TRUMP CHICKENS OUT OF SECOND DEBATE - 9.12.24

to eight, So why would I do a rematch? Unquote. Actually, in the world of boxing or UFC, Trump's campaign would be in intensive care at this hour, and the only demand would beat a pull it off life support and end its suffering. And actually, in the world of debates, it was Trump who had demanded additional debates with Joe Biden and then with the Vice president. So by his own rules, Trump just proclaimed he lost the CNN debate to the President in June. Still, Donald Duck has the

moral force of intestinal parasite. Mentally, he cannot process defeat, and in the only UFC he competes in, the acronym stands for utter ef fing cowardice, So he is doing the misquoted advice Senator George Aiken didn't actually give to Lyndon Johnson about Vietnam. Declare victory and get out, and we all know what happened to Lyndon Johnson. There are

no polls suggesting Trump won the debate. None. There are some online votes, But as Trump could never quite understand why people laughed when he would bring up Putin's eighty eight percent approval rating in Russia, he cannot recognize, or more likely, cannot understand, the not so subtle nuances that separate elections, actual valid extrapolatory opinion polling or ratings, and data produced by letting the same idiot push the same Trump button on the same website read toua dot com

one thousand times an hour. He can see only two things, his own name and a number attached to it. If the number thwarts his desires, he declares that number to be invalid. It is a perfectly rounded, symmetrical, closed universe. Most people who try to live this way wind up in prison or in an institution, or prematurely dead. Trump is the one who slipped through. In other contexts, this is terrifying to ponder here it is just pathetic and hilarious all of our lives. You and I have heard

he doesn't know the meaning of the word defeat. Well, here we are this idiot. Trump literally does not know the meaning of the word defeat. The rest of the far right it knows the meaning of the word defeat. The Wall Street Journal editorial board declared Trump lost. She clearly won the debate last night. RFK Junior sounded a similar note. Vice President Harris clearly won. Polymarket polling odds went from fifty two to forty six, Trump to forty

nine forty nine. Even wagering at poly Market went to seventy three percent favoring Kamala Harris. Matt Walsh wrote, do you need me to lie to you and tell you this was a brilliant performance by Trump? Would that make you feel better? Trump? Sir David Bossi was asked what was Trump's best debate answer, and Bossy would only say, that's a good question. You're putting me on the spot.

Trump campaign hoodlum Corey Lewandowski was asked what was Trump's best debate answer, and he could only say he had so many good answers. A Trump surrogate said she managed to lure Trump into every trap she set up for him. I wish I hadn't watched it. This surrogate was named Alexey Naumov. He is a member of the Russian International

Affairs Council, and he said that on Russian state television. Meanwhile, it took Trump's surrogate and pretend professor Hugh Hewitt more than nineteen hours to come up with this second day excuse quote. Opinions are settling. Trump was not at his best, but was usually okay and at some point good, especially on the border and his closing statement. Nineteen hours to think up some means of pulling his lifeline meal ticket out of the burning trumpster dumpster, and Hugh Hewitt comes

up with, he was usually okay. As we await the first true post debate polls, it appears only one has been completed since Trump's handlers came out and carried him off with two shovels and a wheelbarrow. The poll in question has Harris winning the debate by fifty three to thirty four and increasing her lead in the election polling from two points to three points. And nah, that doesn't seem like very much, but the pollster is so col

Strategies polling for Red Eagle Politics. And this is literally an online service whose website redirects you to its Twitter accounts and Gmail address, and it is designed to fabricate good poll numbers for conservatives. And oops, it couldn't even do that. Here. A TV news Live focus group voted twelve to five that Harris won the debate. The focus

group was on Fox News. One member said Trump was so bad, He's just like an old suit from like nineteen eighty seven, right now, accurate with a little perspective. What is shocking today is not that Trump won't debate her again. It might actually be the first kind of smart thing he's ever done. How could he ever do well enough to erase the impact of Tuesday Night, even in the aggregate, even if there were ten more debates.

What is shocking is how unprepared he and the fascists were for the need to find an excuse to make up a scapegoat, to make up two scapegoats. Obviously, they finally found them ABC News and Disney and well known Marxist Taylor Swift. Trump proceeded to go from the debate debacle to a nine eleven debacle in which cameras caught him during a moment of silence. Biden Harris, Mike Bloomberg, Rudy Giuliani, and even JD. Vance were all eyes closed,

head bowed Trump. Trump was caught looking up into the sky like ooh, a balloon in the shape of a kiddy. Trump also managed to somehow bring Laura Lumer to the nine eleven memorial on nine to eleven. Laura Lumer, who shared a video insisting quote nine to eleven was an inside job. How could you go through that debate and

it not be the worst moment of your week? Trump? Happily, Trump did not let Nancy Mace or Senator Loomis of Wyoming or the other MAGA idiots come along, the ones who paid tribute to the quote two nine hundred and ninety six victims of nine to eleven. It was twenty nine hundred and seventy seven victims. You only get to their number nine hundred ninety six if you and include the nineteen terrorists. Nancy Mace and other Republicans wrote, we

will never forget about them. A pre scheduled Trump fundraising email went out early yesterday and back to the subject of a scapegoat. The subject line read I love ABC News and it was all about how well he did and how fair the debate had been. And at the same time, Trump was on TV insisting that some they will now take away ABC's news license, their license to news. There are no news licenses. Even most Trumpists know there are no news licenses. But Trump now he has to

have news licenses. I think ABC took a big hit last night. I mean to be honest that they're a news organization.

I have a pet news license. And speaking of pet halibuts, there's jv jd Vance, who was suddenly the popular successful one on the ticket, promptly gave that distinction back by addressing the Taylor's Swift endorsement and doing another one of those Freudian slips in which he wound up humiliating Trump.

are flying around the money booth cash blowing me. I guess I didn't hear Trump over maybe the sound of my own laughter and his own petulant fury. I didn't hear him on Tuesday admit that he has met with Vladimir Putin since he was ejected from a White House. I'll speak to one, I'll speak to the other. I'll get him together. That war would have never happened.

it on TV. And if that admission doesn't summarize his mental problem, I don't know what would the undocumented immigrants in your jails and why Kamala Harris wants to spend your taxpayer dollars to give transgender surgeries to them and the pet cats and dogs and ducks they are eating in Ohio.

Ninety minutes though after the debate ended, as people were still shocking and mocking over Trump's claim that Haitian immigrants are eating pets in Springfield, Ohio, Trump posted the video of a woman in a different Ohio city that is three hours away from Springfield, who was arrested on August twenty sixth for animal cruelty after she actually did kill

and eat a cat in public. As the independent journalist and now pet detective Jacqueline's Sweet discovered, the woman's name is Alexis Ferrell, possibly for and she was born in Ohio to American parents, and there is no family connection to Haiti at all. Alexis Ferrell's mother went to prison, though Sweet reports for her role in a murder cover up, and Pharrell, twenty seven, has been charged repeatedly for drugs

and theft. It was also the issue of the local representative of the Nazi group Blood Tribe, who addressed the Springfield City commissioners last month and told them, quote, I was head of the anti Haitian immigration march earlier this month. So the right wing's fairly successful attempt to transform a nutjob who ate a cat in Ohio, the place of her birth, where her folks are from, and who is not named Robert F. Kennedy Junior, to turn her into a Haitian immigrant that may or may not be connected

to the aforementioned Nazi movement. There, the right wing troll and ron DeSantis thug Christopher Ruffo has now offered quote a five thousand dollars bounty to anyone who can provide my team with hard, verifiable evidence that Haitian migrants are eating cats in Springfield, Ohio. Now, I'd like to read that line again, as Walter Cronkite, if you don't mind five thousand dollars bounty to anyone who can provide my team with hard beaver of hiable evidence Haitian migrants or

eating cats and Springfield, Ohio. That's the way it is. Wednesday, September twelfth, twenty four wonkron Height CVS News five thousand dollars bounty to anyone who can provide my team with hard, verifiable evidence that Haitian migrants are eating cats in Springfield, Ohio. And mister rufoul I have a man online three says he wants to claim the cat bounty. Yes, he says, his name is mister d Trump, and they set it on television. I'm one of the top policy analysts of

my generation. Did you know that couldn't tell it from this show? Also of interest here though, how to tie the tenant media Russian stooge Gate scandal, and Trump and a Handmaid's Tail and Taylor's Swift together in one dangerous remark made by one of the alleged right wing recipients of funneled Kremlin cash. I'll just read the headline from the website Mediaite. Quote Dave Ruben urges young pretty girl Taylor Swift to reconsider Harris endorsement because Venezuelan gangs might

rape or kill her unquote. That's next. This is countdown.

He was congratulating her on her sixteenth anniversary, and as the x er noted, it was yet another year Matdow decided to wear her ingratitude like a badge, which made me think again about how Rachel and I and all the rest of us almost got canceled before her first anniversary, the day NBC almost took MSNBC off the air. Next, and things I promised not to tell first, there are

still more new idiots to talk about. The daily roundup of the miscreants, morons and Dunning Kruger effects specimens who constitute two day's worst persons in the world, Lebrons worse. Virginia Republican candidate Hung Cow, the guy who alerted the world in June that the Washington Post was investigating whether or not he'd padded his military resume. Hung kW is back with a medallion that he is apparently handing out, which reads, I want my senator to be hung. Now,

this is stupid and crass, but I might make that joke. Hell, you heard how I started this episode. But I keep thinking, you're talking to Republicans. Man. If they think of you as being hung, they mean Mike Pence kind of hung, don't they also hung? Kow has been down in the polls to Tim Kaine for two months by from twelve points to fourteen points. If he's anything, he's hung out to dry cow? Am I right? Or more likely don't

have a cow? Man? The runner up the Silver Two of my least favorite fascists, Trump operative Tim Murtaw and Trump apologist Byron York. The former Republican Tim Miller, now of The Bulwark, tells this story from the spin room Tuesday Night. There's no job in politics, he writes, less fun than being the spin room representative for a loser. Trust me, I've been there. You stand underneath a placard with your name, but you raise it only to half mast in the hopes that the media jackals find some

other prey. First, just after Trump's lame spin room performance, I encountered a former Trump spokesman, Tim Murtaw, a one time establishment type. I knew a little bit he was huddled closely with one of the Washington examiners MAGA content generators. Byron York leaned over and observed that Murtaw had found a friendly voice. Quote Byron will write you something good, I said, as Murtaw grimaced at me, Yorke grunted out, f you smartest observation by Byron Yorke in like twenty years,

but our winner the worst, Dave Rubin. This is actually pretty disturbing, but pretty much par for the course. You already know the name Dave Ruben. His name came up last week, another propagandist with a lavish lifestyle, and suddenly turns out there are indictments alleging that he is one of the Echo Chambers stars who has been getting paid indirectly, maybe unknowingly, being overpaid by a couple one hundred thousand

dollars a month and by the Kremlin. Dave has a delivery that is, to put it mildly mild, which just underscores the banal of his evil. I'll play the tape of what he said, what he seemed to be saying about Taylor's swift. I think it self explains.

Dave threatens Taylor's Swift Ruben two days worst person, don't know to the number one story on the countdown on my favorite topic me And this is not the anniversary of this event, but I was reminded of it over the weekend. So here goes. Often it happens in television that there are events so traumatic that the cliche about your life flashing before your eyes does not apply, but an equally hackneyed one about your career flashing before your

eyes might. The executive producer of our MSNBC news cast Countdown, Izzy Povich, and I were on the grown up elevator to the office of NBC President Jeff Zooker on the fifty second floor of thirty Rock in New York, Summoned there by some garbled message from MSNBC President Phil Griffin about MSNBC being taken off the air, I was mumbling to Izzy, sundry imprecations and reminiscences, eight freaking months is we spent twelve freaking months forcing them to create Meadows

show at last eight months, all the crap prompter practice getting her over her fears rockets past CNN only eight months of show and now it's all gone. Izzy reminded me it was not just Rachel's show that was threatened, which was why poor Court Harson from Hardball was already upstairs, along with poor Ed Schultz and Phil Griffin, and Rachel's executive producer Bill Wolf and some clown from Morning Joe

and a couple of other MSNBC executives. And us. I know, I know, I did the line from the drunken Irishman from Hitchcock's The Birds, complete with the bad accent. It's the end of the world, I said, Jeff, immilt is going to take MSNBC off the air. I didn't need any of my overwrought visions from two years earlier of the future of liberal news commentary falling out the NBC window to its death on the rink. This was the

real thing. The chairman of General Electric was threatening to open the window himself, throw us out the window himself, and then race down to the pavement to stomp on our dying remains himself. Poor Ed Schultz heard Jeff Zucker say those words, and he had screwed up his face and tilted his head like a puppy hearing a car crash. He had not believed it the first time. He had not believed it the second time. Zucker said it a third time. Immelt is going to take MSNBC off the

effing air at, Schultz groaned. After weeks of Griffin's coaxing, he had finally just moved from the As to New York the preceding weekend, Yet he was still somehow only the second most strung out person in the room. You, Zucker shouted at me, You're the smartest one in the room. What the f do we do now? I'll confess I was shaken by this because it appeared for once that Zucker was not being sarcastic. I had never before seen

him flush nor flustered. This was a guy who wore fleece in July, yet now he was beat red and sweating. Sometimes he knew what he was doing, and, as his opposition to hiring Maddow had proved, sometimes he didn't know what he was doing. But he always acted as the most confident man in the galaxy. But now he literally had no clue what to do next. And he not only could not ignore my advice, he desperately needed it. This situation and that color on his face were almost

worth watching the corporate fascists nuke my network. I asked Zucker to explain what happened? You, God, Dan, well know what happen happened? Zucker moved towards me, and I stood up and I told him I would see myself out. He stopped, remembering that he did indeed actually need my help. I'm sorry I apologize. This isn't rational, This is Immelt. Last week sometime Bill O'Reilly snapped, He told Murdoch he wasn't gonna take any more of what you were saying

about him on the air. So he did a piece last night accusing GE of manufacturing the components that been used in roadside bombs that were built in Iran to kill Americans in Iraq, which is true legally, that's legally true. They found roadside bombs that had like thirty year old GE transistors or TV tubes from nineteen fifty four or something in them. Legally, GE did manufacture components that were used in roadside bombs that were built in Iran to

kill Americans in Iraq. So O'Reilly puts this on his effing show as a lead story, and then Fox sent two camera crews in this little crap producer from o'reiley show, Jesse Waters something to steak Immelt out and chase him around the GE shareholders meeting in Charlotte. Zucker finally came up for air and I jumped in, why didn't Emmelt have six camera crews to stake out the two Fox crews and chase them around in Charlotte. I mean, isn't

that one of our news hubs. Charlotte doesn't emmelt own like twenty camera crews?

and Matthews is fired. And he pointed at poor Ed Schultz and you're fired, and Ed whimpered, So smart ass, what the F do we do? I feigned all the nonchalants I could feign. If I could have lit a shroot by striking a match on the soul of my boot, I would have. It's manageable. But Jeff, why is emmelt so worked up about what O'Reilly said about him? Only O'Reilly's nutjob viewers actually believe any of that crap. Nobody at GE. Nobody investing in ge could possibly believe we're

building components for roadside bombs? Zucker inhaled deeply. Emmelt's mother believes it. All the heads in the room turned toward the president of NBC. Missus. Emmelt back in Cincinnati is a devoted Bill O'Reilly viewer watches him every night, sees this, calls him, says, Sonny, why are you manufacturing components that were used in roadside bombs built in Iran to kill Americans in Iraq? I had not expected that, I said to Zucker, So he'll really burn what two hundred million

a year in profits between Rachel and me? Because his mom watches Bill O'Reilly. Zucker got angry again. You bet your effing assi will Now you said it was manageable, How how the hef do we manage it? Ulberman? Just a minute? How old is she? Zucker summoned all his annoyance. How old is who ML's mother? How old is she? Jeff Zucker was really annoyed. How the f should I know? You're missing the point? I had him really worked up nearly to the boiling point. It was great, guess, Zucker spluttered,

I don't know he's in his mid fifties. She's got to be eighty ninety something. I stifled a fake yawn. Yeah, you're right, probably closer to ninety now that I think of it. So the problem is she watches O'Reilly. She tells him what's on Fox, what O'Reilly's saying about Ge. Well, I think you have a simple solution. I'd say, the first thing you do is you send over a couple of big guys to her house and you pull the

freaking cable out of the wall. Zucker actually gasped. My producer is Ipovich unsuccessfully stifled a laugh, and I saw Rachel crack a smile. Zucker regained himself. This isn't funny, Alderman, I crossed my legs. Oh, it's a little funny. And anyway, it's not essential. If the problem is emailed is threatening to take the network off the air because O'Reilly is avenging himself against me by attacking him and attacking Ge. The short term solution is easy, and in fact it

is manageable. The long term solution that's not easy, and that's not manageable. But the short term one that's simple. Rest of this week, next week, maybe the week after that, even we just don't mention Fox News on MSNBC, something resembling a smile crossed Zucker's face. It made him look a little less like a lizard person and more like a monkey with glasses. You do that forever? No, not forever.

I would not do that, I said to Bias time. Yes, but remember who was it who was in my office last winter telling me that I should go on the air and just to f with Fox? I should ask why Rupert Murdoch was still running a huge international media company like News Corp. Despite all the reports that he's suffering from dementia, even though there haven't been any reports that he's suffering from dementia. For everybody's sake, here, who was that again who told me to do that? Zucker's

goodwill was gone again? Obviously that was me. What's your point? My point is, we built this new brand of ours organically on a couple of themes, a couple of statements of principle, and one of them is to use your words just to f with Fox. If we don't f with Fox for a couple of weeks at the start of the summer, who's gonna care. Who's gonna notice, But like after two weeks, three weeks, our viewers are gonna notice, and the TV writers are gonna notice, and then the

crap will hit from every direction. You can think of temporary freeze on mentioning Fox, then mentioning O'Reilly and mentioning Murdock. Fine, permanent freeze. Might as well let Immelt turn us off in the morning. After all, I don't think Zooker actually heard the last part about em Milt turning us off. After all, the lack of color was returning to his face. Okay, breathe, he kept saying to himself. Breathe, breathe, Okay, breathe. He

looked at me and nodded. He pointed at Izzy and at Phil Griffin and me, You and you and you and I. We will talk tomorrow, maybe tonight, and we'll all meet again next week. Until then, nothing about Fox, anybody, are we clear? Nothing on the air about Fox. Silence in the room. Then the assorted noises of people rising,

mixed with attempts to resuscitate poor Ed Schultz. Somebody Matthew's guy Harson I think, was almost at the door out of Zucker's office, an office so big that it was to steal the ring Lardner line the signs of the Yale Bowl, but with lamps. And then a voice spoke up, quietly but firmly, Excuse me. It was Rachel Maddow. Excuse me. I will not have the content of my show dictated by any corporations, including the one I work for. Remember

this is June two thousand and nine. She still felt that way then, and especially one I don't work for. I will walk out first. I cannot have the audience wondering what else I have not told them. I don't do a lot about Fox on my show, but if there is a story about Fox, I will not honor this freeze. I will report that story. And if I'm prevented from reporting that story, I will leave. Whereupon she left,

Zucker barked Phil Alderman, is he stay? When the rest of the room had cleared, Zucker blew air out of his mouth as if it were smoke. He gestured violently at me with his right arm. I told you she was a mistake. You didn't listen to me. I told you. Now she's your problem. All this is your problem. Get her back on the Resida or else. Now I had run out of goodwill and jokes. Oh, I'll get her

back on the reservation, Jeff. But if you think this is my problem, just think about what happens if he really does take us off the air, or if it just gets out that he threatened to take us off the air because his mother didn't like what Fox said about him. That's my problem. Uh uh, that's your problem. And it's the problem of the CEO of the freaking sixth largest corporation in the world, who makes his business decisions involving hundreds of millions of dollars of profits based

on what his mother says. At this point, Phil Griffin managed to pull Zucker away and Izzy and I made for the door, saying nothing until we were in the elevator. Finally, she asked, what are you going to do about Rachel? I look straight ahead, I have depth perception ish she was while traveling forward, backwards, up or down. Yeah, if I know what I'm gonna do about her. But I got an idea. I mean, the only person she was really talking to in there was herself. This isn't a

brand new surprise success for her anymore. This is successful. This is what nine ten months she's successful. She said she was once a dancing cell phone outside of a cell phone store outside of Boston. She ain't going back to that. I went to talk to Rachel about an hour later and reassured her. I mentioned that powerful as Fox was, they were not going to be able to re invade Iraq by themselves, and unless she moved it way closer than it had been, nobody would cross her

censorship line. And I said, just give me as much time as the French government took before fleeing during the Nazi advance in nineteen forty. I said, give me, what was it, thirty three days? Give me thirty three days. If we aren't back where we were this morning, we can both quit on the air. I mean that'd be fun, right three nights. Well after midnight on a Friday, my NBC issued BlackBerry buzzed with a quick email from Rachel

matdow Hey. She wrote, don't necessarily quote me because I'm really drunk, but just make the best deal you can for us. I trust you. We don't need to do Fox all the time. I never do Fox stories anyway. I just had to say that, and this is the best platform we will ever have. Well, she was right at least for the time being. A couple of weeks later I had to sneak in a script that blasted Fox, and at ten thirty at home that night, I got a call from a drunken Phil Griffin shouting into the phone,

I have a family. Zucker had to go meet with Roger Ayles secretly inside thirty Rock, and I hope they remember to clean the room afterwards, and mlt even had to meet with Murdoch. And then, happily, some idiot Ge executive decided to boast to The New York Times about getting us little talent children under control and a big deal with the executives over at Fox and how they'd settled everything, which blew up the whole deal instantly, because the moment the deal went public, NBC looked so stupid,

and even NBC News was now risked. The only point of the whole thing was to keep the Immelts and the Zookers and the Griffins and the ales Is from throwing us and our little island of liberal commentary out of that window at thirty Rock. But as Rachel Mattow and I would be constantly reminded in the ensuing years, Thirty Rock has a lot of freaking windows. I have no doubt that that man Emmelt would have taken the

network off the air. His ego was that fragile. Happily he was replaced by people from Comcast whose egos are even more fragile. I've done all the damage I can do here, but they've not done all the damage they can do yet there not yet anyway, thank you for listening. We're now back to five episodes a week, posting nightly

just after midnight Eastern. Once again there is a Monday Countdown, and thank you kindly for joining in on the live thing after the debate on Tuesday, which cleared I don't know one hundred and twenty five one hundred and fifty

thousand views plus the podcast numbers. Thank you. Brian Ray and John Phillip Shanelle, the musical directors have Countdown, arranged, produced, and performed most of our music, Mister Chanelle handling the orchestration and keyboards, Mister Ray as ever on the guitars, bass and drums, and 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 Olberman theme from ESPN two. It was written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN, Inc. Other music arranged and performed by No Horns Allowed. My announcer today was my friend Stevie van Zandt, and everything else else was pretty much my fault. So that's countdown for this, the fifty fifth day until the twenty twenty four presidential election, the three hundred and thirty ninth day since convicted feldon dementia.

J Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically elected government of the United States normally and heretofore. I've mentioned using presidential immunity, using the mental health system. Now I say, let's just use the election or get him to do another debate to keep him from doing it again while we still can. The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow Bolton's as the news requires. Until the next one, I'm Keith Olberman. 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,