TRUMP LACKEY SAYS HE WANTS TO JAIL RACHEL MADDOW - 12.18.24

it's Rachel Matdow. Now you are next. We're close to it because Trump is this close to suing you for writing mean tweets about him, or for not voting for him, or if your name is Anne Seltzer, for putting out a Des Moines Register action poll that did not favor him enough not I may sue them. At least I'll scare them. A lawsuit in Iowa for consumer fraud filed

against the Des Moines Register lawyer hired. His name is Alan Ostergren, and if you look him up in Google reviews, like Phil Bump of The Washington posted, you will find he literally has a one star rating. Emboldened by such pathetic self prostituting excuses for American leadership as Jeff Bezos Patrick Soun Schong, Joe Scarborough and Bob Eiger and all the snatch defeat from the jaws of victory cowards at

Disney and ABC News. Trump has now lost any remaining sense that anybody is even going to try to stop him. It is hard to point at a crazy man and say he's now lost it. But he's now lost it. You are next, Well, you're probably behind me, and you and I are both behind Matadow, and she's behind Anne Seltzer. But you know what I mean. ABC folds on Saturday

and by Tuesday. Trump has sued the Des Moines Register for what might have been an accurate poll because it said he wouldn't win Iowa by as much as he thought he would. In other words, he's suing a newspaper for having dared to not predict he was going to run up the score. And the creature who wants to imprison Meadow for some conspiracy that exists only in the place his brain should be is Steve Bannon. Steve Bannon, the guy who looks like a boxing hobo traveling the

country in empty freight trains. Trump, though, is still thinking about suing Bob Woodward for election interference. He is still thinking about suing the Pulitzer Prize Committee. And if that sounds familiar, it's because he already sued them two years

years ago. Helpfully, an op ed in the Washington Post, Jay Bezo's proprietor from a Columbia historian named Robert Y. Shapiro, which is still prominent on the Washington Post site, insists none of this will happen, mister Shapiro, and I want to see a copy of his diploma before I call him. Professor insists Joe Biden should pardon Trump in part because quote, it would enable Trump to devote all of his administration's attention to governing instead of seeking revenge and retribution against

his enemies unquote. And if that isn't the dumbest, most naive thing ever written, it's close. Revenge and retribution are two of only four or five emotions that Trump shares with human beings. Mister Shapiro also notes in his op ed how well fords pardon of Nixon worked out for the country. And here's a man employed at any institution of higher learning more respected than the Good Humor ice

cream truck. And he does not realize that Ford's pardon of Nixon is how humanoids like Trump first understood that he could get away with it. Trump sued ABC, He may sue CBS. He's just sued a polster. His boxing hobo wants to arrest Meadow. Trump wants to sue the Politzer Prize people again. They're going after Liz Cheney. He's in revenge and retribution reruns. But go on, tell me why we should permit him to become president a month from now.

Iowa by twenty points. The farmers loved me, and I love the farmers, and it was interesting the way she did it. She brought it down two weeks before she said I was going to only win by four That was a big story.

it too often. This is just the beginning. Today, Trump and his scumbags are merely suing or threatening public figures who have arded or angered or disagreed or just not agreed enough with him. He is still threatening CBS with a lawsuit over how it edited an interview that wasn't with or about him. Next he will be suing people for voting for Nicki Hayley, or for moving out of a Trump building, or for thinking bad thoughts about him, like in that Twilight Zone episode. Some of these hypotheticals

are too crazy even for Trump. But do not forget that part of Trump's personal motivation for pursuing the presidency in the first place was his long standing dream of, as he put it in twenty sixteen, opening up the libel laws. Opening them up to make it easier to sue you for anything, not voting for him, not writing an op ed praising him, enough, giving an award to

somebody who had investigated his crimes. From this day on, the official language of San Marcos will be Swedish, says the revolutionary leader Esposito after he sees his control in the political comedy Bananas and goes crazy with power. In addition to that, all citizens will be required to change their underwear every half hour. Underwear will be worn on the outside so we can check. I mean, what is the exact distance between that and suing a polster for

saying you are winning? How much shorter is it than we would have thought before this blight descended upon us? How much shorter is it when Trump has appointed former newspaper Flamenco Correspondence as his own concierge judges and cases go to this judge? How far are we away from this? When nutjob Congress and Barry lauder Milk just issued his own made up reports in which he recommends criminal charges

against Liz Cheney for I don't know snydness. I don't know, but I'm so glad ABC News and Disney and mild pal Bob Eiger settled Trump's case against them, and everybody's just moving on to morning in America. That's the case where George Stephanopolis accurately paraphrased Judge Lewis Kaplan's finding about Trump and rape, the one in which Judge Caplan wrote,

quoting the judge. The only point on which Ms. Carroll did not prevail was whether she had proved that mister Trump had quote raped unquote her within the narrow technical meaning of a particular section of the New York Penal Law, a section that provides that the label rape has used in criminal prosecutions in New York flies only to vaginal penetration by a penis. The definition of rape in the New York Penal Law is far narrower than the meaning

of rape in common modern parlance. It's definition in some dictionaries, in some federal and state criminal statutes, and elsewhere. The finding that Missus Carroll failed to prove that she was quote raped unquote within the meaning of the New York Penal Law does not mean that she failed to prove that mister Trump quote raped unquote her. As many people commonly understand the word quote rape unquote. Indeed, as the evidence at trial recounted below makes clear, the jury found

that mister Trump in fact did exactly that unquote. Judge Kaplan in his written filing in the Egene Carroll case, Hell, I wouldn't have wanted to go on the court with just that as my evidence that I didn't make a demonstrously false statement of fact, would I, Bob Igern't I wanted I have to prove that George's statement wasn't false and didn't have reckless disregard for its lack of falsity. Wouldn't I wanted to have to prove you didn't damage

Trump's reputation. That's Trump, whose own Vice president elect JV. Vance once called him hitler. Gotta settle that case, because not only do you have to protect your money, but you know, there was this great op ed in the Washington Post by some guy named Shapiro about how pardoning Trump would enable him to stop seeking revenge and retribution against his enemies. This is for the public good. Tell me something, Bob, tell me something. Jeff Bezos, tell me something.

Patrick schun Shanng, you little La Times whore, after you ordered your newspaper to stop writing about Trump's nominees for a while, and to send you anything they ever did. Write about them again. Tell me what you do now the next time you report that Trump lost the twenty twenty election and Trump sues you, Suddenly I have the

perfect idea for an ABC reality show. Just put a little lipstick camera next to every one of the executives at ABC and Disney going forward, and when Trump sues them next time, because he will just take their reactions and put them on TV, you'll break all ratings records. But we settled with him. We gave him fifteen million dollars for his Trump presidential memorial sinkhole. They have all

gone nuts further nuts. It was at the same Young Republican dinner in New York where that one bozo pitched face first off the stage and took the podium down with him in the most eloquent expression by any Trumpist in the history of their movement, at which Steve Bannon issued his threat against Rachel Maddow. The third term Magic Act, in which you make the twenty second Amendment to the

Constitution disappear, came up again. I recall being mocked for insisting here again and again and again that as soon as Trump was back in office, they would start making up a path focused on whether it means only two terms or only two consecutive terms by which he could run again in twenty twenty eight if he isn't dead then, or maybe even if he is. I was told I was laugh out loud wrong, he'd never try that. It's

in the constitution, and I was wrong. They didn't wait for him to go back into office before they started this Bannon quote. The Viceroy Mike Davis tells me, since it doesn't actually say consecutive, that maybe we do it again in twenty eight. Here it comes, and then the smooth segue into Soviet style vast conspiracy show trials. Quoting Bannon again, we want retribution and we're going to get retribution.

You have to. It's not personal, it's not personal. They need to learn what populist nationalist power is on the receiving end. I need investigations, trials, and then incarceration. And I'm just talking about the media. Should the media be included in the mass criminal conspiracy against President Trump? Should Andrew Weisman on MSNBC and Rachel Maddow and all of them We want all your emails, all your text messages,

everything you did. You colluded in a conspiracy with Merrick Garland, Nancy Pelosi, Lisa Monico, and Jack Smith unquote, a conspiracy against Trump involving Merrick Garland. I wish these are the people who guide Trump, the ones Joe Scarborough and Mika Przhinsky in effect went and before whom they prostrated themselves, the ones who want to arrest Scarborough's and Prashinski's co workers. Now, honestly,

it's not that big a jump for Scarborough. He tried to get Matdow fired in two thousand, Seve Evan two thousand and eight, two thousand and nine, twenty ten. I can't testify to any days since, but I've been told it continued after I left there, So arrest her. Eh. A week ten days ago, the entertainment website Variety asked me to write a thing for their year end issue, seven hundred words on what MSNBC should do now, because, of course, the ratings collapsed at MSNBC after the election,

and Scarborough and Mika also collapsed. Seven hundred words now, Surprisingly enough, I have a lot more than seven hundred words on this topic. I believe, in fact the word count on my laptop read infinity. But Variety did a nice job of editing, and I thanked them for it before it posted yesterday. I'd like to read you the piece now, but annotated and expanded upon in some places, and I put a few things back in that they took out for space, nothing more than that, and amplify

in a couple of points. Originally they titled this when it posted yesterday Keith Olberman on how MSNBC should approach Trump two point zero, But shortly thereafter they changed the headline, and unlike the New York Times, they didn't stuff it through the deflavorizing machine. The new Variety headline Keith Olberman, how can MSNBC save itself after Trump's win? First step fire Mika and Joe. Okay, I have to admit I giggled for an hour and then I give fawed Keith Olderman.

How can MSNBC save itself after Trump's win? First step fire Mika and Joe? By Keith Olderman. This is the article quote by Keith Olberman, What does MSNBC do now after Trump accomplished the undead thing and retook the White House? After Comcast announced plans to spin off the network along with others, in such haste that its new company was named spin Co after Joe Scarborough and Mika Braginski went on their show and welcomed our new insect overlords after

its audience vanished, nothing stay the course. The audience is exhausted and needs a break. It'll be back and resistier than ever. Suffer the ratings troth. Here's my first aside. How has this not occurred to anybody else that it's a troth? I cut back from five podcasts a week to two. You want to listen to five of these right now? Every week? You think I want to write five of these. I'm having trouble doing two. Maybe in

January we do more. Right now, we need to rest and husband our resources, and I might point out and then, in terms of the ratings, although the Fox ratings went up from disastrous to twenty percent better than disastrous after Trump won, After Obama one in two thousand and eight, at MSNBC collapsed. There were meetings with executives there who couldn't understand it. But Obama won. Why a week later are we getting one tenth of the audience? And I said,

everybody's still drunk. They really didn't understand it. I believe sometimes often as I'm just dozing off falling to sleep at night, I sometimes actually believe that there is a place in this country where they decide who runs all the television networks, all of them. Not just MSNBC or ESPN or any of the ones I've worked at, but all of them. Who ne Vision and Telemundo included. Where they all sit around and they go, all right, who's the worst possible person to run the Hallmark channel? This

guy doesn't like romance movies. Put him in charge. I really think so. The ratings are down at MSNBC. I can't imagine why the audience does not want to see the news. And unlike other places, you can't just lie to them about what's happening. I mean not really. You can soften it up a little bit. You can try to be encouraging, you can try to be entertaining. You can do that maybe twice a week, like I'm doing, rather than say, twenty four hours a day. Of course,

the audience is going to go away anyway. Back to what I wrote for Variety, I mean, obviously you have to fire mister and missus Scared Bro, however, continue their banal but largely benign political coffee class show without them and their insistence that we all join their msn VS, nobody will remember they were ever there. Another aside, I happen to be very proud of that phrase, msn VS. You don't know about VC France, Google it. It's on every morning now with cout Scarborough. They also cut the

neck sentence, which I thought sold the point. Remember the Daily Show with Craig Kilbourne. Yeah, when Craig Kilbourne left the Daily Show to go do the CBS Show after David Letterman, boy oh boy, the predictions where the new host was never going to be able to live up to Kilbourne's reputation. It was never going to be as good as it was with Kilbourne. The next host was Sean Stewart. Do you remember MSNBC Mornings with David Gregory

and Contessa Brewer. They were the ones who succeeded Don iMOS when they fired Imus when they didn't work out, they went to Scarborough and get some We have some woman who's free in the mornings Brushinski. Okay, I guess that's how that happened. I mean, look, at how MSNBC has excised me from their history. Nobody would notice if Scarborough disappeared, or if you don't like the idea of firing them both, just have him come back next Monday with a different wife. Lord knows it wouldn't be the

first time. Back to the article. Plus, the next money is coming from more fervent opposition to Maga. Not less, wasn't the Scarborough disaster sixty percent of the demo audience gone in three days? Instructive enough? Did you not notice CNN going from fact based criticism of Trump's madness to hours of cacophonists shouting and sinking to whatever is the next level down from irrelevance. Another aside, looking at you, Abby, Philip.

This formula in which you get eight people around a table yelling at Scott Jennings, everybody yelling at everybody else. This was the one trick that the former MSNBC executive later president, Phil Griffin knew. Every show, every show that ever got into ratings trouble, every new show, every old show was eventually approached by the show doctor, the man with the magic touch at MSNBC, Phil Griffin, and his solution was always I think we should have a panel

with like six people at it every show. Phil Griffin is now the president of the Rachel Mattow Production Company. If there are any actual charges to be brought against Rachel Matdow for anything in this world, it's hiring Phil Griffin. Back to the article, did the quarter of a million canceled Washington Post subscriptions not tell you something? Or the exodus from Twitter X? What do you think happened to

all these news consumers that they were raptured? They're all still there waiting to spend their time and money at the only liberal candy store still open, yours. These other supposed bastions of journalism have left you a near monopoly. And MSNBC only exists today because the last time NBC was handed a near monopoly, your management ancestors said, one hundred million in profits from Alderman's liberal show. I guess

we'll take it if we have to. They did cut out something which suggests that the resonance of what you and I know about what's going on in the media not necessarily nationally understood. I added to the part about the exodus from Twitter X and the quarter of a million Washington Post subscriptions canceled, and the Scarborough disaster and the CNN ratings. I added the New York Times losing its way for the sake of some flaccid both sides of headlines. They cut that out, Still true back to

the article. In the early years of this century, the great minds at GE, then NBC's parent were trying to go to the right of Fox by putting on Tucker Carlson, Michael Savage, and Laura Ingram. They were thus too busy to notice that I was putting on Rachel Maddow, Lawrence O'Donnell, and Chris Hayes while they were trying to steal Bill O'Reilly away from Fox, or failing that, to transform MSNBC

into a literal prison documentary channel. I kept Rachel from jumping to CNN by giving her four hundred and thirty seven dollars out of my own pocket. And the next thing the corporate masters knew, we'd spun them all off into their own shows an MSNBC was profiting a billion a year. By the way, I'd like the four hundred and thirty seven dollars reimbursed. Please another side. I know you haven't heard the four hundred and thirty seven dollars

story before. I've kept that as a relative secret. I've only told it on let's see two hundred and sixteen episodes of this podcast. Well, I'm bitter. Back to the article. Generation after generation of NBC executive idiots viewed politics as nothing more than a soda brand and believe there was some additional audience, undecided or right wing, that they could add to the present one if only they also offered a different flavor called new MSNBC. The new flavor invariably

turns out to be turnip. Besides that right wing ruled you out in nineteen ninety six. Pursuing it results in only one thing, the Scarboroughing of your present audience. That doesn't mean you can't tweet stuff. Your primetime audience doesn't want new faces. It wants comfort food. So refresh the menu and decor scuttle those daytime shows which always existed solely to give NBC News execs something to stare at while they pretended to work, and replace them with the

morning formula, only with different sets in different titles. Try outsider big personality hosts like Elie Mistal and Pablo Torre. You could even try for a truce with your prodigal anchor, so he'll be inside the tent peeing out for a change. You may have noticed that I included in this one paragraph and buried rather successfully. I might add a suggestion that they fire Katie Turr and hire me back to the article, And now you can finally do something I

first suggested in nineteen ninety eight. Change the damn name of the network. Use the acronym NYWS or American News Network. A nice self explanatory f Trump TV. What all this will get you? Besides the kinds of profits only a monopoly can provide, are non cash virtues like moral force and ethics, and journalism and patriotism and liberty. You may now be the last line of defense for the free press and thus the future of representative government in this country.

The bullies don't stop hitting you because you are nice to them. They stop hitting you when you knock them out cold. Put that on MSNBC and all will be well. Thanks Keith, great report. Also of interest here Pennsylvania state senator. They're twenty twenty two Republican nominee for governor in that state. Erupts at a photo of a downed drone being carted off on a Northeastern expressway. He feeds all the conspiracy crap. Only one problem. That was not a downed drone. It

was a famous movie prop. Now this had been Trump, he would be suing me for disagreeing with him. That's next. This is countdown.

look at this positively. When Ted Turner was forty three years old, none of us who worked for him would have expected him to live to well forty four. He drank incessantly, he never slept, He took every risk he could find. He's eighty six. He's still in and out

rather than just out. That's a win. Ted won again, and boy, could CNN use Ted now, But I want to tell one of those stories from the out days, when his outness often produced such rage inside him that he almost fired me over the hat that my cammerman was wearing. It a story, and I almost responded by socking him in the jaw, But we made up in the end. Things I promise not to tell about Ted Turner next first. Believe it or not, there's still more

new idiots to talk about. The daily roundup of the missgrints, morons and Dunning Kruger effects specimens who constitute today's other worse persons in the world, the bronze worse Trump and this tariff bullshit because he thinks the year eighteen ninety four was great. The Premiere of Ontario, Doug Ford, has responded in a way that could help us go back

to eighteen ninety four. He says, if Trump follows through on this thread of a twenty five percent tariff on Canadian goods, he will simply stop Ontario from exporting to the US anymore. Electricity. Canada is the source of twenty percent of our crude oil, a lot of our our natural gas, and of course electricity they generate, which a million and a half Americans use in Michigan, New York, Wisconsin,

places like that lights Out. Incidentally, the website gas Buddy says the tariffs could increase the price of a gallon of gas by at least thirty cents a gallon, maybe seventy cents. The runner up Molly Murphy, a polster who did work for Kamala Harrison, who should now be on a rocket ship to the sun. She addressed the Democratic National Committee Executive Committee's first post election party I'm sorry

post election conference. Molly Murphy said they blew the election because they spent too much time attacking Trump over this irrelevant topic of norms. Voters, Molly says, believe quote norms if not worked for them, and so we certainly shouldn't ask them to clutch their pearls. We risk sounding like hall monitors. As to the here and now. Molly adds that voters don't care who he's putting in cabinet positions. These voters are saying, I always give him pass on

the outrageous if my costs come down. She insists, they should have been focused on household costs. Look, if you were a Harris Polster and you are speaking up now instead of on October eighteenth or August eighteenth. First off, f U. Secondly, it's pretty clear millions of Americans, or at least the two hundred and twenty nine thousand, seven hundred and sixty six voters in the swing states who

actually decided the election. It's pretty clear two hundred and twenty nine thousand, seven hundred and sixty six people who have the right to vote in America chose the wallet over the polio and the fascism. Nobody's arguing that they're morons. We have bred them to be morons, we have educated them to be morons. We have let them educate themselves in homeschooling to be morons. They are morons. What a shock.

But the point that continues to mystify me about second guessers like mal Le Murphy and other narrow minded pinheads is this, the Democrats spent eleventy billion dollars on advertising that much money. I'm just guessing here, but I think I think hear me out. We could have covered both topics. We could have covered the whole insurrectionisty dictatorshippy thing in the ads and the price of the sandwiches and the gas thing. Could have done them both, could have put

them both in the same commercials. Even you think the cost of groceries is going down under a Trump dictatorship, he wants tariffs on everything, including oil and gas and electricity. Your gas is going up under Trump at least thirty cents a gallon at least oh and if you try to complain about it, Trump will sue you. I'm Kamala Harris and I approved this message because your food prices will so double under Trump. See other than the choice of voices. There you can walk and chew gum at

the same time. Molly Murphy, well the generic you, but our winner. State Senator Doug Mastriano of Pennsylvania. If that name sends a shutter down your spine, well it should please. He was the GOP nominee for governor that year in twenty twenty two, the one who lost to Josh Shapiro by fourteen because Mastriano was a fundamentalist theocrat and an election subverter, and a COVID denier and most importantly a

murn and he's still a mourn. Mastriano posted a photo of what he says is a drone looks to be four or five feet high, maybe twelve feet wide, lashed to the back of a flatbed trailer and being transported on a major highway. Breaking News reads the caption to this photo. Crashed drone in Orange Beach, retrieved from water

and taken to undisclosed location for further investigation. But Mastriano, though he has the IQ of a brain damaged fish that just had a drone crash into it, had much more to say about this above the photo of the drone. It is inconceivable that the federal government has no answers nor has taken any action to get to the bottom

of the unadefied drones. The fecklessness of this administration was on display last year when a Chinese surveillance balloon was allowed to fly over the entire continental United States before being shot down. Such should be viewed as a threat to our nation and citizens. An action is long overdue. We have recourses and assets in our arsenal to get answers, but I suppose Ukraine is more important to the White House.

January twentieth can't come soon enough. Mastriano's post got a community note because the photo that has driven into this madness is not of one of the so called Northeast drones. It's a model of a tie fighter from Star Wars. A motion picture this photograph being driven along a highway in the Philippine, which Doug Mastriano could not distinguish from

his ass or his elbow. The community note also disappeared sometime yesterday, then reappeared, leading to the conclusion that perhaps Elon Musk also cannot tell the difference between an actual craft capable of flight and a toy. On the way to the local Comic con convention, Doug Mastriano boasts he spent thirty years in the army and is a veteran of desert storm in Afghanistan, and thank you for If we hadn't already been doing this, we should start doing

this immediately. We should question anybody who served in combat in the last thirty five years about literal brain damage, because we see this time after time they come out of service with the best of intentions and with the iq of a fish that was just hit by a drone. Because this bone had simply picked up this photo from some conspiracy website and either assumed he could fool everybody with it, or is too far gone himself to know

it was a pheo of a movie prop. Doug these Ano the drunes you're looking for, Mastriano, idiot, and today's other worse BUYSI and outer Space. I have one more story to tell you about covering the nineteen eighty two National Football League players strike, and this is less about the strike itself and more about the man for whom

I covered it, Ted Turner. Ted Turner had put CNN on the air just two years earlier, and his sports guy Bill McPhail had interviewed me for a job as their New York Sports reporter even earlier than that May of nineteen eighty and when I did not get it, I was genuinely relieved, because I was convinced there was no way they would ever get CNN on the air. No chance. Ever, Obviously I did not account for Ted

Turner's stubbornness. Anyway, I wound up going there freelance in nineteen eighty one, as I have related in some detail here, when Lou Dobbs and his girlfriend, the New York Sports Reporter, had to get out of town fast at the existence of missus Lou Dobbs. Eight months later, as the nineteen eighty two NFL strike loomed. They had made me staff and given me a contract, first offering me one thousand dollars less a year than they were paying me freelance.

Even CNN of nineteen eighty two acknowledged the absurdity of that mathematical proposition. So I was invested already whining about Ted Turner, employee of CNN, when the football players walked out in strike in September nineteen eighty two, and that strike was my beat every day from March to November.

A day or so after the strike began, we sent up an interview with the president of CBS Sports, Neil Pilson, about the effect that the strike would have on TV Sports in general and CBS Sports in particular, And as the camera crew and I filed into his office, Pilson wearily said, nothing against you, guys, but I've done so many interviews already about this strike that if you actually come up with a question I haven't been asked already, I'll give you well. We all leaned in towards him.

Give us what the job a job interview at least fifty dollars, I'll give you CBS Sports caps, not exactly a job, but better than nothing. So we rolled tape and I said, so, mister Pilson, in light of the strike, do you wish CBS Sports did not have the Super Bowl this year? As it does? And he laughed, and he took off his mic and he went over to his office phone. He buzzed his assistant, bring in three caps, will you? And he sat back down. He said, you guys,

did it. Nobody asked me that yet, and it's like the only question that really interests me. You're still rolling. Neil Pilson then proceeded to give a lengthy and thoughtful answer about how as long as the season was not canceled, it was probably better to have the Super Bowl because people would be so grateful that after the strike they

wound up playing in anyway. So now a week goes by after that interview, and the bargaining sessions between the players and the owners are taking place in a Manhattan hotel, the Lows on Lexington Avenue, a dump with a nice lobby. All that matters to me is the Lows with the dump, and the nice lobby is literally three blocks from my apartment. The players and the owners just march through a long hallway into private rooms. That's all we see of them.

It is not heavy lifting. There are nice seats at least in that lobby, but it is enlivened one day by news that our boss, Ted Turner has asked the union if he can come in and meet with their twenty odd player negotiating team because he wants to pitch them on something. He was in fact due there yesterday

but was unavoidably detained. The rumor the players told me never confirmed, was that while changing planes in Chicago, Turner and an air hostess had ensconced themselves in a dumpster or the other version was in a janitor's closet for twelve hours of whoopee, and that's why he was a

day late. Anyway, I walk into the Lows that morning, and if somehow I had not been able to recognize my camera crew, sure enough it is the same two guys who had been with me at Neil Pilson's office at CBS when I asked him the question he had not been asked before, earning us free CBS sports caps, and the cameraman and the deck operator are of course wearing their CBS sports caps and understand in nineteen eighty two. CNN was not an upstart. It was not the feisty outsider,

It was not the future of news. We were called pretend TV. It was said that CNN stood for Chicken Noodle News. One day, I called somebody up and asked for press credentials for Cable News Network, and the guy said, Cable News Network. The either people own the news stands downtown. I had no idea what he was talking about, so I went to one of the newstands and I asked the guy who owns this place? And he pointed to a plaque and it said owned by Cabbell News Company.

The Kabbell News Company, owner of downtown newstands, was better known than Cable News Network. We got scoffed at in some arenas and venues like Madison Square Garden in New York. Our crews were not admitted because they were not in the Union. So the CBS sports caps were an important, albeit borrowed touch of legitimacy and dignity, especially for my

cameraman and my deck guy. So the three of us position ourselves in that long haul in the lobby, waiting for my boss, Ted Turner, me holding the mic, with the big red CNN logo on the mic flag and the crew wearing their gaudy CBS sports caps, and in Ted walks emerging from the brilliant early autumn sunshine, filtering in from behind him from the street like this was a perfectly lit movie scene, and he sees me and recognize me and smiles and comes over and beams hot, damn,

it's my CNN crew, And he shakes my hand and we roll tape and I start to asking my first question, and suddenly the joy drains from his face and he stops me. Oh, did what they wearing on their heads? He gestures at the cameraman and the deck guy, and I explained the Baxter, I don't give a damn who gave him them? Is a CNN crew, they wearing CBS sports caps. Get them off they damn heads. And he

pushes me, I mean really shoves me and strides past us. Now, even then, I'm five six inches taller than Ted Turner and twenty five pounds heavier at least, And maybe I can live with my employer embarrassing me in public, but I do not have to let him shove me in front of all the other reporters. So for a second, I think, Ah, I'm just gonna run down the hall and catch him and horse collar the bastard from behind.

About a year into my TV career, I have already accepted that there are positives to television, but I've also already learned nearly all the negatives. And not three months earlier, I had gone over to ABC to interview with them about going back to do radio sports. Seems to me, given what I know about Ted Turner, dragging him to the ground and then quitting TV forever would be a

pretty appropriate farewell. And then one word popped in my head. Rent, Ah, right, Rent, So quickly I go to Plan B to be fair in thought, if not an action. Ted Turner was right. Look pretty silly to have the CNN camera crew wearing CBS sports caps while interviewing the founder and owner of CNN, who, by the way, was in the newspaper constantly because he

kept saying he was going to buy CBS. Plus, I still had a story to do that day, and that crew is going to have to go back into the room where Turner would be meeting with the players about an hour later for the proverbial spray shot that would give us some video to use of their meeting, and simply having my guys take their caps off was not going to suffice. So I ran the three blocks back to my apartment to grab the only bit of merch or swag produced in the first two years of CNN.

Something they had and apparently inexhaustible supply of CNN bumper stickers. I must have had one hundred of them in my place alone, and there were boxes and cartons and boxes and cartons of them in the New York bureau, which was funny enough as it was, since I don't think all the people who worked at CNN in New York

in nineteen eighty two owned six cars among them. Anyway, I trimmed a couple of the stickers down to just the CNN logos and raced back to the Crappy Low's hotel, and just as they were calling for the crews to come in to get the spray shots of Ted meeting with the players, I put those CNN logo stickers over the CBS logos on my guys caps, and to my delight, they stuck in place a little large, but it worked. Later the boys came out of the meeting room, and

the cameraman was in hysterics. He wound the video back and had me watch it through the viewfinder of the camera. As soon as they had walked in, Turner started to give them dirty looks, and then suddenly one of the NFL players said, Hey, Ted, there's your crew. There's your CNN crew. Hey CNN over here. Everybody was laughing, and now Ted was beaming that them. That's my CNN crew.

All right, good work boys. When his meeting with the players broke up an hour later, I got a message from Ted's assistant to wait for him around a corner from the main lobby so he could give me give CNN exclusive details about what he was trying to sell

the players on. It was a series of exhibition games so the striking players could make a little money on the side, that he could televise and there would be a pitch to the National Labor Relations Board that the strike had been forced on the players by the owners, which would have meant the players would have all become free agents. Ted won haunted them, all of them, every player in the National Football League to sign instead with him. He would create a twenty four team league. He would

give the union half ownership of every team. He would find backers for the other half, and all he wanted was the TV rights. It didn't happen, obviously, but what a breathtaking scheme. Anyway, Turner was all smiles when he came out of the meeting to tell me before he met with the rest of the press, and he said, great with the hat, good work, but I have to get you guys some real sea and ed sports hats for Christmas. Ted stayed another fifteen or twenty minutes doing

god knows what with God knows whom. I didn't see any dumpsters in the hotel, and then he left by the main exit as the rest of the camera crews and reporters trailed him. I went along just to see if there was anything he hadn't told me, And as he went out the doors to his car, he said, see overman, and I said, don't forget the hats, and Ted Turner gave me one of the dirtiest looks I have ever gotten in my life. Sure enough, a couple of days before Christmas, I get a call from my

boss in Atlanta. I mean just got a box of one hundred CNN Sports Truckers caps from Ted Turner's office. I don't know what the hell this is all about, but his assistant says, if we wanted to know, we should call you. I was very proud of making the correct choice between correcting mistake and getting us all hats and dissaulting him. There is one PostScript. Ted talked the players into the exhibition games. I mentioned only two of them, one at RFK Stadium in Washington, which I went to

on assignment, seated next to Ted Turner. He had two flasks with him. Anyway, the crowd was so small at RFK Stadium in Washington that at one point they got on the PA system and asked all the fans to go sit down behind the player benches so the TV shots of the game wouldn't show all those empty seats. The other game was in the Los Angeles Collis. They drew even less, maybe one thousand fans, probably more like five hundred five hundred fans in the LA Coliseum. Five

hundred fans looks like the raisins and rice pudding. But it was the name of his ad hoc league with these games in Washington and LA that still sticks with me forty years later Ted named it himself. I'm pretty sure he did this deliberately. I know nobody else noticed it until I made a big deal about it. Ted Turner called his ill fated venture his Erzatz National Football League the quote all Star season, and I said, perfect. The acronym you have built for it is a s S.

I've done all that average I can do here. Thank you for listening. Brian Ray and John Phillip Schaneil the musical directors have Countdown, arranged, produced, and performed most of our music. Mister Chanelle handled orchestration at keyboards, mister Ray was on the guitars, bass and drums, and it was produced by Tko Brothers. Our satirical and fifty musical comments are by the best baseball stadium organist ever, Nancy Faust.

The sports music is the Olderman theme from ESPN two, written by Mitch Warren Davis Curtisy of ESPN Inc. Other music arranged and performed by the group No Horns allowed, and my announcer was my friend. Why this is a coincidence, Nancy Faust? Everything else was, as ever my fault. My best wish is, of course, to Ted Turner. My first television boss of bosses. That's countdown for today, Just one four hundred and ninety five days until the scheduled end

of the lame duck presidency of Trump. Probably your lawsuit may vary. The next scheduled countdown is Monday. As always, bulletins as the news warrants till the next one, and I'm Keith Aldrimman. Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and good luck. 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.