Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. The light bulbs may have finally gone off over the heads of the Biden campaign at two three pm Eastern daylight time yesterday. They had used the phrase before, and they had said the phrase before, but it was at that moment that they sent the phrase out into the world alone.
A Twitter x post reading simply quote convicted felon and under it the close up, sweating modeled face golf picture of convicted felon Donald Trump, the one that looks like it was the before shot in a before and after about your grandpa's risk of having a stroke. Elections are not decided by social media posts, and they are not decided by nicknames, and they are not decided by bad photos. But you can probably decide one percentage point in an
election with all of those, or two or five. We may hate this, but we live in in America where the name crooked Hillary stuck, and the phrase lock her up stuck, and the acronym maga maga one of the stupidest and most discordant acronyms of all time stuck, And here Joe Biden now has been gifted an answer to every insult and every meme and every catchphrase used by Trump and his cult. And it's not only a great answer, but it has the added benefit of being entirely true.
And it has the even greater benefit of utterly deranging the entirety of the Trump horror cult. They have spent every day since the convictions screaming, shouting, whining, crying, don't say that. Don't call me that like you did the day that the kids gave you your first mean nickname in the third or fourth grade. The musk flunky David Sachs is calling it the convicted felon hoax. More of that,
mister Sachs. The conspiracy driven right is claiming this is a George Sorrow's plot because his son tweeted about using the phrase. The idiot senator from Utah Mike Lee says the use of this phrase is quote a departure from the norm including norms involving the left's use of words like convict and I know Mike Lee rarely makes sense, but I honestly don't even know what he's talking about,
and neither does he. Within a twenty one minute span, Mike Lee congratulated Democrats on guaranteeing Trump's election with the convictions, and then forgot he had tweeted that and insisted there could be no bigger, more impactful donation to the Biden campaign. They have been deranged. The gravity has been turned off in their world. Make sure it stays off. And again, as I pointed out in the special Bonus bulletin on Saturday, there has been and will continue to be an impact
on the perception of Trump by Republican voters. And the earliest polling shows, No, it's not going to peel off twenty percent of them, and it doesn't have to peel off twenty percent of them. Five percent of them is worth roughly twelve electoral votes, and two percent in Michigan and Pennsylvania and Wisconsin would have meant President Hillary Clinton. In twenty seventeen, the newest polling CBS you Gov, the number of Republicans saying he's now not considered fit to
be president is up to ten percent. The number of Independents saying he's not fit to be president is now fifty percent. Echelon Insights run by a conservative Kristin Sultis Anderson went back to four hundred and seventy seven people it had previously pulled who had had it forty seven forty seven, and after the verdict they asked them again and now they are coming back forty nine forty seven
for Biden. Put these on the pile next to the IPSOS Reuter's poll Ticke and last Thursday and Friday, a quarter of independents saying they are now less likely to vote for him, ten percent of Republicans saying that. And Morning consult took the other tack and asked should he end his campaign, and half of independence and fifteen percent of Republicans said yes, Trump should end his campaign now convicted felon Donald Trump and no, the numbers will not hold,
they will soften. The access Hollywood tape experience is useful and instructive. It doesn't all have to last forever. It only has to impact this one percent or two percent less than that in the key swinging states. And there is nothing right now and maybe nothing for the rest of this campaign that Joe Biden could do to lower supermarket prices or cheapen gas, or make anything else positive happen that could have that sized impact and have it
happen that quickly. So to the Biden campaign to every Democratic senator and representative and governor and every pro democracy commentator keep calling him convicted felon Donald Trump every time first reference, like he legally changed his name to that. And this goes for the President of the United States as well, because if they play this right, they can
get a second, maybe bigger convicted felon Donald Trump. Bump out of this because the moment Joe Biden says that himself or puts it in a campaign commercial, I'm Joe Biden, and I approved this message because he's convicted fella Donald Trump. The moment that happens, the political media will lose their minds. Can you imagine the idiots in all of the newspapers.
Can you imagine Maggie Haberman and Katie Turr trampling each other to get their forty four thousand stories written about it, and get the reaction from every Trumpist and every Republican and every Democrat and spread this phrase further and further until it is inescapable and it is inseparable from Trump's identity. Also, every Democratic group doing a poll, I want those questions asked, are you less likely to vote for Trump now that he is a convicted felon. Should he drop out now
that he is a convicted felon? You feel about this phrase? Donald Trump is a convicted felon. And while you're at it, make hats. I want hats. I want red hats. I want red hats with that same stupid fonts. Convicted fellon Donald Trump. And for God's sake, get it on social media the two three pm tweet yesterday. I want a million of them. I want Facebook and Insta and TikTok users waiting knee deep in videos, all of which say
convicted felon Donald Trump. And the reason a second bump from the New York trial is a necessity is it is now unavoidable. We will not be completing any other Trump trials before the election. Georgia just vanished the hearing into the latest attempt to disqualify Fannie Willis from helming. That election interference case will begin on October fourth. Even if the three Appeals court judges appointed by Republican Georgia governors violate their Siegfried oath and rule in her favor,
they will not get that trial going quickly enough. And incredibly, this does not appear to be Eileen cannon style footdragging. Atlanta Media reports that the standard turnaround on a big procedural appeal like this in Georgia is now eight months. This is actually expedited. And this is all because Fannie willis needed to be untouchable in this case, and I wish life were not like this, but she wasn't untouchable.
So the New York case resumes July eleventh. Asterisk could be delayed with the Republican Convention starting July fifteenth, and CBS News reporting GOP leaders will not dismiss the possibility that Trump will have to accept his nomination from behind bars in jail, slipping out a message, writing it on a bar of soap, baking it into a cake. Please do not use the image of a conjugal visit. Also, get all the Eugene v. Debs jazz out of your mind.
This was not a murder trial. Even if Judge Mayr Shaan somehow does not grant the delay in sentencing, he will not end the hearing by having Trump dragged off by his feet directly to Riker's Island. There will be an appeal on the sentencing. Whatever it is or similar delay. Trump might or might not get prison time. Seems to
think he could face a brief prison spell weekends. Maybe that's been mentioned a lot or house arrest, tells Fox, I'm okay with it, which means he hears house arrest and he thinks more golf by the way back to convicted fellon Donald Trump, and that Biden Harris Headquarters tweet the golf photo with it essential. If you do it right, you can now tie a second association to it and get the bonfire glowing even higher into the night sky.
Convicted felon means Donald Trump, and any photograph of Donald Trump at a golf course means convicted felon. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court is coming apart at the seams. The civilian victim in the Alito flag scandal now says that both in late twenty twenty early twenty twenty one, and then again as recently as two weeks ago, a black suv from the Alito's security detail parked not in front of Alito's house, but in front of her own mother's home
in Alexandria, Virginia. Quote. I couldn't say who was in the car because of the tinted glass, Emily Baden told the newspaper The Guardian, and nobody ever said anything. I took it as a general threat. The message was we could do terrible things to you and nobody would be able to do anything about it. When it comes to justices at the Supreme Court, they make the laws, but
the laws don't apply to them. Yeah, pretty much. Mss Baden says it happened a handful of times after the confrontations with Martha an Alito in late twenty twenty and early twenty two, and then again after The New York Times finally put the story out there last month, after
the Washington Post sat on it for three years. Miss Baden notes ominously that none of the initial news stories included her name or her mother's Guess what the Elito security detail They already had all that information, and where Baden's mother lived after the infamous expletive Ladden conversation in early twenty twenty one, cooting Baden's husband right after a security vehicle moved in front of our house and stayed for the remainder of the night. This is not about
scarcity of parking on that block. Baden's mother lives several houses down the street from where the Alito. Black cars normally linger in front of the Alito's house or directly across the street. If the implied threat was not enough, the cliche of the unmarked power vehicle parked in front of your house all night with tinted windows. Baden also says that Justice Lilleid's statement blaming everything on her and on his wife is full of lies. Quoting her, he's
lying about many many things in that statement. She says she never initiated any confrontation with the Alitos, and moreover, Alitos claim that her law and signs directly insulted the Alitos not true. Mss Baden says she had hoped to stay anonymous in this as the Supreme Court disaster. This Supreme Court disaster plays out, but then the other's story broke about the appeal to Heaven flag at the Alito's summer home and quoting her again, that other flag sealed
the deal for me. I thought, if I don't use my name, I will not be true to myself and my lifelong convictions. I believe in resistance to fascism. My grandpa fought in World War II. He was a person who quite literally fought against fascism, So what do we do about this, or importantly, what can we do about this? Apparently the Chief Justice of the United States wants us to acknowledge that he runs the country now and f
everybody else. On Thursday, Chief Justice Roberts refused to meet informally with Senators Durbin and White House to discuss the crisis because quote, a meeting with leaders of only one party would be inadvisable. On Friday, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson said the Supreme Court must quote step in unquote to overturn convicted felon Donald Trump's thirty four guilty verdicts, and he said he was sure they would because quote, I know many of them personally, and I think they
are deeply concerned that this is totally unprecedented. So I think they'll set this straight. In other words, the Chief Justice can't meet with Democrats because that would be a bad look. But an untold number of Associate Justices many they know the Leader of the House personally, and that leader a Republican and not a Republican and Democrat himself
just a member of one party. That leader implies that he's spoken to them or communicated with them about a criminal case that it only took the jury twenty four hours to convict on, and they all agree that that criminal case needs to be overturned. This is such a bad look that even tiny little Johnson noticed. He went back on Fox to try to make it better and made it worse. Of course, I haven't had conversations with the justices, he explained, with the nonchalance of a doctor
who does not actually have a license. I just know their character, their personality. That's worse. That's saying the Speaker of the House is confident that the Supreme Court will interfere with a criminal prosecution of a criminal on behalf of the criminal and against representative government, so confident that he didn't and doesn't even have to talk to them about it, like they communicate telepathically or something, or maybe he just talks to Thomas and Alito the way the
rest of the world does with cash. There are still a few ways to turn this John Robert Sam Alito, Clarence Thomas, Donald Trump, Mitch McConnell, friends of Mike Johnson's
Supreme Court into a complete glittering whorehouse. But there aren't many of them left, and none of them are really necessary for the project, whether Roberts knows it and he's faking it, or he's really so stupid that he does not see that his building is metaphorically on fire, and thus the democracy it is supposed to protect may follow. I don't care which anymore. The Supreme Court is right
now so corrupt that it is beyond redemption. Now. The best and most correct solution to this ethical disaster is to get everybody and every important document and every artifact out of the Supreme Court and implode the building and start all over again. But that's not exactly doable just now.
The next and most correct decision would be for the current presidential administration and its Department of Justice to stop participating in the Supreme Court and to explain to its justices and to the Chief Justice that it can keep staging all the hearings it wants and rule however it pleases, but as during the Civil War, the government will henceforth
be ignoring it. Then, if the Supreme Court really wants to enforce its lamentably prejudiced and purchased decisions, maybe it should send Alito door to door to try to convince people that his fraudulence doesn't matter. Maybe he could bring some of his flags with him. It would be a stunning and possibly impactful site. Long term, the only solution is for a unified government, a democratic White House, democratic Senate, democratic House, to expand the Court by as many members
is as necessary, say sixty or seventy. I am not optimistic that this opportunity is going to arise, largely because if Speaker Johnson isn't lying, and who can be sure about that he must have lied in one of those two comments to Fox, then the Supreme Court is even more completely owned by the Republicans and the Federalist Society and the fascists than we suspect it in our worst nightmares. And so if they can correctly throw the election to Trump,
we should assume they are going to. Having said that this is still not beyond correction, Congressman Jamie Raskin wrote a op ed for The New York Times that unfortunately was published the day before the Trump verdicts, and so it vanished from any and all screens. But in it he slowly gets around to actual action, action that the Democrats and the Biden administration could take right now, And the good news is it's all doable, and the bad
news is it requires Merrick Garland to do it. I'm not going to paraphrase this because I can read and even sometimes understand the law, but Congress and Raskin can
practice and write it. Quoting him, Rascin argues, the US Department of Justice, including the US Attorney for the District of Columbia, an appointed US Special Council, and the Solicitor General, all of whom were involved in different ways in the criminal prosecutions underlying these cases and are opposing mister Trump's constitutional and statutory claims, can petition the other seven justices to require Justices Alito and Thomas to recuse themselves in
the Trump presidential immunity case. He adds, not as a matter of grace, but as a matter of law, the Justice Department and Attorney General Merrick Garland can invoke two powerful textual authorities for this motion, the Constitution of the United States, specifically the due process clause and the federal statute mandating judicial disqualification for questionable impartiality twenty eight USC.
Section four, five to five. The Constitution, Congressman Rascin writes, has come into play in several recent Supreme Court decisions striking down rulings by stubborn judges in lower courts whose political impartiality has been reasonably questioned, but who threw caution to the win to hear a case anyway. This statute requires potentially biased judges throughout the federal system to recuse themselves at the start of the process to avoid judicial
unfairness and embarrassing controversies and reversals. He concludes, the constitutional and statutory standards apply to Supreme Court justices. The Constitution and the federal laws under it is the supreme law of the land, and the recusal statute explicitly treats Supreme Court justice is like other judges, quoting any justice, judge or magistrate judge of the United States shall disqualify himself in any proceeding in which his impartiality might reasonably be questioned.
And the only justices in the federal judiciary are the ones on the Supreme Court, unquote Jamie Raskin. So there is law ready to be used break glass an event of emergency to stop this politically corrupt, biased, unprofessional, destructive cabal of justices. Mike Johnson knows personally to stop them from screwing the country into the ground any further or any faster. The irony, of course, is that the real
impediment right now is the attorney general. It goes without saying that he should resign or that President Biden should fire him today, but that was also true last week, and last month, and last year and the day Merrick Garland took office. Because what we need out of an Attorney general is not a partisan Democrat, nor a Biden version of Bill Spanish inquisition bar. What we need is an advocate for, you know, continuing representative government in this country.
And it's pretty clear by now that Merrick Garland has no idea that it is even warm in here, let alone any idea about this goddamned fire thing in the room. Also of interest here, the good news is at least nobody's threatening right wing fascist vigilante violence over the Trump verdicts. And when I say nobody, I mean only his lawyer, the one who wanted to seize all the ballot boxes in twenty twenty, and only his former staffer now pretends
to anchor newscasts, and only Trump himself. Nobody but them. That's next, This his countdown, This his countdown with Keith
Oldwoman Stelle ahead of us on this initiative countdown. Thursday will be the eightieth anniversary of D Day, and that means all kinds of things for any American who hates fascists and Nazis, so like fifty seven percent of us now, But for some of us, this eightieth anniversary invokes memory of the sixtieth anniversary, for which the then new president of MSNBC pulled out all the stops and decided to go wall to wall with live reports from Normandy and
Me and lesterr Holt anchoring all day and and and then breaking news happened, big breaking news which broke up the president's plans and broke his heart things I promised not to tell next but first. As ever, there are still more new idiots talk about the daily roundup of the misgrants, morons and Dunning Kruger effects specimens who constitute
two days Where's persons in the world. The runner up worse convicted Felon Denesh Desuza probably missed this since they announced it late on a Friday night, and hopes that you would miss it. But the executive producer and publisher of Desuza's movie length lie called Two Thousand Mules, repudiated the film and him and the True the Vote organization, and the publisher and producer apologized to one of Desuza's victims and pulled the film out of circulation. Desusa accused
a Georgia man named Mark Andrews a ballot stuffing. Desusa actually did the voice over saying why you know our things and crime Na Franklin bounce They weren't. He didn't, but he did sue. Suddenly, Salem Media and it's publishing film affirm Rather Regnery said sorry, sorry, it was all that guy's fault. Quote. It was never our intent that the publication of the Two Thousand Mules film and book
would harm mister Andrews. We apologize. We have removed the film from mister Salem's platforms, and there will be no future distribution of the film or the book by Salem. And then here's the kill sentence. In publishing the film and the book, we relied on representations made to us by Denesh Desuza and True the Vote Inc. Unquote. Bye, Felicia, you relied on Denesh Desuza. Hell, there's your problem right there. By the way mister Andrews, he has not dropped his lawsuit.
The runner up, Senator Josh the running Man Hawley, who went on Denesh Desuz's old girlfriend's show and told Laura Ingram that he predicts, quote, We're going to find out soon that US soldiers are in Ukraine, that US soldiers are advising like in Vietnam. Well, there's only two choices here. Hally is either lying, accusing the Biden administration of conducting a clandestine war in Ukraine, or he's just revealed military secrets. Can't do anything about the lying part. But if it's
the latter, prosecute him. When are we going to stop lending Schmucks like Josh Hawley drive steam rollers through this
country and it's laws, prosecute him. But our winner, Carl Higbee Newsmax, Carl is big mad after convicted fellaon Donald Trump was convicted, Big mad, Carl has decided he's going to start shooting people, or somebody's going to start shooting people, or Trump's going to start shooting people or Carl was interrack and once again, I don't think we know one percent of all that we are going to know someday about PTSD.
Oh, Carl, you tyrants are about to awaken a machinery you don't want. You are pushing people to the edge. The same party that is offended by the wrong pronouns as pushing the party that owns ninety percent of the guns of which the majority defends our nation, who mine our minerals, who build our skyscrapers and drive our trucks.
You weak people have no idea. You people in your cities with your white shoe consultants' country clubs, who thought prosecuting Trump was a good idea, You have never met America.
Carl Higbee works in New York, lived somewhere around here. He sued for permission to open carry here, and he's nuts, obviously. But let's start with this widespread right wing idea that they're going to shoot all the rest of us and that'll show us two points their boy wins the election. It's academic. The government will do that for them. You boys can just keep your gun in your house and
just stay home and rub it all day. But if not, and I mean Trump said something like this over the weekend too, again another stochastic terrorist outreach about the American people's breaking point. And just yesterday John Eastman broke into a thing about how MAGA will take it into their own hands. I mean, what do you think your guns are going to do? Pushing the party that owns ninety
percent of the guns, of which the majority defends our nation? Boyo, who owns all the tanks, who owns all the planes, who owns all the military bases? Ever understand this? You're gonna start shooting. Do you think the response is gonna be like January sixth, where there's no response? Oh? Nos, they're shooting. Don't use the tanks or the planes, complain about their adverbs. Thank god. These fascists are this effing stupid.
They start shooting. What's the what's what going? We quote John Eastman, what's that's why we have an insurrection Act. I'll also point out that this Carl Higbee nut job was in the Trump administration. He was chief of External affairs of the Federal Government Volunteer Service Organization CNCs, and then CNN found the archive of his twenty thirteen internet radio show in which Karl made insulting and derogatory comments
about Blacks, Muslims, women, LGBTQ plus people, and immigrants. He suggested welfare recipients should permanently lose the right to vote. He suggested civilian should be permitted to go to the border and shoot undocumented immigrants, and he suggested that three quarters of service members with PTSD were just faking it. Did you say that? Carl? What a guy? Carl Higbee? Two days worst person guns versus tanks in the world to my favorite topic, me and things I promised not
to tell, and D Day plus sixty. It was June sixth, two thousand and four, and MSNBC's new president Rick Kaplan needed to make a mark on the network for his new bosses, and he decided this was gonna be it on June six, two thousand and four, maybe the last even numbered anniversary of D Day, where we'd have a lot of people left who were there. We'd turned the
network all D Day. June six, two thousand and four basically was going to be June sixth, nineteen forty four, relived Tom Brokaw live on the visius of Normandy and Somebody There and Somebody Here and his main two MSNBC news anchors, me and Lester Holt, anchoring two hour blocks devoted to the anniversary and then switching off and he came back, and I would go away, and then I'd come back and he would go just wall to wall.
I'm Rick Kaplan, and I used to produce for Walter Cronkite to not only lock in his new gig at MSNBC, but set himself up for his next goal executive in charge of the Today Show or NBC Nightly News, or something bigger than that little crapshack we ran at MSNBC. For my part, I was dispatched first to interview one of the prizingly large number of soldiers and sailors and airmen who survived D Day and went on to fame.
There were actors Charles Derning and James Dewhan Scotty on Star Trek, and the author J. D. Salinger and Sieman's second class, Yogi Bearra. I met Yogi at his museum in New Jersey, and I swear to God he and his son demanded a friendly bribe to do the interview. And what they wanted was my copy of the nineteen sixty three tops Yogi Bearra baseball card. Seriously, that's the toughest one to find. Yogi said, we never have enough
of them here. I always enjoyed Yogi. But he had more to say about his nineteen sixty three baseball card and its relative scarcity than he did about the D Day invasion and his chief on his rocket launcher boat telling him to keep his head down or he might get to watch it fly off his neck. Anyway, the Bearra interview was fine, and it was done, and we edited like fifteen very very short answer into about two
minutes of not bad narrative. And I had written a couple of other D Day features, and I'd written some other scripts on Friday, and by Sunday we were all crammed into the main MSNBC conference room in Secaucus, New Jersey, everybody working a sixth day. And you would have thought this guy, Rick Kaplan, president of the network, was leading the actual invasion of Normandy, not merely a cable TV
network coverage of the sixtieth anniversary. Thereof, Kaplin was waxing poetic about how important this was for us, and how it would put us on the map against CNN and Fox, and how he had covered all the contingencies. And that's when people's phones started vibrating and ringing. Kaplan was still enjoying the sound of his own voice as these phones gradually drowned him out. When one of the producers finished whispering into his BlackBerry and then said, excuse me, Rick,
we have a problem. Ronald Reagan has just died. Without a word, twenty people at that conference table rose and then froze, realizing that before they abandoned this meeting to go get on the air as quickly as possible, and then to lay out what would be rolling coverage till at least midnight of Reagan's death and life and reaction to it till further notice. We couldn't just start. We basically had to wait for the president of the network, who was sitting there, Rick Camplan, to say, Okay, we'll
figure out the D Day stuff later. It's Reagan day. Let's go. Except he didn't say that, looking crestfallen, looking like a kid who's had his toys stolen and then broken. As he watched Rick Kaplan swept the room with his gaze, he stopped on me, Thanks, couldn't we just couldn't we just do half an hour of Reagan and then half an hour of my D Day and then half an hour and he trailed off, and I said, Rick, it's
a two term president. I mean, I think he was full of crap, but apparently a lot of American thinks he's some sort of icon. And by the way, it just it just happened like eleven minutes ago. It didn't happen sixty years ago. I'm sorry. He was almost literally pouting, But what about all my D Day coverage? President of the network? And I said, well, we can run those pieces throughout the day tomorrow. They won't just disappear. We
don't have to go degous the tapes. Okay. We realized that the president of the news network was not going to be any use helping us cover the first big breaking news story of his presidency, because it couldn't bear to change his plans to accommodate breaking presidential news. This was at the end of month three of the Rick Kaplan MSNBC presidency. He was already on the ropes with us.
He would later be the who chased me around the studios because he was squeamish and I'd mentioned blood on the air and he thought I was trying to sabotage his great show with Rita Cosby. He would soon be the network president who did not know what was live on TV and what was on delay. I'll tell you that story in a minute too. However, the Rick Kaplan story starts in the men's room at MSNBC. It is February seventeenth, two thousand and four, at one of those
moronic corporate speak town halls. The bosses have just introduced Rick Kaplan as the new president of the network. Kaplan speaks for an hour without interruption. He does not mention that he was the president of CNN when it's nineteen year streak at number one in the cable news ratings came to an abrupt end. He does, however, mention that he is six feet seven inches tall, but he does
not seem to be six feet seven inches tall. As this nonsense ends, I rush into the men's room and find, to my amusement, Joe Scarborough, Chris Matthews, Jesse Ventura, Lester Holt, and one unoccupied y'urin all. As I moved to occupy it, it dawns on me that Ventura, the former professional wrestler, is the shortest man in the bathroom at six feet two. All five of us are silent. Finally, Matthews says it Helen hell, can he say he's six foot seven? He's
barely taller than I am? And I'm six four, oldman? Are you slightly taller than me? You're slightly shorter than me? How is he six seven? Everybody keeps looking forward, of course, into the wall in front of us. I'm six three and a half. Lester, he's your height. I saw you standing with him, you tour even. What are you six ' five? Lester says, uh huh and flushes. Scarborough chimes in, I'm just over sixty four. We're almost eyed aye, he's not
six seven. Finally, Ventura speaks, I've been thrown around a ring by guys or six to seven. This guy's not six seven. From the sink, wester Holt now says, have any of you known anybody our height who lies and says they're taller? Matthews again, who lies about their height? Eye flush? This guy does, gentlemen, we are in trouble here for the presidency of Rick Kaplan at MSNBC. That might have been sorry, I can't resist it the high
water mark. Later, on Friday March fifth, two thousand and four, Kaplan, who had been there, three weeks assembled the hosts and producers of the primetime shows on the network that would have been me, Scarborough, Dan Abrams, our staffs, the New Jersey staff of Chris Matthews Show, and he told us that the next day was going to be Monday. Somebody from Scarborough's staff helpfully corrected him, mister Kaplan, I'm sorry,
tomorrow is Saturday. Kaplin sternly explained he was now president of this network and we all sucked, and if he said today was Friday and tomorrow is Monday, then today was Friday and tomorrow was Monday. He wanted to see us react to sudden changes in our plans. We were being told we were being called into work a sixth day tomorrow for no reason. Kaplin then started yelling at us, You guys don't get it. You're all working tomorrow. Anybody who doesn't come in is fired. We are going to
do the whole pro primetime lineup. Your breaking news is today's breaking news, the guilty verdict in the Martha Stewart case. Start booking your guests because tomorrow is Monday, not Saturday. Just on my staff, Saturday was supposed to be my reporter's engagement party, a surprise party thrown by one of my producers for his wife's birthday, and the day another producer was closing on buying a house. I have a
vague memory of what we put on the air. I have a stronger memory of the new president of MSNBC losing the staffs of all four of his primetime shows on his fifth day on the job and never ever getting them back. Kaplan then went to a corkboard on our office wall on which our show Rundown was displayed. He ordered producers to move segments around, and he berated me for not having anticipated his whims and at one point he screamed, stop, what the hell are you doing?
And he got up and he grabbed the push pin, which held up an index card bearing the name of a guest. You don't use green pins with yellow index cards. You use yellow pins with yellow index cards. What kind of a newsman are You can't imagine how this guy choked away CNN's monopoly on cable news ratings. I was reminded recently that later on December eighth, two thousand and five, seventeen years ago tomorrow, he did one of the most
unintentionally funniest things I have ever witnessed. A plane slid off the runway at Midway Airport in Chicago. Nothing funny about that, obviously, But Kaplan called into our control room demanding we changed something about our live coverage that he didn't like. We promptly made the change. He was right. Five minutes later he called in and started swearing at one of our producers. I told you to change that if you you're fired, And the producer said, we changed
it five minutes ago. When you called in, silence, Rick, Are you watching the network on some sort of delay? Are you watching on TVO or something? Silence again. Finally he said, okay, good work, see you tomorrow and hung up. He didn't know he was watching it on a delay. Kaplan was also one of these forget the mean thing I said yesterday. God knows I have kind of guys. By Monday, he had heard people laughing at some of my on air jokes and his front runner instincts took over.
He called me and the producer in for a meeting. I have only one criticism of your show. Which of these stories whill you'll be talking about? Thing? Is genius? The fifth story? The fourth story then the third story. It's original and fresh. I hesitated. I almost said to him, yeah, this whole counting thing we just invented that. The music is genius, the graphics are genius. You're a genius, but
you're missing something obvious, something genius. After each one of these stories, after you thank your guests, you should do a list of the things you didn't tell us about those stories. So like, after the fifth story, you should say, now here are the other five things we didn't tell you about the fifth story, get it a full screen graphic and you telling people. And then fourth things for
the fourth story, and three for the third. I thought for a moment, and I said, okay, but what happens if we make those graphics up and then a minute beforehand, the guest brings up one of those things we claim we didn't tell you. When he just told you, we had lost Rick Caplan's attention by that point. Hmmm, he grunted. For a second. I thought his eyes were pointing outwards in different directions, but he snapped himself back into this reality.
Huh could happen? You'll figure it out anyway, too late to do it today. Figure it out and do it tomorrow, thanks the producer, and I had to then explain to the staff of Countdown that from now on, for every story they had to deliberately leave out one or two or three or four or five facts or details, something interesting enough to be made into a full screen graphic, but not interesting enough to be included in their scripts
or the interviews with the guests. Suddenly I thought a lot of people's eyes were pointing outwards in different directions. The line producer, Greg Kordick, who was in charge not of content but of timing things and making sure things like graphics got made, said, matter of factly, this will add five hours to everybody's workday. And so it did.
After the next day's show when we listed the top five things we can tell you about today's fifth story and the top four things we didn't tell you about today's fourth story, et cetera, and we had to shorten all the scripts and shorten each interview just to make room for all of this extraneous crap. Greg, the producer, said, people here will be quitting by Thursday and dying by Monday, and I said, you're right. Plus it ruins the interviews and it weakens the show. Don't do it tomorrow with
Kaplan yells I'll take the eight. So now it's Wednesday, and not only don't I hear anything from Kaplan about the Tuesday show and his the top five things we didn't tell you about today's fifth story Jazz, but after the Wednesday show when we don't do it, I'm sitting there waiting for an enraged phone call because we didn't Thursday morning at home, I'm waiting for an enraged email. Thursday afternoon, I'm waiting for an enraged Kaplin in person. Nothing.
He never said a word. The week passes nothing, a month, two months, it's summer, nothing. The rest of two thousand and four flies by. Nothing. We did once, we never did it again, and then he never said anything. It is now January two thousand and five, and he still hasn't said anything. And I'm told by Phil Griffin, my first producer in television sports and sixteen years later of my first producer in television news, who has since become the vice president of MSNBC, that Kaplan wants to see
us in his office. It's not a big deal, Phil says, he's in a good mood. He just wants to make us feel like we have input into his decisions. This is a what do you think meeting? Now I have to ask you to carefully picture the layout of Rick Kaplan's office at MSNBC in the year two thousand and five. Envision a long, narrow room. Baseball's MLB network now operates there, and they have cleverly turned Kaplan's office into a wardrobe room,
perfect since it was really just a long closet. Anyways, Rick Kaplan, who was six foot five but lied and said he was six foot seven, sat at the very back of this room. I'm in the front door. You turn to your right, and maybe thirty thirty five forty feet away from you, in the farthest corner, facing his computer on his desk, flush against the left hand wall, is the president of MSNBC. A few feet into the room is where you sit. Halfway between these two points.
Against the right hand wall is where another executive can sit, so Phil Griffin sits there. I am just inside the door. He is fifteen feet ahead of me to the right. Rick Kaplan is thirty feet or forty feet ahead of me to the left. Picture this carefully. The way these chairs and desks are arranged if you're me and Phil Griffin is looking at you, Rick Kaplan can only see the back of Phil Griffin's head and not his face. If they are both looking at you, they cannot see
each other. Weird, seemingly trivial turned out to be essential. We begin this meaningless meeting and talk about guests and graphics, fonts, and Kaplan talks about how much the ratings have gone up in his year as president. And finally, I say, I do have one suggestion. I think the show is going to be very successful, and I think if we want to make any changes, we should make them now before it becomes successful. And I say, I have never heard anybody say they like the fifth story, fourth story,
third story stuff. If you want to continue the name countdown because people know it by now, that's great, I guess. But the five four three two one numbering is a conceit and it's a lot of extra work for everybody, and I think we should kill it now. Kaplan is aghast. He is pale, He is not angry, he is just stunned. But you can't do that. Five four three two one
is part of the reasons the ratings went up. The ratings went up when I came up with the idea of the top five things we didn't tell you about today's top five story, worries in the top four things we didn't tell you about today's number four story, etc. We can't stop that. That's why people watch My idea took me a split second to even remember what the
hell it was he was talking about. I had forgotten the whole five things we didn't tell you Albatross weeks after the one show we did it, and then the staff rebelled and I said, screw it, and I'll take
the heat. And I was about to say this out loud when I suddenly realized that Phil Griffin, fifteen feet away on the right, his face turned to me and thus invisible to Kaplan thirty feet away on the left, was making his eyes as wide as possible, and Phil was looking right at me and silently mouthing the word no, no, no, no, no, all the while keeping his head completely still, so Kaplin didn't know he was talking to me. Silently. I got Phil's message, I dropped the subject. I didn't say it.
The meeting ended maybe too minutes later, with Kaplan saying keep up the good work and ushering us out by saying, and keep up with the top five things we didn't tell you about today's five fifth story. Oh that's what's making it really cook. When we were out of earshot of Rick Kaplan, Griffin thanked me for being able to read his panicked lips. I used an oath to liven up my question. What the blank was that all about? And Griffin said, now you know what every day of
my life has become. It's not worth it to try to correct him. He believes what he believes, and he won't be checked or contradicted. And I said, we only did the five things. We didn't tell you a thing once, only once. It's like a year later. How in the hell could he possibly think we're still doing it? Griffin laughed, like a soldier on a World War One battlefield who has just run out of bullets. See that's the problem, buddy. He only watches MSNBC here in the office. The place
he's renting it doesn't have cable. President of MSNBC doesn't have cable at home. On June sixth, two thousand and six, they fired Rick Caplan as the president of MSNBC. They let him resign. They also let him keep his secret, the darkest of secrets, himn for MSNBC that for his two years on the throne, the president of an all
news cable channel did not have cable. The sad thing is if Rick Caplan could guarantee CNN the ratings that we had at MSNBC on the day he was fired at MSNBC, CNN would make him president again before sunrise, President for life. Triple digits. I've done all the damage I could do here. Thank you for listening. Countdown. Musical directors Brian Ray and John Phillip Schanel arranged, produced, and performed most of our music. Mister Ray was on the guitars,
bass and drums. Mister Shanelle handled orchestration and keyboards, and was produced by Tko Brothers. Other music, including some of the Beethoven compositions, arranged and performed by the group No Horns Allowed. Sports music is the Olderman theme from ESPN two, written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN Inc. Our satirical and pithy musical comments are by Nancy Faust. The best baseball stadium organist ever. Our announcer today is my
friend Jonathan Banks. And everything else was pretty much my fault. Once again, I make my request to you. Do me a favor, and let's double the audience here. Send this to somebody you think might like it who does not listen. You don't have to do anything else, just that check
will be in the mail. That's countdown for this the one hundred and fifty sixth day until the twenty twenty four presidential election and forty fifth since convicted felon Donald J. Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically elected government of the United States. Use the July eleventh sentencing hearing, use the mental health system, use presidential immunity if it happens, Use the not regularly given elector objection option to stop him from doing it again while we still can. The
next scheduled countdown is tomorrow. Bulletins is the news warrants till then. I'm Keith Olraman. Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and good luck. Countdown with Keith Oldraman is a production of iHeartRadio. For more from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.