamiliar with that statement, unfamiliar with Trump's call to get more fake votes in Georgia. To be fair, I met Pam Bondy. There is every chance she really is unfamiliar with all that and unfamiliar with the relative whereabouts of the ass and the elbow. I met her years ago in a PBS studio in Tampa. I think, if I remember correctly, she was there to comment on Cable TV
on one of those missing women tabloid cases. You can trust me on this. The office of Attorney General of the United States has of course been vacant since January twenty seventeen, and if anybody can uphold that tradition of vacancy, it's Pam Bondy. By her testimony yesterday, she is either an utter liar or she has been in a coma
the last four years. Oh and by the way, it doesn't look like she was asked about her endorsement by j Bezos's Washington Post, Penny Saber and Hot Sex News, specifically the part where Jeff Bezos's flunkies didn't mention in that endorsement, that editorial saying she should be confirmed immediately that the former lobbyist for Jeff Bezos's Amazon was Pam Bondy.
Marco Rubio does not seem to have been asked about Trump announcing we have a hostage deal at noon yesterday before any of the principles announced it, before our own
government announced it, thereby jeopardizing it. Mister combover designate was not asked if he saw any parallels in this to Richard Nixon's minions delaying a Vietnam deal in nineteen sixty eight till after the election, then claiming credit for it, or perhaps to Ronald Reagan's minions delaying an around hostage deal in nineteen eighty until after the inauguration, then claiming credit for that. Marco, though, does get credit for this.
To paraphrase Rodney Dangerfield is Thornton Mellon in Back to School if you want to look smart, hang out with a bunch of stupid people. Still, the dumbest of the
bunch is Director of National Intelligence nominee Tulsey Gabbard. And again, if you talk about intelligence with Tulsey, you have to remember that to her it is some sort of brand name, the Wall Street Journal, not exactly the sort of liberal media Hegseth had the gall to assault at his hearing reports that in a meeting with Republican Senator James Langford, who now says he's going to vote for her anyway, he asked her what the job of Director of National
Intelligence entails, and her answer indicated she had no effing clue. Then came a tough question from Senator Mike Rownds about individual national security surveillance tools, and she did all but answer, oh, ahsion,
I thought you said Beer. The problem with the Democrats is that they are wasting their questions largely going after Trump by hitting Rubio Bondi and hegxith with things Trump did or said or might do, instead of hitting Gabbard, who doesn't know what job she's been nominated for, and who with the right pressure in the right situation, might not get approved. Politico reported that quote. One aid to a senior lawmaker said in a secret ballot, she'd lose
fifteen Republicans. Other estimates have been far higher than that Republicans. Senator Curtis of Utah actually went on the record and said, it's not that she's uninformed, it's that she's not making any effort to convince him he should vote for her. Translation from Washington speak, she's lazy. She of course understands none of this. Cliche is no pain, no gain. The appropriate corollary for Tulsea Gabbard is.
No brain, no pain.
I think I know why Jack Smith released half his Special Council Report overnight in case any of us were having trouble sleeping and needed fresh boredom. I don't want to knock Jacksmith. Along with Judge Chuckkinn, He's one of just a few people supposedly on the side of the angels, were just the law who not only did their job without fear or reservation or any interest other than the
law and the truth. But the gist of what he released amounted to we had strong evidence that Trump deliberately did not stop the January sixth insurrection, but inspired it and then leveraged it strong enough to convict I jack Smith think so, and then he would have been ineligible to return to power.
The end will good.
I also think it would have been strong enough to convict. And as we have seen here in New York, so what as we have seen at the Supreme Court?
So what?
These aren't laws like we were all led to believe. They aren't based on justice or even a justice neutral set of just common sense rules, so everybody doesn't get to pick which side of the street they want to drive on each day. These laws are all catch twenty two. They are designed to allow corrupt judges or corrupt Supreme Court justices to insist that the same laws that apply to you and would put your ass in jail do not apply to their corrupt friends or appointers.
Or owners.
It just seemed to me that Jacksmith's final report might have contained some of that evidence. I mean, even Pam Bondi and Cash Patel are going to provide evidence real or otherwise. I don't know what difference it would have
made in Smith's report. But maybe after Trump chooses which path to authoritarianism he will send us down, and after the inevitable blowback from those oppressed by it, and after the forced change in power, and after whatever the next generation here has to do that resembles eighteen sixty one to eighteen sixty five to either regain freedom or protect it. Maybe that evidence would be useful down the road someday, whenever the printing of actual history books with the actual
history in them resumes. Now, at what point do we have to assume the New York Times is doing what the Washington Post has already done, and CNN has already done, and what the La Times is doing, and what MSNBC is threatening to do, bowing to Republicans to protect their owner's billions, as if the bully will stop hitting you
just because you don't hit back. Times editorial on a big idea to sell of America's immigration mess quote, Democrats should embrace the need to control who enters the country. The United States cannot admit everyone who wishes to come, and the choice of who may come should be intentional, not a result of a government's lack of will and
capacity to enforce its own laws. The highest number of undocumented immigrants deported in this country in the last decade was more than two hundred and fifty thousand in Czech's calendar fiscal twoenty twenty four under the administration of Why Joe Biden, But he's a Democrat. The Times just identified the Democrats as the cause of all the border stuff, and thus they went on to say the rise of Trump and the Democrats are the reason that everything else bad,
including probably the New York City congestion pricing. That so inconveniences the Times editorial board on their drive into town. By the way, the previous high number for undocumented deportations that was in twenty fourteen under that noted Republican Barack Obama. The Times editorial is not just pandering to the right wing. It's about as uninformed factually as Pete Hegseth was spouting his liberal this and woke that at his hearing, and
that is a whole lot of uninformed. It's as uninformed as Elon musk Hoist by his own petard, when he took his collection of lies about the southern California firestorm to a briefing given just to him that he put live on his website from the Unified Command fire Center, he spouted lie's internet gossip QAnon crap. They calmly refuted him.
They were so respectful that not one of them laughed at him or hit him in the face with a frying pan, And their answers were so calmly and authoritatively honest that he had nothing to say other than goodbye, Just like the psycho who walked into the DC Pizza Parla years ago with a machine gun to free all the babies in the basement. Oh, there aren't any babies, and there isn't even any basement. Okay, I'll just leave now. That's Elon Musk. Only Elon Musk wasn't armed either with weapons or wits.
All right?
What about what about water availability? Was water availability I understand that was like not an issue in Malbouy?
Is that correct?
Was it water?
Yeah? So there was water.
We have several reservoirs.
That knows that we use a lot.
Now, just an example, if we have one building learning we could flow the thousand.
Gallons a minute on that one building.
With the hoseleys that we put in this up it, you can imagine one thousand gallons per house we can do. Right, So the amount of water we're flowing there really is no water system that's going to keep that pace.
So we have to bring in.
Water tenders, which to these big tank water tanks that you know, twenty five hundred and three thousand gallon trucks, and they'll come in.
That's what we have to do to over to compensate.
So they park out.
There to do it.
DWTP did a great job.
They brought in.
Big water trucks for us, right, and we use them as basically mobile hydrants, all right, Right, and then we have our own agency as well that has water tenors.
Okay, I am I saying? Is that that like along the maybe correct if I'm wrong? Along in Malibury along the coast, there was no shortage of water in the palistage. There was a shortage of water at a certain point or is that not?
Well, we were just we were flowing just an amount of amount of water that the system couldn't overbed. It was very just because of how much water these firefighters were utilizing.
Okay, all right, that was good, All right, thanks guys.
Musk at best sounds like a seven year old who just found out there's no santi. By the way, that guy I mentioned who went into the DC pizza parlor, he's dead now pulled out a weapon during a routine traffic stop. Cops were better at all that stuff than he was, so sometimes it works out. Still, the line continues on Musk's site. There is a social media influencer. I think we need to drop that pleasant euphemism and call them what they are. Salespeople were shills or propagandists.
There's a social media shill from Washington State called Mela Joy or Mila Joy or I don't know, and she was one of many who got hold of this one line and put it out as if it were true. No source, no link, just Mila Joy's possibly AI generated, fake looking face. Oregon sent sixty fire trucks to California. California won't let them into the state because California is unsure of emissions on the trucks. California is a joke. Get out while you can. The Oregon State Fire Marshall
saw this. After two hundred and forty seven thousand views, we sent seventy five fire engines. Your statement about our teams not being allowed into California is false. Our teams arrived yesterday and are working around the clock to help our neighbors. Mila Joy deleted her post. Terrific, right, I can progress here one down, five hundred billion deletions to go. Also of interest here the other shoe dropped in my ex's story. Oh yeah, which ex? Wey Elser, the one
who tried to get her fiance arrested? And phew here it wasn't me and I had such a momentary thrill. Lawrence O'Donnell's last interview, he's leaving MSNBC two. No, I read it wrong. It's Joe Biden's last interview. He's leaving, and unfortunately O'Donnell is staying. That's next. This is countdown.
This is Countdown with Keith Oberman, my crazy friend.
Still ahead on Countdown. So I read this headline about Lawrence O'Donnell doing the last interview with President Biden, and I thought, cool, Lawrence o'donald is doing his last interview. They're getting rid of him, like they got rid of Alex Wagner. Imagine my disappointment when it turned out they meant Joe's last interview, not O'Donnell's. Lawrence is a guy who tried to take Countdown away from me while I was on a leave of absence as my father was dying, and when he did not.
Succeed, he SAINMP.
We took and stole some of the producers, took them to a new show that was created so his boss could explain to the new owners that he the boss, was not utterly inert and unnecessary, but actually had done things, considering he had nothing to do with starting my show or meadows. And that's just the beginning of the saga of mister Smarmy, the man we called load Lawrence O'Donnell
ahead and things I promised not to tell first. There are still more new idiots to talk about, the daily roundup of the miss Grants, morons, Undonning Krueger effect specimens who constitute today's other.
Worse persons in the world World the Bronze worse.
This got almost no attention, And you'll forgive me if it's a story that I pay more attention to than you do. But the worse is my ex Olivia. The body count is now complete at three. We think it's complete. Who knows RFK Junior now forever to be foddled around by an image of him in your mind on FaceTime while holding his phone in one hand and holding his
RFK junior junior in the other. Obviously, the second body is Newzy herself, because if a guy can get stuck to a masturbation scandal, it will always be worse for a woman.
That's unfair.
It should be exactly the same, utter slimy humiliation because it was somebody she was writing an article on for a mid level magazine. The magazine and Olivia reached some kind of deal and she moved on. But her career in tatters should be. And while there is speculation she may be able to go back a notch and write something again for somebody else, she will never shake this. Never ask Jeff Tubin, ask the late pee Weee Herman, and neither of those involved their work, never hers was
part of a reporting assignment as a news reporter. And one thing has not changed about Olivia. And since she was eighteen years old, was she ever holier than now about being a reporter. She was a reporter. She went out and got stories. I just read the teleprompter. Now there is another option for her. She can go where
all disgraced x real reporters go, right wing media. They'll take her in and proclaim her a liberal journalist who's seen the lights and and and Barry Weiss and and it would be a step down from masturbating on FaceTime with a presidential candidate. But I suppose it would be a living anyway, I said. The body count was now complete at three, and nobody had noticed the third one, the ex fiancee, the one she used to call her stalker in Washington. Politico got away with deftly announcing this
move in the least institutionally damaging way possible. I'll just read their forty two word announcements. Ryan Liza, who came out of the magazine world and captures the essence of people and ideas as well as anyone in the business. If that's true, how did this thing happen with his fiance and in the business? Is going to be doing that in our pages with a special emphasis on contributing to Politico magazine.
No mention that.
Liza has been demoted from the editor of the Politico wildly and inexplicably popular aggregation daily news letter. And after a leave of absence for about three months, and after two lawsuits and having to answer Newsy's charges that he blackmailed her into sex and her intention to get the FBI involved, in the investigation at the sex I think.
So.
A presidential candidate is now an online whanker. A genuinely brilliant writer is unemployed and maybe going to stay that way. And this guy who was a star writer for The New Yorker before he met her is now a contributor to Politico's Nietzsch side site Politico Magazine. Yesh oh, And over here on the side there's me and the Dogs shrug emoji. The runner up warsa Dakota Lee Dilly. Dakota is what the online folk call a rando. He identifies
as an Ohio State football fan from Zanesville, Ohio. Somebody meant Cincinnelia that next Monday is a huge day for Ohio State football fans. Their team plays for the national championship, and Trump's going to pardon January sixth. AnyWho, this Dakota Lee Dilly not only has a name out of the best of political satire, he's one of those dudes who's post on Elon Mush's fascist propaganda site. Usually they head
off into the universe without making any impression whatsoever. Well, we're going to change that because I happen to see it. News Wire posted Pete Hegseth says US military bases should restore names of Confederate generals and Dakota Lee. Dilly retweeted this with perhaps the most rationalization of all rationalizations. They were American generals before the Civil War. They were commanders during the Mexican War. Many of them advised the Cuban
Spanish American War. They took a loyalty oath. Yes they committed sedition. Yes they committed treason, but they were damn good commanders. And Lincoln said as much himself else heir, among other things. No, none of them were American generals before the Civil War, not even Robert E. Lee, for whom there is no Robert E.
Lee base. Fort Lee, New Jersey, is not a base. Robert E.
Lee was a lieutenant colonel just before he began committing treason. Lincoln promoted him to colonel and offered him promotion to major general. But these other guys, they weren't generals either, nor were they good commanders. In fact, Braxton Bragg, for whom Fort Bragg was named largely because it's near where Bragg was from, he was an idiot who lost nearly all of his battles and whose eyebrows were so thick and his brow was so prominent he was often described
as a monkey with a gun. But the money shot from Dakota Lee Dilley is this part quote. Yes they committed sedition, Yes they committed treason, but they were damn good commanders. That might as well be the official motto of the incoming Trump kunta. If you're looking for a guy to staff out your pentagon, Pete Hegseeth secretary of bril Cream, look this guy, Dakota Lee Dilley up if you can pry him away from Ohio State football highlights.
Yes they committed sedition, they committed treason, but they had good points too. But the winner, how about how about Lee Harvey Oswald getting recognition he was a marine, the Lee Harvey Oswald elite Corps under Trump. But the winners the worst together again for the first time, absolutely the two most self applauding newspeople I have ever met, I mean, worse than Joe Scarborough, Chuck Todd and Dan Abrams. Now I've told the story about Dan Abrams before. Were named
general manager of MSNBC. On June twelfth, two oh two thousand and six, at nine am, told by his bosses that all his power was being stripped from him as general manager of MSNBC. Also on June twelfth, two thousand and six, at four pm.
Chuck Todd you know he's Chuck Todd.
Chuck is saying now that he's moving on from NBC when his contract expires.
The response to which has been.
They didn't fire him when they fired him from Meet the Press. They've been paying him all this time. Man, I had a job like that once with Fox.
Best job I ever had.
How much money are you gonna give me to not do anything for anybody?
Cool?
Well, now these two great overrated, self absorbed hair challenge morons have joined forces in a way, and the sum is lesser than the parts. I'll just read the version of this on mediaite dot com. That's Mediaite founded by Dan Abrams, because mediaite is what the dan Abrams is
of this world think. Is a clever a clever pun or play on the word media eight meteorite, meditate who knows quote on My News Nation show, I went after NBC and Chuck Todd when they announced that he was stepping down his host to Beat the Press last year were actually in twenty twenty three, and my criticism was that a news operation that is supposed to be seeking out the truth and providing its viewers and readers with accurate information calling out fact from fiction almost certainly, and
now we know why they created a fictionalized version of what happened with Chuck Todd. I should just mention here that this idea of seeking accurate information all the rest of us hosts there at MSNBC. When Dan used to host The Missing White Women of the Day show, were warned by mid level managers and staffers on his own show that maybe we should not quote him with some of the stories that he was breaking because they were from dubious sources. All I know is most to them
never panned out. Abrams also goes on to submit that Todd quote was forced out of his role and replaced with Kristin Welker, and to insist that the statements issued by both Todd and NBC at the time were untrue. They should not be lying to us, he said, before going on to make the case that Todd was a better host of the show than Welker. Now, Chuck Todd was much better at hosting Meet the Press than Kristin Welker, he asked smarter follow up questions, the show was more interesting. Well,
that's clear and convincing evidence. Abrams went on to argue that Todd ultimately lost his role because he was tough on both conservatives and liberals and therefore didn't have a political community behind him. Has nothing to do with that, of course, It was that he stunk at this and let everybody get away with everything, especially the conservatives, because he tried to balance everything, including oh, over here is a misstatement by a Democrat.
And over here is a treason. They're the same thing quote.
And in the world we live in now, that is a negative that is now held against you. And so now Meet the Press as someone hosting the show who is less good by any objective assessment than Chuck Todd was, Abram said. And talk to people who were fans of Meet the Press, who are who aren't overt political partisans, and they'll just tell you the show was a smarter show when Chuck Todd was there. So bottom line is,
whoever gets Chuck Todd I think will be lucky. There are fans of Meet the Press who are not overt political partisans. There are people who watch political shows who are not overt political partisans. Part of some sort of work release program, community service. You are sentenced to four hundred hours of watching Meet the Press and the other Sunday shows.
No, but here's the gist. This went by in a hurry.
Here he's complaining that NBC lied about firing Chuck and made it look like he was step aside and made it look like he was going to leave at the end of his contract like a year and a half later. They actually provided Chuck Todd with a minor fig leaf about his career and about his ego.
And that's a bad thing by them.
I mean, I have no respect for NBC, but this is one of the rare good things they have done in the last twenty years, as opposed to the fig leaf they gave Dan Abrams, which he now wears on his head. I mean, when they finally fired Dan Abrams as general manager in October two thousand and seven by letting him claim he just missed being on the.
Air too much.
It's absolutely possible they actually waited long enough sixteen months for Danny to realize he had a title, but after the first few hours, no job other than to provide laughs.
For the MSNBC staff.
But this idea, we can't fire him now, We'll just keep him in the job and then put him on the air so then he can say he missed being on the air. That was voiced by MSNBC management to all the producers at MSNBC within a week of his appointment.
I mean, doesn't he know that.
They lied about him too twice? Chuck, Todd and Dan now meet the press as someone hosting the show who was less good by any objective assessment, because Dan Abrams doesn't remember that his idea of an objective assessment was his idea for MSNBC's new catchphrase, should be keeping it real. Abrams two days Worst Persons and Noor. Now to the number one story on the countdown on my favorite topic,
Me and Things I promised not to tell. Early on the afternoon of Monday May twenty third, twenty sixteen, I bounced out of my New York City apartment building, began to walk past the tourist trap brunch spot in the lobby, and froze there at one of the cramped outdoor tables, staring up at me in blank surprise that must have matched my own staring down at him in blank surprise was Laurence O'Donnell. I decided to go silly, Hey, get out of my house. He laughed, I laughed. It didn't
seem forced. He introduced me to his companion, his daughter. This my dear is Keith Ulderman. Keith started us all at MSNBC, and then he left, and and here Lawrence gave one of his long pauses, and we crashed it. I wanted to be generous. I started to politely contradict him, and I just couldn't do it. Hum yeah, pretty much anyway, About thirty seconds of courteous nothingness followed, and I wish the O'Donnell's well, and then I left. It was the
most pleasant experience I ever had with Lawrence o'donald. In fact, it might have been the only pleasant experience I ever had with Lawrence O'Donnell. After I finally convinced and bullied and blackmailed MSNBC management into letting Rachel Meadow become the regular guest host for my show, and she aced it and then rightly got her own show, and she aced that and became a star. I went looking for a new guest host. My first idea was a frequent guest
we had named Chris Hayes. I didn't get far. Management had its own idea and my input was not required. They wanted former Vermont governor and Democratic presidential hopeful Howard Dean. And Howard is a really smart guy and great on TV. But Howard had a bit of a teleprompter problem. One of my producers swears that Howard once read good Evening. I'm Howard Dean, former governor of Vermont. This is countdown.
I do know.
Whatever he did on the air, it was bad enough that one week when I was off and at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, and a baseball news story broke and he was filling in for me. My producers called me there and asked me to come on from the streets of Cooperstown and be a guest on my own show, just to help Howard Dean out. Anyway, Their next idea was a guy who had been kicking
around MSNBC since its founding in nineteen ninety six. Lawrence O'Donnell was one of the original MSNBC Friends, the MSNBC Friends political pundits who sat on clearstools at a clear table or in a set designed to look like a booth at a coffee shop. No, I'm not making this up.
Among the friends were and Colter and Laura Ingram, if you can believe it, once or twice an hour, the rather CNN like all news coverage on MSNBC in its first couple of years would pause and three or more of the friends would appear, chew over the MSNBC headlines and then disappear. Lawrence O'Donnell was one of the friends. It was as bad as it sounds. Then Lawrence o'donald pretty much disappeared. You would see him on MSNBC as a guest every once in a while, but mostly he
pursued his acting and producing career. He played President Bartlett's father on the West Wing, the one who beat him. Throughout college. Lawrence was very convincing, and then around two thousand and eight, we started getting pressure to bring him in as a guest on Countdown, like once a week or twice a week. I was not sure what that was all about, but he had been a Senate staffer and he knew the healthcare debate and other wonky stuff pretty well. So I gave my assent for whatever that
was worth. Not long after that, Lawrence came into my office. He really needed my support, he said, to get him more involved in MSNBC. He knew I had gone to bat for Rachel and before her, I'd gone to bat for Tom Brokaw, and for people like Chuck Todd and Chris Hayes and others who are now getting steady incomes from NBC. I don't remember his argument on his own, behalf. I do remember I didn't have much of a reason to say no, and he wasn't asking me to do
a lot, so I said yes. The next thing I knew, I was reading a memo announcing that Lawrence O'Donnell had been appointed as the new full time guest host of Countdown. This was in the winter of two thousand and nine twenty ten, when my late dad was fighting so valiantly to stay alive after colon cancer and more importantly, a series of infections. Dad had the immune system of an alien. The average white cell count in a healthy adult is
between four thousand and eleven thousand. One night, Dad's was at thirty three thousand, and the doctors told me to prepare to make the call to let him go. They had one antibiotic left to try on him. The next morning, Dad's white cell count, which had been thirty three thousand, was eight thousand. Onward, he fought. Unfortunately, he was eighty years old and he had not exercised since Harry Truman was president, and eventually he ran out of Houdini tricks.
I had been visiting him twice a day for six months while still doing Countdown and the NBC Sunday Night Football Show. But now, as it hit late February of twenty ten, his bright days became fewer and farther in between, and the hope that was propelling me to keep being his full time caregiver and Countdown's full time host both began to fade. In the last two weeks of my dad's life, as the doctors tried all the long shot things, I asked MSNBC for a leave of absence. Finally the
inevitability became inarguable, and we let Dad go. On Saturday, March thirteenth, twenty ten, my sister held his hand and I read him his favorite Thurber story, and as soon as I finished it, he exhaled deeply and peacefully, and he died. I think I took another week off, maybe two, and I vaguely recall emails from friends at Countdown that I may have paid passing attention to, but I really didn't.
Most of the staff, including people who came up from Washington, like Howard Feyneman or Gene Robinson of the Washington Post, always friends to me. They attended my dad's memorial service. I believe Lawrence o'donald, who was of course filling in for me on Countdown, was there too, but maybe not, I do not remember. And then came the day when I went back to the office full time and my assistant grabbed me both hands on my wrist. You did not answer my emails, she said, with a fervency she
rarely exhibited. For God's sake, do not ever leave me alone with Laurence O'Donnell Again, I snapped back to attention. Had he, you know, bothered her? Not that way, she said, But he's a son of a bitch. He treats me and everybody who was a producer here like dirt. And since you didn't read my emails, I just have to tell you this. He's trying to get you fired so he can take over Countdown. And if you think he's nuts, one of your senior producers is in on it too
with him. I have to admit, even now, of all the things I went through at that very, very strange place MSNBC, even now, this story still shocks me. The senior producers of Countdown consisted of a guy who'd been a producer who booked satellite transmissions for MSNBC until I asked that he'd be promoted, and one was a guest booker for the daytime shows until I asked that she be promoted. Another was a line producer who was well regarded only for his ability to time a show until
I asked for him to be promoted. And then there was the old friend of mine who had been blown out of ESPN in a sexual harassment porn link email scandal and was headed back to college to start his career all over again, until I asked that he'd be hired and then promoted. I did some digging, and I was going to confront O'Donnell about it when somebody told me he had tweeted something negative about me and about Countdown.
So I got a hold of him and I said, this did not seem to be in keeping with MSNBC traditions and rules, you know, the ones about not peeing inside the tent. And he said, what do you know about MSNBC traditions. I've been here since nineteen ninety six. I never left and came back. So I went to my boss, the president of the network, Phil Griffin, the one who would not hire Rachel Maddow. And before I could say they'd have to get rid of him, Griffin
said it was all academic. They were preparing the press release as we spoke for Lawrence's new show at ten o'clock called The Last Word, and oh, by the way, Keith, two of your senior producers are going with him to run his show. If this sounds vaguely familiar to you, it is the plot of the pilot for the old Aaron Sorkin HBO series Newsroom. I was still friendly with
Aaron then, so he actually asked. As I related this to him in real time in emails and phone calls, he asked if he could use it in the plot rather than just what he often did, which was to use it without asking. The problem was none of this
made any sense in the real world. Although it made a pretty good pilot for Aaron Sorkin in going into the ten pm slot, Lawrence O'Donnell would be replacing a rerun of Countdown, and even if O'Donnell did much better in the ratings, much much better, there was no way it could ever make enough money to make the move make sense. O'Donnell's new show would necessarily cost MSNBC between ten and fifteen million dollars to produce every year. Didn't have anything to do with him.
That was the cost.
The Countdown rerun cost, not ten fifteen million dollars a year. It count however much they paid the guy who pushed the play button that fired up the videotape of the Countdown replace amortized. Later that day, a sympathetic NBC executive called me up and explained the move to me. First, Griffin was convinced O'Donnell was about to leave us and sign with CNN. I said, well, that's a good idea
for everybody involved except CNN. Turned out CNN had not even talked to him, but Griffin did not know that. More importantly, Comcast had already finalized its agreement to buy NBC effective the following January, and as part of the deal, they were entitled to review what all the executives in the company had done, and they had already looked at MSNBC president Phil Griffin and discovered he had never done anything. In panic, Griffin told colleagues he had to launch a
new show of his own immediately. This is the series Aaron Sorkin should have made. As to the producers who left my show to go with O'Donnell, while my father was one of them, told me a couple of years after she left MSNBC for the last time, every day when I went into that last word office, I realized you were getting your revenge on me without even having to lift a finger. Lots of people I've worked with, probably a majority of people i've helped, have behaved like
Lawrence O'Donnell, because remember, it's television. It is a mental illness. The comparatively healthy people are the ones who acknowledge it's a mental illness. But Lawrence O'Donnell was something special. A year before my dad died, almost to the day, in fact, I was in Los Angeles appearing on Bill Maher's show, and one of the other guests that night was the actress Kerrie Washington. She was very nice to me, very sweet, a very big fan, and she asked to stay in touch.
Sure enough, after my father died after the memorial, after I was back at work, I had to go to his house for the first time since he had passed away. It was about as much fun as it sounds. In the car on the way back into New York City. The solemnity of it. Both my parents died within eleven months of each other. It really hit me for some reason for the first time, full force, and I was about to lose it when the car approached a billboard
overlooking the West Side Highway in New York City. And whose big smiling face was on the ad on that billboard, Carrie Washington, And it flashed me right back to her kindness in la and it helped me overcome this bump in my mourning. So I wanted to drop her a note, nothing big, nothing suggestive. I wasn't hinting at asking her out. Just you never know how you might help somebody in a time of crisis. Thanks for letting me smile. That
was the whole message. I asked my assistant to figure out how to get it to her, and that was the end of it, except A week later, the fact that I wrote her a note wound up in a column written by an colter.
I was astonished, how why?
And Colter it was her usual the brain doesn't quite work right kind of stuff. She implied I was hitting on Carrie Washington and said how stupid I had to be to not realize she was involved with somebody, and on and on and on, no mention of my father's passing, or the mar show or the billboard or her smiling face. I went back to my assistant and I said, Hey, what on earth did you do with that note to Carrie Washington? And she said, oh, I gave it to
this Lawrence O'Donnell guy. And I said, good God, why did you do that? And she said, well, he's dating Carrie Washington. I thought you knew that. I thought that's why you asked me to get it to her. So it wasn't hard to figure out from there. Lawrence had called his old friend from the old MSNBC Friends of nineteen ninety six and Colter and told her about the note.
Inventing whatever motive his jealous little mind could dream up, it should have gotten him fired from NBC, but unfortunately his boss was just as much of a fourteen year old emotionally as he was. And meanwhile, I had decided to get out of MSNBC anyway when the time was ripe, and as it turned out, it ripened in January twenty eleven. I've told that story in other episodes, like sixty of them.
It's kind of complicated, And since nobody ever actually asked me why count Down the TV show ended, I've probably got another sixty episodes worth of information about that anyway in twenty fifteen, since repeatedly over the following ten years, there were overtures by both sides to bring Countdown and
Me back to MSNBC. In twenty fifteen, during the World Series, in fact, the then president of NBC News, Andy Lack, asked me to come back and do a new show at MSNBC and move to Los Angeles and have a co host, a conservative, and not do any commentary. And actually this new show was somehow less appealing than it sounds. But the punchline of all punchlines is contained in what Lack wanted to call my new twenty fifteen MSNBC show
that never was. It tells you all you really need to know about The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell and MSNBC and O'Donnell's place in TV history at its demise and the end of MSNBC. NBC new president Lack was brimming with enthusiasm about this name that he had come up with for my new show, A good the perfect title. Lack told me, we're gonna call it The Last Word with Keith Olberman. And I didn't laugh for guffaw. I just said, Andy, you have a show called The Last Word,
The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell. Andy Lack now laughed, huh, hopefully not for much longer.
I don't.
I've done all the damage I can do here. Thank you for listening. Remember when Lawrence O'Donnell started in about a year after the show began, and so this puts it at like twenty eleven, twenty twelve. He said he couldn't see him doing it long term. Then he began to realize it was nowhere else in the world it could make that kind of money any who. Brian Ray and John Phillip Shanell, 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 fifthy musical comments are by the best baseball stadium organist, every Nancy Faust. The sports music is the Olderman theme from ESPN two, written by Mitch Warren Davis, and it appears courtesy of ESPN Inc. Other music arranged and performed by the group No Horns Allowed. Anouncer today was my crazy friend Tony Corneiser. Everything else was, as always,
my fault. The next scheduled countdown is Doomsday Monday, January twentieth. As always, bulletins is the news warrant Still next time, I'm Keith Olberman. Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and good luck. 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.