TERRIBLE NEWS REPORTERS WE HAVE HERE IN HELL. LIKE, MADDOW - 2.27.25

our opinion pages. Jeff Bezos had somebody write for him yesterday and stick his name on it, and then email it to the Washington Post staff and then post it online, resuming the quote, we are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars, personal liberties and free markets. We'll cover other topics too, of course, but few points opposing those pillars will be left to

be published by others. There was a time when a newspaper, especially one that was a local monopoly, might have seen it as a service to bring to the reader's doorstep every morning a broad paced opinion section that sought to cover all views. Today, the Internet does that job. I am of America and for America, and proud to be so. Our country did not get here by being typical and A big part of America's success has been freedom in

the economic realm and everywhere else. Freedom is ethical, It minimizes coercion, and practically it lives creativity, invention, and prosperity. Oh nothing, just another fascist throwing around the word freedom. What he means is freedom for him to enslave youew Oh nothing, just the Washington Post having self defenestrated already, and now somehow crawling back to the top of the stairwell and throwing itself out a different window, and another

chunk of freedom of the press along with it. Oh nothing, Just confirmation of the rogue theory of eternal life that this is hell. As a side note, if that is correct, If this is hell, Jeff Bezos's girlfriend, my ex Fox Sports colleague, Laurin Sanchez, is reminded not to stand too close to any open flames here in hell. The melting

plastic smell could kill us all. And Jeff Bezos's gleeful final transformation of The Washington Post from a newspaper to a Trump cheerleading newsletter is only the newest of three media cans this week, including the cowardice of the White House Correspondence Association and especially the startling reality that Rachel Meadow, whom I hired at MSNBC out of my own pocket, has avoided the truth on the air, evidently to make it look like her corporate masters did not complete a

race purge at MSNBC, not told the truth for the second time about other anchors leaving MSNBC, And I'll tell the story of the first time in a few minutes. Look, this is not a media podcast, though I do a lot of it since I know a lot about it. But when the history is written of this increasingly successful attempt to overthrow the government of the United States by Trump, if he lets anybody write it one of the final straws, maybe the final straw will have been how stunningly quickly

the American free press collapsed, gave in, gave up. And then how the same news organizations and networks managed to find yet another new lower level to which to descend. And then finally, how it all of it managed without being really coerced or threatened or even rewarded in any

way to become cheerleading collaborators of Trump. Because all of it today a white supremacist, stoned foreigner being allowed in the White House let alone in the Oval office during a cabinet meeting, and he and Trump promising to fire all federal employees and basically privatize the government. A measles outbreak in Texas, and there's now a death and it

was an unvaccinated child. Polling showing roughly thirty five percent of all Republicans favoring eliminating elections and Congress, and fifty five percent of Trump Republicans supporting rule by an authoritarian strong man. To the Republicans who have for forty years done nothing but run up deficits, getting away with pretending to be fixing the urgent crisis of deficits that they

caused and which isn't urgent anyway. To the five million dollars citizenship gold cards and the Ukraine extortion and the Gaza theft, and the entire protection racket infomercial presidency of this asshole. All of that is possible only because our media, our news reporting, our journalism, our free press, is broken, and probably irretrievably and fatally. So. They didn't start this fire, but they did stand there taking great pictures of it.

It starts with what self absorbed, bubble protected lemmings our news media members are reporters, commentators, editors, but especially owners. And I've promised here on both podcasts on Monday that if Mattow actually said anything about the racist purge by her employers, the one that claimed Joy Reid and Katie Fang and three other shows fronted by people of color, I would apologize to her. Well, I do apologize to her.

She said something, and I will also apologize for her because what Rachel Mattow said was something worse and somehow worse than if she'd said nothing and pretended everything was fine, because all she did was whitewash it, literally white wash it. Let me parse what Maddow said. It is shameful. And I don't know if she deliberately rewrote the narrative on behalf of her bosses, or she has somehow actually convinced herself that this revised, unreal version of what happened to

Joyreid and the others is the actual truth. Quote Joy Reid's show the readout ended tonight unquote. Rachel, you mean she was fired. They fired her quote and Joy is not taking a different job in the network unquote. That's because she was fired, Rachel. Your bosses fired her. Quote, she is leaving the network altogether, and that is very very very hard to take. Unquote, She's leaving because Rachel, she was fired, and it's unfortunate. You've found it very

very very hard to take. But I'm wondering what you with essentially veto power over personnel at that network that you have previously exercised. I'm wondering what you did to try to prevent it, because if it is very very hard to take, maybe you should have stood up a little taller, or thrown your weight around a little more adroitly, or said, if she leaves this network, so do I.

firings and three virtual firings. They didn't walk out the goddamn door, Rachel. They were thrown out the window, and you are covering up for that, quoting her again, it's not my call, and I understand that unquote. At what was formerly thirty one million dollars a year to do fifty two shows a year and is now twenty five million dollars a year to do one hundred and thirty two shows a year, you know what, it is your goddamn call, Rachel. You go in and you tell these morons.

She stays, or I go and guess what she stays. Could have done that too with your own staff, Rachel. Tuesday. Apparently MSNBC informed most of Madow's staff that they were being let go as part of this schedule shakeup. And once again, when you are the brand, it is your

goddamn call, Rachel. When I was the MSNBC brand, and they refused for six months to even give Rachel Maddow a chance to be my guest host for one night, and went so far as to lie to me claiming they had hired her as a contributor when they hadn't, And as a result, she almost left us to go to CNN for two hundred and fifty fing dollars. I told my bosses, either you hire her within the next twenty four hours, or I will walk out during the

middle of a program. Quoting her again. I will tell you it is also unnerving to see that on a network where we have two, count them, two non white hosts in primetime. Both of our non white hosts in primetime are losing their shows, as is Katie Fang on the weekend. And that feels worse than bad no matter who replaces them. That feels indefensible. And I do not defend it. Unquote, ah, you do not defend it. You know who. You sound like, Rachel You sound like Senator

Susan Collins. You sound like the headline writers at the New York Times. Leave the impression that Joy Read and Katie Fang and the others quote lost quote their shows, misplace them perhaps, or or lost them because well, Joy Read and Katie Fang and the others they got hit by a meteor, rather than you know, your Comcast bosses turned them joy Read, especially into human sacrifices in hopes of appeasing the evil spirit of the devil Trump. Good God.

I sat there next to Rachel Meadow on the fifty second floor of thirty Rock in Jeff Zucker's office in June two thousand and nine, when our bosses at GE threatened Zucker personally that they were about to take MSNBC off the air, literally throw the off switch, because Bill O'Reilly had smeared the chairman of GE, Jeff Immelt, and

Jeff Immelt's mother was a Bill O'Reilly fan. And in a meeting of all the anchors and executive producers and Jeff Zucker and everybody else, we agreed on an interim emergency solution that I proposed, like a month long moratorium on mentioning Fox News, just to do we can figure out what the hell to do next. And as we were congratulating ourselves on this grim averting of nuclear war with our own owners, which we would lose, Rachel stood

up and said, I will not accept this. If anyone attempts to stop me from doing a story about Fox News, I will walk out. My audience has to know I make the editorial decisions on my show and no one else, because if they think I might have let other people tell me what I could and couldn't say about Fox News. They will be right in assuming that I might have let other people tell me what I could and couldn't

say about every other controversial topic. And she got up and left the room, and as the door closed, Jeff Zucker screamed at me to get her back on the reservation. And I went down to her office and I said, give me just as long as the French held out against Hitler. I think I know how to make this work. I think I know how to retain our editorial control.

But I need like thirty three days. She nodded, and I said, if it doesn't work, or they try to do this to us again, I will then come on your show and we can tell the story together of what they did, and we can quit simultaneously on the air and go out and get really drunk, okay, And

she said she liked that scenario. Rachel Mattow threatened to quit over story editing, and then she and I threatened to quit over story editing six years earlier, one month into countdown on MSNBC and into a new seven figure salary that I really enjoyed, and I threatened to walk out quit an hour from that moment if they tried to run a commentary from the fascist nutjob Michael Savage on Countdown and where are we now at MSNBC. We

gone from that MSNBC to Rachel's quote. I think it is a bad mistake to let her walk out the door. That feels indefensible, and I do not defend it. What Matdow said was as Mealy mouthed at, as cowering, and worse, as much of a surrender as what her colleague Ali Velshi wrote. My show, he wrote, exists because Joy read made that viable and important. Joy is a builder, a thought leader, a fierce warrior for justice, fairness and equity.

Joy is a masterclass in holding power to account. I can't wait to see what she ends up doing next hashtag my hero unquote. Well apparently it's a masterclass. You learn nothing from you, son of a bitch. You not only didn't speak truth to power, Ali Belchi, you didn't speak truth. She was fired. It was a purge. It was a racist purge at MSNBC by Comcast. And they've wiped out all the anchors of colors. Oh wait, there's

one left. His name is Ali Velshie. And none of this is the most infuriating part the purge was designed to appease Trump. Did it work, of course not? Has it ever worked? Of course not. He's not an actual human being. He is not satiated. He does not leave the table with his winnings. You compromise, he decides you are weak. His response to Comcast throwing joy Read into the bottomless pit of Trump inside the volcano, He made

more threats, greater threats. He described MSNBC as a whole corrupt operation, nothing more than an illegal arm of the Democrat Party. They should be forced to pay vast sums of money for the damage they've done to our country. Fake news is an unpardonable sin. So good call, Rachel, good call to present the corporate version of what happened to Joy Read and Katie Fang and the others. Good call to refuse to use the word racism, good call to sell the cover story, good call to not tell

the truth about it. And if there is one more level of hell to drop down to, how did media reporters cover all this? I mean, they are individually and collectively dumber than at any other point in my fifty years doing this. But now the ones who think they are smart see an opportunity. As I said Monday, the word liberal is becoming what the word communist was in

the fifties. And the media reporters who've gone from being part of the enabling process for this now see their chance to curry favor with the fascists by going along with it. They fired Read, they fired Fang, they demoted the others, They installed a panel show. I believe it will be the one millionth panel show in cable TV

news at the moment. It will feature the former head of the Republican Party, in other words, a political salesman, a spokesperson for a brand, not commentator, not analyst, not journalists, just a salesman. Another host will be a former Democratic strategist, another political salesperson, spokeswoman for a brand, not commentator, not analyst, not journalists, just salesperson, the daughter of Senator Menendez. And they will put Jensaki, the ultimate political salesperson, on four

nights a week in the nine pm Meadows slot. And how is this lurch from diversity to sameness, from original thought, even when it's wrong to literally Democratic Party talking points? How is this lurch from the left of the Democratic Party to the boring, losing mainstream How is this covered? By Sarah Fisher, media writer at Axios. The headline of her story about all this quote MSNBC turns farther left

the completely erroneous conclusion MSNBC. Fisher somehow says with a straight face, will quote elevate some of its most progressive voices. The changes signaled the network's intent to double down on its liberal bent instead of moving towards the center in

the new Trump era. Unbelievable elevate some of its most progressive voices after firing Joyreid and Katie Fang and three other of its most progressive voices, and its most progressive voice covered for it again fourteen years ago after they tried to suspend me for violating NBC News employee rules, even though they had written my contract so it repeatedly and specifically stated I was not an NBC News employee.

I prepared to sue NBC for breach of contract, or to negotiate a new set of work rules covering their complaints as well, I might add, or most likely to negotiate an exit so I could go take the money.

Al Gore was offering me to take countdown to his network, Current TV for nearly three months as this was evolving, I told one person, and one person alone, about every development daily or nearly daily, every Twist at thirty Rock, every update on the Gore offer, one person who needed to know that if they wanted to come with me, I could get the millions, or more likely that when I left, NBC would have to give them millions. They

needed to know, and I needed to tell them. This was a person I thought was one of my closest friends, and that person in November and December of twenty ten and January of twenty eleven, to whom I told everything was Rachel Maddow. When NBC and I finally reached an exit deal, I signed it during a commercial break during my own show and announced the end of the show

on the air. I apologize again to my staff. There was no other way to do it, and by chance, that night, as I was literally signing off, Maddow was in Los Angeles to be the lead guest on Bill Maher's show. So I announced, the show is over at eight forty five Eastern, and it's the lead story on

CNN for twenty two minutes at nine o'clock. At twenty two minutes at ten o'clock and mar is on at eleven Eastern, and he leads with it, obviously, and most of the audience at his show doesn't know, and there's a gasp, and then he says, by coincidence, Rachel Meadow is here tonight, and mar asks her for her reaction, And Rachel, who would have gotten an email update from me no later than four hours earlier in which I wrote, I think this is it? Says live on National TV

to Bill Maher, asked about Oberman quitting. This is the first I'm hearing about any of this. I know nothing about it. An absolute lie, the first one. It is one thing to sell your soul, Rachel. It is one thing to sell the corporate equivalent of your soul, Comcast, but then it's quite another to sell it and discover the check with which they paid you was signed by

Donald Trump in Disappearing Ink. Amazingly, this whole disaster at MSNBC, I mean the new one, not the one from twenty eleven, might be the only second most important example of what happens to those who collaborate with evil. It was two weeks ago this past Tuesday, when Trump personally got so angry at the Associated Press because the Associated Press refused to call it the Gulf of America, that he banned, the wire Service from White House Access and the other

news organizations. Rallied to the AP's defense. And when I say rallied to its defense, I mean they did nothing. Lots of bad mistake style statements, lots of I do not defend it kind of statements, lots of handbringing, lots of First Amendment citations. Action like the White House Press Corps collectively boycotting the next Trump event or just sending one reporter to cover it. No, nothing, nothing from the networks, nothing from the New York Times, and most pathetically, nothing

from the White House Correspondence Association. You would think this event in which one of their correspondents, one of their major members, gets banned for refusing to edit according to Trump's whims, you would think this would be in their wheelhouse. You would think somewhere, at some point, at a meeting of the White House Correspondence Association, somebody might have said, you know, if ever we get a president who's decides to write our copy for us, we'll have to do

something about it. No, apparently not so two weeks without paying any price for his censorship. That's what it is. Censorship to salitarian style attempts to control the content of the news. And the administration correctly reads the weakness in the White House Correspondents Association and the White House Press Corps. And it goes further. And now the White House pool reporter, the gal or the guy who covers for everybody when there's no practical way for every reporter to be there,

always selected by the White House Correspondents Association. And by the way, in a rotation basis, it's not like, hey, Gabe, you go do this one now. It will now be selected by the White House. Trump will pick his own reporter. Expect a strongly worded statement from a Washington journalist if there is one left. And by the way, the White House Correspondence Association inert, incompetent, almost inanimate response that contributed to Trump thinking, to Trump knowing he could get away with it.

editor named Eugene Daniels. Oh, by the way, the lame duck president of the White House Correspondence Association is.

sources even exist, which they largely do not. They are made up defamatory fiction, and a big price should be paid for this blatant dishonesty. I'll do it as a service to our country. Who knows, maybe we will create some nice new law. Sure glad you're collaborating with him. Jeff Bezos. Sure glad you're collaborating with him, NBC, Comcast, Sure glad you're collaborating with him, White House Correspondence Association, and I'm sure glad you're by extension, covering for those

who are collaborating with him. Rachel, what's next? What's going to happen next? Oliver Darcy of Status says that before four he addresses a joint session of Congress. Next week, Trump intends to have lunch with the major network anchors a who would that be? Nora O'Donnell was fired and replaced by some guys. B Lesterholt just transferred to Dateline. Hey maybe this was why? See that would leave David Muir.

Now if any of them, I assume Lester will go and one of the CBS guys are all sixty three of them, if any of them have any journalistic or patriotic chops, they will go to that lunch and keep saying things that not only make Trump so mad he throws his ketchup slathered burger against the wall. But there's two like just a suggestion, play this tape of him

from the Cabinet meeting yesterday. This country has gotten bloated and fat and disgusting, and incompetently run play that tape about the country being bloated and everything else, then say hey, the fat same law, Am I right? Yeah? They'll insult him to his face or criticize him to his face.

Who in the hell am I kidding. The older I've gotten, the longer I've done this, the more I've realized, and the more I've told friends and especially younger colleagues, that the greatest of all the thousand shocks my flesh has been air to since nineteen seventy five is the realization that each of us is on our own. Simply put, there are no adults. You have to be your own adult.

The last generation adults was never replaced. There is no group that will do the right thing, no matter the personal cost, No group that will sacrifice for the greater good, No one who will say, if you do this, I will quit. Well, the op ed editor at the Washington Post quit good for him? No adults other than him.

Right now, I will again quote Jean Renoir as actav in Renoire's nineteen thirty nine French film Rules of the Game, about the loss of personal moral and courage and just a minimal effort to just maybe occasionally do what's effing right. You see, in this world, there is one awful thing Octob says, seemingly fighting back, and then he gives up to with his own shrug, and that is that everyone

has his reasons. Our reaction to nearly every metaphorical rape of this nation by Trump is to list our reasons to do nothing about it. The more possible power you actually have, your democratic leadership, you're the White House Correspondence Association, your Rachel Maddow, the more reasons you have to not risk at all. I cannot process this thinking, this lack of thinking, but it is now universal in this country. And it's no longer a question of the guard rails

falling to the wayside. It is the roads falling to the wayside. But whether it can be understood or accepted or processed or not, it's true, there are no adults. If we are going to save this country, we are going to have to save this country ourselves. Those we trusted have all the tools, and we have only imagination and despair. And all I can say is I suspect the one action you and I can accomplish if we

can organize. If we can get past our own rules of the game, reasons for inaction, if we can be our own adults, it's got to be economic in origin. Now, this idea of mine is about one percent complete. The route may not even exist. That collective will may be illusory. But the fascists only understand money. And it's increasingly obvious that the middle and the left in whom we hoped and relied on, may understand other things as well. But even they understand money best. We may have to break

this nation's economic system. We may have to literally extort democracy out of the corporate state. I don't know what that means. I don't know if it's a federal tax strike or a moratorium on buying unnecessary new consumer goods. I mean, what would you do to this country if you didn't buy a phone, or a coffee or a car for the next five years. Maybe it's something else. I don't know. My job has always been just to be the annoying stand up and shout this is wrong guy.

Like I said, this idea is one percent baked. I will contend, however, that at one percent it's already better than coming on television and saying it's a bad mistake to let democracy walk out the door this way, and it's very very hard to take, and I do not

defend it. And thus I have done my part. I have earned my one hundred and eighty nine thousand, three hundred and ninety four dollars per night, haven't I also of interest if you think the idea of cultural black hole, a guy like Trump who defines the idea of the cultural black hole running the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, If you think that is the ultimate dark irony, you have not yet heard about the new board of trustees at the Kennedy Center that

includes one of my exes. No, I'm not gonna tell you right now. I'm gonna let you guess that's next. This is Countdown. This is Countdown with Keith Olberman still ahead on this all new edition of Countdown. I don't want to spoil the surprise of the winner of Worse Persons, so I'll just say that in the next segment, things I promised not to tell is about my two dates

with today's worst person in the world. That was one of the last times I thought, you know, this might be the night I die that's next first, believe it or not, there's still more new idiots to talk about. The daily roundup of the mis grants, morons and Dunning Krueger effects specimens who constitute today's other worst persons in the world. Here are the nominees, the brons worse Stephen A. Smith, or if you prefer Stephen A. Smith. Do you see

what happens? Stephen? Do you see what happens when you wade into politics and you think you know everything and you don't know Jack Spitt, I'm quoting the site awful Announcing. Tuesday night, far right social media account af post shared a screenshot of Smith being among those who clicked the like button on an Instagram video from Nick Fuentes. In the clip, Fuentes, a far right political commentator, accuses the

United States government of being under Israeli influence. Wednesday morning, Smith denied clicking the like button, intently, claiming he didn't know what Fuentes or the video was. The exact post by Stephen A. Smith, I do not know who this is or what that video is. If it was quote liked unquote, it was unintentional. Now there are social media managers for some of the bigger names at ESPN and I wilse swear. But this is why talent is advised use one. So I mean, it's possible somebody running his

accounts did this in Stephen A. Smith's name. But if so, why didn't Stephen say that? Why didn't you say I've got a social media manager and he must have done this. She must have done this, because instead he seems to

be saying it's a coincidence or an accident. There was some unintentional like of a video, a video done by a rabid anti Semite and anti immigrant fascist, and accidentally, somehow it was accidentally like like the like button was hit by another meteor or lightning or something, and the like button is somehow connected to Stephen A's account, because that happens all the time. No, actually it doesn't. It's as unlikely as Stephen A. Smith going on ESPN and

being right about something. The runner up worser Elong Musk, the metaphorical before guy in the penile implant ads he was at the cabinet meeting yesterday, showing his unofficial status by standing while everybody else was sitting. Politico had just published a unique anecdote. It was not Elong's first visit to Trump there in the White House in twenty twenty,

I quote Politico. Before the meeting, Musk, an associate, met with Trump's son in law, Jared Kushner, and then were hosted by Tim Pataki, who served as assistant to the President, the deputy director of the White House Office of Public Liaison, a person who was within earshot of Musk, who West Wing Playbook granted anonymity to provide to describe a private conversation. The immedia, doing its job as usual, later recounted that Musk called Trump a fing moron behind his back while

in the White House. I made the editorial decision not to quote hims calling him then you know what effing stands for quote. We walk into the Oval and he Musk kind of looks around, and he's looking around. This person in the room said, He's like, gush, I tell you, I mean, I was just in China and man and their palaces just make the White House kind of look more like an outhouse. Steroids is a hell of a drug.

So's ozempic and Ketteman. By the way, anybody noticed that Elon's South African accent has suddenly had dramatically gotten, even more impenetrable and apartheidy than ever mean? Was he hit by lightning? But our winner? I've teased it twice. So here it is. They made fun of Trump. So Trump had to punish the Kennedy Senator for performing arts in Washington. And there's no better way to punish a group than making Trump a part of it. Ah, you hate me, I will now be on your board. So he's now

in charge of the Kennedy Center. And some of the new board of trustees' names have been publicized, but not all of them. When I saw the full list, one of the names just popped off the page. No, it wasn't Lee Greenwood, who shouldn't be admitted even if he has a ticket. Wasn't Susie Wiles, Susie, please wipe the cow crap off your shoes. It wasn't her statle, mother's Cherry Summer, all widow of Pat Pat Summer, all Hai pet Some are all here who would have been forgotten

by now but for John Madden. Let's see. Also on this list there's Pam Bondi, Dan Scavino, Dana Craft, Dana Craft, Trophy, wife of New England, Patriots owner Robert Kraft. No, I don't know if she ever worked at a nail salon. And then there's Lauren Ingram.

thrown by her former law firm. But plays or entertainment or culture or stuff they'd have at the Kennedy Center. The only non political thing I remember she was interested in was alcohol. For years, I've been trying to remember if after we crashed that party she had ten Cosmopolitans or was it ten Metropolitans, And it finally dawned on me it was five of each. It was ten Cosmopolitans and Metropolitans, which was shortly before I discovered what they

actually mean by the phrase. And then I had to pour her into a cab and now she'll be at the table with the rest of the board of the freaking Kennedy Center, or under the table.

than our winner of Worst Persons today. The anniversary, the twenty seventh anniversary is the middle of next month. I went on my first date where a guest on my original MSN show, a woman who would later boast to me that her mother's dying words to her were, why are you so bossy? I mean, who would do that? Even if it's true? Why wouldn't you make up something else, like you've been a wonderful daughter, or at least make sure you don't steal my silverware? You witch? I mean,

who's gonna check. You said these were your mother's last words. I presume that means she's gone. Who else would reveal? Why are you so bossy? Was her the last thing she said? I mean, who else? The full farewell quote was why are you so bossy?

March Julius Caesar. I didn't, honestly, and God helped me. Nearly forty eight years of dating, I have not been a kiss and tell her I have dated. I don't know dozens. We're in a couple of hundred, actually thirteen, seriously, with maybe three exceptions. You don't know any of their names. One of them, now a political writer, basically lived with me for three years. I keep that confidence. So why

am I telling this story violating that? Because not three months after that first date, when we were still going out, Laura Ingram asked me if she could look at a speech I was going to give it Corneill's graduation weekend and offer suggestions. This is so long ago. I literally faxed it to her. Sure enough, a couple days later, I'm watching Imus in the morning, which was televised by my network MSNBC, and there on his desk in front of him is the faxed copy of my speech, and

he is reading from my facts. I could recognize the exact sequence of the vertical stripes. My cheap fax machine used to streak all my outgoing pages with Laura used to go on his show a lot, so to curry favor with iMOS, she sent him the speech without asking me. As I told her that day, all bets are now off.

So I've told parts of this story before, like she had been a Supreme Court clerk for Clarence Thomas, and our first date consisted of taking me on an insider's tour of the court and having me sit in his chair in tribute to him. I did not say or do anything constructive. She then cooked me the largest steak I had ever seen that did not have a rodeo cowboy riding on it, and we watched a woman later discredited because she could not keep her stories straight, go

on sixty minutes and make allegations against Bill Clinton. This is my perfect date, Laura told me, seared into my memory. But the important Laura Ingram's story sitting there in the middle of all the debris. I don't think I've ever told this. The first date was only about six weeks after the then First Lady Hillary Clinton got on the Today Show and blamed the at best exaggerated scandal about her husband at Monica Lewinsky on the quote vast right

wing conspiracy that is sound stumpid. Laura said that night, as she showed me her small office upstairs, I expected that she was about to decry the idea that Republicans would exploit television, talk radio and the brand new Internet to try to bring down a president from the other party. And I said, so naive little boy, that I was no, not that, of course we're doing that. She was kind of offended that I doubted the conspiracy part. I explained,

I'd only been covering politics for two months. At the end of the day, she said, end of the day, constantly, at the end of the day, it's that vast part. It's not vast, vast right wing conspiracy. Why, I bet there's not even thirty of us. Laura Ingram then explained that she was essentially the central desk for what she called the miniature right wing conspiracy. She showed me a printed page that had the facts numbers of about two dozen people. There at the top are the sources. She said.

There was Ted Olsen, the attorney, founder of the so called Arkansas Project and the husband of Barbara Olson, a constant presence as a talking head on cable news. She later died on nine to eleven. Everybody liked her. There were several numbers in the office of Independent Counsel ken Starr. One of them read B. Cavanaugh. I said, who's that? She said, nobody important. The only other name I remember was Spencer Abraham, who then was a senator from Michigan.

She said, they, including the people in ken Starr's office, sent her all the rumors, the ideas, stuff about Clinton, stuff they made up, and she distributed them to the other parts of the list. That's these numbers. One number was marked Hannity Radio, another Hannity TV, O'Reilly Radio, O'Reilly TV. There was one for Limbaugh. There was one mark Justice Thomas, and I pointed to it. He likes to stay and farmed. Now, maybe the most important name is not on that list.

That's Matt Dradge. She said. Matt Drudge used all her stuff, but he didn't want any of it to be traceable, very big on not traceable, so I never fax it to him. She said, I just give it to my brother. This is when she still liked her brother. He sees Drudge all the time. He gives the stuff to Drudge. Now, Oliver, here is my baseball collection. See, there were reasons to go out with her. At the time, I could think

only of an old cartoon I had once seen. It was an octopus working in the post office, using all eight of its limbs to sort the mail. But every couple of weeks it dawns on me afresh. Then I was actually a witness to one of the earliest configurations of the machinery. And there is no doubt today whether it is vast or miniature, it's best the machinery that links the right wing politicians and those who are supposed to be above the fray, like Supreme Court justices and

special prosecutors and people like that. There with the right wing publicity outlets that pretend to be news organizations like Fox and Drudge and Oan and Newsmax, and the ones that don't even pretend, like those who succeeded Limbaugh. This machine is, in fact every thing that your typical paranoid conservative, republican fascist trumpst thinks is being run by George Soros or Bill Gates or doctor Fauci or me. You want to be able to say, there are reports or accusations

about some Democrat or a liberal figure or celebrity. Well, somebody puts a rumor in at one end of the machinery, or somebody makes up a rumor at one end of the machinery. It is then sent to dozens of other people. They repeat it, voila. Suddenly there are reports. The reports then get fed back to Fox News or Breitbart or the Wall Street Journal or the Supreme Court, or they're

just tweeted by a thousand bots simultaneously. You want to push this ancient racist, anti Semitic paranoia called the great replacement, but you want it to come out washed clean enough that soulless opportunists like Elis Stefanic and jd Vance can say it aloud on the campaign trail without forfeiting their candidacies. This is the machinery. And I saw the machinery when it was just a list of twenty and thirty people, And at that moment I barely recognized the importance of

what I saw. Then again, I was still on that night, recovering from not just the giant's steak, but something far more visceral. Earlier that day, as we were leaving the Supreme Court, Laura Ingram had boasted about getting even with an ex boyfriend by going back into what had been their house and putting up exact copies of all the photos of the two of them together that he had taken down from his walls. And when he got smart and changed the locks, she went back again to finish

the job. Found her key didn't work so naturally as you would. She stuffed his garden hose through the mails a lot of his front door, and turned on the outdoors. Spagott ten thousand dollars worth of heart. When Florence ruined, she said proudly, and part of me screamed, flee, flee now I didn't flee. Later, as I tried to sleep, two noises kept me awake, snoring, not my own, and Laura's dog. Laura's dog kept talking in his sleep, I

mean almost in syllables, ye like that. It was something like twenty five degrees out and I was on the second floor. And yet I resolved that if her dog really did make that last leap to formulate actual syllables. And it turned out her dog was the one telling her what to do, I was simply going to leave by the window without bothering to open it first. The next morning, Laura and I walked her dog. We got to an empty field. She threw a tennis ball, He

went and got it. She cocked her arm back again. He took off, loving life as he did. She did not throw it. He went forty to fifty sixty feet, then stopped and looked back at her with such disappointment and even a sense of betrayal, and she said, loudly, without a trace of affection for him or anything else, wait far at which is when I realized I was being courted.

the wrong end of a hostage drama. Turned out she was not invited to her party. We're crashing it. I'm going to drink heavily. Frankly. It was a great party. I got to meet Hillary Clinton's mother and her brother. And if you think the fascists are completely sincere about everything, even their neuroses and their paranoia, no, Laura Ingram hugged Hillary Clinton's mother and Hillary Clinton's brother. They seem to

be friends. Later we wound up meeting friends of her in the Oak bar at the Plaza Hotel, where she kept drinking. I was astonished after about her sixth Cosmopolitan on top of everything she'd had at the party. She began to droop her head, nodding like a bobblehead doll. Her friend said, Okay, that's it. We'll take care of the check. You take care of her. She had not

gotten a hotel room or anything. And if you've ever heard of anybody who needed to be poured into a cab because they were so drunk, you don't really know what that means until you have to pour them into a cab. Frankly, I wanted to put her in a hotel somewhere, but the spectacle would have made the gossip pages.

She basically could not stand up, so I took her to my apartment, put her into my bed, and I went and slept on the couch at the far end of the apartment, which is where I was hours later in the morning when she woke me up because she came parading through using my phone to call my assistant to get a car sent to my address to take her to the airport, and to make sure that everybody in my office knew she had stayed overnight at my apartment. And all I kept thinking was why didn't I follow

my instincts, My instincts said flee. I fleed. Not, of course, if I had fled, I would have missed seeing the telephone tree of the miniature right wing conspiracy, wouldn't I. I've done all the damage I can do here. Thank you for listening. Brian Ray and John Phillip Chanel, the musical directors of Countdown, arranged, produced, and performed most of our music. Mister Chanelle handled orchestration in keyboards. Mister Ray was on the guitars, bass and drums. It was produced

by Tko Brothers. Our satirical and fify musical comments are by the best baseball stadium organist ever, Nancy Faust. The sports music is the Oberman 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 Deane. Portions produced by Ted and Kit. Kit just got fixed the other day, so we can understand why he's growling if you listen carefully.

Every time Ted growled during the recording, he was in an appropriate moment. I believe Ted understands what I'm saying. Everything else was as ever. My fault. That's countdown for today, just one thousand, twenty four days until the scheduled end of his lane duck lame brain term unless Musks removes him sooner where the actuarial tables doe. The next scheduled countdown is Monday. As always, bulletins, as the news warrants,

remember impeach Trump. It will not work now, it will win the Democrats the mid terms, if there are midterms. Get off the stick, kids. Until next time, I'm Keith Olverman. Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and good luck. Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.