Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. Yeah, get to the I Lived with Olivia Newsy part of your day presently. But first, here's the actual news. There are heroes among us, and even in politics, and even in the Republican Party, there are heroes among us, and know their motives do not have to be absolutely pure, they don't even have to be a little bit pure. And such a man is State Senator Mike McDonald of Nebraska.
And what he has now done quoting a proponent kind of closes the casket, kind of closes the lid on the Trump bid to reshape the electoral college just six weeks before the election by changing how Nebraska casts its five electoral votes from a split them by disc method that will probably give Kamala Harris one electoral vote and Trump four, changing it from that to winner take all, which would give Trump all five. There are many two seventy to two sixty eight Harris victories. They all pretty
much include that one loan vote from Nebraska. McDonell a Republican, albeit a new Republican. He was a Democrat until they threw him out last spring. Now says in a statement quote election should be an opportunity for all voters to be heard, no matter who they are, where they live, or what party they support. I have taken the time to listen carefully to Nebraskans and national leaders on both
sides of the issue. After deep consideration, it is clear to me that right now, forty three days from election day is not the moment to make this change. Holy crap, I mean seriously, so why the big spiel about impure motives. Senator McDonald is not only from the district that will likely go Harris, the proverbial blue dot of Big City Omaha, Nebraska, but he has long been discussing, toying, tinkering with running for mayor of Omaha, Nebraska, and as a conservative Democrat
or a moderate Republican or whatever. Guess what is not going to happen ever in twenty seven lifetimes if you are the decisive vote, essentially taking away the electoral vote from the citizens of Omaha no matter who they vote for, especially when his likely opponent, the incumbent Republican, is pledged to take away the electoral vote from Omaha. The last minute switcheroo would require thirty three yes votes from forty
nine senators, There are fifteen Democrats. They're obviously voting against this. There is one independent assumed to also be a no, and a couple of Republicans who were supposedly waiting for McDonald to support the switch and then use him as
cover for doing so himself. And they thought they might get that independent or a couple of the Democrats to go over to the side of one vote for Nebraska Senator Lauren Lippencott, the guy who said McDonald's statement closes the casket, closes the lid, and probably other upbeat life affirming phrases like that. He says McDonald is quote an absolute no. We're going to have to reintroduce this bill
in the next session. McDonald doesn't even want that. He is suggesting instead a statewide vote on a constitutional amendment. Now back to motive. McDonald is a Republican because last year he came out as a Democrat and supportive draconian abortion restrictions and a ban on transgender care for youths. It looked like he was going to fold on this one too. A week ago tomorrow, he had two dozen Nebraska Republican senators met with Governor Jim Republican tool Pillin
and Lindsey please help me. They'll do something terrible to me if Trump loses. Graham and McDonald was quoted by people in that room is saying he was looking for a way to get to Yes. Yeah, Well he didn't find that way. And from such lack of a GPS of courage and ethics comes heroes, profiles, encourage, or maybe, as Shakespeare wrote in the unsung single best line in Hamlet, assume a virtue if you have it, not assume take on.
Don you want to be a principled hero, even if you're an unprincipled, cowardly politician, do something principled and heroic, like you know, Mike McDonald just did. I guess now, all Harris has to do is win the Nebraska second. As I mentioned yesterday, CBS News estimates that the Hoole average there is Harris by four. The last actual polls I can find are from the second half of August, and they are Harris by five or with the third
party sock Puppets included Harris by eight. Not many polls. Yesterday, mass Ink Polling did Wisconsin has her up by seven. The Real Clear Politics average of polls, and that is a Republican slanted I don't know, dog and Pony show. It would produce a Harris Electoral College victory of two hundred and seventy five to two hundred and sixty two.
And we can say this with certainty. Either there has been a sea change that nobody has told any of the other posters about, or the New York Times is going to need.
A whole new pole.
They have Trump forty nine forty five in Georgia, they have Trump fifty forty five in Arizona. Redfield Wilton, British Posters has Arizona as a tie, and The Times has Trump forty nine forty seven in North Carolina. Now that is before Mark Robinson's porn Mountain. Its history turned out to be engraved on like ten Commandment style stones. More on that in a moment. But Times, why do you
even print that poll? All but three members of the Republican candidate's campaign staff have quit since your North Carolina poll closed. It's useless. You needed to fill space in the paper or something. And the Arizona Times number is a ten point swing to Trump in a month a month. I wouldn't buy that if it was a ten point swing to Harris, and the poll was signed by every person who was polled, and they notarized the signatures. So as the Republicans are shackled to a corpse in Donald Trump,
Trump is shackled to a corpse in North Carolina. Mark Robinson not only is not apologizing, is not quitting. He now says he's suing CNN, or he seemed to say that. He was asked, are you suing CNN? And he said, we're going after them? Well, hell, when I was at Current TV, we quote went after CNN two and look how that turned out.
You've talked about the reporting being salacious, live not true. Have you taken steps then.
To it's you?
We absolutely are, We absolutely are. We We're in talks right now. Everything up to legal counsel to take CNN to task for what have done to us. We are going after him. Okay, we are going to go after him for what they've done, but we have five weeks left to this rights folks, and make no mistake about it, we are not gonna let CNN throw us off of our mission.
This rocket scientist also announced CNN is going after him like CNN did while Reagan was in office, and like CNN went after Abraham Lincoln when Abraham Lincoln was in office. Look, I got hired by CNN when I was twenty two years old and CNN was fourteen months old. And if CNN was on when Abraham Lincoln was president, that makes me at least one hundred and eighty one years old. I mean, I'm old, ask Olivia, but I ain't that old. You think I'm making this.
Up sea rain today and contrasting with their lives for today. But every what you said about when he was at all, you decided him just as much as you decided all wrong.
You decided him just as much as you despise they were having. Wait, there's more and more. He gave a speech at a Canvas Owen's event in twenty twenty uncovered by the website The Bulwark, in which he praised Jim Crow. Quote during Jim Crow, you can go back and you can look at it, and the record will show you. That's when black folks weren't their highest in this country, when the times were the toughest, that's when they were highest. And why because they knew they had to rely on themselves.
My god. Oh and he praised slavery again, at least how the smart slaves accepted whipping, thinking ahead from twenty twenty, going for that pro Jim Crow pro slavery, pro whipping crowd quote. I can even imagine some of them with their slave chains on the rags they had on. They made sure those rags were as clean as could be,
and they stood up and stiffened up their backs. They saw what was coming down in the pike, and they only knew that it would come if they took those stripes and took those beats beats beats by dre beats stripes, uh whip marks. He means, are there any references to
transgender whipping in any of his resume? The Trump response to his guy being sent to a living hell radio silence about him, but a desperate attempt to get every racist and psycho in North Carolina to emerge from every warehouse, farmhouse, hen house, outhouse, and dog house and vote for Trump anyway. Because Trump now says he's going to send in federal law enforcement. An inference here is ice and troops to destroy all the sanctuary cities in North care Carolina and
every other state. Trump will invade your town to get the immigrants out, including the ones that are legal. Yes, I know there are no sanctuary cities in North Carolina, but as the Carolina Journal notes quote, in North Carolina, Wake, Durham, Mecklenburg, Guilford, Forsyth, Orange, and Chatham counties do not currently honor ICE detainers, according to a June report from US Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
On Friday, Democratic Governor Roy Cooper vetoed HB ten, which would require sheriffs across the state to cooperate with ICE. So this is Trump's guy, Mark tire fire Robinson and no. By the way, the Republican Governors Association has now said it does not plan any additional ads in North Carolina for Republican gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson. Rightly, So what with all this great free pub I'm beginning to think Trump picked J. D. Mantz because he's capable of saying dumber
things even than Trump does. In North Carolina last night.
A person who's more worried about missing a birdie pud than he isn't about an assassin's attempt on his own life. Because that is the definition of courage under fire, and Donald Trump has.
It in space. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, you have a golf club. He has a gun. Get out of the way. This is what he just described. This is actually the definition of an effing idiot. Okay, this I like, especially if there is any softening of the Harris momentum in the battleground polls. And I think she's going to pull sufficiently away in North Carolina going out on him there, and there are damn few ways
Trump can win without North Carolina. Remembering that the Trump plan all along was to find a way to back out of debates and blame first Biden, then Harris. The Harris campaign is going to make damn sure that if there is no second debate a month from yesterday, Trump is going to hear about him chickening out of that debate every day for the next month. From NBC quote. The Democratic National Committee will launch static billboards and mobile billboards.
There were supposedly ones at Trump rallies, like the one in Pennsylvania last night. The chicken billboards include a digitally altered image of Trump in a chicken suit, alongside the words there's no debate, Donald Trump's a chicken unquote. Well, I don't get one part of this. Why digitally altered. He looks enough like a chicken as it is the
hair quote. The DNC originally said that they would be sending staffers dressed in chicken suits to Trump rallies as part of this messaging campaign, but after publication on Monday, a spokesperson for the group said that this would no longer occur. Instead a pro Harris student group at the Indiana University of Pennsylvania College. Don't even try to figure that out where Trump is speaking. This was written before he spoke would send inflatable chickens to his rally there
instead again inflatable chickens. I mean that's Trump. Speaking of appearances, CNN reports Milania Trump, who has not been on the campaign trail in well wait, how long is forever? Quote, spoke at two political fundraisers for the Log Cabin Republicans this year, and she was paid two hundred and thirty seven five hundred dollars for an April event. According to former Trump for latest financial disclosure for him, the payment
was listed as a speaking engagement. The problem is, although It's on Trump's financial disclosure form, nobody knows who wrote the checks to her. It's not listed anywhere the log cabin. Republicans say they did not pay this, so they'll have to search for other payments of two hundred and thirty seven, five hundred dollars to Milagna. Well, what's her contract with Donald? Got in it? Any two hundred and thirty seven five hundreds in there? And now things I promised not to
tell him? Boy? Is that true in this one? Literally, when the RFK Junior Olivia Newsy relationship story broke, I thought, uh, here we go. Eventually and inevitably, this story will get around to me because long ago she and I lived together. We had dogs and tattoos and rings, and like all relationships, it was very nice at the start. Then things happened and we worked on it and it ended. One day I said, I think we've exhausted this, and I changed my mind. Then like the next day, she left, So
I guess that makes it a tie. It's a while ago. She had a clothes closet in my apartment, and I meant what I said here about things I promised not to tell. Because when this story broke, I decided, if nobody asks, I'm not volunteering this. It's difficult to be even the most marginal public figure and keep any part of your life private, and nobody knows that better now than does Alivia. On the other hand, if I'm asked about this by the media, if somebody is going to
write it, I'm not lying to them. I'm not denying it. I'm also not giving them the story, especially not the freaking New York Post which reached out yesterday. I confirmed we dated. That's what he asked, Did you date her? And I said yes, And I said I thought it was pretty general knowledge that we had dated, but that nobody cared, and that if they didn't know this well the paraphrase Arthur Conan Doyle writing Sherlock Holmes's lines for him, I am not retained by the gossip columnists to supply
their deficiencies. In other words, I am not the newsy nudes news network over here giving away free stories. Plus Seriously, nearly all of the relationship was surprisingly mundane, and it doesn't have anything to do with the RFK story except in the broadest possible sense. I mean, I'm sure she's not a completely different person than she was when we dated, but maybe I am left with a couple of overarching thoughts. She did some weird things during the three three and
a half years this lasted. I'm sure I did two. She played around at one point, but how to pronounce her last name? What sounded best professionally NEWSYUSYNOTSI and her parents were not the best role models, And on the other hand, after the immediate and understandable astonishment on their part, they did a one eighty about me. I went to their house for Christmas every year, her mom used to dog sit for us, her dad and I went to a Stanley Cup final game and had coffee a lot.
Though sometimes she so missed the mark on the consequences of her actions that nobody around her would have said anything except how could you not know that? Like the time long after we broke up, that she went to Corey Lewandowski's house and he didn't answer, so she just turned the handle on the front door and it was unlocked, and so she just walked in and didn't know that was unethical and probably illegal, and then made that story public.
But nothing I know about her then or now suggests Olivia would have kept sending a guy nude photos unless he wanted them. I haven't talked with her since we broke up because nowadays you're supposed to ghost each other, I guess. But for whatever it's worth, I can't defend any of her journalistic choices here and I will not. But in the metaview of who's right who's wrong here,
she's not the one who's wrong here. And of course, if you are a faithful listener, it will have dawned on you that all the times I have talked about my beloved dog Stevie, my other dogs, the ex girlfriend with whom I walked into the pet shop because her family dog was dying and she needed a puppy fix, that was Olivia. She took care of me that fateful day when we got Stevie, and she and I devoted
our lives to Stevie. And Olivia largely taught me how to successfully be adopted by a dog and all dogs, and the anniversary of that is next Monday. And all my other dogs, and my late rescues Mishu and Mi Nay, and all my work with dogs and animal groups, that all comes from her. So that's the bottom line. Whatever else this is, Olivier is responsible for me being born again in dogs. She will always have my support if
she needs it, though not the journalistic choices part. Maybe that is all I will ever say again about her. Maybe developments will warrant more details for now I don't think. I don't think they will. But from the department of Keith cannot possibly leave well enough alone. That does not mean I'm not going to make a couple of jokes about this, and maybe not just in this episode. Joke number one about the ethics of me dating her at
my age. I don't want to go out on a limb here, but I am beginning to suspect she likes all old guys. I mean, she was going to marry one who was twenty years older than her. Also, I'm old. On the other hand, I'm not as old as Bobby Kennedy. I win, son of a Bitch is five years older than I am. Clears up a lot of my conscience.
Also of interest here, well, if there's a Keith story about Keith, there also has to be a Keith story about Bill O'Reilly that used to be a federal law He has stormed out of an interview, threatening to sue the interviewer, which leads me in this all new edition of Countdown to the story of How I met O'Reilly and Hannity and Rush Limbaugh and the faq to O'Reilly and the others believe their own poison? Or are they
just whores coming up? And did you know there is an entire left wing industry that exists just to criticize Maggie Haberman and her colleagues, she says, So it must be true. The most important question here is why aren't they paying me? That's next, This is countdown. This is Countdown with Keith Olberman still ahead of us on this all new edition of Countdown. So Bill O'Reilly is in the news again, a decade after he was last actually
in the news. He has threatened to sue a PBS reporter or do something to her because she had the nerve to ask him about the rear and he stopped being in news. This led me, naturally to think about my many encounters with Bill, and especially one question I have been asked more often about him, and about Sean Hannity, and about Rush Limbaugh and about others of their ilk
than I have about anything else about them. Do or did they actually believe the things they said and still say that have actually poisoned this nation's politics and enabled a creature like Trump, or if they just did it for the money. Some answers ahead next in Things I promised not to tell. First, there are still more new idiots to talk about, the daily roundup of the miss grants, morons and Dunning Krueger effects specimens who constitute today's worse
persons than the world, Well, the bronze worse. Let's start with Bill mister Meyerhoffer. He did an interview with Margaret Hoover for the PBS show firing Line. This is what I was just referring to. Hoover says, I want to go back to twenty seventeen, your top rated talent at Fox News. You've just signed a four year deal to renew your contract, and The Times publishes a report on settlements that you had reached with several women over harassment
misconduct claims, totaling thirteen million dollars. You're forced out of the network. The Times later reveals an additional settlement worth thirty two million dollars. I don't expect that you can comment on this, you think? She then read from a Times op ed that she herself, Margaret Hoover, had written, O'Reilly blamed others? She said, quoting herself, embracing the victimization. He's so ridiculed of the American left. He claimed his departure was no fault of his own, but the cost
of doing business as a high profile media personality. This is an outlandish claim. William F. Buckley and Anderson Cooper are high profile media personalities, and yet they have never been dogged with repeated sexual harassment entangled. How do you respond, Billo replied, I don't. Then, he said Hoover was conducting an ambush interview. There's no ambush interview that has lasted as long in the history of the world as the question I just read you that she asked him. It's
no longer an ambush. He would have had time to get to JFK Airport and fly to Brazil before she finished talking. That's no longer an ambush you're involved with that's almost your living with her. Oh why did I bring that up anyway? As the website Mediaite phrased, what happened next? O'Reilly repeatedly then told Hoover that she did not know the facts of the allegations against him, and claimed he had made no settlements himself, and then he was unaware of any actions taken by Fox News. Hoover
countered that this claim could not possibly be true. O'Reilly finally threatened her, quoting O'Reilly, you're gonna use that stuff. You're in for a problem. So I'm telling you right now because that's just bull. I'm not going to record any phony like that. You're going to edit this thing, and you know my attorney is going to be watching. I thought Bill liked to do the watching himself. Do I have this story? Am I misremembering the story? Wasn't
that the whole thing? AnyWho? Then Bill got up and left the interview. He actually turned down camera time. That's the story here. I should have led with that. It was thirty two million dollars. It cost him his Fox show, cost him his career, cost him his only friend in the world, Donald Trump, who now who wouldn't and now won't touch him. But he's gonna sue or demand they not play parts of the interview. I don't know, Hoover says his lawyer sent them a legal demand no details.
Like I've told you before when I used to discuss his settlement with Andrew Macris and the other settlements with the other women. He decided his best strategy was to send his pa, his predessian assistant, Jesse Waters, to stalk the chairman of GE. That'd be General Electric. If I'm going to explain acronyms here which owned NBC, the National Broadcasting Company, which in turned own MSNBC, Microsoft NBC. That didn't work either. And this isn't going to work. The
runner up, Why it's theme nights. We switch from Billow to The New York Times. All the both sides is that's fit to print. It is amazing. There's no sense whatsoever there that they violated every principle they claim and claim loudly and incessantly and condescendingly to represent headline number one. Controversies erupt as Trump and GOP make critical push to voters, and it's push, not push. It's the American English word push like sales job as opposed to the push word.
A Republican who reportedly called himself a block Nazi, a false story about migrants eating cats and dogs, and a feud with Taylor Swift bring back as chaos. Yes, things like this erupt like volcanoes. Controversies erupt force of nature. Clearly, not because Trump made them happen, or made them up, or employs people like jd. Vance who makes them up,
or he recruited people like Mark Robinson. And not because one political party is rather stumblingly traditionally inept, and it's on one set of American politics and the other political party. Trump's political party is filled with corrupt, morally bankrupt, fascist liars who are in fact not that good at getting away with their lies. No, no, no, nobody did that. Trump didn't cause this to happen. Trump wasn't the one
who posted I hate Taylor Swift. Oh yeah he was. No, No, none of that, None of that was Trump's fault, of the Republican's fault. It just erupted, like Krakatoa east of Java. The other Times headline of note over a picture of Trump smiling at the vacant Sarah huh could be the politics of motherhood become a campaign trail cudgel. The presidential race has exposed a fault line in American political culture over the deeply personal decision to have children. Yes, this
problem was always always there. It's a fault line like the San Andreas. Once again, things erupt, according to the New York Times, like volcanoes, and there are fault lines
like San Andreas. This was not one party deciding to choose as the guy running for vice president a clown who insists that the vice president of the United States doesn't have any skin in the game because she's a step mother, not a birth mother, or that the person in the picture under that last headline I read, your Governor Huckabee of Arkansas is not a reprehensible, lying fraud because she somehow managed to find somebody to procreate with her.
Oh no, said the New York Times headline editor, polishing his top hat as he did so.
A political fault line and it's just erupted. Maybe this is due to climate change. Here, you assistant put our best fifty four. Both sidesists on this story. Oh I'm going to faint now. A political fault line has just erupted. Ooh fuck, but the winner the worst? Why more New York Times Maggie Haberman. If you've wondered if she's noticed that, we've noticed that she's just a Trumpian stenographer who occasionally
reveals more than Trump would like her to. Oh, yes she has, and well, sir, she knows the real victim of her bad journalism. The real victim here is Maggie Haberman quote quote to NPR. I think the media does a very good job covering Trump. There are always going to be specific stories that could have been better, should have been better, that are written on deadline, and people are not being as precise as they should be.
I think there is an industry, bluntly dave. My name's Keith, Maggie. I think there is an industry, bluntly dave that is dedicated toward attacking the media, especially as it relates to covering Donald Trump in all coverage of Trump, and I think that Trump is a really difficult figure to cover because he challenges news media process every day, has for years.
The systems are just fundamentally they were not built to deal with somebody who says things that are not true as often as he does, or speaks as incoherently as he often does. I think the media has actually done a very good job showing people who he is, what
he says, what he does. I think most of the information that the public has about Trump is because of reporting by the media, And I guess I don't really understand how this industry that literally exists to attack the press broadly, and the media is not a monolith, it's not a league. But this industry that exists to do that, I don't see how they think they are a solution by undermining faith in what we do. That's been very
confusing to me. As an aside, I would suggest to this thing that is confusing her, it needs to take a number and get behind the line. At the end of the line of things that easily confuse Maggie Haberman, it's criticism of the media that's undermined faith in the media. The interviewer says, yeah, well, I mean part of the attacks are clearly partisan. I mean Republicans and Trump supporters are going to attack, and Maggie Haberman corrects him, I'm
not talking about that. I'm talking about now. The interviewer says, well, yeah, well, who is the industry you're talking about, and she goes, I'm talking about criticism on the left. Uh wait, there's an industry on the left that exists to attack the press broadly, and Maggie Hay in particular, an entire industry. I mean, was somebody gonna tell me at some point I've been throwing this stuff out for free on this
podcast no offense to you. Thanks for listening, But I mean I could have been making thirty nine cents a shot or something. Here there's an industry. I need to talk to the people running this industry. I need to talk to the people cutting the checks in this industry. I have a quality product over here, and by the way, an infinite supply of Maggie Haberman's stuff. They need to
be recompensing me for it. Maggie. She makes me begin to suspect I Keith Overman, am underpaid Haberman two days worst person in the world show, the number one story on the Countdown, and things I promised not to tell and I often asked. I was asked this weekend past about this exact question about the relative sincerity of the Wall of Fame of the Mount Rushmore of conservative fascist commentators.
I don't mean the little nebeshy guys who are on now, who turns out have been getting money from the Kremlin wash through intermediaries, and not even the more recent group like Glenn Beck, but the founding fathers of this rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity dead, career dead, brain dead. I have met them all, and I think the answer about whether or not they are being sincere or this is just a shtick that they do for money, is different in each of them, and yet eventually all becomes the
same thing. Many of them do not start out believing a word they are saying, and then they discover success, and suddenly they want to say more of what they have been saying because it pays them so well. And the next thing, you know, after you say something long enough, it's not just the audience that begins to believe it, it's you who begins to believe it. One day, and I've tried to get the exact date of this, I know it was a Sunday, that's all ninety five, ninety six.
Perhaps based on the memory of what the ESPN SportsCenter newsroom looked like before it's remodeling in nineteen ninety six, I'm thinking it's nineteen ninety five. I walked in to do the Sunday eleven PM Sports Center and in an otherwise empty newsroom, a very small room with a bunch of cubicles around it, one of which was mine, so
small that two anchors would share one computer. Standing next to my desk, not saying a word, but just looking into the newsroom as if he were Charlie visiting Willie Wankas chocolate factory. Was Russe Limbaugh, and given his size, perhaps that's a good analogy. Rush Limbaugh saw me walk in and he almost asked for an autograph. Oh, Keith, Hi, I'm Rush Limbaugh. Nothing like the person you heard or saw, restrained, whispering, behaving as if he were as he said in church,
I'm such a fan. Oh my goodness, Oh, I remember you from the CNN days. I had to explain to him that we had met once. No, it was a nineteen eighty World Series when you worked for the Kansas City Royals. It's important to remember that rush Limbaugh's career
path was he thought sports. He was going to be a broadcaster, a baseball broadcaster, or a baseball executive, and he got no further down that line then, as he put it, the assistant Media and Community Affairs director of the Kansas City Royals in charge of escorting the first pitch thrower and the national anthem singer onto the field. That was his job. But when the head of the PR department for the Kansas City Royals, whose name was
Dean Vogelar and how could you forget that name? Introduces you to one of his assistants, and the guy's name is Rush Limbaugh. You remember that name. I don't remember the conversation. I don't know what it was about. I think he was just standing there and Dean Volgor was being nice to both of us. But we had met, and he was when I told him this story, he was like, oh my god, I wish we had a picture of that. It was almost to the point of embarrassing.
I'll take praise from anybody, especially in nineteen ninety five, before I fully understood what Rush Limbaugh was doing to this country. But I will take praise from anybody. But Rush Limbaugh went from sports into what he did to this country because he failed at sports. His original radio work was as a sportscaster and call in show host in sports when that was not a very popular thing.
And simply being good at killing four hours by repeating the same argument over who's the greatest player of all time this week was not enough to get you a thirty one millillion dollar a year contract. He got fired from that. He was a disc jockey for a while, and then they said we got some time to kill Why don't you just go on Limbaugh and do a
news talk show. Well, he was of conservative leaning, and he found out as he began to criticize the liberals of California in the various small markets in which he worked there around to believe the Sacramento area. The more he did that, and the more vituperative he became, the more people listened. Soon he had a contract. Soon he wasn't about to get fired from another industry, having failed in baseball and then failed in sportscasting and failed as
a disc jockey. Suddenly he had a contract. And then somebody said, we should syndicate your show. Other markets would love to hear this, and you know where it went from there. But in nineteen ninety five, and that's twelve thirteen years into the Limbaugh dynasty, Rush Limbaugh was speaking in hushed tones, having appeared like a ghost like the devil in Bristol, Connecticut. And by the way, I yes, I explained, what the hell what are you doing here?
I asked him that question, and he explained he had been invited after years of pestering Chris Berman to sit with the football crew from ESPN that did the Sunday Night I believe it was called Countdown at that point. Ironically enough, football Highlight Show. After the NFL games on Sundays, they watched the games in a room upstairs that US civilians were never permitted to attend, and they watched in
low definition all whatever ten twelve NFL games. There were a simultaneously and there were options for bringing in your friend. They once brought in a back specialist who brought his table and was doing acupuncture and was doing everything that you could do to try to improve people's If you could do something for the crew, you could come in. I don't know what Rushlanbaud did for the crew, but they finally le him in and he was there early, and he was about to go upstairs and join Chris
Berman in that room. And I asked Berman later, what was that like? He went, I don't know.
The guy didn't say a thing. I mean, he was just there. He was just there. He didn't maybe we didn't even do any chiropracty. What so, what lim Blas said to me that echoes through the years, and it's nearly thirty years ago, was that he would at that point trade everything he had and he was already successful. I mean he was already making I don't know ten times what I was making, twenty times what I was making.
He was successful. He said he'd give it all up if he got to be my co host on Sports Center instead with the pay cut, or Dan Patrick's co host. He was ready to knock off either one of us because that was his goal. And much of the fuel for these raging, hateful men and women is that they have not succeeded in their first My first dream was to be play by play announcer for the New York Yankees. I never got close to it. Did I become bitter or written? Oh?
I took my second dream and got that one, and my third, my fourth, and fifth, and my sixth, and myself not for the conservatives. Rush Limbaugh was going to be the great sportscaster, and he never got close to it. And when he finally got the opportunity to do it in two thousand and two, I believe when ESPN finally put him on the NFL show, and he did know
something about football. When they finally put him on, like three weeks into it, he existed that Donovan McNabb was highly rated by NFL experts simply because he was African American and they needed an African American to be a top quarterback. Bye, Rush, See, you got another chance after all those years, and you blew it in just three weeks.
So that's where rush Limbaugh came from. And of course, if every time you say Bill Clinton is a rapist, or you say Nancy Pelosi is a fascist, or you say Kamala Harris is a communist, if every time you say that, somebody sends you ten thousand dollars, guess what you're going to say, and sooner rather than later, because it's impossible to go on at that volume of work saying things extemporaneously that you don't believe the truth will come out. At some point. You have to believe it.
You have to begin to believe it. You get, as the cliche, goes high on your own supply, and each time you get a little higher, they send you a little bit more money. It is thus not a coincidence that rush Limbaugh nearly went to prison because he had a housekeeper who used to get him vicoden and other painkillers, prescription painkillers by the hundreds. He took high two digits in painkillers every day because ultimately he could not believe deep in his soul that what he was saying was true,
even remotely true, but to sell fascism. It is a verified and thoroughly documented fact that the entirety of the Nazi brass in Germany in the thirties and into the war regularly got methamphetamines and other uppers and other prescription painkillers of the time. There's an entire book on it that is just revealing, and that was Rush Windbaugh. Sean
Hannity would seemingly have been the exact opposite. In two thousand and six, two thousand and five, perhaps I went back to ESPN after years of nuclear war at the request of the head of ESPN Radio to do an hour every day on Dan Patrick's radio show. And we had a gas and they paid me an extraordinary amount of money, and it was such a nice break. The MSNBC show was just coming into prominence and it was a lot of work, and an hour with Dan Patrick
was not a lot of work. I would get there, we did the three o'clock to four o'clock hour, remember, correctly, I would get there at three o'clock and he'd be in his break. They'd have a news update from Dan Davis, and I'd say to him on the line, what are we talking about ago, Barry? Are you going to talk about Barry Bonds? We're gonna talk about this, We're gonna tell Okay, great, let me call up a couple of stories on the computer and we'd go and then at the end of the hour, I'd say, I'll talk to
you tomorrow. And there's Keith Ollerman, my friend. He has to go save the democracy now. But the studio that we used often, and I had one in my house, so I didn't have to do this, but it was nice to get into a big studio a top Madison Square Garden was at the ABC Radio network, and it helped because every once in a while I had to do things for ABC Radio and WABC in New York as part of the deal. So I was very happy
to be there. And one day, as I was leaving, I see sitting in a studio, a different studio, a couple of studios away from the one i'd just used for an hour. To my surprise, there is Sean Hannity and he pounds on the inside of the window like that and waves me in. And I had already I don't know how many times I put Sean Hannity in on the Worst Person's List, but there he was in
the flesh, and we had never met before. So again, this is two thousand and five, six, somewhere like that, and it's I don't know, three point fifty seven or seven. He's going on the air at four and he says, listen, I don't understand this. Why do people think I hate you? People are assume my wait, we have a fistfight the moment we ever met. Every time you put me on that worst Person's list, we get another ten thousand viewers. Every time I make a reference to MSNBC. I'm sure
you get another ten thousand viewers. It's just television. And I thought, oh my god, I hate this guy more than I hate Wimbaugh. He didn't believe a word of it, or if he believed it, he didn't think there was anything wrong with it or controversial about it. He didn't think it was worth standing up for or for somebody else to be standing against. He assumed I didn't believe what I was saying, that this was just a television act. In fact, he said, just stay there, and he signed
a show on he goes. You know, people think I hate all liberals. Well, I don't hate all liberals at all. Some of them are really nice guys. There's one standing here now. I'm not gonna mention him because you know, I get him in trouble if we find out he finds we're friendly, and we haven't had a fist fight yet. But he's a great guy. He just said something really funny about sports, and I'm just gonna quote him, and so, you know what, you hate all those liberals, but leave
a little room for the good ones. And I was like crying out loud. I'd rather deal with Rush Limbaugh well. And then there was the other, of course, future if Sean Hannity was to become a true believer, because once again he started that show for Fox in nineteen ninety six when they went on the air. The story I
told Drews from ten years later. Thirteen years later, he was seated a couple of boxes behind me at Yankee Stadium when the Yankees won the two thousand and nine World Series, and we waved and took photos of each other and tweeted the photos. We were still kind of friendly, and by you know, twenty sixteen, he was advocating for a man wants to be the dictator of America, and you can't do that if you don't believe it, if it's pure opportunism, you can't do what Sean Hannity did.
So he, again, like Limbaugh, started selling a product and ended taking the product. O'Reilly, I believe, at some point must have been more moderate than he turned out to be. His story is largely different. He was what the exaggerations of my own career say I was, but he was it for real. He worked in three different local television markets in one year. He had to move three times in one year. I never did anything like that. I
never worked in two local markets in one year. In fact, I only worked in two local markets in my life in television. I haven't had half the jobs that Bill O'Reilly did. And he was never successful. But his goal was to be I believe he wanted to be Walter Cronkite. I'm not kidding Walter kronk And he got to work for NBC News and ABC News. He got to be an anchor at the same station in Boston that I worked at. For a while, we missed each other by like three months, and he wanted to be. He wanted
to be Walter Cronkite. He wanted to be the voice of America. He wanted to be the most trusted man in America, absolutely devoid of political bias, trusted by everybody. Well, that didn't work out because they kept firing him, and so he was working on Inside Edition, owned by the Fox people when Fox launched the Fox News channel in nineteen ninety six, and they said, well, we're going to have to kill some time here. What have we got.
We got this guy O'Reilly under contract for another eight ten months here, and he's doing terribly with Inside Edition and everybody hates him there. Let's move him into the three pm slot or something on his Fox News and then when he's contract is up, I mean, you know, if he makes some sort of impression, we can offer him half what he's making now, and if not, he's out the door. Well, Fox's primetime lineup and nobody remembers.
This began with at eight clock Catherine Cryer, formerly of ABC and CNN and a former judge in Texas and really pretty much a straight down the middle, slightly leaning to the left news anchor and pretty good one. And she didn't draw flies at eight o'clock. Instead O'Reilly, who I believe was on at two o'clock in the afternoon, had an extraordinary spike because he went on expressing his frustration. People thought he was talking about the country and right
wing versus left wing. He was talking about how everybody had dumped on Bill O'Reilly. The point of every episode of every show Bill O'Reilly ever did. Ultimately you could put his name in there when he talked about America or values, or this happened to a friend of his, or why I was so surprised I went to this restaurant in Harlem and they didn't say I want some
more iced T MF. Or every one of those stories is about him and how he did not get to be Walter Cronkite and all the people he was now going to screw back and they loved it, and he became a template and hanned. He looked at that and went, I'm going to do that too. Bill O'Reilly, by the time I met him, really really believed this. And again, if you're expressing your own rage and just dressing it up and making it in somehow some fashion generic for everybody.
In the world.
Of course you're going to believe it. You are angry. Bill O'Reilly will die without ever becoming Walter Cronkite. I will die without becoming the play by playman of the New York Yankees, and I'll go well. Travel would have been terrible crying out loud click in any event. O'Reilly, as I've outlined many times in many places, did not take well to the criticism that I began to unleash
on him. Literally the day I returned to MSNBC in two thousand and three, when I got a phone call from one of my old friends at NBC in Washington, Nora O'Donnell, who said, you should do a segment on Bill O'Reilly. It's so great to have you back. He lies every night. You should do something about O'Reilly, called O'Reilly factor fiction, and I went, thank you, Nora, thank
you for resuscitating my career at MSNBC. And as soon as the war began to die down in Iraq, we began to go after Bill O'Reilly, And god knows he provided all the ammunition I could ever want. The rule is never punched down, and all he did was punched down. He wanted somebody to stop me. He tried to blackmail Jeff mL the GE chairman. I've told that story a dozen times. He threatened Jeff Zooker, he threatened to expose this and say that he threatened, And finally we ran
into each other at Yankee Stadium. I went to a Yankee Mets game and had a credential because I was on the Dan Patrick Show every day. I was actually also a sports reporter. Two thousand and five, two thousand and six, Yankee Stadium, and there's O'Reilly and I walk out onto the field and to my surprise, there's Bill O'Reilly and he's got a not a press pass, but a pass given to him by the manager of the Yankees at the time, Joe Tory. So it was an FOJ Friend of Joe pass allows you to get on
the field you're not allowed in certain areas. And he was at one end of the Yankee dugout as I came out of the Yankee dugout on the home plate side, and the moment he saw me, he moved ten feet further away, and every time I would look out onto the field, I could feel his eyes burning a hole in the side of my head, and I would turn my head quickly and he would look away. I would edge suddenly one inch closer to him, and I could see out of the corner of my eye him edging
one inch further away from me. This went on for ten minutes while I talked to my friends among the sports reporters. Later, he tried to get into the met clubhouse and his friend of Joe Tory credential did not allow him near the clubhouse, and they asked him to leave. Two or three days later, I got a call from
the Yankees. There was an international incident, was the way described to me about the fact that I had credentials and Bill O'Reilly did not Fox to the point of having the president of Fox's operations saying he was calling on behalf of Roger Ayle's demanding to know why I was given access to the Mets clubhouse, but Bill O'Reilly was not, And the head of pr for the Yankees, sounding like he was reading from a script, went through
thirty minutes explaining that the Yankees didn't give credentials to celebrities and that these sort of situations won't be tolerated and only the working press gets credentials, and you could hear that there were other people on the phone call who were not talking. You could hear it because every once in a while the guy would stop suddenly and then you'd hear in the background. I assumed that was O'Reilly.
The next day, I went to Yankee Stadium with my credential and I went to the PR director of the Yankees, and I said, what was that? He goes, what do you mean? I said, how come I have a credential today? Wasn't that about taking away my credit dentials? He goes, what did I say at the beginning of that conversation? I said, you said you were going to make this phone call and talk to me about the fact that we did not issue credentials to celebrities. Did we have
that conversation? Did I do that? Yes? Do we issue you a credential because you're on the Dan Patrick shower, because you're a celebrity? And I went, I presume the former correct have a nice game. And that was It never came up again. O'Reilly believed he had somehow sabotaged my access to Yankee Stadium, and he tried it many other times, and I saw him once at a Joe Tory event, a charity event, and he did the same thing where he stared at me and then moved an
inch away if I got too close to him. An extraordinarily crazy man and remained such to this day. But as I always say, I probably owe him ten percent of all of my earnings from MSNBC because he just couldn't ignore me. I mean, his ratings were initially at least five times mine. Even at the end, when we'd grown that thing into making one hundred two hundred million dollars a year profit for NBC, his ratings were still
twice three times mine. He should never have once mentioned me. Instead, he put up a petition one day, had them do it on the Fox News website too, without mentioning my name, because he refused to ever mention my name. He wanted Phil Donahue reinstated as the eight pm anchor on MSNBC, and he did a whole thing about how Phil Donna, who had been treated so badly, so sign up here on foxnews dot com the get Phil Donahue the eight pm slot that he so richly deserves. And I was like,
thank you, Bill. So the next thing I did was I got my camera, one of my camera crews from NBC in Secaucus to record everybody on the MSNBC Countdown staff lined up to get to the computer and all of them signing up to get me fired and get Phil Donahue and stated, because one thing about fascists and people who get high on their own supply, but people like Bill O'Reilly never understand people like that who believe all this, that people are at home taking notes, writing
down how will I live my life? This is what Bill O'Reilly says, This is what Hannity says, this is what Limbo says. One thing is they really believe that they don't recognize that the job is just too largely inform But in many cases, simply reassure people who've already reached the opinion you have that they're not crazy, that there are other people who've reached that same opinion, and to add to their understanding and correct them sometimes or
to have them correct you. It's illumination with maybe a few jokes and an entertaining broadcast of some kind. It is not I am writing the New Bible, and you will live your life this way. So we got that count of how many people wanted to have Phil Donahue reinstated like we managed to get it over five thousand. That was one of my favorite accomplishments, Right you are, mister Mayerhoffer. One of the great great practical jokes ever completed in the history of the world, certainly in the
history of television. Billow used to read emails and texts, and somebody asked him a question and signed it mister Jack m E H F F E R Jack me Hoffer, and he read it. He later said, I knew what that meant, but I thought it was a good question. Swear to God, I swear to God. I've done all the damage I can do here, that not as much as Bill Thank you for listening. We're now back to five episodes a week, posting nightly just after midnight Eastern And as you have heard, you never know what you're
going to hear here, do you? Once again, there is a Monday countdown at least through the election. Please forward this to a non listener who should fix being a non listener, because this is high quality material right here. Brian Ray and John Phillip Schanelle. Speaking of high quality material, are the musical directors of countdown, and they have arranged, produced, and performed most of our music. Mister Shanelle handled orchestration
and keyboards. Mister Ray was on the guitars, bass and drums. It was produced by Tko Brothers. Our satirical and pithy 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. My announcer today was my friend John Dee. Everything else
was pretty much my fault. There's always Solan's countdown for today, one month and twelve days until the twenty twenty four presidential election, the one hundred No A million, No three and fifty eighth day since convicted felon dementia j Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically elected government of the
United States. Use the election, use the mental health system, use presidential immunity if we have to to keep him from trying to overthrow the government again while we still can. The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow. Bulletins as the news requires till then on Keith Olderman, good Morning, good afternoon, good night, and I'm trying to hit the mark here the post good Luck, Yes 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.