LIBERATE THIS! JUDGES RULE TRUMP TARIFFS ILLEGAL - 5.29.25

Trump had used the nineteen seventy seven federal Economic Emergency laws to impose these tariffs, and this three judge panel the US Court of International Trade said, sorry, tariffs were not among the weapons allocated to the president even in the event of a federal economic emergency, which they did not prove, and no one bothered to prove any indication anywhere in any law in the Constitution, anywhere else, any statute anywhere, that the president had the right single handedly

to impose tariffs without the approval of Congress. They have given the Trump administration ten days to halt all tariffs. The Trump administration has already appealed. What is interesting as a sideline to this is the corporations that were affected by these tariffs, including the ones that were pushed to the brink of true economic peril, did nothing about them. They knew these tariffs were illegal, or at minimum illegally applied and did not have anything behind it legally, and

they did nothing. They rolled over rather than challenged Trump in court. This is a series of states and other groups that sued and got these tariffs at least halted, at least halted pending an appeal. In retrospect, perhaps it was a mistake by the Department of Justice, under Trump's guidance, to tell this US Court of International Trade that it had no right to review the president's actions. It said this to this court repeatedly throughout this process. He got elected.

That's the only law now round here. Premise it did not go well for Trump in the slightest. No matter what happens in terms of the appeal, presumably the halting will be itself halted, and the ten days to stop the tariffs will not go into effect until the appeal is heard. But who knows. Like everything else about this misbegotten presidency and this misbegotten man, the details remain left to be sorted out by others. He is in charge

of one thing, and one thing only breaking shit. In a totally unrelated bit of timing, Elon Musk has now officially bailed out, saying, well, it was scheduled for this to be the time for him to bail out of douche or whatever that was called again, but he is now no longer associated with the government. They had been gradually fading him out anyway, to the point where, like the cheshire cat in the story, all that was left was his stoned grin. And we can now ask the question,

remember Elon Musk. One final note here, pending obviously days of further litigation and bombbast to come, how dare the judges never elected make a decision instead of our god Trump, who was elected in a minority vote by a minority of voters. One last note here Stephen Miller, who is nominally has nothing to do with this particular aspect of

the Trump would be dictatorship. Stephen Miller announced this to his waiting world of human scorpions by retweeting the right wing nebish Bennie Johnson, and I don't know if I can think of anything that says more authoritatively, I am a serious and powerful government figure that you should be afraid of nothing, says that more resonantly than our team, a guy named Benny, and adding to Benny's reporting, the judicial coup is out of control. Do you see what happens?

Gretchen Whitmer? Do you see what happens? Tim Cook? Do you see what happens? Jake Tapper, Claire Shipman, Eugene Daniels, CBS News, Bob Iger, do you see what happens when you let Trump? Well, if you know the movie The Big Lebowski, you know the twist on the rest of that speech. It's not pretty. It is, however, completely accurate. Stop capitulating to Trump, stop negotiating with Trump, stop appeasing Trump, stop letting Trump, etc. There is only one way Apple

is going to survive Trump. Tim Cook, There is only one way Columbia is going to survive Trump. Claire, there is only one way the White House correspondents are going to survive Trump. Eugene Daniels. If you haven't figured it out yet, I'll spell it out. Doing what he wants only tells him you will do what he wants, so he will come back and give you another list of what he wants. Now he's a blackmailer. He's a crooked businessman, He's a bully. There is only one way to survive Trump,

and that is to destroy Trump's presidency. In a world of Columbia's, be a Harvard, in a world of White House correspondents, be the Pentagon correspondence, in a world of apples, be Walmart. Put your hands on Trump's shoulders and reassure him and knee him in the groin. Instead, Gretchen Whitner praises Trump. He tricks her into going to a White

House photo op. She has to cover her face with her notebook like a damn purp walk and yesterday, Trump says, yes, he is looking into pardoning the men who were convicted of trying to kidnap her. Instead, Tim Cook sucks up to Trump, and Trump responds by tariffing iPhones twenty five percent. Instead, Claire Shipman and Columbia suck up to Trump, and Trump responds by trying to put a judge, a Trump judge, in charge of Columbia's entire curriculum and hiring and admissions.

The White House correspondents don't defend the associated present. Trump comes back and takes all their repertorial choices away from them. Decides who's going to be on the pool. Eiger gives Trump a bribe disguised as a settlement, and Trump threatens to take away Iiger's station licenses. Instead, CBS so hoard itself out that it's sixty minutes. Chief quit, that it's news. Chief quit. Now it is being mocked by The New

York Post. The New York Post mocking Sherry Redstone and reporting that her board is flinching at her bribe settlement of Trump because paramount's insurance doesn't cover bribe settlements and there may be a congressional investigation of their bribe settlements

and civil or criminal charges against her. Instead of doing something, Jake Tapper tries to throw the Trump Biden debate to Trump by refusing to fact check him, destroys his own reputation, destroys CNN's reputation, has no space remaining in journalism, so he has to put his name on a Biden acuity book now bombing so badly that to drum up publicity for it, he had to apologize to Lara Effing Trump that he had to go on Piers effing Morgan and insists and actually say as an adult, as an American

as a supposed TV newscaster actually say that the Biden story was in many ways a scandal worse than Watergate. Jake Tapper's colleagues at CNN are now refusing to work with him. His career is melting before his eyes. It is so bad. Somebody on Twitter wrote that Jake's quote book tour is turning into spinal tap, where they started out in stadiums and end as openers for a puppet show. Is standing up to Trump pain free? Hell no. Harvard

tells Trump to f off, sues him. He comes back and tries to expel all of their sixty five hundred, sixty six hundred foreign students, thinking this not only screws the foreigners, but it will also bankrupt Harvard or something, because of course there aren't sixty five hundred or sixty six hundred other students turned down by Harvard who wouldn't say yes if they got a new callback. Harvard turned me down in April nineteen seventy five, and I might still say yes if I got a new callback, and

I mean a callback today. So Trump then cuts off one hundred million in grants to Harvard and threatens to vet the social media of all foreign students in this country, and he's out of weapons. The classic case of the bully. He'll threaten you, he'll hit you, and then he runs out because he has no backup plan. Now Harvard can keep suing him, and people at Harvard can sleep at night.

Because the point is Trump would have tried to expel foreign students anyway, and would have cut off the one hundred million dollars anyway soon or late, because that's what he does. That's all he does, that's all he's ever done. He just does it faster to you. If it's obvious to him, you are going to make it easier for him. If you were as crazy and as malicious and as non human as Trump is, wouldn't you do it that way?

If you were Ted Bundy Trump, would you murder the companies that put up a fight or murder the ones that just sit there? What can Harvard now get away with? One of the op ed people on the student newspaper writes a column saying she knows how to settle this with Trump and his administration. She has challenged Secretary of I didn't get any education. Linda McMahon, the ex wife of the wrestling jackass. She has challenged Linda McMahon to

settle this in a wrestling cage match, Rah Voe. One can argue that Harvard's moral victory here, and it's actually two or three dozen moral victories are the proverbial p in the dark suit, a warm feeling nobody notices. But there are also material victories. To contrast the filled with inertia White House Correspondence Association, there are the fighting Pentagon correspondents.

The impeccable Oliver Darcy of The Status Newsletter reports that Pete Hegseeth tried to strong ar I'm a CNN producer who had been chosen by her peers to be part of the small pool traveling with the Secretary of Greasy Kids, stuff and Scotch to Singapore. They didn't want Haley Britsky to go. They didn't like her tweets. Seriously, these are alleged grown ups. They didn't make her tweets, so they

banned her. They said, no, you can't go as part of the pool, and her Pentagon media colleagues, unlike the White House Correspondence Association, promptly told the Pentagon Press office to f off Britsky doesn't go. Nobody goes. Nobody goes. Heg Seth doesn't get to be on TV and in articles, and to thus gaze longingly at himself. He'd have to go back to carrying a dozen mirrors with him at all times. The Pentagon folded like one of heg Seth's

cheap suits. Britsky went a small victory, and presumably if Trump understood what it meant, he'd reproach heg Seth. But this, of course is way down on the list of things Trump will eventually fire Hegseth for, certainly when it looks like heg Seth had the Pentagon got the NSA to wiretap people in the Pentagon without the slightest authorization, without the slightest concern for the laws, because efet, what do you expect when you hire the weekend fill in fox

guy and not some first string fox guy. But it underscores the point. The bully is going to hit you. Appease him. He will hit you, hit him, he will hit you. But guess which way causes him to stop hitting you fastest. Guess which way causes him the most pain.

Tim Cook's response to Trump's threat of a twenty five percent tariff on iPhone should be something equally as crazy, something like saying, starting September first, Apple will no longer sell iPhones in this country, and if you want one, you're gonna have to go to the secondary market or into Canada. Fight insanity with more insanity. What do you think you're obligated to actually stop selling iPhones here just because you say you're gonna stop selling iPhones here? This

is Trump's America. You can lie all you want, You can deny you ever said it. They can play the tape and you can say, oh, it's Ai. The value of all this, of course, is that even if you have made the terrible mistake of appeasing Trump, you can renege. Even at the late hour. Claire pull the plug on the deal Columbia made with him. Iiger tell him you've changed your mind and you're now suing him. CBS Paramount Board tell Sherry if she wants to settle with Trump,

it's going to come out of her paycheck. Do something. This entire dynamic now becomes meaningful, not just a test of moral clarity. And whether you remember the lesson the bully in the schoolyard should have taught you namely the moment he touches you stab him. Trump is now trying the same bullshit with Putin. Something has happened to him. Putin, he's gone absolutely crazy. It will lead to the downfall of Russia. When that didn't make Putin cry or run

home to mommy, Trump escalated. What Vladimir Putin doesn't realize is that if it weren't for me, lots of really bad things would have already happened to Russia. And I mean really bad. He's playing with fire. Firstly, congratulations Trump, you just confess that you have been protecting Russia, an enemy of this country, a foreign power in opposition to the United States of America. You just confessed Russia, Russia, Russia, true, true, true,

trees and trees and treason. Nobody asked, you just confessed. You just confessed you've been covering up for Putin. Good work, stable genius as in horse stables. Secondly, this will stop Putin in Ukraine. Trump should have just quoted the self own that Shakespeare put into the mouth of King Lear, the definition of imfidence, the summit of empty threats. I will have such revenges on you both that all the

world shall I will do such things. What they are yet I know not, but they shall be the terrors of the earth. I shall have such revenge on you Putin. I will do such things bad thing, I mean, really bad. We have a vested interest in Putin not responding to this the way he ordinarily would think Russia's inexhaustible supply

of open windows. But Putin will probably have a surgical response that humiliates and damages Trump alone, because Trump's tantrum may cause Putin to think that Trump's usefulness to him is about to run out, and he was going to switch to somebody else in a few years. Anyway, JB. Vance might as well do that. Now, what's the point of owning the president of the United States if you can't fire the president of the United States. Stop appeasing Trump,

and among other reasons, to stop appeasing Trump. When you thwart him, when you stand up to him, he dissolves into a self fitting, soft, stupid child and looks it and sounds it. Apparently he did not know about Taco Taco, the New Wall Street acronym about tariffs, the acronym for Trump always chickens out taco. When CNBC's Megan Cassella asked him about taco yesterday, and I've telescoped this so you don't have to listen to the whole meltdown. Trump found

out about taco for the first time. Trump don't like taco, and Walster analysts have pointed a new term called the taco trade.

cooperation with the media. Quote, Aside from the lamentable attempt to ban AP, He's basically taken questions from old comas. It's impressive stuff. Yeah, impressive, Governor. Aside from that attempt to ban the world's most widely distributed wire service. Oh, other than that, he's been impressive taking questions from all comers. Trying to ban a news organization, second time in a week. Just there, he threatened a reporter over a question he

didn't like. That's impressive, Jack Blanchard of Politico, That's impressive. Do you know what happens if he starts getting away with banning the Associated Press or running the White House Correspondence Association. You know what happens. Politico disappears. Jack Blanchard has to go back to London and busk. Meanwhile, on the Fascism for Money Front, Axios reports Stephen Miller and Garden Nome are angry that their administration of the undead

deported just seventeen two hundred people last month. That's actually below past presidential administration averages. Miller and Noam want three thousand a day, not that I'd ever question the motives of such upstanding white trash as Christy Nome and Steven Miller.

But financial disclosures made public last week revealed that besides Attorney General Blondie, you know who else did work for the GEO Group, the people to call when you need a privately owned, privately operated, vermin filled concentration camp for immigrants in your neighborhood. You know who else worked for Geo ice scum Tom Holman consulted for them for at least two years before Trump put him in charge of finding people to put in GEO Group brand concentration camps.

What a coincidence? And if you miss this, former nursing home scumbag Paul Waalsack Walsack as in Ballsack, pleads guilty to tax crimes. The judge gives him eighteen months, says their quote is not a get out of jail free card for the rich. Then Ballsack's mom a Trump donor named Elizabeth Fago Fago, I'm praying it's Fago. Elizabeth Fago gets an invitation to a Trump event at Mary Lago see if it would never mind. The invite comes either just before or just after her son is sentenced. No

got out of jail free card for the rich. The price for admission to the Trump event is one million dollars to Trump. Three weeks after the dinner, Ballsack, her son gets a pardon because there is a get out of jail free card. Of course, it is not free. This story got wildly and widely covered, but I don't remember seeing it connected to a story from two years ago.

This month, anybody else remember Rudy Giuliani's reported boasts that presidential pardons were available for purchase at popular prices without a prescription, two million dollars each, half to him, half to uh Trump. That is what a woman named Noel Dunfie, who sued Juliani for sexual abuse, says Guliani told her in twenty nineteen. And she says she has countless recordings of their encounters. And I don't know if she recorded on any of the part about the pardons, and I

don't know if she's telling the truth. And I have even less of an idea of whether or not he Giuliani was telling the truth about being able to do this. But Dunfee's attorney claimed Giuliani quote asked miss Dunfie if she knew anyone in need of a pardon, telling her that he was selling pardons for two million dollars, which

he and President Trump would split. He told Miss Dunfie that she could refer individuals seeking pardons to him, so long as they did not go through the normal channels of the Office of the Pardon Attorney, because correspondence going to that office would be subject to disclosure under the

Freedom of Information Act twenty nineteen. Pardons for Sale, Pardons for sale, Get your pardons here, hot roasted pardons two millions apiece funny dog gun thing, though huh Giuliani allegedly boasts of selling pardons for two million, a million for him and a million for Trump, and six years later, Trump pardons ball Sack after Mommy Ballsack attends a fundraiser and buys a ticket to it, which costs a million for Trump. Two of Trump's most ridiculous delusions have now merged. Oops.

Turns out he threatened Canada before he realized he would need Canada to participate in this science fiction Golden Dome bullshit that Musk must have convinced him to buy from Musk. I told Canada you got everybody in Canada just sort of sit still while you talk to them. I told Canada, I told Mars, I told God, I told Jesus. I

told my invisible friend Stanley. I told Canada, which very much wants to be part of our fabulous Golden Dome system, that it will cost sixty one billion dollars if they remain a separate but unequal nation, but will cost zero dollars if they become our cherished fifty first state. They

are considering the offer. Couple notes. One, If you don't have Canadian outposts in your Golden Dome, your Golden Dome would never be aware of missions or flights or missiles coming in from the north, the northeast, or the northwest until about five ten seconds before they hit. Canada does not need the Golden Dome. You trump need Canada. Two. Golden Dome is not going to work. The dome idea Ronald Reagan star wars under a different name. It barely

works in Israel. Israel measures eight five hundred and twenty two square miles. The United States measures three million, eight hundred and nine five hundred and twenty five square miles. Three. The Golden Dome is at Notre Dame. Four, The only Golden Dome Trump is actually associated with is his hair, and five Canada is not, in fact, considering the offer.

Also off the wire, Wired magazine quotes staffers of Nancy Mace, the house whack job who isn't Marjorie Stupid Green or Lauren Bobert staffers who say she set up burners on social media to boost her rep quoting Wired. Quoting a former Mace staffer, we had to make multiple accounts, burner accounts, and go and reply to comments saying things that weren't true, even on Reddit forums. We were congressional staff and there

were actual things we could be doing to help the constituents. Wait, you're telling me Nancy Mace has burner accounts working to help her and her online persona is still that bad man. And then there's this, The last surviving grandson of one of our former presidents has died at the age of

ninety six. Sad news, of course, But is it really news I mean a grandson, Well, sir, it's news because the former president, he was the last surviving grandson of that former president, left office on March fourth, eighteen forty five. I'll say that again. His grandfather, a US president, left office on March fourth, eighteen forty five. His grandson died last weekend, one hundred and eighty years and just under

three months later. He was the tenth US president. He was President John Tyler, famous because it was he who ascended from the vice presidency went our ninth president. That's nine single digits. William Henry Harrison died just thirty one days after his inauguration in eighteen forty one. His vice president was Tyler. Tyler's grandson just died this past weekend. President Tyler fathered a child, not even his last child.

He wasn't even in the White House yet. His third to last child, Lion Gardner Tyler, fathered when the ex president was sixty three years old. That was in eighteen fifty three. Lion Gardner Tyler fathered a son at seventy five, That would have been on November ninth, nineteen twenty eight. The son was born, and that son was Harrison Ruffin Tyler, and he was the guy who died over the holiday weekend. Three generations and you are back to the year President

Tyler was born. The year President Tyler was born was seventeen ninety three generations. The last of them just shuffled off. It takes you back to March March twenty ninth, seventeen night March twenty ninth, seventeen ninety, or as we called it around the house, Grandpa's birthday. Also of interest here, By the way, I'm sixty six. It was not a top ten priority on my list, but I have in the last I don't know, three decades, regretted not having children.

Harrison Ruffman. Tyler's father was seventy five. His father was sixty three, So send tapes and resumes to okay, never mind. Also of interest here, in two thousand and one, Rupert Murdoch fired me personally for reporting the story he didn't like, after I had called my bosses and Rupert's office to get the approval to report the story. Now Rupert Murdoch's chief minions are firing another reporter from their company for

reporting another story Trump didn't like. Punchline, the new guy getting the Olderman treatment, did a story last year on me. That's next. This is Countdown. This is Countdown with Keith

Oberman still ahead on this edition of Countdown. I've never done this before, but the thing I promised not to tell is going to be exactly the same thing I promised not to tell in the episode of Monday of this week, the same recording, because impossibly, between the first running and now it has become relevant to another media story involving the same company, which you'll hear about in a moment that's next in Things I promise not to tell. So if you heard Monday's, feel free to skip today.

In fact, feel free to skip today's anyway, even if you didn't hear mondays, what am I your boss? First? Believe it or not, there's still more new idiots to talk about. The roundup of the miss Grants, Morons and Dunning Kruger effects specimens who constitute the latest other worst persons in the world the Brons. Homeland Security Secretary Christie Nome with eight new action adventure dress up outfits. Ooh, there's a new one. Nine new action adventure dress up

outfits from the associated press photos. US Homeland Security Secretary Nome visits Middle East. Homeland Security Secretary Christi Nome rides a camel after a tour of cal At al Bahrain fort. First of all, I can report she did not shoot this animal. So we have slight improvement in the life of CHRISTI Nome. Secondly, there she is little Turkey, arms bared, wearing the headgear and sunglasses traditional in the Middle East. And she's on a camel, simply put, and the camel

you rode in on. Runner up Jesse Waters of Fox Congressman Tim I'm not all here, am I? Burchette Waters sent his idiot henchman. That was the role Waters used to perform for Bill O'Reilly to ask senators and congressmen what they think of waters rules for men. Rule one, we're really weird looking hair Burchett responding to the key Waters rule, which is men don't drink from straws or through straws. And I don't use straws, Burchett, I don't drink out of a straw. Brother, That's what the women

in my house do. Cool Cool, Burchette, Cool Waters. Once again, I will point you to idiots to the photo of Waters's old boss at Yankee Stadium from about twelve thirteen years ago, drinking a milkshake, threw a straw during a baseball game while sitting next to another guy drinking a milkshake through a straw. A guy named Donald Trump. Congratulations Congressman Burchant on calling Donald Trump a woman because he

used the straw on a milkshake. But the winners the scumbag New York Post owned by scumbag Rupert Murdoch and its scumbag editor in chief Keith Pool. Once again, Rupert Murdoch's real name is Keith. He hired an editor in chief for the Post named Keith the doing me dirty. And this also, this story hits so close to home.

Lachland Cartwright's site Breaker, that's Lachland Cartwright, who is not named Keith, reports the Post is burying a story that would have embarrassed Trump and revealed that his pick to run the DEEA had reportedly led two operations that led to unnecessary deaths. And then Pool Murdoch on the Post, essentially firing the reporter who broke the story after they buried his story that they buried that they told him

to proceed on. A sixteen year veteran of the Post no less, let me quote Cartwright's report at some length here. It was a pretty amazing scoop, Josh Cosmon explained to the Breaker. Cosmon briefed multiple editors at the Post, including the business, features and political editors, who all encouraged him to pursue the story, but there were early signs of external pressure. I was told by a White House press person that Caroline Levitt was looking at this real carefully.

Cosman told Breaker about conversations he was having with the White House about Cole that's the DEI guy. After clearing several hurdles, including getting two on record sources and speaking to more than a dozen former top officials, the story was written, edited, and slated to run on Sunday, March twenty second, but it continued to be pushed off till later in the week. Eventually, Cosmon emailed the post's political editor to ask for an update. There's no good way

to say this, so I'll just say it. Keith Poole spiked the story. The Post's political editor emailed Cosmon March twenty seven in an email obtained and reviewed by Breaker. The bombshell email went on to say I sent him the most recent copy. In his response was nope, not running this. In a way that made clear there was no changing his mind. The editor wrote, I'm very sorry. I thought we had the story, but sometimes decisions are

made above my pay grade. Yeah, that sounds familiar to Two weeks later, on April eleventh, Cosmon met with the post's business editor and was told that he would either have to submit to a performance improvement plan or take some time to seek another job. He acknowledged that Keith Poole had issues with some recent stories, Cosmon told Breaker.

On April twenty ninth, CNN published a story about Cole under the headline ex agent's question, role of Trump's dea pick and violent overseas incidents, detailing many the allegations that were in Cosmon's story. For what it's worth, we clearly were ahead on the story, Cosmon emailed the political editor. In fact, we still have more info in our spiked story than CNN's, though the takes are pretty similar. Yeah, I know, Josh, the political editor responded nineteen minutes later.

I always believed in the story, but sometimes decisions are made above my head. Unfortunately, when Keith takes actions like this, you are catching and killing the story, Cosmon told Breaker. Then two weeks later, you're telling me to get out. I certainly interpreted it as retaliation. The timing struck me as not coincidental. On Tuesday, afternoon, just hours after Breaker approached Pool for comments, Cosman was suspended from the New York Post with full pay. So let's recap the reporter.

Cosman asked what the rules were, told his bosses told the story, followed their rules, and then the paper buried his story and buried him anyway, as I will late after this break. Murdoch himself did this to me in two thousand and one, although because he was on vacation when I broke the story, he wasn't around to bury it. So the story ran and I followed all their rules

and they fired me anyway. And the punchline to this when a New York Post reporter called me last September to say they were about to update the RFK Junior sexting with a New York Magazine reporter story. They're going to update this by claiming that I had lived with that reporter, Olivia Newsey. The Post reporter was same guy, Cosmin, and I did what you have to do in that situation. I put the story on Twitter immediately saying yes, this is true. I did not do what the Post did.

When Cosmin came up with the truth and another great story, kill it and off him, so the New York Post editor Keith Poole and Rupert Scumbag Murdoch two Days, Worst Parsones and the wal Fight to the number one story on the Countdown and my favorite topic, me and things

I promised not to tell. Over the weekend watching hockey, I had occasion to invoke my days hosting the Baseball Game of the Week and the World Series for Fox, and it reminded me of the delightful way that ended with me being paid one hundred thousand dollars a month not to do anything. I have changed jobs a lot, and seldom have the departures included gold watches and going away parties, at least not going away parties to which

I was invited. But in forty three years in radio and television, I have only actually been fired in the traditional sense of go clean out your desk and get out twice. Once the order was from a drunken radio executive who did not like the fact that I was twenty one years old, and he was overruled, and he was sent home with a warning by his bosses hours later, and I was back on the job forty eight hours after that. The other time, when it actually happened, You're fired,

clean out your desk. That was, unsurprisingly at the hands of Rupert Murdoch and Fox, and I mean Rupert Murdoch personally, or so he claims. When I finally convinced NBC News that I was serious about no longer hosting its Monica Lewinsky Athon in nineteen ninety eight, the head of NBC Sports,

Dick Eversoll, had an ingenious solution. He knew his friends at Fox Sports longed to have me front their version of SportsCenter, and so he proposed the following NBC would give my agent ten days in which to negotiate two deals. A deal for me to go to LA and host Fox Sports News and Major League Baseball on Fox, and another deal in which Fox would pay NBC one million dollars for my contract, like I was a mediocre baseball pitcher. Amazingly, it worked. I got what was then a record breaking

salary for any cable sportscaster. Ever, NBC got its million, and maybe most startlingly, NBC then asked me to stay on the air as a lane duck at MSNBC for like six weeks. Curiously throughout my career, no matter how abrasive the exit. My Lane Duck employers have always, for some reason trusted me to stay on their air, even though I was leaving in local news in Los Angeles once. I did this for three months. Anyway. At first, going

to work at Fox Sports was a delight. Their news guys, the evil Roger Ales and his henchman John Moody, pitched me on doing stuff for them, maybe co anchoring with Bill O'Reilly. I'm serious. I passed sports. We spent money. I worked with friends. I didn't have to talk about politics. I could narrate highlights. I could do funny voices. Way downtown Bang I lived on the beach. I mean, my

next door neighbor was Hawaii. Every time there was a newspaper story about ESPN, even though our ratings were terrible, there was also my picture in it with a caption like challenging ESPN. It was great. But then two things happened. The Fox guy, who knew we needed five years at minimum just to tie ESPN in the ratings, took me to lunch one day and said, sorry, mate, mo missus is moving back to England tomorrow without me, so I'm

going good luck. He was replaced by guys who replaced the five year plan with a five week plan to raise the ratings by literally one fifth of one point. I left that meeting, in which they explained their suicidal plan and revealed that my salary represented an unsustainable twenty percent of their entire budget, and I called my real estate agent and put my house on the beach up

for sale. Not long after, my doctor gave me a physical and a warning, cut back on work and stress and everything else, or you can have a heart attack ten years from now. I told my bosses this, and their response was to blackmail me. We have a clause in your contract which allows us to send you on the road once a week while you are still working five days in the studio. We're going to enforce that unless you kick back two thirds of your salary. They

put this in a document. There are, as the kids, say, receipts. So I folded to blackmail because two thirds of three million dollars a year is still pretty good. But I kept doing the job. In nineteen ninety nine, I broke a story that everybody laughed at that Michael Jordan was unhappy in retirement and he wanted to come back to play in the NBA, but instead of getting a salary, he wanted an ownership stake in a team. Two years later,

he did exactly that. In two thousand, I got to host the first Mets Yankees World Series, and hosting baseball every Saturday on Fox was a pretty good gig, and we were just gearing up for the two thousand and one baseball season when I got a tip on April twentieth that the owners of the Los Angeles Dodgers had unofficially put their team up for sale, and in fact, they were talking to the old owners, the O'Malley family, about taking the Dodgers off their hands, selling the Dodgers

back to the son of Walter O'Malley. This was a great scoop, but it had great danger because the owners of the Dodgers were Fox, my own employers. The next day, after getting this scoop, I made about one hundred phone calls, and sure enough I got the friend of a friend of a friend of my agent to confirm that he and his family were in preliminary discussions joining the O'Malleys to buy the Dodgers from Fox. Two sources great scoop, and that night I reached out to my bosses and said,

what the hell do we do here? The story is solid, The Dodgers are for sale. But look, this is your candy store, and I do work for you, and if you don't want me to report this, I'm obviously not going to report it, and I'm not going to pouch and I'm not going to give the story to somebody else. My boss has replied, good for you. Why don't we all get on the phone with the top rupert. Murdoch has his own Personal News Corp Public relations department. Let's

see what he says. So on Sunday, April twenty second, two thousand and one, we got Murdoch's own PR guy on the blower and I explained it to him. Now, mister Murdoch has a policy about this. He never interferes in editorial decisions, not even in sourced business stories, not even if they involve him. So long as you make it clear your sources are not from within the company, and so long as you're confident in your sources, and so long as you include our denial, you should proceed

with this Dodger story. That is what we are paying you for. For a brief moment, I thought maybe I have misjudged Rupert Murdoch. Well, it turned out to be a very brief moment and a very wrong moment. I reported the story that night, howls of denials. Five days later, though, the Long Beach Press Telegram newspaper had its own story said, despite denials, Dodgers are for sale, with far more details than I had, And that really was the end of it.

The team was unofficially for sale. Dodger fans, who hated what Fox had done to the team seemed happy, and the bast stinking pile of burning excrement that was Fox

and NewsCorp and Murdoch sailed on unperturbed. But twelve days after that, just before I was getting in my car to go to the first Fox Baseball meeting for our two thousand and one season coverage, the president of Fox Sports, yet another Aussie called David Hill, called my agent and told her case, not doing any baseball for us this year. Business decision click, end of conversation. Nothing else, no firing, no get out, no clean out your desk, no announcement.

But then two days later they turned off my access to the Fox computer system, And four days after that they called and canceled my cable show, and then that night I got two weird calls from Rich Sandomir, who was the TV sports critic and TV sports business reporter for the New York Times. And Rich asks me, so, did you know you got fired by Rupert Murdoch personally? And I said, with genuine astonishment that I not only didn't know that, but even given my thoughts about Rupert Murdoch,

I didn't believe that. Well, that's what my sources at Fox tell me. Apparently your Dodger story really pissed him off, but really, and I said, I had cleared it through his personal PR guy. I don't know, Rich Sandomir said, apparently he was on vacation and he got back like the ninth of this month, and he read all these stories about the Dodgers being for sale and how Fox Sports was the first to report it, and he called up David Hill and he told Hill to fire you immediately.

So I told Rich, this is the first I have heard of this, and I still don't believe it, even though the day he mentioned May ninth was the day David Hill had called my agent and told her I would not be doing baseball for Fox that year. An hour later, the phone rings again and it's Rich Sandomir again, and he sounds shaken. I got it wrong. I don't have any sources at Fox who told me Rupert fired you personally. My source said that you were telling people

Rupert had fired you personally over the Dodger story. And I gave Rich a sequence of well, kind of friendly uh huhz And I said, no, I didn't, and know you've never been dumb enough in your life to make the mistake you're saying you just made. And he said, well, I never said somebody at Fox said Murdock fired Joe. Ok. Thanks. By the next day, they had me come into the Fox building on Pico Boulevard and clean out my office while a guard watched. And she was a really nice guard.

In fact, she brought donuts but a lovely way to go out. As I packed, I thought more and more of what had happened in the month since I had gotten that tip about the Dodgers being for sale. As I left the Fox lot for the last time as an employee, I went back a couple of times to attend table reads for the Simpsons. Table reads for the Simpsons were much more fun than being an employee at Fox.

I called a couple of reporters I knew, and my agent and some people in the business, and we tried to put together a timeline that made some sort of sense, because the slow motion firing thing. May ninth, you're not doing baseball. May eleventh, your computer won't work. May fifteenth, your cable show is canceled. May sixteenth, clean out your office.

A week long firing made no sense until one reporter friend said, you know, Fox called me and said, call Keith up and provoke him, get him to call us names, tell him about this story and that paper, calling him washed up, get him going, And then it all clicked. My contract ran through the end of the year two thousand and one because Fox was firing me without any cause or even claiming there was a cause, without any

violation of my contract or their rules. Because I had left a trail of good behavior on the Dodger story. They were trying to enrage me and get me to say something nasty that itself would be a violation of my contract so they could outright fire me and keep the money. And the money still on the contract was about eight hundred thousand dollars. Now, after decades of contemplating this, I am confident that I am no crazier than the next guy, at least not the next guy in television.

But on my worst, craziest, least rational day, if you said you have two choices, Alderman, you can blow up these people who are firing you, and you can make them look bad in a newspaper for a day and then they'll fire you and keep all the money they owe you. Or you can keep your big bazoo shut for just seven months. You can keep the eight hundred thousand dollars, and you can spend the summer doing whatever the hell you want, and you can then spend the

rest of your natural life blowing these people up. If that's the choice, I will always take the scenario that gives me the eight hundred thousand dollars for doing nothing. Always so. On January first, two thousand to after the last Fox check cleared, I began making a professional avocation out of attacking Fox News, Fox Sports, Fox Business, Fox Murdoch, Fox O'Reilly, Fox, Tucker Carlson, whatever. And I got the

eight hundred thousand dollars, But they're lingered for years. This kind of academic question of whether Rupert Murdoch had actually fired me for having followed the rules set out by his own personal pr guy. As usual, these things resolve themselves when you least expect them to. Murdoch was speaking at a Dow Jones conference in Carlsbad, California, on May twenty eighth, two thousand and eight, seven years to the month they got rid of me and a story came

across the wire with my name on it. The guy interviewing him at this conference talked about whether there should be dissenting voices on Fox quote news unquote, like that guy who was killing it on MSNBC Keith Olderman. Now Murdoch barked if fired him five years ago. He was crizy, timing was off. But there was Rupert Murdoch confessing in front of a crowd that he fired me personally, the

red badge of courage in quotes. I wondered if it still pissed him off that he had to pay me the eight hundred thousand dollars when I didn't take the grievance bait. Three years after that, Murdoch said it again, like I hadn't heard it. The first time. On February first, twenty eleven, Rupert Murdoch was interviewed by his business talking had Neil Cavudo, who for some reason asked him if he would consider hiring me to put me on Fox News. Now we fired him once. We don't believe in firing people.

Twice Kavodo replied, you called him a nut, lady was a nut?

voluntarily chooses to call himself Rupert. I mean, sure, my name is Keith, but at least my name ain't freaking Rupert. All the damage I can do here but not as much as Rupert Murdoch has. Welcome to the club, mister Cosman, Thank you for listening. Brian Ray and John Phillip Shanelle musical directors have countdown, have arranged, produced, and performed most of the music. Mister Chanelle on orchestration, keyboards, Mister Ray on guitars, bass drums. It was produced by Tko Brothers.

Our satirical and pithy musical comments sometimes known as pithy and satirical, are by the best baseball stadium organist ever, Nancy Faust, now back with the Chicago White Sox in the Chicago White Sox Nancy Faust Lounge for a limited engagement only. The sports music is the Olberman theme from ESPN two, which was written by Mitch Warren Davis and appears courtesy of ESPN Inc. Other music arranged and performed by the group No Horns Aloud. And speaking of music,

my announcer today was my friend Stevie van Zant. Everything else was as ever my fault. Let's countdown for today, Day one hundred and thirty of America held hostage just one three thirty three days until the scheduled end of his lame duck and lame brain term unless Putin removes him sooner, or the actuarial tables do, or we do stop compromising with Trump. The next scheduled countdown is Monday. As always, bulletins as the news warrants. Remember he's laying

the groundwork now to not leave office later. He must stop him until next time. I'm Keith Olderman. Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and good luck. Countdown with Keith Olberman is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.