J.V. VANCE IS GOD'S GIFT TO THE DEMOCRATS - 8.8.24

But Democrats should also now anonymously flood the Trump campaign and every Republican in the country with a succinct and anonymous message send more jd Vance, My God, is this guy an idiot? More accurately, JV Vance JV what a gift? JV Vance has launched twenty years after after the original attempt to do this succeeded against John Kerry. Jd vance has launched a new swift boat campaign against a man, Tim Walls, governor of Minnesota, who served in the military

for twenty four years. And Tim Walls is the victim here, obviously, but moreover, jd vance has launched this campaign, this swift voting effort while being the running mate of a draft dodger. If there is one topic you do not want to bring up as Trump's campaign slowly bleeds to death, one topic you do not want to insert into the national

dialogue right now. It's stolen valor. And if that were not enough, if it were not enough to bring the entirety of the Trump bone spurs draft avoidance, and that's the best interpretation of it, story back to life after literally fifty five years. If there's one thing you don't want to do besides that, it's to bring up this story again and this question of valor and who's telling the truth about their military record when your own role in the United States military was as a Marine correspondent.

Captain J. V. Vance was a correspondent with the Marines in Iraq. Brian Williams in uniform. Everybody more on that. Presently, he's trying to swift vote to smear a man who served in the National Guard for nineteen eighty one through two thousand and five and who retired at one rank lower than he actually served at because he had not finished one training course, so he took the benefits hit rather than try to fudge the promotion. That is who

is being attacked here by JD. Vance. Thus JV reopens the entire question not only of what Trump was not doing in Vietnam, but what he Vance was not doing in Iraq as a Marine correspondent. And of course, the last phrase you would ever want to use under these circumstances would be the one that goes stolen valor.

to Tim Walls. On the other hand, as it points out in his biography, he enlisted in the US Marine Corps and served in Iraq as a combat correspondent for six months late in two thousand and five. I swear to God, part of the second Marine Aircraft Wing Public Affairs section. I presume they had battles with Iraqi pr people. He said his service taught him how to live like an adult. But he added, oh my goodness, get this tattooed. I was lucky to escape any real fighting. That's a

marine talking. I was lucky to escape any real fighting. But this guy over here is guilty of stolen valor not only that, but Vance has tried to pin the Iraq War on Joe Biden because as a senator, President Biden voted and was conned by Colin Powell and everybody in the DOJ and everybody in the Bush administration and in the Office of Homeland Security and Dick Cheney and all the other scumbags. He was conned, as many of us were. I wasn't, but I'll be part of that

era in news for all time. He was conned as Biden now says, but JD. Vance wants to make the Iraq war Biden's fault, not Bush's fault. As late as twenty ten, JV. Vance was publicly supporting Bush's war in Iraq. Now he says, he fell for George W. Bush's propaganda about Iraq. Wait a minute, that was propaganda that was lying about Iraq. And you were one again, what did you serve as you were a general? Oh no, you were a public affairs Colonel JD. Vance. You were in

charge of spreading propaganda. So this war that was based on lies and propaganda by George W. Bush, you were one of the people who perpetrated the lying. Well, we want to give you a full credit for that. Thank you for your service, Liar Brian Williams in a uniform. Yes, uh, I personally captured Sodom Hussein. He was staying in my basement, in my basement, in my pehouse in the middle of the desert a near Sodom City. Now, Vance does not

have to take all of the blame on this. If you are familiar with the original swift boat story, one of the scumbags in charge of the swift boating of John Kerry, in which the campaign of George W. Bush in two thousand and four managed to get MSNBC, CNN, NBC, CBSABC, all of them to question the exact details of where the boat was and where John Kerry was and where the island was when they gave John Kerry one of his medals while he was serving in battle in Vietnam,

and they tried to make him look like he was some sort of draft dodger, when of course Donald Trump was a draft dodger and George W. Bush avoided active service, never left Texas for his military service. They managed to do this with the complicity of the media and a few of us in the back going. I don't think this this is right. It was par for the course with the Bush era. And as we know now Public

Affairs Colonel JD. Vance was helping on this whole Bush measure from Iraq, but that would be in two thousand and five. This is two thousand and four. One of the Bush administration's swift voters is now Senior something or another senior asshole on the Trump campaign. So they worked on this in two thousand and four. It worked so well,

and they've decided to use it again. And they've stepped on their own dicks again because they are emphasizing the fact that Donald Trump dodged the draft and the phony war of Iraq, all of the lies, all of the propaganda from George W. Bush was sold in part by public Affairs Colonel JD. Vance, the gift that keeps on given. But wait, there's more from JV. He's offered to debate, to debate Kamala Harris. If you've ever heard the cliche too clever by half and wondered what it actually meant,

this is too clever by half. He's playing dumb. He doesn't have to play very hard to give this impression across to anybody, but he is playing dumb and claiming that, well, officially, Kamala Harris is still the vice president. I will debate her. They don't really have a vice it's been certified already.

He also stalked the Vice president's playing yesterday, adding to the weird creep factor, leading also to a tweet from Congressman Moskowitz saying he's been on Air Force two, the Vice President's plane, and it has a very nice sofa. This guy is just tone deaf and is another one of the Dunning Krueger group. No earthly clue that he's not the smartest guy in the room when he's probably seventh from the bottom. The takeaway the headline to the entirety of the Tim Walls era just starting day three,

But the headline, the point is he's happy. People like happy voters. Like happy voters are fed up with these angry conspiracy theories, these whiners like Trump and Vance. If there's anything that the Kamala Harris campaign exploding out of the gates and now exploding again out of the gates with the addition of Walls has shown, it's that we don't want everybody to be angry all the time. And again you put on the list of the people who are angry all the time. I'm on that list. I

get the point. So here, like we don't have enough here from JV. Vance, he went and got more angry yesterday. He got a gift from the almighty. You want evidence that there might be a god. JD. Vance got a gift from that entity if he really exists. Yesterday, a reporter asks him, what makes you happy? I mean, utterly teed up to make inroads, to be able to push back against tim walls, to stop the bleeding before it turns into a hemorrhage, to compete with walls for the

I like America. I'm happy. What makes me happy? I like dogs and cats. I like ice cream. I like America. I like to smile at the flag. I like to wrap myself in the flag. I like Donald Trump. Donald Trump makes me happy. Say something like that. He couldn't he couldn't do it. He couldn't stop himself. What makes you happy, He's asked, He answers in effect, I like being mad. He did everything except say I'm only happy when it rains. I only smile in the dark. My

only comfort is the night gone black. I didn't accidentally tell you that I'm only happy when it rains. A little bit different here, how the criticizes being too serious entertain me sometimes. What makes you smile?

January sixth was better? What about when the entire country burned to the ground by Black Lives Matter, especially Minneapolis. These two streams merged. Trump did it. Trump has spent the entirety of the time since Tim Walls was given the vice presidential slot on the Harris campaign blaming Tim Walls and Tim Walls alone for communism, inflation, gas prices. The troubled Trump has keeping his hair just the right

color of orange. He's been complaining about Tim Walls and insisting its Tim Walls and Tim Walls did a terrible job. And he's going to, in that phrase from Steven Miller, turn the entirety of the Midwest into Mogadishu, except now it turns out, thank you ABC News. Trump got on the blower with all the governors in the middle of twenty twenty, late in the spring, after Trump had tweeted

liberate Minnesota, jeopardizing Tim Walls's life by doing so. After all that, after the rioting, such as it was trivial compared to January sixth, got on the phone with a bunch of governors to talk about how he thought walltz was doing with the protest in Minnesota, and Donald Trump could not stop praising Governor to Walls. I know Governor Walls is on the phone and we spoke, and I fully agree with the way he handled it.

not even hit the wall yet. One of the people who burned it to the ground was a Maga provocateur, a member of the Boogaloo Boys. So when you hear oh, they burned down a Minneapolis police station while Tim Walls was governor, just remember like the guy who shot at Trump, it was Maga, And you could just take some of that tape of Trump and you could say, we're Tim Walls and Kamala Harris, and we approved this message because

Donald Trump is an effing moron. Now your polls round up, and again, the overarching theme of the polls ever since Harris replaced Biden in this campaign has been the same message. These are the kind of inroads that were hoped for by perhaps Labor Day or maybe October first. They are already here and there is as yet no indication they are even slowing down. You gov for the Economist yesterday Harris forty five, Trump forty three. Data for Progress Russ

felt only that's Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. The second time they've done this trial July twenty third, the results were Trump fifty percent in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, Biden forty three percent. The new poll dated August seventh, Harris forty eight forty seven, So Biden was losing by seven to

Trump and Harris is beating Trump by one. The swing in a matter of two weeks, two weeks eight points and by the way, a very good job by Data for Progress because they polled the sane people about how they would be voting if it were still Biden in the campaign for the Democrats, and the wisdom of this move and the timing of this move, which will be judged, I think by historians to be just as important as

the move itself. The timing of this and the fact of this is indicated by the results of this poll Data for Progress in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Again it's forty eight forty seven Harris, and those voters said if it had been Biden running, it would be forty seven forty two Trump. So there is a swing right now of six points in favor of Kamala Harris and against Donald Trump by virtue of the presidential nominee being Kamala Harris.

Marquette University Law Wisconsin voters likely voters Harris fifty Trump forty nine, and they did about two hundred different issues. These are just the highlights. Harris is seen as better on abortion policy, healthcare, ensuring fair and accurate elections, on Medicare, and on Social Security. Some specific questions, Does the phrase is a strong leader fit Harris? Fifty percent say it fits very well or somewhat well. Does it fit Trump?

Fifty eight percent say it fits very well or somewhat well. So the big thing Trump has going for him, one of the two big issues his own seeming personal strength. Because America has always loved bullshit, his seeming strength is only at this point one hundred days out, an eight percent advantage over a presidential candidate who has been the candidates for two and a half weeks. Another one, Does the phrase has the right temperament to be president? Fit

these two characters? Well, see if you can guess how this one turned out. Does it fit Harris? Fifty six percent say you bet you. It is Wisconsin after all. Does it fit Trump? Forty two percent say it fits very well or somewhat well. That's forty two percent that is below the percentage of voters who are Republicans in Wisconsin. The favorability score in this poll in Wisconsin, Trump was at forty one before his own convention and before the

assassination attempt, it has risen only to forty four. His negative is fifty four. He's still ten points underwater. Harris is at forty one approval fifty three disapproval, So she is just twelve underwater. She's only two points worse than he is two and a half weeks in. One more set, not so much of polls, but as of interpretation of polling and trends. This is Larry Sabato's group at the

University of Virginia Center for Politics. Their crystal Ball, good old fashioned crystal ball, which has nothing to do with the former MSNBC host stoll Ball. Thank goodness crystal Ball ratings changes. Three states were changed yesterday in the forecast. Georgia was lean Trump. It is now considered a toss up. Minnesota was lean Democrat. Guess what it is now It's now likely Democrat. New Hampshire was lean Democrat. That one has also been moved by Sabato and company to likely Democrat.

And this is all before the Republicans experience when the walls come tumbling down on them. Also of interest here, remember Valentina, the gal with the ar fifteen running for Secretary of State in Missouri, the one who appeared on the balcony of the Speaker of the House in violation of the rules and laws regarding the use of the Speaker of the House's balcony for political purposes. Well, guess what not gonna be Secretary of State in Missouri. She

lost bad. She's not gonna get it. She lost real bad, real real bad. Those fun numbers. Next, this is countdown. This is countdown with Keith Oberman still ahead of us on this editionive Countdown. Somebody mentioned this guy's name yesterday.

He is still in television. He rarely talks about his stint as the general manager of MSNBC because it's kind of like that forty nine day term of the former UK Prime Minister Liz Truss and the way they talk about her now now Liz Truss, Liz Trust who oh, the woman who lost to the cabbage That is this story. The worst general manager in the world, so bad he was compared to a character from the old Candice Berg

and TV series Murphy Brown. So bad that when it was announced they were actually going to make him the GM that other executives at MSNBC believed that it was an elaborate, practical joke. Ahead in Things I promised not to tell first, there are still more new idiots to

talk about. The daily roundup of the mis grants, morons and Dunning Kruger effects specimens who constitute two day's worst persons in the world, the Bronze Worst Olympics critics like Trumpy, like Victor Orbon, the ones who took on the mayor of Paris, A Hidalgo and has been the mayor there since twenty fourteen using language like this, I love Anne.

Religious and political officials you will recall voice outrage in response to the opening ceremonies, and the International Olympic Committee apologized to anybody who might have been offended because they thought it was the Last Supper, being it's a book, you don't even know if it's real. You don't even know where the Last Supper was. There's no evidence that Christ actually existed. If you want to believe it, go right ahead. Don't complain about the Olympics because you think

they made fun of the story. And it wasn't even that story they were making fun of. And I am being nice. Mayor Hidalgo is not being nice, she said,

using the English version of this abbreviation. F the reactionaries, if this far right, if all of those who would like to lock us into a war of all against all, said Mayor Hidalio of Paris in an interview with Lemounde published Tuesday, and as was noted here in one piece of wire copy, using the expletive in the original English, she said she's proud of the way the opening ceremonies presented Paris to the world, quoting again, Paris is the city of all freedoms, the city of refuge for LGBTQI

plus people, the city where people live together. F the right. I would like Mayor Hidalgo to run for mayor of New York City. I mean we need a mayor who talks like a script from the Sopranos. Just let it all hang out, Mayor. Thank you the runner up. Okay, don't always let it all hang out. Take, for example,

our worser today, Philadelphia radio sports reporter Howard Eskin. The headline Howard Eskin to remain Eagles sideline reporter, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer despite quote unwelcome kiss at Philly's game.

Howard Eskin, who is currently banned from the state at which the Philadelphia Phillies and the NBA Philadelphia seventy six Ers play that would be an arena in the seventy six ers case, will be the All Sports radio stations sideline reporter for Philadelphia Eagles games, following a nearly one month hiatus that followed accusations he made an unwanted advance towards an Airmark employee, that's the concessionaires at the ballpark at Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia. The advance included an

unwelcome kiss in May. If you've ever seen Howard Eskin, you know how old he is. He's two hundred and six. All kisses from Howard Eskin would be described as unwelcome. Apparently this one was a little worse than normal. Have I got a story about Howard Eskin for you? When I say Howard Eskin is two hundred and six, that

might be not a bad guess, almost literally true. When I got into this business in nineteen seventy nine, Howard Eskin was already the sports stringer for United Press Internationals radio network in Philadelphia, so I would buy tape from him, as we said he would do interviews with players after games for the Philadelphia Phillies, the Eagles, the seventy six Ers,

any other team that existed in those days. He would then feed the tape to us in New York and he would get fifteen dollars or twenty five dollars or whatever it was. In nineteen eighty, the Philadelphia Phillies made their first World Series appearance in thirty years, the first since they had a lot of reporters covering things like the World Series, and we needed for UPI somebody to go and cover the World Series in Philadelphia and Kansas City.

And that was me, age twenty one and the third most senior sportscaster out of three for UPI's radio network. And my boss Sam Rosen was good enough to hire somebody from Philadelphia to make sure that I was okay, that there was a back up in case I missed a protein interview, to share his tape with me, to help me out in any way he could, in addition to his other personal responsibilities for his radio station in Philadelphia, and that naturally was our stringer in Philadelphia. Howard unwelcome

kiss Eskin. I'll have to say Howard Eskin did not do a bad job. I was twenty one years old and didn't have much to compare it to. Using the experience of the last forty four years, I'd say he did probably a B minus job. He had a lot of stuff to do for himself. I didn't need that much help. But several times I said, I didn't get that interview with Dick ruthven Dowerry. I got it for

your hair. It's a dub. However, after the Phillies won their first World Series ever and they had become the Philadelphia Phillies, and I believe eighteen eighty four, they moved from Worcester, Massachusetts, to Philadelphia. The Phillies had never won the World Series before, so the celebration was kind of big. And in nineteen eighty they won the World Series at home in Philmladelphia, with the police on horseback ringing the outfield.

There must have been fifty mounted Philadelphia Police officers on the field on the warning track. God help anybody if there was a long fly ball, long fly ball deep left field. As their announcer Harry Kallis would have said, thank goodness, the last out was a pop up in any event, That's how worried they were about damage during the celebration in Philadelphia, and sure enough, there was a little damage when we finally left the ballpark that night

about four am on the main streets of Philadelphia. The amount of broken glass on the streets was about two two and a half inches high. Broken glass down the

middle of Broad Street in Philadelphia. Howard Eskin having been paid to take care of me, and since there weren't a lot of cabs outside Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia the night the Phillies won their first World Series because everybody was too busy the breaking glass on Broad Street, Howard Eskin said, I'll give you a lift back to your hotel, and he took me halfway to my hotel, right into the middle of Broad Street for twenty four to twenty

five am. And he said, yeah, so far as I go, you can get a cab from here, and basically pushed me out the door. Howard Eskin back once again after unwelcome kiss at Phillies game. Give him something unwelcome at the Phillies game. And now to our winner, the worst Valentina gun nut herself. You remember Valentina Valentina Gomez, the immigrant from Colombia, running to get the Republican nomination for

Secretary of State in Missouri. She's put out video fat shaming others, kind of risky considering her own problems with the issue. She's made video after video anti gay, anti lgb TQ. She's made video after video carrying automatic weapons. She made the video I mentioned earlier standing on the balcony of the House of Representative Speaker Mike Johnson, which

you cannot do. You cannot campaign from that spot. Well, that issue will be put aside for a time because the Republican primary for Secretary of State in Missouri is over and guests who didn't win go go with Gomez. No, I'm afraid not. Let's see Denny Hoskins one hundred and fifty seven one hundred and eighteen votes, twenty four point

four percent of the vote. Shane Schuler one hundred and eight thousand, Mike Carter ninety one, eight sixty six thirteen, Dean Plotcher eighty six six, Mary Elizabeth Coleman seventy two, Howard Eskin dot sixty Oh no, I just made that part up. I don't see Valentina Gomez's name here anywhere. On two three, four five, oh, wait a minute, here she is. She finished sixth She got forty seven thousand votes. She got seven and four tenths percent of the vote.

She only missed by one hundred and ten thousand votes for the Republican primary, but she did finish ahead of Jamie Corley by one thousand. Congratulations Valentina Valentina Gomez, who lost to Denny Hoskins, who has been sued for defamation by Denton Loudermill of Olatha, Kansas, after Hoskins shared an image of Loudermill in handcuffs and falsely identified him as an undocumented immigrant and one of the shooters at the

Kansas City Chiefs parade shooting louder Mill. Valentina Gomez sixth place, probably should have brought a bigger gun. Today's worse person than the world. You can get a cab from here to the number one story on the Countdown and my favorite topic me and things I promised not to tell And with that bill O'Reilly cris Cuomo thing in worse Persons about that network News Nation, I was reminded that there's another guy who has a show on it. And if you have not seen this network, you are among

roughly eight billion people. It's kind of like the nick at night of cable news. You turn to it and five will get you ten that your immediate reaction will be I didn't know he was still alive anyway. It reminded me of this story about this other guy. I was a witness to the greatest management fiasco in television history, and it began on Monday, June twelfth, two thousand and six.

My girlfriend and at the time, Katie Urr, was coming in from la for a week, and my vacation had started the previous Friday at exactly nine oh one pm. At nine oh two pm on that Friday night, the acting chief of MSNBC, Phil Griffin, called me, insisting that even though I was on vacation, we had to meet for breakfast at nine thirty am Monday. I said that made it a not vacation, and he said, we will give you two additional days off later. Something is happening

you need to know about first, I sighed. The previous Wednesday, they had fired the president of MSNBC, the one who had once chased me around our offices in Secaucus, New Jersey, threatening to kill me because he was squeamish about blood. See if that makes any logical sense to you. He threatened to kill me because he was squeamish about blood. Jeff Zucker, then the president of NBC, had called my agent and asked how my relationship with the aforementioned acting

chief Phil Griffin was. It was obvious they were going to put Griffin in charge charge, and as the marquee anchor on the network, they needed me to find it out from them rather than from a gossip site or something. I could not begrudge them the courtesy. So on the first weekday of my vacation, Griffin and I met for breakfast, and as soon as coffee arrived, he said, so listen, buddy, I'm gonna be an executive in charge of MSNBC, but I'm gonna be staying here in the city to oversee

the Today Show. So MSNBC will also have a general manager, uh, and the general manager will be in charge in secaucas and the new general manager will be Dan Abrams. Well, I paused for a second and then burst into laughter. I mean thirty seconds of a riotous belly laugh, loud enough that other people at the restaurant at Norma's in the Parker Meridian in New York City turned around to look at me to find out what was so funny. Then I composed myself. Then I laughed again, then a

third laugh, then a fourth laugh. Oh my god, Phil, that is the best. You get me to get up early on the first day of my vacation and you hit me with that Dan Abrams running something we've known each other, what Phil twenty five years next month? That is the best joke you have ever told me. Dan Abrams and I laughed again for another thirty seconds, and one of my friends, who was a waiter there, came over and said, everything okay. Because Phil could never interrupt

anybody who was praising him. He smiled back at me, and when I finally stopped laughing, he said, well, thanks,

I guess, but I'm serious. We've been talking to Dan for several months about this, and he just has the kind of analytical mind that it had taken me more than a minute to realize Griffin was serious that he and the President of NBC News, Steve Cappus, and that President of NBC Jeff Zooker, had actually decided to take the host of our nine PM show, which had been devoted for years to excruciating, lowess, common denominator tabloid crap

coverage of the missing white woman of the week. To take a man who had the respect of absolutely no one on air or off at MSNBC, A man who made me in that regard looked like Saint Francis of ASISI. A man who had only been in television for twelve years, a man who had never run anything in his life, A man with indescribably bad hair that none of us could identify. Was it a two pe? Was it a weave? Was he hit by lightning? And that was the most

sincere thing about him? His hair? They had actually decided to appoint this gossip monger with no experience to run a network that was just now finally establishing itself as a factor in American political media. Christ Phil, what are you thinking? I said to him, He's a buffoon. I'd rather work for Joe Scarborough. He's condescending, he insults his producers, he insults our producers. He leaks constantly to the reporters and the gossip blogs. Half of his exclusive sources turn

out to be wrong. And I might be the best friend he has there. Phil Griffin chugged his coffee. Well, I'm sorry about that. I mean, I mean it's not going to make any practical difference for you. You would countdown will report directly to me. Dan isn't going to have any responsibilities running the primetime shows. He's only going to be hands on with the daytime shows. But he'll be the general manager of the network. And we think he has a lot of exciting ideas. And I said exciting

ideas about what exciting ideas about Sean Beney Ramsey. Phil, We have just stopped being the running joke, the bottomless punchline of cable news. And once this gets out, we will be less respected than we were a year ago. I paused, and the news bounced off the walls of the restaurant and hit me afresh again. Dan Abrams, general

manager of MSNBC. He will get you fired, Phil. I don't know if he will get you fired because he's trying to get you fired, or he'll get you fired because he'll be so bad at this that everybody will quit. But you've just committed professional suicide. You and Cappus and Zuker dead men walking. Phil Griffin was now read I had only previously seen him read when he was very,

very drunk and we were in our twenties. I was hoping you'd give him a chance, and I said some very pleasant things about giving him a chance to destroy what we had been building up for the last year. And did Phil remember that my contract was up in six months and CNN was already publicly courting me to go there. I said, I'm gone. You might as well release me from the contract right now. I'm out. And

then something else popped into my mind. Oh, and listen, did you think there might be a problem because he and I dated the same woman nine years ago, and he told her she'd be making a misas to get involved with me. Phil's eyes widened. He had forgotten, Like I said, he'll have nothing to do with Countdown. An hour later, my home phone rang and it was Dan Abrams. I just wanted to say how much I'm looking forward

to working with you on Countdown. As time goes by, Phil will be more and more overwhelmed at the Today Show, and I'll be making the day to day decisions. I'll be your guy. After a few minutes of this, which I swear I could hear, his phone scratching against his two pay and during which I said nothing but uh huh. My home phone rang again and it was the NBC president, Jeff Zucker. So, you guys report to Dan, and if you need to go further, you can go to Phil.

And I said, Phil had just told me Abrams would have nothing to do with countdown, and I intended to make sure that was true. Zucker, showing the loyalty and consistency that was so publicly displayed in the original Chris Cuomo CNN fiasco, immediately said, well, if this doesn't work, f Dan Abrams, hell, F Phil Griffin, you come to me. The first thing I had done when I had gotten home was to call my executive producer, i Isy Povich.

She had been as fascinated as I had been as to why I had to have a business breakfast on day one of a vacation. Well, I sighed, You'll never believe who the new general manager of MSNBC is. She guessed Phil Griffin than me, and then the manager of the New York Yankees, Joe Tory. I said, all would have been better choices. I said, it's Dan Abrams. She laughed so hard I had to pull the phone away from my ear. After she finally calmed down, is he said, you had me going, Oh my god, what a disaster

that would be. I'm sorry I fell into the bit. Yeah, just kidding, she laughed again. No, actually, I'm not kidding. She laughed again and said come on, and so I said, yeah, yeah, I'm kidding. She laughed again. No actually I'm not kidding. Dan Abrams is the new general manager, she laughed again. We must have done this for two or three minutes. It was an old Eddie Izzard bit. I stole it

from him about the death of Engelbert humperdink. I finally stopped when she said, wait, I saw Dan Abrams getting out of his car in the President's parking space this morning. You're you're not quit kidding. Oh my god. I have to call my husband and tell him I'm quitting. Well, it all worked out about as well as I had predicted. At his first meeting with the producers, Dan Abrams revealed

his first exciting idea. He had apparently been given enough lead time about his appointment to have made up giant banners containing the new MSNBC network slogan, which he had dreamed up. The banners He told the producers, we're going to be hung around the studios, and in fact, we're being hung around the studios as they spoke, and behind him there was one covered in a drape cloth, and

he pulled the string. The cloth fell off, revealing his first exciting idea, the new network slogan MSNBC keeping it real, keeping k eeipi n apostrophe, no g keeping. That was the highlight of his tenure as the general manager. The blowback against his appointment was so universal nobody trying to hide it. Abram's first move was to cancel a show hosted by an Xbox News walking malliprop artist named Rita Cosby. She almost took hostages. Abrams delayed the meeting to tell

her staff from noon until six pm. Abrams then gave an interview about his vision for MSNBC and told the reporter quote, documentaries are our most important programs, and the staffs of the uncanceled primetime shows mine included nearly walked out because in fact we were our most important programs. While Griffin prevented that mass resignation by swearing Abrams had been misquoted. Abrams then launched a series of radio commercials

for MSNBC documentaries. Abrams tried to get a producer named Bill Wolf, who had been told he was going to be the new general manager, to instead host his own show. He told me he had figured out the perfect guest host for Countdown and was already in negotiations with him. Dan Rather, my girlfriend Katie's father, then chimed in with a new nickname for Abrams that spread across the television industry Miles Miles, as in Miles the boy producer from

the sitcom Murphy Brown. I even felt sorry for him, it was that bad, and of course I was promptly repaid for this mistake. A week after Abrams was hired, the cable news blogger named Brian Stelter, who inexplicably wound up first at The New York Times and then at CNN, and you heard about him getting fired over the summer. Brian Stelter called to say he had been told by a source at NBC that I had just been fired at a meeting an hour before by Abrams and an

NBC executive named Randy Falco. In fact, Abrams was at a meeting with Zucker and the NBC News president, Cappus as they desperately tried to steer out of the fatal skid they had all swerved into. Phil Griffin was furious. Griffin told me he suspected Abrams had been somehow connected to this leak about this fake story about me getting fired, and he began an investigation of him and never trusted him again. One week appointed Monday, and a lame duck

the following Monday, keeping it real keeping. On August ninth, three days shy of the two months mark, Phil Griffin called my office an hour and a half before my show. Okay, you want to say I told you so, but we've made it clear to Dan that he won't be involved in any major decisions going forward. He will remain general, but I'm running everything. In a year or so, buddy, we'll say he found out he just had to go back on the air, and he'll resign and we'll give

him the nine PM show. Probably, you have to keep this confidential. I did. I'm surprisingly good at that, at least still, I started this podcast. Fourteen months later they offed him, by which time I had already started to lobby them to make the nine PM host not Dan Abrams but Rachel Maddow. They finally gave into that in September two thousand and eight, and Dan did not have a show or a title, and he finally got the

message and he left NBC in twenty eleven. The last I had heard of Dan Abrams before the News Nation retirement home. He had launched a new website. It's called Whiskey Raiders because it rates various brands of whiskey. He got it, Raiders, Ray Ters, you got it. It's a punt. Presumably he chose that pun because somebody else had already taken keeping it real. I've done all the damage I

can do here. Thank you for listening, and sorry again for the continuing brevity and raggedness powering through here with the bad throat as the kids say. Brian Ray and John Phillip Schanelle musical directors, have Countdown, arranged, produced and performed most of the music. Mister Chanelle handled the orchestration and the keyboards. Mister Ray was on the guitars, the bass,

and the drums, produced by Tko Brothers. Our satirical and fithy musical comments are by the best baseball stadium organist ever, Nancy Faust. The Sports music is the Olderman theme from ESPN two, written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN Inc. Other music arranged and performed by the group No Horns Allowed. Speaking of music, my announcer today was my friend, the one and only Stevie van Zant. Everything else was pretty much my fault. That's countdown for this the ninetieth day

until the twenty twenty fourth presidential election. They three hundred and ninth day since convicted felon draft dodger j Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically elected government of the United States. Thanks for reminding me that about all that jv vans use the September eighteenth sentencing hearing. Use the mental health system. You've got it. President Biden used presidential immunity to stop him from doing it again while we

still can. And anti Semitic, anti immigration, psychotic Republicans, please stop shooting at Trump. The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow. Bulletins as the news requires and the voice permits till the next one. I'm Keith Olvermant. 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.