Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. Trump has now doubled down on his smearing of military heroes of Medal of Honor recipients by comparing them to the likes of Miriam Adelson and her late husband Sheldon, whose contribution to America was literally that a contribution giving Trump a out of campaign money. And no, I am not leading the podcast with the Democratic National Convention nor the
lamest anti convention protest ever seen. To a local news reporter in Pennsylvania, Trump has now insisted veterans are not enraged at what he said, that he has not done untold damage to his supposedly ultra patriotic base, and naturally, in doing that, he made it worse because now he had to clarify that what he meant was that Miriam Adelson looks better than Medal of Honor winners because Medal of Honor winners are often horribly wounded or dead, and who wants to look horribly wounded or dead.
Many veterans are upset about that, and clean hear in Pennsylvania. No, I didn't hear that. I only heard when I say better, I would rather in a certain way get it because people that get the Congressional of Honor, which I've given to many, are often horribly wounded or dead. They're often dead. They get it posthumously. And when you get the Congressional Medal of Honor, I always consider that to be the ultimate,
but it is a painful thing to get it. When you get the Presidential Medal of Freedom, it's usually for other things, like you've achieved great success in sports, so you've achieved great success someplace else. When you get the Medal of Honor, generally speaking, and I've met many of them, and I've seen the families of many of them, this is an incredible honor, but it was a statement that is much more painful to get because they're oftentimes in
very bad shape. I've seen him come up and they've suffered greatly, Whereas the Presidential Medal of Freedom need to my knowledge, I don't think anybody suffered other than they've you know, they've worked hard, and they've done graz things. Onesday military award. One's a civilian award, but sometimes very painful to get the other.
Well, that settles it. Trump took time out from digging that hole to insisting to a Pennsylvania audience yesterday that Kamala Harris's laugh is that of a crazy person, because clearly somebody has told him that people no names please have been calling him crazy, and because you know, he's never laughed in his life, except perhaps to express cruelty, he will get the chance to do that today when he could easily go full KKK level racist at a
rally at Howell, Michigan, known for decades as the haven there for white supremacists, where marchers chanted we love Hitler last month when they followed we love Hitler with we love Trump, and that's Howell, Michigan, Howell and not howl. Trump is neither howling nor laughing cruelly or otherwise about the Poles. Morning Consult not only saying it's tracking Pole now has her up forty eight forty four. It was
three points last week, it is now four points. She's also above water on favorability by fifty to forty five, so Kamala Harris is plus five favorable, her high water mark, something Trump has never come close to approaching. Morning Consult also notes that since she took over the campaign four weeks and two days ago, she has not trailed Trump. Once in any of the daily tracking updates. The poles continue to be so good, so uniformly, that it is now hard to keep up with them all and probably
not worth the en effort, as you already know. Sunday, CBS News polling put her up three, but ABC and the Washington Post pegged it at six. Sienna in Arizona, for the Times, has gone from Trump by six in May to Harris by five. Now Sienna in North Carolina is Harris plus two, with or without Kennedy in the race. It is so consistent. Now let me caveat it again. It could all go south before you finish listening to this podcast. Who knows. But it's so consistent at just
this moment that even Politico has noticed. Somebody there wrote, some Republicans are preparing for the possibility that Harris will have a larger lead on Labor Day than she does now, good grief, that is perhaps the only certainty here. Hell, Labor Day is two weeks from yesterday, and her post convention bump, which is average historically four points, will not
show up in the polls until this weekend. She will probably give some of that back next week, but she will be up more and even more often by Labor Day, and then we will be in the home stretch. Historical analysis by a couple of authors indicates that whoever gets the largest bump from their convention maintains that bump through election day. The convention, although meaningless, as I will point out in a moment, is not meaningless when it comes
to the polls. As an aside, though, I continue to be amazed by Democrats who are literally afraid of these good numbers, trauma leftover from the first half of this year and twenty sixteen, of course, fear of overconfidence. I look at them and I see an opportunity to be less afraid and to be more vindictive. There's a stable, small lead. Let's get more sleep now and be more vicious down the stretch. Let's metaphorically kill them and eat them.
The bigger the lead, the bigger the win, the less likely the Republicans are to even try to force a contingent election where Republicans merely stall certification for Harris long enough to create a passive aggressive kind of January sixth, where the Electoral College count can't be finalized, and then God knows what happens next. Metaphorically, look at the poles, get more sleep, metaphorically, kill them and eat them. And please remember when you do that, don't be like JD. Vance.
Remember what to eat them with. If you are going to demean yourself and do the eat the local food ritual, just eat the dam food. Don't go to pat Cheese Steaks in Philly and accuse them of hating Swiss cheese because the cheese steike wit is wit cheese whiz. It's like Swiss cheese either, but everybody says it's in souls. Why do you guys say Swiss cheese is the story native We just.
Whiz first, all right.
Okay, alright, love what I want? I wanna. I want a cheese steak with wiz. JV. Vance turning a cheese steak at a tourist trap into philosophy or being generous into a callback to a John Kerry campaign misstep from two thousand and three two thousand and three might as well invoke the campaigns of Rutherford B. Hayes and President Polk. JV. Vance continues to be the gift that keeps on giving. Last Friday, there was a new character on the Vance campaign, Atlas.
Atlas is quotequote, his unquote dog named for Atlas shrugged because those book oriented trumpers of all. Red Ain rand As, a professional dog walker, pointed out to the website Jezebel as Vance introduced Atlas to the airplane stairs on Friday, he was holding the leash to Atlas's easy walk harness with just a couple of fingers. I mean, all I have is malteses, and even with them, I do what everybody else who's ever had a dog for more than
ninety seconds. Does I double wrap the leash around my hand or quadruple wrappit, or I often have it go across my palm and intertwine it with my fingers. All dogs have outstanding body control and low centers of gravity. But as to JV quote his unquote dog, Atlas is a German shepherd. With that light grip, Vance looked like he was carrying a piece of string in his hand. If Atlas had pulled hard enough, he would have not only gotten away from JV, would have pulled him down
the goddamn stairs. I would point out since Friday, we have not seen Atlas on the campaign trail. He did not go and get a cheese steak and strike up a conversation with the guy at PATS, although I'm sure it would have been a smarter conversation than the one JV had. From deep in their souls, you can hear the disappointment forcing its way out like a primal scream. It was the primal scream of reporters who were promised tear gas and violence and Billie clubs and got only
their own tears. The reporters nationwide on Fox, internationally on BBC, heartbroken, stunned, leaving. There were no riots at the opening day of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, not one goddamned canister of tear gas, unused pro Palestine protest signs that we got, got hundreds of them in Union Park. They're still sitting there, unclaimed, unused, staring up mockingly at Trump's stalking horse, Cornell West, as he wondered where all the protesters were at mint condition
now available at extremely popular prices. I am somewhat agnostic on this issue, but organizers and journalists hoped for thirty thousand, perhaps forty thousand protesters to march to the United Center yesterday and to become as big a story as Joe Biden's farewell address, and actual estimates ran the gamut from maybe there were ten thousand more towards three thousand, twenty five hundred something like that. In short, the Chicago White Sox, who have lost ninety five out of one hundred and
twenty five games this baseball season. They are more popular in Chicago than are the protests against the Democratic National Convention. Oh the humanity. I think you can tell I am not a big one for Democratic conventions nor Republican conventions. There has not been much to see or talk about at them since Ford tried to become Reagan's co president in nineteen eighty or Kennedy almost knife Carter the same
year at Madison Square Garden. Hell, maybe there hasn't been much to see or talk about since security tried to beat the crap out of Dan Rather while he was live on CBS talking to Walter Cronkye in nineteen sixty eight. The conventions were interesting even when I was a kid, because the primaries didn't used to decide the nominee for the most part, the conventions did you proved yourself eligible
at the primaries. The decisions were made at the convention as long ago as nineteen eighty, when I was a sportscaster for United pres Internationals Radio network. I timidly asked our political chief if there was a chance that I could somehow borrow somebody's credential and go to the Democratic Convention in New York and just record a feature there, a feature that had a sports angle, just for the background noise. The political chief opened the top drawer of
his desk and handed me four different credentials. If you
need more, let me know. As recently as two thousand and eight, I was MSNBC's anchor for the entirety of the network's coverage of the Democratic Convention in Denver, and neither I nor my co host, Chris Matthew spent one minute inside the convention because the news bosses had long ago figured out that nothing interesting happened inside the convention, and the backdrop inside the convention simply looked like a large crowd at an indoor arena attending a basketball game
or a concert, except there was no game and there was no concert, just the crowd extremely boring, extremely fast. So they sat us outside with the train station in the background, and I thought, well, who on earth is going to leave the convention to come over here, and then President Carter showed up, and then everybody else showed up, and I realized they all wanted to get out of what was not just the convention boredom, but the convention boredom you had to pretend was fascinating. I don't know
why they still hold the conventions. I mean, obviously it's an infomercial now and you get all your viral soundbites, but not from a political point of view. I mean, the dirty secret of the Democratic and Republican Conventions is that they are exactly like the conventions of every other business organization in this country, from the American Psychiatric Association conference to the wholesale beard, hair brush, manufacture and supply Cartel.
They are vacations you can write off as tax deductions. There's free booze, free food, free entertainment, you get to see old friends, you get to see if you can talk your old friends into becoming something else but business news. I mean, it was a nice handoff from President Biden to Vice President Harris last night, only we are well reminded throughout it and before it, and accurate that this is not the handoff that will be later, this was
just the convention handoff. Now something wonderful. There is one thing I will give the entirety of the Trump fascist attempt to violently overthrow the government of the United States credit for, and that is message discipline. They may have been gifted by being given the man who can fool all the people, all of the time, long enough to get elected anyway, or they may now be shackled to a corpse, but they have always stayed true to their jackass.
Unlike liberals, unlike reporters, they have never expected Trump to pivot. Never, they have never asked him to become something he's not, like, you know, a human being. And then came Tom Vasili of Newsmax, I hope you are sitting down.
What some have called a slump over the last few weeks is a tremendous opportunity for reinvention. And whether the former president of the campaign allow it to happen, though, remains to be seen. Kamala Harris is getting a clever makeover. Mister Trump can and should use this moment to reintroduce himself to the electorate as well. Unlike the whistle stop tours of years past, when people heard from a candidate maybe once. Today they often hear elements of the sub
speech dozens of times, and it frankly gets boring. That's why long speeches and hour long rallies don't win elections.
Wait, there's more.
Mister Trump shouldn't be campaigning in arenas. He should be campaigning in supermarket parking lots and gas stations like he's running for town council. Knock on some doors with some volunteers, drop into some living rooms and suburban neighborhoods along the way as well. How many Americans know the Donald Trump who loves music, everything from opera to Sinatra to Metallica. We know mister Trump plays golf a lot of it. What's his secret to playing the game so many people
struggle to master for decades? Believe me, I'm one of them. Whatever happened to Grandpa Trump? I loved Grandpa Trump. We saw him at the convention, a smiling former president, one grandchild on his lap, another on stage telling the nation about the Donald Trump most of us have never met, the one who greets his grandkids with bear hugs and kisses, picking them up in the air and making them laugh. Donald Trump should treat this like celebrity apprentice in reverse earning it every day.
Yes, more Trumpian retail politics, more parking lots. Have him take the tie off. Don't have him talk about himself or get up there for an hour. It's boring. Golf tips is what we need. Golf tips from Uncle don Old. That's the ticket. I'm sure he'll go for that. Throw out everything he understands, everything he enjoys talking about himself in front of large crowds, feeling, no existential dress, no memento. Mora is going to live forever. They love him. Now,
throw all that out and give golf tips in parking lots. Brilliant. Tom Basili of News Max the new Trump, the kinder gentler Trump like Max Biali stock implores Franz Liebkin and the producers show the world the true Hitler, the Hitler. You loved the Hitler, you knew the Hitler with a song in his heart. What now you want me to change that quote to Trump? Why? Also of interest here,
Phil Donahue has died. In addition to the recognition that he almost single handedly changed television talk shows and in fact changed television and is a Hall of Famer Pantheon television person. He remains the centerpiece of what is almost an article of faith here on the left that MSNBS fired him and ended his career when he had the highest ratings on that network because he dared to question the war in Iraq. I think you know I never defend MSNBC. I think you may remember I never criticized
anybody who hit George W. Bush. But this whole Phil Donahue story, it's not true, none of it. And you know how I know it's not true because not only was I there, but when they canceled Phil Donahue in two thousand and three at MSNBC, the show they replaced him with was called Countdown with Keith Olriman. That's next. This is an all new edition of Countdown with Keith Olreman.
This is Countdown with Keith Olberman.
Still ahead of us on this all new edition of Countdown. Phil Donahue has died a legend of television and in politics, a legend of corporate repression of the anti war protests as the Bushies led us into Iraq. The man who tried to warn us and lost his top rated show and maybe his career as a consequence. Except and as you know, I am the last person to ever defend MSNBC or to criticize anybody who attacked George Bush. That's
not how it happened, not at all. The real story of bad ratings and cost overruns ahead in things I promise not to tell first. There are still more new idiots talk about the daily roundup of the miscrants, morons and Dunning Kruger effects specimens, who constitute in two days worst persons in the world. The Brons worse. Laura Ingram, who has her own show on Fox News called The Ingram Anger. No, I don't think that's what. It's called.
The Rock Concert Vibe DNC, she writes, is in lieu of a convention where the main players are capable and confident enough to discuss the salient issues. They will entertain you, but you pay for it with lower living standards. Laura hit her head sometime about I don't know nineteen eighty five, and then again in nineteen ninety five, and then in
two thousand and five, and several times since. I think, just as a reminder, at the Republican Convention way back, month ago, month ago, it was they had Hulk Hogan on is like the keynote speaker Hulk effing Hogan from the year nineteen eighty one. Olk Hogan as the keynote speaker or something. He spoke the same night Trump did, and he ripped off his shirt and did a trump a Mania bit. But the Democrats are the ones who
are not dealing with substance at their convention. Oh and by the way, at the twenty sixteen Republican Convention, Laura Ingram went on stage and gave a long siege Hile's salute to a giant image of Trump, a big, full, stiff armed, forty five degree angle right armed salute to Trump like he was Hitler. So please don't tell me about entertainment versus substance unless the substance you're talking about is how he is Hitler. The runner up worser Abby Phillip,
Abby Phillip, Abby, Abby phil Lip. You don't know the name she's on CNN. No, No really, CNN, you don't know that name either. See Capital N, Capital N. You don't record anyway. She does a show it used to be a news network, nice five person panel the other night discussing the Harris campaign on her show, because after all, it's still nineteen ninety eight, right, and as many guests as you can have on so they can have a
pie fight. That's the idea of cable news. This is what the third guy to run CNN since I started this podcast, and they just keep getting worse and worse. They brought in some British guy whose experiences in print and he drove the BBC for a while into the ground, and then he was with the Times and he's got imaginary newsrooms. And I don't know what's going on. Five people on a panel to discuss the day's news. Who wants this? The ratings indicate nobody wants this. Nobody wanted
it in two thousand and three. Anyway, during this one of the five people in the five person panel on the Abby Phillip No, it's a real show. The Abby Phillip Show was the how do we put this play? Intellectually challenged Congresswoman from North Carolina Nancy I skip morning sex to be at this prayer breakfast Your holiness mace. Keith Boykin wrote after being one of the other panelists that Michael Eric Dyson and I had to correct Representative Nancy Mace RSC at least ten times last Night for
purposely mispronouncing Kamala Harris's name. I will say Kamala's name anyway that I want. To Mace, who is either from South Carolina or North Carolina. I'll decide which Carolina she's from. Mace called her Kamala. I'll say Kamala's name anyway that I want. The only reason that Nancy Mace gets away with this sort of stuff is not because they put her on Fox News or Newsmax so she has a lot of followers on Twitter X. It's because people like
Abby Phillip and CNN and platform her. I understand CNN has been in a kind of slow burning fire and they're all trying to get out of there before it actually turns into an ash heap metaphorically speaking. I understand they're trying anything they can to stop the disastrous collapse of ratings, which by the way, is affecting everything in television. Aim your profit goals lower and things won't be quite so bad. But who's going to do that. That's my
money that you're not making because nobody's watching. We've got to have something else on this network until you get to the point where we can do the daffy duck bit where somebody self destructs live on television. The ratings are going to keep going down. I'm not going to say it. I'm tempted to say it. I'm not going to say it. I'm not going to say it. But our winner, Marcel Telloma, who is still identified on Twitter
x as the head of Students for DeSantis. Marcel tweeted out a map in which an electoral map, an electoral college map in which Trump beats Kamala Harris two hundred and seventy three electoral votes to two hundred and sixty five and explained, with the brilliance that can be conveyed only when you are this terse and this absolutely convinced that no one has ever thought of something like this before. If he writes Trump wins California, he does not need
a single battleground state. This is the way to victory. This is not a troll count. This guy is legit well legitimately he was the head of students for Dsantis. There is a story about him online from last July. Students for DeSantis coalition of university student groups organized by Never Back Down said it's reached one hundred total chapters across thirty seven states. There's an incredible energy from young voters. Blah blah blah blah blah. Governor DeSantis as our next president,
said Marcel Teloma. The group stir. If Trump wins California, he does not need a single battleground state. This is the way to victory, Marcel Teloma. By the way, I got a better idea, Marcel. You know what, never mind having Trump try to win California. The real easy way to beat Harris and put Trump back in the White House. You ready, you gotta pen, Marcel, the real way to do this. Trump, as you know, has the Republican nomination already. Now you're with me still? Now he should also get
the Democratic nomination. All right? This is the way to victory. Huh am, I right, Marcel Dechelle, this is the way to do it. If he's both candidates, he can't lose. Probably, Marcel Talloma, Trump wins California. Today's worst person California in the world. Phil Donahue died Sunday in New York. He was eighty eight. He had been sick for a while since last year at least, And so do our number one story and Phil Donahue. This is not about what
a good guy Phil Donahue was and he was. This is not about what a committed liberal he was and he was. And this is not about how he changed television talk shows television, indeed for good or for ill, all of which is true and unquestionable. This is about the contention that has echoed for more than two decades that Phil Donahue was fired by his last employer and had his career ended by his last employer, MSNBC because he opposed the Iraq War. That's not why he was fired.
That might have been why he was fired as soon as he was, but that was not why he was fired. And the reason I know this is I was there and as I saw this play out in real time. Initially, I was a disinterested bystander the firing played out, and people told me things in real time that they thought it was safe for me to know, because what the hell. I was only going to be back at MSNBC in two thousand and three for a couple of weeks, maybe just a couple of days. I'd been hired by NBC
Sports do the Olympics and other stuff for them. It's not like I was going to replace Phil Donahue at eight o'clock on MSNBC when they eventually fired him. Well, actually I did replace Phil Donahue at eight pm on MSNBC when they actually fired him, but that was not the plan. That was never the plan. And then all of a sudden one night, that was plan Phil Donnie who had retired in nineteen ninety six because his ratings had dropped from first because he was the originator of
that format, the daytime drama live talk show. Barbara Walters did one, Doctor Phil did one. They've all done them. This was the original the Donahue Show, a high feminist content, a high liberal content, and given the fact that he often did really stupid topics, a high intellectual topic and content.
But by nineteen ninety six he was done and he retired, and in two thousand and two MSNBC approached him about doing a primetime show on MSNBC, and again when they did fire him, the show that replaced him at eight o'clock on MSNBC was called Check's Notes Countdown with Keith Alderman.
And see that's your first clue that Donahue was not fired because he opposed IRAQ and Bush Countdown originally started as essentially just another hour of the latest news from Iraq after we invaded, and gradually, i'd say within two months, I began to take a somewhat skeptical view of this.
But before I went on the air, before they assigned me the eight o'clock show and replacing Phil Donahue, I had spent about a year doing a daily commentary on the ABC Radio network that was carried by a couple of hundred stations, including one in New York, in which I questioned the sanity of this impending war, and we all knew it was coming for a year. We all knew it was the only thing the Bush administration had been prepared for as of September eleventh, was an a
war in Iraq. And the only conspiracy I ever put any weight in was the idea that they looked at nine to eleven and went, oh crap, what are we going to do now? Oh my god, it's an excuse to go into Iraq. That was the conspiracy of nine to eleven. That's the inside job, and that's the extent of it. They were prepared to go into Iraq at whatever excuse presented itself. If the weather had been bad six weeks in a row, they would have said, that's
Sadam Hussein fault. We're going in. In any event, my point is that if you're going to get rid of a guy for opposing Iraq and George W. Bush, you are not going to replace the Phil Donahue Show with Countdown with Keith Olderman. You are firing Donahue and replacing him with Olderman. Bad call, buddy. And again I don't defend MSNBC, and I am defending MSNBC because I saw
this play out in real time. Countdown started it as another hour of news from Iraq, and by June I was telling the real story about the rescue of Private Jessica Lynch, who had been taken hostage by the Iraqis when in fact she was in a hospital and they were torturing her there, and knowing fact, the doctors turned out from the Iraqi hospital had contacted US servicemen through intermediaries and said, we don't have enough equipment to take
care of her. We're worried about permanent spinal damage. Why don't you over and get her when we'll stand outside and you can go in and get her, And they turned it into the raid at Entebbe, and I was the first newscaster nationally to go and say, you know, there's this report from a Toronto newspaper that that's not the way it went down. And Bob Right, the head of NBC, called up the head of MSNBC Primetime, my boss, Phil Griffin, and said fire him. And Griffin talked him
down to make him apologize. And I said, apologize to who, Phil, And he said, apologize to the troops. I said, I didn't even mention the troops. I guess that's why you're making the troops look like they didn't know that this was I said, so you want me to tell the story again and explain that I wasn't trying to insult the troops. Yes, that'll subtle it. Otherwise we'll have to cancel the show. And I said to myself, it's a little demeaning. On the other hand, I got to tell
the story again. I got to throw a little cold water on this idea that this was some sort of rescue. So I told the story again. In fact, I said, would you like me to apologize again next week? And they said yes, And soon we were doing all the stories that question whether or not George W. Bush was lying to America, which he was. That's what they got
instead of Phil Donahue. They did not fire Phil Donahue over IRAQ to get me, not just to get me, but to get eight goddamned years of me saying this, screaming at George Bush getting on the cover of The New Yorker. Shut the hell up, mister president. They fired Phil Donahue in two thousand and three for the following reasons. Number one, they made NBC management and MSNBC in particular, they made the classic daypart mistake. I have talked about
day parts before. If you remember Katie Kurk being lured away from the Today Show on NBC to host the CBS Evening News and being an utter disaster, that was a dapart mistake. The daypart is the mornings, the afternoons, the middays, the evenings, the late nights, the overnights. It's a radio term, but it applies to television. And the simple truth about day parts is just because you are popular in one day part does not mean you will automatically be popular in another. In fact, it may mean
you will be unpopular. I learned this at the age of thirty two. No earlier than that. I learned this at the age of twenty nine. I went from KTLA in Los Angeles, where my sports cast was on at ten minutes to eleven o'clock every night, and it was the intellectual thing to watch on TV. I went from KTLA down the street to KCBS, from channel five to Channel two, where the sports cast came on not at ten fifty every night, but at eleven thirty every night.
It was the same sports cast. I was the same guy, the lighting was a little bit better, the material was a little bit better, and everybody hated me because that was a different day part. Everybody who liked the thing and thought it was intellectual, they were going to bed at eleven o'clock. They were literally not going to stay
up till eleven thirty. All the people who were watching me at eleven thirty were the people who did not have to be at their jobs early the next morning, people who were fungible, let's put it that way, in terms of their career. That's how I learned about day parts. Katie Kuric went from The Today Show, where she was a co host and when you got tired of her on. Then came that guy who later wound up to be a you know, and then she'd come back on when
you were tired of him. And they took her and she mostly did interviews in little fluff pieces, and she was a happy gal. And they put her on the CBS Evening News, where her job was to read the teleprompter at six thirty at night, and nobody knew her at six thirty at night because she'd been on at seven thirty in the morning, and everybody hated her because she wasn't that good at reading the teleprompter and she couldn't do those little fluffy interviews. It was a newsreading job,
and it was a disaster. And it happens again and again.
And somebody, several somebodies, including the people who spent millions of dollars on the MSNBC Phil Donahue Show, thought that because Phil Donna You had been a brilliant success between the years nineteen sixty seven and nineteen ninety six on over the air television, usually running at one o'clock in the afternoon or two o'clock in the afternoon, that he would be a success at eight o'clock at night on cable in two thousand and two Daypart plus the other
great mistake, which is a success on broadcast television, was automatically a success on cable television or vice versa. That was the primary reason they had violated the first rule. The show was doomed from the day they signed them to the contract. They also had another problem to get him to come out of retirement, even though he wanted to. He's from television. He wanted to keep doing it. I'm from television. I want to keep doing it. It's part
of our psychological problems. Even though he wanted to do it, he knew he had them over a barrel. It was MSNBC. It was a minefield. There were littered corpses everywhere of shows that had not succeeded. The eight PM thing alone was a disaster area. Between my two stints there, I was gone for four years and four months and there
were seventeen different shows on on at eight o'clock. You had to get what you wanted why you could get it, And Phil Donahue said, I want a huge staff, and I'm not going to Secocca's freaking New Jersey to do my show. I'm going to do it from thirty Rocker. I'm not going to do it at all, and it's going to have a live audience, and I want a staff of three times the size of anybody else's. I want three executive producers. And I went, okay, mister Donahue, Okay,
mister Donahue, Okay, mister Donahue. The show now cost about ten times as much to produce as any other hour on cable news, meaning that it didn't just have to do as well as the other shows on MSNBC or even slightly better to lift up the boat, but just to pay for itself, it basically had to do ten times better ratings than any other show on cable television. And guess what it didn't. The Donahue Show on MSNBC premiered in August of two thousand and two. The rating
was zero point one. The network was averaging in its depths zero point two the Phil Donahue Show, after initial success, the highest rating they'd ever gotten for a premiere show, even mine, sank to about half of the average audience on MSNBC. Was it because he talked a lot about Iraq and doubted the reasonableness of going to war there? Maybe, maybe it was the fact that he was on at eight o'clock at night, and everybody who used to watch him was either dead or looking for him at two
o'clock in the afternoon. Back to the day part subject. So, how come when the story of Phil Donahue's firing by MSNBC as the Iraq War started always points out that Donahue Show and Donahue were fired and canceled while it had the highest ratings on MSNBC. Well, they left out one detail in that, which was they had the highest ratings on MSNBC at the time that the show was canceled. For the month of February two thousand and three, it
averaged four hundred and forty six thousand viewers. Just to give you a relative idea, at these sort of apex of countdown on MSNBC two thousand and nine, we did an average of a million, two hundred thousand viewers a night. Four hundred and forty six thousand was the best at MSNBC in two thousand and three as this war approached. It was terrible. It was a low number. It wasn't that much bigger than anybody else's, and it sure wasn't ten times bigger than every other cable show in the business.
It had the highest ratings that month, and they canceled it anyway because it was hemorrhaging money. And my friend of the time, Phil Griffin, who had filled me in on the entirety of this story as it unfolded, said that they were only getting those high ratings because they were spending, now on top of everything else, a fortune in advertising. They bought every local commercial they could get. They put bus ads in most of the major cities trying to get people to watch Donahue. Was a desperate
attempt to keep Phil Donahue on the air. As he put it, an unfortunate term, and Phil was known for them at the time of February. In March of two thousand and three, we had to carpet bomb with advertising as like, Phil, what about IRAQ? Oh, you're right, buddy. The reason we are left with the impression that MSNBC canceled the late Phil Donahues show because he was opposed to IRAQ was Phil Donahue wanted it that way. I understand this fully well. I think what happened to me.
The biggest lesson, I think is the how corporate media shapes our opinions and our coverage. Donahue said, this was a decision, my decision, meaning relating to the cancelation of his show, the decision to release me came from far above. This was not an assistant program director who decided to separate me from MSNBC. They were terrified of the anti war voice. Let me interrupt to say these things are true. They were terrified of the anti war voice. My own
experience over the Jessica Lynch story would explain that. On the other hand, of course, it wasn't the assistant program director who separated him from MSNBC. It was the president of MSNBC, the president of NBC News, and the president of NBC because that's the decisions they reserved for themselves, because those are the egotistical ones, the ones where you can call in some TV star and say either you
do it my way or you're fired. To resume mister Dona Hues's comments, they were terrified of the anti war voice, and that is not an overstatement. Anti war voices were not popular, and if your general electric, you certainly don't want an anti war voice on a cable channel that you own. Donald Rumsfeld is your biggest customer. So by the way, I had to have two conservatives on for every liberal. I could have Richard Pearl on alone. Richard pearl was a diplomat in quotes who worked for Bush.
But I couldn't have Dennis Kucinich on alone, former mayor of Cleveland, who was most anti war. I was considered two liberals. It really is funny almost when you look back on how the management was just frozen by the anti war voice. We were skolds, we weren't patriotic Erican people disagreed with us, and we weren't good for business, all of which is true, but all of which somewhat
exaggerates the point here. If half a million people and it wasn't that many were watching Phil Donahue every night, half a million people in a country that even then was pushing three hundred million isn't very much. His anti war voice was an annoyance to these people, an embarrassment
to people like Bob Wright, who ran NBC. Phil Donahue treated it as if he was I don't know, he was the guy amiel Zola writing jacquesues against the French government in eighteen ninety something Phil also forgot in making this statement that in the fall of two thousand and two, he was on the air on MSNBC, alongside the late Jerry Nackman, who also had a show that wasn't doing well,
talking about they're terrible ratings. They're going to fire us, Nachman said to Donahue, and Donahue said, yeah, they are. That was in the fall of two thousand and two. Weeks after the Donahue Show had premiered. There was talk of moving Donahue to the middle of the day. There was talk of moving Donahue somewhere else. There was talk of putting him on a hey hiatus. Instead, everybody got fired except poor Knackman, who got sick. The reason I
was at MSNBC was Jerry Knackman was sick. They didn't have enough anchors. They asked me to fill in for a few days, and the next thing you knew, I was doing the show again. Would they have fired Phil Donahue if Bush had said, we have fixed this, there will be no war in Iraq? Yes, they would have fired him. It was hemorrhaging money. It was putting out ten dollars for every dollar it took in. Would they have fired him that fast, no way. They were short
of staff. They were so short of staff they brought me back. And I had left five years before in flames. That's why I was there. I'm wrapping this up. New York Magazine in twenty ten, I believe, wrote a long story about the then climaxing cable wars, particularly between CNN and MSNBC. Gabe Sherman, I think, wrote this with the
surgeon patriotism. Following the terrorist attacks of nine to eleven, NBC CEO Bob Wright told Shapiro, that would be Neil Shapiro, then the head of NBC News, that MSNBC should try and out flank Fox on the right. We have to be more conservative than they are, right, told Shapiro pointedly, that's absolutely true. By the way, Bob Wright actually thought you could be to further right than Fox was at that time, And for years I thought he was an idiot who just had these psycho drama ideas going on
in his head. Well, of course, then came Trump. He was right, he just didn't know how to do it. Swirling graphics of the American flag, New York Magazine wrote soon became a fixture on the network, along with the tagline America's News Channel, it said, in graphics that were taped to all the cameras so that all the anchors
would see it and say it Erica's News Channel. Despite the network's emphasis on flag waving, MSNBC showed how little it understood the Fox model when, with Phil Griffin as MSNBC's primetime head, it hired the liberal Phil Donahue, who'd been Griffin's childhood idol, out of retirement in April two thousand and two to anchor an eight pm primetime talk
show that would challenge Bill O'Reilly. The show debuted with the highest ratings ever for an MSNBC program, attracting more than a million viewers in its first night, but within a month the audience was cut in half. Standard for MSNBC. Rita Cosby once got nearly million viewers her first night, by the end of the week, she was down to one hundred and seventy five thousand to resume. At the same time, executives expressed increasing unease about Donahue's vocal opposition
to the looming war in Iraq. At a time when red meat patriotism prevailed, Donahue booked anti war guests like Michael Moore, Rosie O'Donnell, Susan Sarandon, and Tim Robbins. By the way, I should point out that years later, when I was trying to explain to Phil Griffin that Rachel Maddow was the next star of MSNBC and she should be given her own show, he tried to hire Rosie O'Donnell instead. Soon, the Donahue pro problem threatened Griffin's job.
In a tense phone conversation, NBC News President Shapiro told MSNBC president Eric Sorenson to fire Griffin, but Sorenson pushed back, I'm not going to do that, he told Shapiro. Number One, Phil's been loyal to me for a long time. I don't think it's right. Number Two, we're shorthanded. We have all this talent and he's the one who's managing it. Part two was a lie. They didn't have any talent
at all. That's why I was back there. As a compromise, Griffin's job was spared, but he was stripped of responsibility for the show. The new producer insisted on a precise numerical balance between liberals and conservatives. Donahue's problems only increased when Chris Matthews let it be known that he wanted Donahue off the air. Matthews was a rising force at the network, with a reported salary of five million dollars a year. He cultivated former ge CEO Jack Welch and
had the ear of the NBAC CEO, Bob Wright. The two summered together on Nantucket and you know the limerick about Nantucket. Matthew saw himself as MSNBC's biggest star. Well, he was MSNBC's biggest something, and he was upset that the network was pumping significant resources into Donahue's show. Again, I would never defend Chris Matthews under any circumstances, but
he's absolutely right about this. Matthews was delivering ratings with almost no advertising, ratings that were usually much higher than those of Phil Donahue, and here thousands and thousands of dollars in advertising were spent daily to try to sell people on a Phil Donahue show that nobody wanted, whether it offered a solution for world peace and eternal life.
In the fall of two thousand and two, US News and World Report ran a gossip item that had Matthew saying over lunch in Washington that if Donahue stays on the air, he could bring down the network. After the item was published, Matthews showed up at Donahue's office and apologized. He didn't deny it. Donahue remembers Matthews made a hobby within MSNBC of trying to get the rest of us fired.
He tried to do that to me in two thousand and eight during the coverage of the Republican National Convention, when we got removed because of something I said. Matthews had been saying equally stupid things and usually factually inaccurate ones. But he did call Jeff Zooker and then Jeff Immelt, the head of GE, and say you should fire Olderman and keep me. Back to the New York Magazine article.
With the war looming, Sorenson and Griffin decided to take him off the air to make war for twenty four to seven make room for twenty four seven war coverage. Matthews told me he had nothing to do with the decision. That's true. They never listened to him. For Griffin, the firing of his childhood idol was a painful experience. The guy that got me into TV probably hates my guts, and I wish he didn't because I love the guy Griffin, says Griffin, who prevented Rachel Maddow from appearing on MSNBC
for several years as an anchor. Anyway, he was paid back by the fact that somehow Rachel has forgotten this and made him the president of her production company. In any event, So all that was playing out, and I was just hanging around for a couple of days filling in for Jerry Knackman who was just out sick. And then the diagnosis came back about how sick Jerry Nackman was,
and suddenly they didn't have enough anchors. Less Your Holt, who was doing something like four or five hours a day on MSNBC, was suddenly called to New York to do more action coverage from NBC News about the Iraq War. And now MSNBC had no anchors, They had nobody who was familiar to their audience, They had nobody. Nacman was sick. They certainly weren't going to have Phil Donahue anchor Iraq
war coverage. And now Lester Holt was being taken away from them, and Brian Williams was already in Iraq personally looking for Sodom Hussein or whatever he was doing in Iraq. So the plan was canceled. Dona Hughes show hires somebody good like Sam Donaldson and have him do a show called Countdown with Sam Donaldson. I've already told you how
they turned that into Countdown with Keith Olderman. But the gist of it was, as I said earlier, if there had been no threat of Iraq war, or if everybody had said, you know, Phil Donahue is right, this is asinine, This is power greedy. This is Bush trying to use nine to eleven in the most insincere and brutal way
possible as an excuse for an unrelated war. If everybody had said that, if Bush had resigned from the presidency and Cheney with him, if they had made Michael Moore President of the United States, they still would have fired Phil Donahue because he lost money. Phil Donahue Television Hall of Famer, not fired over Iraq. I don't know the damage I can do here. I mean, I know it's disrespectful in many ways to have brought that up now, But when else is it relevant? This is a topical
subject the passing of Phil Donahue anyway. Did they mistreat him? Absolutely? Was it his fault that they spent ten times as much money as he was making. No, it was not his fault, but the idea that he then turned it into it is all about it. It was not all about it. Please share this podcast with somebody who doesn't
listen for whatever reason. Friday's regular episode and then the bulletin on Trump insisting that the Medal of Honor winners were only as important as the Congressional Medal of Honors that he gave out to corporate donors that drew a total audience of a quarter million. So thank you. Keep it up any who. Brian Ray and John Phillip Shaneil, the musical directors have Countdown, arranged, produced and performed most of our music. Mister Chanelle handled orchestration and keyboards. Mister
Ray was on guitars, bass and drums. It was produced by Tko Brothers. Our satirical and pithy musical comments are by the best baseball stadium organists ever, Nancy Faust. The sports music is the Olderman theme from ESPN two, written by Mitch Warren Davis, courtesy of ESPN Inc. Other music arranged and performed by the group No Horns Allowed. My announcer today was my friend Larry David, and everything else was pretty much my fault. So that's countdown for this.
The seventy eighth day until the twenty twenty four presidential election, the three hundred and twenty first day since convicted Felon Daventia J. Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically elected government of the United States. Use the September eighteenth sentencing hearing if it happens, because say what you will about Trump's lawyers, whatever the deadline is, they are never ready
for it. Use the mental health system you have this President Biden used residential immunity to stop him from doing it again while we still can. And anti Semitic, anti immigration, gun nut Republicans, please stop shooting at Trump. The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow. Bulletins is the news warrants till the next one. I'm Keith Oldremman. Good Morning, good afternoon, good night, then good luck. Countdown with Keith Oldreman is
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