Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. The only scum here is Trump, and the only thing that
has been obliterated is America's reputation. We have now descended to that level of hell in which the entire purpose of the government of the United States is to say and shout and lie so loudly and so often that the insane, deteriorating, mentally dissolving international joke, that is, the current president does not yell at the fools and whorees who work for him and can't stand the sound of his voice another god damned minute. He has now gotten the government of Israel to lie for him about his
private war against Iran. He has now gotten his own government to issue assessments that not only completely contradict yesterday's assessments,
but completely contradict his own assessments. He has now gotten his own Director of National Intelligence, presumably under the threat of being fired, to cherry pick somebody's intelligence, maybe ours, maybe Katars, maybe sho Rogans who knows and insists that this is new intelligence and it confirms his obsession, his obsession that everybody in the country, everybody in the world, everybody in the universe, everybody yet to be born must
agree with him that Iran's nuclear capacity is quote obliterated and for all time and forever, in no arguments, and it's the greatest military success in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And don't you dare say otherwise, don't you dare inconclusive obliterated, except that twenty four hours ago Trump said it was inconclusive. Both you and Secret Terry Rubio on hex I mentioned the week. But can you clarify is the intelligence correct, wh is the intelligence wrong?
Well, the intelligence was was very inconclusive. The intelligence says, we don't know. It could have been very severe. That's what the intelligence says. So I guess that's correct. But I think we can take that we don't know. It was very severe. It was obliteration. And you think that a media outlet would say, isn't it a great thing?
Inconclusive but also obliterated and obliterating, because about an hour before he said that, Trump wrote this fake news CNN. This is all caps, by the way, so you know he really means it. Together with the failing New York Times, have teamed up in an attempt to demean one of the most successful military strikes in history. The nuclear sights in Iran are completely destroyed. Both the Times in CNN
are getting slammed by the public. They're not. He's holding another news conference, having hegseeth do it today to say, presumably something like fake news. CNN, together with the failing New York Times, have teamed up in an attempted to mean one of the most successful military strikes in history. Can I have my weekend job back at Fox and a drink please? And by the way, Fox reported the same thing that CNN and the New York Times reported inconclusive, inconclusive,
and again Trump said it was inconclusive. But don't you dare say anything about inconclusive. Don't say anything but obliteration, or you will be included when America's all time worst scumbag makes his daily proclamation of who is scum and who is not? And not just left town.
This was an unbelievable hit by genius pilots and genius people in the military, and they're not being given credit for it because we have scum that's in this group, and not all of you are. You had some great reporters, but you have scum. CNN is scum. MSDNZ is scum. The New York Times is scum. They're bad people, they're.
Sick good things. CNN has been sucking up to him for three years, or he'd be saying this three times a day, and not just at NATO conferences to international reporters, international reporters that have the courage, unlike our wretched leftovers, to laugh at him of.
Question on his Spain, Are you satisfying with today?
Oh?
It's terrible what they've done.
Now I do.
They're the only country they won't pay the full up. They want to stay at two percent. I think it's terrible. And you know, they're doing very well. The economy is very well, and that economy could be blown right out of the water with something bad happening. You know, Spain is the only country that are you from Spain? Good congratulations. You're the only country that is not paying. I don't know what the problem is.
It's also he wants a Nobel Peace Prize for obliterating like Hiroshima. So to quiet d menhaed Trump down for a few hours while somebody figures out a way to impeach him or twenty fifth amendment him, or just next time leave him at the Hague. That's where the International Court of Justice is. Here is who is lying to him and to us now statement on behalf of the
Israel Atomic Energy Commission. The devastating US strike on Fordeaux destroyed the site's critical infrastructure and rendered the enrichment facility inoperable. We assessed that the American strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities, combined with Israeli strikes on other elements of Iran's military nuclear program, has set back Iran's ability to develop nuclear weapons by many years. This achievement can continue indefinitely if
Iran does not get access to nuclear material. This statement apparently shocked observers in Israel because it was not released by the Israeli government to anybody in that country. It was for American media only. In point of fact, it was for Trump only. You can tell that it's not largely holy or perhaps at all true because Nettnyahu's government, which also needs to maintain a war footing and create this sense that there is an existential threat to keep
its leader out of prison for life. In this statement, Netnya, whose government credits American strikes, now another lie domestic. The one member of the Trump administration, who seems to have gotten it right of all people, the stopped clock herself, Tulsey Gabbard, skunkhead, Iran was not within weeks or months of a nuke. This attack would accelerate the nuclear risk actual ascertainable fact. And then they don't even tell her in advance when they decide to bomb against her advice.
She's not in the situation room that night, so she presumably has to issue the most ridiculous lie yet or lose her job. New intelligence confirms what Potus has stated numerous times. Iran's nuclear facilities have been destroyed. What new intelligence? Who's did you find it on a slip of paper inside a fortune cookie? Telsey? If the Iranians choose to rebuild, they would have to rebuild all three facilities Natans for
now Esfahan entirely, which would likely take years to do. Sure, because they didn't move anything out of those three facilities to allow them to put them elsewhere and build elsewhere, And they didn't learn one thing that they better build their nukes back better and stronger than ever before. Before this asshole bombs the empty facilities again. The propaganda media has deployed their usual tactic, selectively released portions of illegally
leaked classified intelligence assessments. Tulsie, the leaker is in the house. Those were re leaked by somebody with access to that information, that somebody works for Trump. You moren incidentally, this memo that you just issued that I'm reading here, this is you selectively releasing portions of classified intelligence assessments, not a notice. Did you notice the coincidence there, Tulsi, unless you made them up? Unless this is a lie, in which case
you're in the clear. Portions intentionally leaving out the fact that the assessment was written with low confidence to try to undermine President Trump's decisive leadership and the brave servicemen and women who flawless executed a truly historic mission to keep the American people safe and secure. The oldest trick in the Neocon book. And yes, Maga and the Neocons
are now indistinguishable. Doesn't matter how differently the roots were that they got they took to get there, they are now the same thing they got to the same place. Meaningless carnage in the Middle East that makes things worse and will have ramifications a quarter century from now that we can't possibly predict. But you defend that by saying that if you dare to question the outcome, the purpose
the president the secretary of brill cream. If you don't say obliterated, if you don't praise, dear leader, you're insulting the troops. And to try to stitch all this together, let me quote the Wall Street Journal, Iran nuclear obliterated. So now we have to negotiate with Iran to get them to discontinue their nuclear quote. Trump said he doesn't think a nuclear deal with Iran is necessary after the US strikes on three Iranian nuclear sites that he added
there would be talks with Tehran next week. He said the US would be asking the Iranians for the same thing before Israel attacked Iran. We want no nuclear, the president said, adding we destroyed the nuclear Speaking from the NATO summit, Trump said he believed the ceasefire between Israel and Iran would hold. The president signaled that he wouldn't stop China from buying oil from Iran, saying Tehran needs
the money to put that country back into shape. Trump also pushed back on a leaked intelligence report that said US strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities only set back Tehran's nuclear ambitions by a few months. Defense Secretary Pete he Said said the FBI started a probe into how the preliminary assessment became public. Cash Patel's going to put a
couple of eyes on it. As the reporter Roger Sallenberger noted about this Wall Street Journal write up, we don't need to deal with Iran, but we're still going to ask them to give up their nuclear program, which we destroyed. And of course it's all bill, and Iran has finished. And Trump posted a music video in which the Beach Boys Barbara Ann is subhumanly repurposed as bomb Iran. The old John McCain joke. Don't tell but Trump he'll stroke
out when he hears it's a John McCain joke. Good week to do it too, when Brian Wilson has died. And remember, there's no threat. Obliterator obliterated. And you're scum if you say otherwise. So I guess that means that Trump administration is scum. Oh and Trump, who you heard in the clip before, agreed the results are inconclusive. Trump
thinks Trump is scum, and for once he's right. There are four sidebars initially anyway to Zoran Mamdani's startling and thrilling first round win in the Democratic primary for mayor here in Fun City one the early tepidness of national Democratic support for him and for his run for mayor from Chuck Schumer, the Gironto crostis in chief. He praised his campaign Akeem Jeffries, whose only apparent career goal is to last long enough to join that jeron tocras he
did the same. Oh, he ran a wonderful campaign. What was his name again? Gentlemen, get on board, Ma'm Danny won the middle class in New York City by doing the two things you idiots refuse to even try to do last November. Combine concern for the financial crushing of the middle class and stand up for what's right in the country and the world, including opposing Trump and Ice and the fascists as loudly and frequently as possible while
reducing costs. It's only two things. I know. You might have to eliminate a bunch of banquets and dinners and press conferences from your schedule to accomplish two things in one year, but this guy apparently is doing it. Also, Schumer Jeffries, you and the other chameleons who are now trying to be centrist after everything else failed because you aren't any good at this. They are responsible for democratic
cowardice at every corner. From Politico, it is extremely alarming that the only candidates who genuinely excite our voters are the ones making absolutely insane promises on politically toxic positions. One DEM strategist tells Playbooks Adam Wren, leaving us in the spot of trying to execute on bad policy and losing terribly or failing to keep our promises, and reinforcing the idea that all politics is bullshit. Firstly, politically, you
know what bullshit is. Bullshit is granting somebody anonymity for that. You know why Kamala Harris lost last year. You know why the Senate didn't get any closer. You know why the House was lost because an alleged Democratic strategist who has his finger on the pulse of nothing, does not have the honesty nor the confidence in his own analysis right or wrong to put his own goddamned worthless name on that milk toast quote. Secondly, sir or madam, talking
to Politico, how about this crazy idea. How about keeping your promises? Or if you can't make as much noise as possible, because you have been thwarted by the armies that Maurice Metterlink saw. At every crossway on the road that leads to the future, each progressive spirit is opposed by a thousand men appointed to guard the past. The second sidebar those thousand men, they're all named Andrew Cuomo.
The biggest threat to New York City right now, the biggest threat to the Democratic Party right now, the biggest threat to the midterms, The biggest threat in twenty twenty eight is tepid Democratic support for ma'm Danny for mayor and the window that then opens for Cuomo to run as an independent backed by another twenty million or so from Mike Bloomberg Republican and other rich bastard Republicans to keep the boy socialist out, even if all that results
in is spoiling it for ma'm Danny and we get another term of Eric Adams. Eric Adams who is missing yesterday in the day after the New York political earthquake because he was doing live guest hits on Newsmax from inside his car, which is where next year in a just world, Eric Adams will be living the third sidebar
Watch now for the chance that went Trump. Our minor bird president who keeps repeating the same word, switches from to mandelli once they teach him how to say it when he pivots back from persecuting Hispanics to persecuting Muslims. Under the radar. Trump has just established an America first Homeland Security Advisory Committee on it. Mark Levin, the guy in Fox who talks like this, Corey Lewandowski, he's an advisor to Christy. No. You know, I've heard a lot
of terms for this before. I never heard Hey, let me give you some advice, honey. And Rudy Giuliani, who apparently has escaped from his new home in the Bronx Zoo. So clearly, Levin, Lewandowski and Giuliani are their inside Homeland Security to push back against and balance all those at Homeland Security who are in favor of protecting America. Meanwhile, after ma'am Donnie's knockout blow, the Laura Loomer Charlie Kirk types have already invoked nine to eleven. And how dare
New York elect one of them? Let me tell you something in nineteen ten, and I have this secondhand from my late grandfathers, who were very happy about it because they were German and they had been this category of New Yorker the decade before. But in nineteen ten, Italians not named Enrico Caruso in this city were presumed to be mafiosi, and Jews in this city were treated as
third class citizens. Twenty three years later, nineteen thirty three, New York City elected its greatest mayor of all time, who was Italian and Jewish Lagardia. His mother's name was Irene Lozato Cohen. Oh, and he was a socialist. Sorry, I didn't mean to shock you. He was a Republican socialist. Our second greatest mayor, John Purroy Mitchell, was thirty four when he was elected. Thirty four, Why that's too young? And our greatest mayor since LaGuardia ed Koch. To this
day we don't know his second orientation. And guess what nobody really ever bothered to ask. We don't give a crap. This is a city that looks for competence. This is a city of immigrants and assimilation and especially the mixing of the gene pools. Often we miss we screw it up. I mean, we're on a hell of a mayor's streak. This idiot Adams, this idiot Deblasio, this idiot Bloomberg, this idiot, fascist,
lunatic Giuliani. But one thing we do not do, and this is the fourth takeaway after the election results in the primary, one thing we do not do is get full the second time. This above all else was lost, and not just Mandani's victory, but his victory in round one instead of round seven of ranked voting. This was as much of a repudiation of Andrew Cuomo and the idea that there's no longer such a thing as bad political publicity. It's the Trump theory. It's the way we've
lived for a decade now. It doesn't matter who you raped, as long as they spelled your name right. New York is trying to show America, trying to show the Democratic Party. Please wake it up if you see it, that the way to beat a scumbag is to remind everybody what a scumbag he is, and while doing so, offer alternatives that can benefit them in their real lives. Trump is
a scumbag. Here are free buses. I wonder if they have figured this out now in all the places where Zamdani was attacked and Cuomo Cuomo an unrepented sleeze, and I'll need to see a paternity test to believe he's really Mario Cuomo's son, where Cuomo was welcomed back as if none of that had happened. Bill Clinton endorsed Cuomo. Bloomberg did. Jim Clyburn. I love Jim Clyburn. Jim Clyburn called Cuomo the future of the Democratic Party nationally. Cowomo's
older than I am. Jim, your trolley has come off the track. Best of all the New York Times editorial Board, which said, whatever you do, do not put him on
your ballot anywhere. Don't rank him last he is. There's no way he can possibly run the few New York Times And by the way, we are now officially in this period of time, the New York Times editorial Board and the New York Times publisher have affirmed that the words New and York are just part of a brand name, and any actual connection between that paper and this city has long since been eliminated. I know I called him Zamdani. It was a kind of a telescoping of his first
name and his last name, just call him Mayor. Also of interest here, anybody noticed Trump went full gay bashing. I mean, I understand stuff getting buried under the avalanche of Trump is bullshit and rage and but full unmistakable homophobia in writing from Trump. That's next. This is Countdown.
This his countdown with Keith Oberman Oberman.
Stollah on this all new editionive Countdown. Since I am back in TV sports doing stuff for the baseball games carried on the fan dual network sports regional outlets, might be a good time to commemorate my departure from ESPN, the first one this time of year in nineteen ninety seven, not the second time, not the third time, when I became a Disney retiree. Seriously, I'm a Disney retiree. Get me, I'm a Disney retiree. The first time I left. Boy,
oh boy, was that a big story. I'll explain next in Things I promised not to tell first, Believe it or not, There's still more new idiots to talk about. The roundup of the miss Grants, morons and Dunning Kruger effects specimens who constitute the latest other worse persons in the world Thebron's David Ellison, who, along with my former friend Jeff you should have known I was lying to Shell.
We'll be running CBS news once Sherry Redstone finishes pretending she's just settling a Trump lawsuit when in fact she's taking the smell off a little payola. This is from Oliver Darcy's Absolutely Necessary Status newsletter. Late last year, during a trip to New York City, David Ellison quietly made time for a meeting that said as much about his
worldview as it did about his interest in media. According to people familiar with the matter, the Hollywood scion sky On I never knew how to pronounce that word, Hollywood asshole, set time aside on his busy calendar to meet with
Barry Weiss, the founder of the Free Press. Allison, like a number of C suite executive types parentheses longing to turn the rest of us into robots, has long been an admirer of Weiss's style of journalism, and I have to compliment Oliver for not putting journalism in quotes here. I'm told viewing her as one one of the more compelling voices in the shifting landscape of independent journalism. Independent
journalism being an ironic term for sucking Trump's ass. Ellison appeared to leave a wide range of options on the table, signaling that he sees Wiss's a valuable addition to CBS News, wants to hire her for CBS News while he considers how to put his stamp on the news division. Trust me, you put a lunatic, loser, asshole like this woman at CBS News, you put your stamp on the news division, and then you threw the package out the window. Might as well change the name from CBS to well, we're
going to say CBS stands for completely bullshit. Now, while a management role is not said to be on the table, it would not be out of the range of possibilities that she could be named as an on air contributor or perhaps even given a coveted correspondent position On sixty minutes, Barry Weiss is the asshole who thinks everyone and everything is woke and anti Semitic, that criticism of Israel is anti Semitism. She wrote her way out of real journalism.
She now provides a platform for people who were never good enough to be in it. If you think CBS has already hit rock bottom, no weight. There's still the Barry Weiss basement to hit. The runner up Kerry Lake, you know, the fired Phoenix weather caster who looks like the marionette from the old Act Whylon Flowers and Madam look it up? What of all things did this country actually need during Trump's private war of obliteration against Iran?
The one that ablittered nothing propaganda or information against Iranian propaganda broadcast into Iran? What did it get dead? From Axios mid a historic flashpoint in the Middle East. The Voice of America has broadcast just seventy five minutes of content targeted to its audience in Iran over the last seventy two hours. This is a little old. A source familiar with the schedule said the programming was limited to
just one show for around thirty minutes Sunday morning. I believe it was Breakfast with the Beatles, and another for around forty five minutes Monday morning. The source said nothing against Breakfast with the Beatles. Before the Trump administration's efforts to gut funding for USAGM and its outlets, the Voice of America broadcast twenty four to seven for its Iranian audience.
Why it matters? Duh? Driving the news. Carrie Lake, special advisor to VOA's parent agency, the US Agency for Global Media, last week said termination notices were sent to six hundred and thirty nine employees at USAGM and VOA. One time Carrie Lake actually does something that isn't about her and how she is the greatest martyr this side of whiny gains. The one time she does something, it actually hurt Trump's private war against Iran. I sure hope Trump doesn't hear
about this. Speaking of which our winner de mensaed Trump himself. We all know he hates black people, Jews, Hispanics, the truth, anybody who looks at him, funny Muslims, members of his own family, foreigners, sane people. And there's another like three thousand names on this list, but I'm going to skip them. But we tend to overlook his homophobia. It's transactional homophobia. Roy Cone, who tutored Trump's psychoses and various expertises in the Evil Arts, he was gay, But of course roy
Cone hated himself for that, so this fits. This is not the first time he did this. He did this just before the election. But see if you can spot the homophobia. The sites that were hit in Iran were totally destroyed, and everyone knows that only the fake news would say anything different in order to try and demean as much as possible, and even they say that they were pretty well destroyed. Working especially hard on this falsehood is Allison Cooper of fake News CNN. Allison Cooper, I
have a long history with Anderson Cooper. I think he'd say hello to me if I said hello to him, and that'd be the end of the conversation, and probably fine. I think just too many times he missed opportunities to stand up for what was right. Other times he stood up for what was right. But that's irrelevant to this. You don't judge whether or not to say something when you read something like that based on your own personal
experience with somebody. Because one of the most reliable ways of mainstreaming hatred, violent filth, prejudice, repression in government, the death of freedom of speech, one of the most reliable ways to allow eventual murderers and persecutors to begin to lay the groundwork to try to extinguish a class of people, a group of people because of who they are is to stop calling them out every time they take a step towards that, Ah, well, that's just Trump Allison group,
So the hell it is. In any other time, any politician who made that reference once about anybody, let alone a public figure, would be finished. Within weeks. You'd be saying, whatever happened to that Trump guy? Erased from public discourse because we stood for something, Because exhausted as we might have been by war or depression or conflict, or prejudice or hatred, we shamed the malefactors among us. The Cuomos
of this world disappeared after what they did. Donald Trump is the worst person who has ever lived in this country, the worst. It is no longer close. The insult against Anderson Cooper, against gay men, against LGBTQ, against any minority group, against just anybody who dares to combat Trump's lies and delusions and delusions of grandeur with reality, anybody who dares to take reality and hit Trump in the fucking face
with it. That insult against those people is an insult against you, and against me, and against everyone in America. And when we ignore it for one second, it lets Trump retain strength. And draining Trump of all of his strength is our only chance of survival. Trump homophobe, truly unquestionably and permanently two Day's worst person in the world.
There is a huge oral history of ESPN from twenty eleven by Jim Miller, and most of it is pretty good, but there's one line in it that triggered this recollection. The executive vice president of the company in nineteen ninety seven was named Howard Katz, and in this ESPN book he was quoted as saying, I didn't fire Keith. I just chose not to renew his contract. And then there's a couple of quotes from guys I never heard of who said, no, we fired him. None of it's truth.
Howard and I got along surprisingly well at ESPN and even better since, so I'm just going to assume he misremembered all this, and he's right, I mean, legally, he chose not to renew my contract early in nineteen ninety seven, and a couple of weeks later, instead he offered me a new four year contract which would have basically doubled
my salary. And even after I had said no thanks and I signed with NBC, the then president of ABC, Bob Eiger, whatever happened to him, tried to get me to back out of the NBC deal to renege on it and then sign a new deal at ESPN. So they offered me two new deals after they didn't renew my old contract. See how this works. In ninety six and ninety seven, it was no secret that my first choice was to leave ESPN. I had come within hours
of asking to be let out of my deal. In the summer of nineteen ninety six, a radio station in Chicago, WMVP had wanted me to go do the afternoon drive show there, a mix of news and sports, and they were offering me twice the money I was getting to host SportsCenter, and I was ready to go. Loved it, had a great week there. They wined me, they dined me, and everybody offered me a free beer. Welcome to Chicago,
you're from out of town. And then ownership of the radio station simply pulled the plug on the station it was in thirty first place and said they could save a lot more money by simply rebroadcasting what was on FM radio. And eventually, and this would have been interesting had I gone to Chicago. Eventually the owners sold WMVP
to ESPN. Anyway, my ESPN deal was set to expire on December thirty first, nineteen ninety seven, but they had the option to extend it for I can't remember either either for a year after that or two years, but they had to notify me really early in ninety seven, and instead, on February eighteenth, nineteen ninety seven, Howard Katz proposed to my then agent that we tear up the contract and do a new four year deal that started at seven hundred thousand dollars a year and covered a
radio show with Dan Patrick, and the Sunday edition of Sports Center, and the sp Awards ceremonies, and the Internet and everything else. This was a lot of money for ESPN in nineteen ninety seven, seven hundred thousand dollars a year, so we played around with that for a while, but I didn't really want to go into radio full time,
not then when I still had dark hair. So on April fourth, nineteen ninety seven, Howard Katz came back with another offer, three Sports centers a week plus some radio, starting at five hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year.
I noticed that this was less than the first offer, so two weeks later, at the first ever Jackie Robinson Night at Chase Stadium in New York Howard came up to me and asked me, in front of everybody in our booth, ranging from Chris Berman to Robin Roberts, to all the producers, and briefly to President Bill Clinton, he asked me if we were close on this new deal that he'd offered me. I got angry at him. He got angry at me for getting angry at him, and
I said, you know, forget it. And what's more, it makes no sense for me to hang around here as a lame duck. Howard wait, Howard the duck, and he calmed down. He said I could look at other jobs and we'd let things cool off and talk again about a new deal in a few weeks after I looked around to see if it was something I'd rather do than be at ESPN, and if it still wasn't going anywhere, we would agree on a date early in the summer and I could leave six months before the contract officially ended.
And then three huge things happened about this that most people still don't know to this day. Even after all that, When I called Phil Mushnick of the New York Post and Richard Sandomir of the New York Times, and I told them I would be leaving ESPN, and it appeared I would be going to go to Court TV to be the host and executive producer of my own sports show, four nights a week. I almost stayed at ESPN once
it got out that I was leaving. I got a letter for a viewer who told me that his son, who had autism, had been at his other son's little league game, and when his brother banged out a base hit, this kid, who had rarely ever spoken in his life, suddenly shouted out one of my catchphrases. This guy said, he hit the ball real hard. Then there was a flyball, and the boy said it's deep, and I don't think it's playable. Then they went home, and this virtually noncommunicative
child began to draw illustrations of my catchphrases. For whatever reason, I had triggered some kind of blossoming by this child at his brother, and his father sent me a book of the child's illustrations of my catchphrases. I am not trying to suggest I really had anything to do with this. It was good fortune and circumstance, and probably something to do with the tone of my voice, nothing more. But I was very moved by this, and I remain so
and by other things. People wrote to me or wrote in the press about how much the show Dan and I did meant to them, and I went back to Howard Katz and I said, look, I know I've been impossible. You have to understand that from my perspective, the company has also been impossible. But Dan and I created too good a show to let it die. When I go here to Court TV, I'm only going to work Monday
through Thursday on this new thing. If you will send a car to take me to and from Bristol every Sunday and give me some tokensal give me fifty thousand dollars or something, I'll just do the Sunday night show for you every week. You'll never see me, I'll never see you. It's the show that has the highest factor of management control. It's basically coloring in by numbers, and it reruns all morning on Monday. So forty percent of the people who see Dan and I during the week
they see this one show. That's it. If you want some other stuff for me to do, like radio commentaries, great, we can negotiate that, but we should not let this die. At least let's have it on once a week, and Howard Katz said, Okay, let me think about this. It sounds really good. And he got back to me the next day and he said it was the most difficult decision he had ever made in this business, but he
just couldn't do it. It established too much of a precedent, especially the idea that somebody could work at ESPN and also at some other TV operation. He put it very bluntly, if ESPN was not the sole employer of its people, it could not control them by threatening to fire them.
And he looked at me and he said, especially you, And in the same sentence he said, look, we'd love to continue the relationship, though we see lots of ways you could fit into ESPN Classic, like once a week or once a month or whatever, and we'd like to get in on the bidding for these radio commentaries that you're going to do on the side. Well, it all
ended surprisingly amicably. I decided to go to NBC and NBC Sports instead of Court TV, and as I signed the contract, I called the ESPN president, Steve Bornstein and
the head of Sports Center, John Walsh. I called them from the office of the head of NBC Sports Dick Eversol, and in my diary, I can't tell if that was June nineteenth, nineteen ninety seven or June twentieth, nineteen ninety seven, but I made the calls, and it was Eversall's idea, call them now, call them right now, it'll matter later. The funniest thing was the following Monday, June twenty third, I was packing up my stuff in my house in Connecticut.
I am all set, and I am officially beginning my first week not working for ESPN and instead working for NBC. And the phone rings, and it's John Walsh in Los Angeles for something, and he has to talk to my agent immediately. Do you know where she is right now? Howard Katz and I have just spoken with Bob Iger and he wants to present a primetime proposal to you
for ABC and you can continue at ESPN. And I laughed, and I said, John, I signed with NBC last week the World Series and the news show and Super Bowl stuff. Remember I called you from Dick Ebersoll's office. You remember it was Friday or Thursday, whatever it was. We're having the news conference today and he is dead serious and he says to me, oh oh oh, and there's a long pause. Well, well, I still need to talk to
your agent. Well. I had known Bob Iger, who had apparently precipitated this phone call, since I was in college in nineteen seventy nine. He had given me an hour of his time just for career advice, because I had interned at the TV station for which his first wife had been a news producer, Channel five in New York. I told that story I think two weeks ago, and Bob was wonderful to me. So I called Bob and I explained what had happened, and he said, Steve Bornstein
only told me that you were leaving this morning. I'm very very sorry. I knew there was contentious negotiations about a new deal for you, but I had no clue it was at the point where you might actually leave. I should have known. That's my fault. That's why I told John to make the call. He did. Trust me. If I had known, would have been totally different. I would have made it right by you. You would have
wanted to stay. And if it doesn't work at NBC, you call me directly and I'll bring you back here myself. I mean the ending was so unexpectedly and surprisingly pleasant that even when my new bosses at MSNBC suddenly announced I think it was in newsweek that they were going to call my program The Big Show, which was our nickname for Sports Center at ESPN, the Big Show. But they hadn't told anybody at ESPN that we were going
to call our MSNBC show the Big Show. It was me who got on the phone with Howard Katz and a couple of other people at ESPN to apologize and to make sure they were okay with it. So even after my ESPN career was officially over and all chance of my returning was dead, we tried to revive it, both of us, Howard Katz and me, in good faith. And I don't think Bob Eiger was blowing smoke at me. He had no reason to. And even after all that,
the parting was non nuclear. I think they sent me a fruit basket for my first night at MSNBC on October first, and then it all blew up. John Walsh called the TV sports columnist at USA Today, Rudy Marski, and gave him my first set of ratings from MSNBC, just to try to make me look like I couldn't succeed without ESPN. Marski told me that direct quote. They want to punish you publicly. Walsh has been pressuring me to run the very poor ratings, and he said, I'm
going to finally do it. I just wanted to give you a little warning and maybe you have a comment. Well, that set the tone for the next five years of warfare, and it was nuclear pretty quickly. But this impression that ESPN chose to dismiss me or not renew me, or not bring me back, it's nonsense. Howard did not not renew me. Instead, he offered to double my salary if
I stayed. If I had signed with NBC, Iiger was still trying to get me to back out after I had signed with NBC and stay at ESPN and ABC. The irony of this minor detail from about nineteen ninety seven printed in twenty eleven, I think is that I had already returned to ESPN by the time it was printed. I took an hour out of my day at MSNBC to go on with Dan Patrick on his ESPN radio show from two thousand and five through two thousand and seven. A year after that book, came out with that quote
in it. Twenty twelve, I was talking to the executives at ESPN about going back full time, and a year later I did to launch a nightly show on ESPN two. And that ended when they laid off like one hundred
million dollars worth of talent salaries in twenty fifteen. But then I went back again in twenty eighteen and I did Sports Center, and I did baseball games on radio and on TV, and I did reports, and I did commentaries and did the not top ten plays of the week and on and on and on, and finally we parted happily in the late summer of twenty twenty so I could return to political coverage, and I knew they wouldn't want that, and I didn't want to put it
on ESPN, and the unlikely result of that my partying happily in twenty twenty. On the books at Disney, I am listed as a Disney and ESPN retiree. I get benefits I retired from ESPN. I mean, they didn't give me a gold watch or anything, but I'm technically a retiree. And if you had predicted that in nineteen ninety seven
or twenty eleven. Well, you know the cliche. I bring all this up again because I don't know how often I have thought of that father and his two boys, and the one who started speaking, but only in my catch phrases. I would guess it's at least once a month. Those boys would have to be in their thirties by now or nearly, and I wonder often of what has become of them, and I sure hope they are well. I've done all the damage I can do here. Thank
you for listening. Fan Duel Sports Network, that's the new address, five networks just covering baseball fiftieth anniversary. In the business is October, if there's still a business, if there's still a planet in October. Most of our Countdown music was arranged, produced, and performed by Brian Ray and John Phillips Chanel, the musical directors of Countdown, and it was produced by TKO Brothers. That's Brian and John and me. Mister Ray was on guitars,
bass and drums. Mister Chanelle handled the orchestration and keyboards. Hour sit here and fifthy. Musical comments are by the best baseball stadium organist ever, Nancy Faust, the Olderman theme from ESPN two, written by Mitch Warren Davis, appears courtesy of ESPN, Inc. And it is the sports music other music arranged and performed by the group No Horns allowed. My announcer today because we were talking about New York was my friend Clarie David doing the impression of the
old Yankees' public address announcer Bob Shepherd. Everything else was as always my fault. Let's countdown for today, day one hundred and fifty seven of America held hostage again at just one three hundred and seven days until the scheduled end of his lame duck and lame brained term. Unless putin or musk remove him sooner or advance does where the actuarial tables do or we do. He did Iran because he thinks it will help him domestically. All that matters is that you say, is it blue? The next
scheduled countdown is Monday. Until that next one, I'm Keith Olberman. Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and good luck. We here is obliteration. Countdown with Keith Olberman is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts