TRUMP LOSES ANOTHER 7%; DID HE DO A QUID PRO QUO WITH THE WALL STREET JOURNAL? - 6.6.24

percent has already committed to voting for President Biden. The Times did its best to bury this last night, but even from a low rent corner of the front page, the truth screams out. It's one of the biggest questions in the wake of Trump's conviction. Did the verdict change anyone's mind? Write Snate Cone and others early on, The answer appears to be an equivocal Yes. Times clearly saw

a good polling idea and stole it. Remember those polsters who didn't just ask randos, did Trump becoming a convicted fella make you less likely to vote for him? But actually recontacted previous polices and ask them that question. The Times got two thousand voters it had pulled in April and May. That block had Trump ahead by three. That same group, as of yesterday had Trump ahead by one, and fully seven percent of Trump's April supporters no longer

back him because he was convicted. The Times says three percent has switched from Trump to Biden, and the remaining four percent is still on decided about where they will now move their vote. Better still, the Time says the shift away from Trump is strongest among quote, young, non

white and disengaged, democratically leaning voters. Of the people who previously told us they had voted for mister Biden in twenty twenty but would vote for mister Trump in twenty twenty four, around one quarter now say they would vote for mister Biden, and The Time says the double haters who were split among Biden and Trump but didn't really like either, a fifth of Trump's support among them is gone. These were all huge Biden vulnerabilities two weeks ago. They

have now shrunk to bite sized. Remember last Saturday, I told you that each point lost by Trump from his base is seven hundred and fifty thousand Trump votes, that a five percent loss would mean something like a dozen electoral votes going to Biden, and that each new poll reflecting the outcome of the trial here in New York affirms damage to Trump of at least at minimal two or three percent. The convictions had the effect we all

knew they would. It is a good bet that the use of the magic words will have that effect too. The magic words convicted felon Donald Trump. One other set of polls more granular, also good News Decision Desk, HQ and The Hill have put out their averages of polling in the swing states. They have seven swing states. They include North Carolina, I mean, I guess, I think of six, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Nevada,

and Georgia. In three way races with Kennedy included. The average of twenty two different polls in Wisconsin now has Bidden up by three point one points. Using thirty one different polls in Michigan, it's now Biden by half a point twenty nine polls. In Pennsylvania, Trump had forty one point six to forty one point three twenty eight poles. In Arizona, the Trump lead is back down to three and a hay twenty one poles in Nevada, Trump by four point six, twenty six poles in Georgia, Trump by five.

We are just four weeks removed from the Times Siena polls in which Trump was up and up big in all of the swing states. Biden in that time, thanks largely to the convictions of Trump here in New York, Biden has in short, caught up. Now, what would the editors of the Wall Street Journal do if convicted felon Donald Trump went to them and said, I can get putin to send home his American hostage, your reporter Evan Gershkovich.

What would the editors then do if Trump paused and added, I would like you to do us a favor, though, And what would the editors do if Trump then paused again and said, you need to help get me elected. I need you to join our Biden age plot. I need you to write a piece that restarts the Biden age plot. I'm a convict now, I need to change the subject immediately. I need you to publish this by

Wednesday latest. That imaginary conversation is bluntly the worst thing I have ever thought about any journalists in this country, any news organization through half a century of cynicism that has only grown by dint of the decades of personally witnessing the horrible people and horrible acts of this industry, grown through three years of working for a Rupert Murdoc company and then being personally fired by him because I

followed his instructions exactly. Even through all that, I have never even thought this badly of him and all of

his journalistic prostitutes. But then it turned out the Washington Post buried Trump's foe knowledge of the horrors of COVID, as expressed Bob Woodward on tape, and it buried for three years the Alito flag scandal, and The New York Times led a multitude of its quote reporters unquote sit on vital and exclusive Trump news, possibly vital to the safeguarding of the democracy, for months, for years for book deals.

And then the Wall Street Journal printed a piece on President Biden's age, again, a piece that is as journalistically bankrupt as anything I have ever read in the press of this country, a piece which quoted only Republicans, including Kevin McCarthy, but not including Kevin McCarthy's other comments that know Biden was sharp as hell, after which the co author of the piece, Shoubin Hughes, went on CNN and dismissed McCarthy's sharpness comments by insisting, quote McCarthy was doing

that tactically because he also had to get along with President Biden. In other words, this reporter was acknowledging that McCarthy either lied to her about Biden, or he lied to Biden and everybody else about Biden. But they at the Wall Street Journal believed him credible enough to serve as the primary source for this piece when McCarthy is in fact a worthless, bitter and broken man who is

twoh sleazy even for his own Republican party. This is a piece for which Democrats like Nancy Pelosi and Senator Patty Murray and Senator Jack Reid were interviewed, but when they said on the record, no, he's fine, they were edited out. Their quotes were not included, their conclusions were not included, But several dozen Republicans who would not go on the record were permitted to slander the president anonymously.

A piece so bad, so devoid of even the attempt to make it not look like something written by the Gateway Pundit so bad that it was defended by Chris Silizza.

And still I hesitated to even suggest that this Wall Street Journal piece did not occur in a vacuum, but in perhaps a quid pro quote, because to do that would require a degree of moral corruption at the Wall Street Journal, a kind of terrible disqualifiing conclusion to the entire ethical construction of the lives of not just the writers of the story, Annie Lynsky and Shauvin Hughes, but every editor and every publisher at the Wall Street Journal

who touched this piece. It requires them all to have sold their souls in exchange for what might be a worthless promise by two of the worst human beings who have ever lived. It requires the Wall Street Journal to literally be just as subhuman and as selfish and as corrupt as Trump. The saddest thing here is the possibility that these events are not connected, that there was no quid pro quote, but that it will always look like

there was one. The saddest thing is that the corruption unleashed upon our country by Trump, by this Murdoch slime, these personifications of evil and immorality, that what they have done to us is so great that this exchange true or not, is plausible. This exchange if you hurt Biden for me, I'll make sure if Putin doesn't kill your friend, that is true or false, entirely plausible. And that is

Rupert Murdoch's fault, and that is Donald Trump's fault. And may they both burn in hell forever for that especially. And yes, I hesitate about this part too, because to the core of my being I hate conspiracy theories. And the conspiracy theories I hate most are the ones that seep into journalism and into life just because of the sequence of timing, because of the logical fallacy that be followed a therefore a caused B and yet there is

the timing. On May twenty third, Trump suddenly started talking about Evan Gershkovich, the kidnapped, detained Wall Street Journal reporter, and about bringing him back from Moscow, and how the only way to bring him back was to elect him, because Putin will send him back, but only to Trump,

not to Biden. He'd be back after a Trump election, but before the inauguration, and almost nobody pointed out that by saying this, Trump was admitting that actually he could convince Putin to send Gershkovich home now, but he won't, and nobody pointed out that in doing so, Trump also had made himself part of the Russian gang holding Evan

Gershkovich hostage to day. And yet it was late Tuesday night, nine pm Eastern that the Wall Street Journal's genuinely unbelievable attempt to reignite what even Politico had termed the Republican's biden Age plot, an effort for whom editors on my high school newspaper would have been fired and probably expelled. This story dropped like a hunk of excrement from Rupert

Murdoch's soul nine pm Eastern Tuesday night. And what had happened earlier Tuesday, What had happened at eleven twenty two am Eastern Tuesday, involving Trump and the same Wall Street Journal.

on Biden be written by Lynskey and Hughes, or rewritten by editors and blamed on Lynsky and Hughes in exchange for ransoming their friend. Well, he already did something like that. He did it to President Zelenski on July twenty fifth, twenty nineteen. I would like you to do us a favor, though He'd help Zelenski defend Ukraine against Putin's crimes, as

long as Zelensky concocted false evidence smearing Joe Biden. If you think Trump wouldn't call Murdoch or Wall Street Journal editor Emma Tucker a Murdoch import from his Times of London and say I can get Evan home. On November sixth, I can help you defend him against Putin's crimes. I would like you to do us a favor, though you're crazy. The question isn't whether what Trump would do that. My god, it's only a surprise he didn't do it earlier, given

his statement in May. Given this new video, I would be willing to wager he did do this. The only question is whether the Wall Street Journal would do it with him. And if they didn't and the Biden age plot piece was actually somehow published coincidentally nine hours later, then perhaps the Journal and Rupert Murdoch and Emma Tucker

are not so much soulless monsters but utter morons. And amid the thousand terrible things I have accurately accused Rupert Murdoch of being, perhaps the only one I never have is accusing him of being an utter moron. Now, about this piece and its authors and their willingness to manipulate the news or to be manipulated by Republicans or Trump cultists or their bosses or Rupert Murdoch or whoever, there are significant reasons to be of doubt about the credibility

of Annie Lynsky and Shauvin Hughes. If you remember the Washington Post reporter who mocked President Biden quote walking through a graveyard. That was Annie Lynsky quote, Biden goes to a church and walks through a graveyard in Wilmington as his legislative agenda is dying in Washington, with a picture of it. October third, twenty twenty one. At face value, it was tasteless enough that she should have been fired

on the spot. But that was just face value. Annie Lynskey either did not know enough about her own job or did not care enough to know that the graveyard in Wilmington is the one in which Biden's late son, his late infant daughter, and his late first wife are all buried. Annie Lynsky, co author of this Wall Street Journal crap, initially deleted her tweet about the graveyard without even apologizing, and then she had to correct that tweet

and put in an emotionless tweet reading I'm sorry. And the attack on Biden visiting the graves of his son bo and his wife Nelia, and his daughter Naomi. His daughter was one year old when she and her mother were killed in a car accident, the attack on Biden and the tasteless ain't I clever? Linkage of the graveyard and the dying agenda actually worse than they seemed at

the time. Annie Lynskey covered the twenty sixteen Clinton campaign for The Boston Globe, and at a substance abuse event on the campaign trail, a woman in the audience stood up and revealed her son was an addict who had

committed suicide. And Annie Lynskey, who would later mock Biden going to see his dead family, decided that Hillary Clinton's response to this poor woman was stilted and cold, and annie Lynskey's assessment of Secretary Clinton's emotions was published on the front page of the Sunday Boston Globe under the headline in New Hampshire, Clinton is lacking in the art of contact. This fiasco, this week's fiasco, This complete, unalloyed appearance of a quid pro quoll between her and her

paper and the Trump campaign. This is only the latest in this series of self degradations, which are the only stories of consequence written in the entire career of Annie Lynskey. And as to her partner in this piece of journalism, Shoubin Hughes, who seemed unconcerned that she was admitting on national television that Kevin McCarthy was a tactical liar, while simultaneously evincing that it had never dawned and may never yet dawn on her. That McCarthy may have been tactically

lying to her. Her mediocre career is best summed up

by this from the thirteenth of February twenty thirteen. Assigned by the Wall Street Journal to cover reaction to the first State of the Union Address for the second term by President Obama, Her dispatch from Washington begins quote Ted Nugent, the rock star and gun rights advocate, stuck to his promise to remain respectful as US President Barack Obama delivered the State the Union address, but after the speech concluded, mister Nugent returned to form unquote Honestly, I am still

looking for reasons to believe that my wild theory that the journal is trying to ransom its reporter by servicing Donald Trump is nonsense? Is paranoia? Is something else? That This deplorably bad story was co written by this Lynsky idiot and by the journal's resident expert on Ted Nugent's responses to State of the Union addresses. That's not helping me, nor are the other reporters who, before the Wall Street Journal story became toxic, decided to defend it and promote it.

I mentioned Soliza, also known by his real name Kiss of Death. There's also Boston Globe Washington Bureau chief Jackie Kucinich, whose only concern was that the Democh who were interviewed for the piece but whose quotes were then dropped because they disproved the journals slash Trump narrative. Qcinich didn't care about the journalistic malpractice there. Her interest was what those Democratic protests said about Biden's security. They don't say a

goddamn thing about his acuity, ma'am. They say a lot of things about the Wall Street Journal's honesty, and Annie Lynsky's honesty, and Schaubin Hughes's honesty, or, more accurately, their utter lack of honesty. The last straw was Kendelanian from NBC News, pimping this story by adding only the word stunning.

When last we heard from this boil on journalism's ass Dalanian was defending Robert Herr, the corrupt Partisan Special Council, the Trump groupie who turned his report exonerating Biden of all wrongdoing into a psychological evaluation of the press. And I think in doing this Dealanian gave away probably inadvertently. I mean, who would deliberately include Kendalanian in a media conspiracy? But I think he inadvertently gave away what this is

all about. Remember, in March, Delanian had written one of the most hilariously self unaware paragraphs in recent American journalistic history. Quote the Robert Herr hearing is a perfect example of what American politics has become. A career public servant spends a year reaching conclusions that are inconvenient for partisans of each party, so they set about questioning his motives and

ethics on national television. Ah, there we are. The House is trying to get the Robert Herr President Biden interview tapes right now, trying to get them out of the Department of Justice so that the House Republicans can quote them and leak them and put them in Trump campaign ads.

The fascists are circling back to what again. Even Politico recognize this as the Biden age plot, because Biden has caught up to Trump in the polls, because Trump has been convicted, because Trump is a convicted felon because Trump is a convict, because it is affecting his support seven percent in the goddamn New York Times. It is trying to revive the Biden age question. And yesterday it was the turn of the Wall Street Journal to carry water

for Trump. And he's sick of fans like Robert her And oh yeah, who was the main named source in that journal piece? Why was Kevin McCarthy another Trump whore? Make no mistake what the Wall Street Journal did. It prostituted its news pages for Donald Trump. The only doubt is precisely why. I think the circumstantial evidence and the timing support this crazy idea that there could have been a quid pro quo over Gershkovich. And it is with that unfortunate man I would like to leave this. I

am not Annie Lynsky. I am not going to mock the human concern for his well being, his release, his very survival. He is a prisoner of a man the world should rid itself of as quickly as possible, Vladimir Putin. I am not going to mock even the thinking that must have crossed the minds of dozens of good people at the Wall Street Journal, who have said to themselves in the last year, I'd do anything to get my

friend Evan home. I have only sympathy and empathy. I had a pow Miia bracelet, a Vietnam pow Mia bracelet as a teenager. If he were my relative, my friend, my colleague. I do not know how far I would go to get him back, or at least think of

going to get him back. But I still know that I would not do a deal with Trump and by extension putin and bluntly, I have no idea whether or not people at the Journal would say the same thing, or if perhaps they have already faced that choice and that article was the result of them already having made that deal. Okay, I am not going to put the blame solely on her. Georgia is a red state, despite who the senators are. The governors who appointed the appeals

judges were Republicans. But everything in the Georgia election interference can is now on hold after the State Court of Appeals stays all proceedings. That's every hearing and every motion and even every scheduling until the challenge to that decision not to disqualify Fannie Willis is heard at the beginning of October. There is no chance this will be completed before the election. Again, How she could have not known that she had to be a million miles beyond the

slightest hint of the mildest reproach. How she could not have known? That makes my blood run cold. Trump, though was defeated in New York, the gag order will stay in effect until at least sentencing on July eleventh, and there's still nothing new on any attempt to postpone that sentencing until after the Republican Convention the next week. In ho Chi Min City. I'm sorry in Milwaukee, I was looking at that Internet archive shot of their website with

the photo of Hochi City instead of Milwaukee. And since everything legal about Trump ends at the Supreme Court anyway, I will actually direct you to an excellent story from the Washington Post to clip and save. Justin Juvenile's piece is headlined Alito's account of the upside down flag doesn't fully add up. Here's why. Of course they should have gone with doesn't fully fly. Here's why. But I'm nitpicking. It is a very useful article and literally worth saving

somewhere in your computer. And there is one point I have not heard articulated this well, and this simply before that, I would like to quote in full. The most pivotal question about the upside down American flag has yet to be fully answered, Martha and Alito's motivation for flying it. Obviously, this is about Alito's insistence that his wife flew all her flags a politically, that the Virginia upside down flag was, as she so colorfully put it, an international sign of distress.

Quoting the Post again, Alito repeated his contention that a neighborhood dispute sparked the flag flying in a statement to The New York Times, which first reported the flag controversy last month. The Justice then told Fox News reporter Shannon Breem the dispute began when his wife confronted a neighbor about an anti Trump sign that featured an expletive, indicating the argument likely did have a political dimension. Ah, so it was not political, except that missus Alito started it

by complaining about a political sign. Gotcha? Also of interest here, how crazy, how self abnegated? How horrorsh are African American elected officials of this nation who are campaigning for convicted fellon Donald Trump? Even though he is an obvious white supremacist. Congressman Byron donalds now says it was better for black people during Jim Crow because Byron Donald's is either a political prostitute and an ignoramus, or if you're a glass

full kind of person, he's just an ignoramus. That's next. This is Countdown. This is Countdown, with Keith Olberman still ahead of us on this edition of Countdown. I just mentioned that when I talk about the pervasive baseline corruption of all Rupert Murdoch news operations like the Wall Street Journal, I know it firsthand. I worked for Murdoch, and after

a decade of denying it, he finally confirmed it. He fired me personally because I had done exactly what he told me to do, things I promised not to tell coming up, But first, as ever, there are still more new idiots to talk about. The daily roundup of the miss Grants, Morons, Undone and krugriffect specimens who constitute to Die's worse fashions in the world. Yeah, the runner up worse Speaker of the House, Mike I may look like

a sick, sick man, but you can't prove anything. Johnson, He's appointed two new members to the House Intelligence Committee, Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, of course, had to turn over his phone to investigators looking into the attempt to subvert the election. And doctor Ronnie glug glug Jackson of Texas, who just got into a profanity laden fight with state troopers at a rodeo there last year.

of Seapack. I don't know whether to laugh or cry or applaud Matt's freudian's slip here, but he has written and since deleted quote the sham prosecutions of President Trump have ignited a fire in the American people. They know that it's a rotten process and it's why President Trump isn't doing so well with young, Hispanic and Black voters

on quote vote. If the polling I mentioned earlier in this program doesn't convince you if the polling I cited yesterday in this program doesn't convince you, if the pro polling I cited on Saturday in the special report doesn't convince you, that the convictions are killing Trump and totally disorienting his supporters, that Freudian slip must convince you. That's why President Trump isn't doing so well with young, Hispanic and Black voters. Thank you, Matt Well said, But our winner,

Congressman Byron Donalds the Tim Scott of herschel Walker's. Byron wants to be vice president. He wants to prove he can be the kind of African American political leader who can appeal to Trump's base, the one who's willing to deny he is African American. First, there was a Black Americans for Trump event in Philadelphia, and almost nobody but

white folks showed up for that. Then there was a second, an event to court the black vote, literally titled Congress Kognac and Cigars, at which Donald spoke and my long ago ESPN colleague Michelle Tafoya was the moderator. She, of course, is so proud of her minority heritage She's partially Hispanic, that she used to use the air name Mickey Conley. She m seated, and Donald told the Philadelphia Inquire everything that every white supremacist would want to hear, a Byron

Donald say, quoting the paper's report. At another point, Donald said he is starting to see the reinvigoration of the black family, which he described as younger people forming nuclear family units and helping to breathe the revival of a black middle class in America. He went on to say that those family values had previously been eroded by Democratic policies that black voters embraced after becoming loyal to the party due to the Civil Rights movement. Quote, you see

during Jim Crow, the black family was together. During Jim Crow, more black people were not just conservative, black people have always been conservative minded, but more black people voted conservatively, he said. And then hw Lyndon Johnson, you go down that road and now we are where we are, he added, referring to the former US Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. So Congressman was better during Jim Crow, where there were

more conservative votes among black people. Yeah, for the most part, black people could not vote at all. Couldn't have voted conservative, liberal, or communists or fascist or anything else. Yeah, they often

got shot when they tried to vote. When between eighteen eighty two and nineteen sixty eight, according to the Equal Justice Initiatives' extensive research, at least three thousand, four hundred and forty six African Americans were lynched in this country, at least eight of them in Pennsylvania, where you made this idiotic asshole statement of yours about how it was

better Jim Crow. And if that wasn't bad enough for you Byron Donald's Jim Crow fan was also offended when Michelle Tafoy asked him about why the cognac and cigar events seemed to be almost all male and why almost all of Trump's African American support seems to be male only. First of all, there's a difference between men and women anyway, Donald said. Men have been created by God to be conquerors,

to be hunters. That's who they are. And so a black man in today's America is looking around and saying, how can I go hunt for my people and hunt for my family. They're looking at what Joe Biden has done and saying I can't hunt. You took my spear unquote spear. You heard him Congressman Byron, Who's gonna tell him they just made the racist reference to black men throwing spears. Donald's Today's worse person in the world. See the number one story on the countdown on my favorite topic,

me and things I promised not to tell. Over the weekend, watching hockey, I had occasion to invoke my days hosting the Baseball Game of the Week and the World Series for Fox, and it reminded me of the delightful way that ended with me being paid one hundred thousand dollars a month not to do anything. I have changed jobs a lot, and seldom have the departures included gold watches and going away parties, at least not going away parties

to which I was invited. But in forty three years in radio and television, I have only actually been fired in the traditional sense of go clean out your desk and get out twice. Once the order was from a drunken radio executive who did not like the fact that I was twenty one years old, and he was overruled, and he was sent home with a warning by his bosses hours later, and I was back on the job forty eight hours after that. The other time, when it

actually happened, You're fired, clean out your desk. That was, unsurprisingly at the hands of Rupert Murdoch and Fox, and I mean Rupert Murdoch personally, or so he claims. When I finally convinced NBC News that I was serious about no longer hosting its Monica Lewinsky Athon in nineteen ninety eight, the head of NBC Sports, Dick Eversoll, had an ingenious solution.

He knew his friends at Fox Sports longed to have me front their version of SportsCenter, and so he proposed the following NBC would give my agent ten days in which to negotiate two deals. A deal for me to go to LA and host Fox Sports News and Major League Baseball on Fox, and another deal in which Fox would pay NBC one million dollars for my contract, like I was a mediocre baseball pitcher. Amazingly, it worked. I got what was then a record breaking salary for any

cable sportscaster. Ever, NBC got its million, and maybe most startlingly, NBC then asked me to stay on the air as a lane duck at MSNBC for like six weeks. Curiously throughout my career, no matter how abrasive the exit. My Lane Duck employers have always, for some reason trusted me to stay on their air, even though I was leaving in local news in Los Angeles once. I did this for three months. Anyway. At first, going to work at

Fox Sports was a delight. Their news guys, the evil Roger Ales and his henchman John Moody, pitched me on doing stuff for them, maybe co anchoring with Bill O'Reilly. I'm serious. I passed sports. We spent money. I worked with friends. I didn't have to talk about politics. I could narrate highlights. I could do funny voices way downtown Bang I lived on the beach. I mean, my next

door neighbor was Hawaii. Every time there was a newspaper story about ESPN, even though our ratings were terrible, there was also my picture in it with a caption like challenging ESPN. It was great. But then two things happened. The Fox guy, who knew we needed five years at minimum just to tie ESPN in the ratings, took me to lunch one day and said, sorry, mate, my missus is moving back to England tomorrow without me, so I'm

going good luck. He was replaced by guys who replaced the five year plan with a five week plan to raise the ratings by literally one fifth of one point. I left that meeting, in which they explained their suicidal plan and revealed that my salary represented an unsustainable twenty percent of their entire budget, and I called my real estate agent and put my house on the beach up

for sale. Not long after, my doctor gave me a physical and a warning, cut back on work and stress and everything else, or you can have a heart attack ten years from now. I told my bosses this, and their response was to blackmail me. We have a clause in your contract which allows us to send you on the road once a week while you are still working five days in the studio. We're going to enforce that unless you kick back two thirds of your salary. They

put this in a document. There are, as the kids, say, receipts. So I folded to blackmail because two thirds of three million dollars a year is still pretty good. But I kept doing the job. In nineteen ninety, I broke a story that everybody laughed at that Michael Jordan was unhappy in retirement and he wanted to come back to play in the NBA, but instead of getting a salary, he wanted an ownership stake in a team. Two years later,

he did exactly that. In two thousand, I got to host the first Mets Yankees World Series, and hosting baseball every Saturday on Fox was a pretty good gig, and we were just gearing up for the two thousand and one baseball season when I got a tip on April twentieth that the owners of the Los Angeles Dodgers had unofficially put their team up for sale, and in fact they were talking to the old owners, the O'Malley family, about taking the Dodgers off their hands, selling the Dodgers

back to the son of Walter O'Malley. This was a great scoop, but it had great danger because the owners of the Dodgers were Fox, my own employers. The next day, after getting this scoop, I made about one hundred phone calls, and sure enough I got the friend a friend of a friend of my agent to confirm that he and his family were in preliminary discussions joining the O'Malleys to buy the Dodgers from Fox. Two sources great scoop, and that night I reached out to my bosses and said,

what the hell do we do here? The story is solid, The Dodgers are for sale. But look, this is your candy store, and I do work for you, and if you don't want me to report this, I'm obviously not going to report it, and I'm not going to pouch and I'm not going to give the story to somebody else. My boss has replied, good for you. Why don't we all get on the phone with the top rupert. Murdoch has his own Personal News Corp Public relations department. Let's

see what he says. So on Sunday, April twenty second, two thousand and one, we got Murdoch's own PR guy on the blower and I explained it to him. Now, mister Murdoch has a policy about this. He never interferes in editorial decisions, not even in sourced business stories, not even if they involve him. So longung as you make it clear your sources are not from within the company, and so long as you're confident in your sources, and so long as you include our denial, you should proceed

with this Dodger story. That is what we are paying you for. For a brief moment, I thought maybe I have misjudged Rupert Murdoch. Well, it turned out to be a very brief moment and a very wrong moment. I reported the story that night, howls of denials. Five days later, though, the Long Beach Press Telegram newspaper had its own story said, despite denials, Dodgers are for sale, with far more details than I had, And that really was the end of it.

The team was unofficially for sale. Dodger fans, who hated what Fox had done to the team seemed happy, and the vast stinking pile of burning excrement that was Fox

and NewsCorp and Murdoch sailed on unperturbed. But twelve days after that, just before I was getting in my car to go to the first Fox Baseball meeting for our two thousand and one season coverage, the president of Fox Sports, yet another Aussie called David Hill, called my agent and told her case, not doing any baseball for us this year. Business decision click, end of conversation. Nothing else, no firing, no get out, no clean out your desk, no announcement.

But then two days later they turned off my access to the Fox computer system, And four days after that they called and canceled my cable show, and then that night I got two weird calls from Rich Sandomir, who was the TV sports critic and TV sports business reporter for the New York Times. And Rich asks me, so, did you know you got fired by Rupert Murdoch personally? And I said, with genuine astonishment that I not only didn't know that, but even given my thoughts about Rupert Murdoch,

I didn't believe that. Well, that's what my sources at Fox tell me. Apparently your Dodger story really pissed him off, but really, and I said, I had cleared it through his personal PR guy. I don't know, Rich Sandomir said, apparently he was on vacation and he got back like the ninth of this month, and he read all these stories about the Dodgers being for sale and how Fox Sports was the first to report it, and he called up David Hill and he told Hill to fire you immediately.

So I told Rich, this is the first I have heard of this, and I still don't believe it, even though the day he mentioned May ninth was the day David Hill had called my agent and told her I would not be doing baseball for Fox that year. An hour later, the phone rings again and it's Rich Sandomir again, and he sounds shaken. I got it wrong. I don't have any sources at Fox who told me Rupert fired you personally. My source said that you were telling people

Rupert had fired you personally over the Dodger story. And I gave Rich a sequence of well, kind of friendly uh huhs, and I said, no, I didn't, and know you've never been dumb enough in your life to make the mistake you're saying you just made. And he said, well, I never said somebody at Fox said Murdock fired Joek. Thanks. By the next day, they had me come into the Fox building on Pico Boulevard and clean out my office while a guard watched. And she was a really nice guard.

In fact, she brought donuts but a lovely way to go out. As I packed, I thought more and more of what had happened in the month since I had gotten that tip about the Dodgers being for sale. As I left the Fox lot for the last time as an employee, I went back a couple of times to attend table reads for the Simpsons. Table reads for the Simpsons were much more fun than being an employee at Fox.

I called a couple of reporters I knew, and my agent and some people in the business, and we tried to put together a timeline that made some sort of sense, because the slow motion firing thing. May ninth, you're not doing baseball. May eleventh, your computer it won't work. Teenth, your cable show is canceled. May sixteenth, clean out your office.

A week long firing made no sense until one reporter friend said, you know, Fox called me and said, call Keith up and provoke him, get him to call us names, tell him about this story and that paper, calling him washed up, get him going, And then it all clicked. My contract ran through the end of the year two thousand and one because Fox was firing me without any cause or even claiming there was a cause, without any

violation of my contract or their rules. Because I had left a trail of good behavior on the Dodger story. They were trying to enrage me and get me to say something nasty that itself would be a violation of my contract so they could outright fire me and keep the money. And the money still on the contract was about eight hundred thousand dollars now after decades of contemplating this, I am confident that I am no than the next guy,

at least not the next guy in television. But on my worst, craziest, least rational day, if you said you have two choices, Alderman, you can blow up these people who are firing you, and you can make them look bad in a newspaper for a day and then they'll fire you and keep all the money they owe you. Or you can keep your big bazoo shut for just

seven months. You can keep the eight hundred thousand dollars, and you can spend the summer doing whatever the hell you want, and you can then spend the rest of your natural life blowing these people up. If that's the choice, I will always take the scenario that gives me the

eight hundred thousand dollars for doing nothing. Always so. On January first, two thousand and two, after the last Fox check cleared, I began making a professional avocation out of attacking Fox News, Fox Sports, Fox Business, Fox Murdoch, Fox O'Reilly, Fox, Tucker Carlson, whatever. And I got the eight hundred thousand dollars,

but they're lingered for years. This kind of academic question of whether Rupert Murdoch had actually fired me for having followed the rules set out by his own personal pr guy. As usual, these things resolve themselves when you least expect them to. Murdoch was speaking at a Dow Jones conference in Carlsbad, California, on May twenty eighth, two thousand and eight, seven years to the month they got rid of me and a story came across the wire with my name

on it. The guy interviewing him at this conference talked about whether there should be dissenting voices on Fox quote news unquote, like that guy who was killing it on MSNBC Keith Olderman. Now, Murdoch barked, I fired him five years ago. He was crizy, timing was off, But there it was Rupert Murdoch confessing in front of a crowd that he fired me personally, the red badge of courage in quotes. I wondered if it still pissed him off that he had to pay me the eight hundred thousand

dollars when I didn't take the grievance bait. Three years after that, Murdoch said it again, like I hadn't heard it the first time. On February first, twenty eleven, Rupert Murdoch was interviewed by his business talking had Neil Cavudo, who for some reason asked him if he would consider hiring me to put me on Fox News. Now we fired him once. We don't believe in firing people. Twice, Kavoodo replied, you called him a nut. Lady was a nut?

himself Keith, he voluntarily chooses to call himself Rupert. I mean, sure, my name is Keith, but at least my name ain't freaking Rupert. See twenty three years later, It's quite clear to me the rules are very simple in Rupert murdoch Land. You do what Rupert Murdoch tells you to do, and you get fired. You don't do what Rupert Murdoch tells you to do, and you get fired. I've done all the damage I can do here, still have the eight

hundred thousand dollars. Thank you for listening. Countdown. Musical directors Brian Ray and John Phillip Schanel arranged, produced, and performed most of our music. Mister Ray was on guitars, bass, and drums, and mister Shanelle handled orchestration and keyboards. It was produced by Tko Brothers. The other music, including some of the Beethoven compositions, were arranged and performed by the

group No Horns Allowed. The sports music is the Olderman theme from ESPN two, written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN Inc. Our satirical and pithy musical comments are by Nancy Fauss, the best baseball stadium organist ever. Our announcer today was my friend Kenny Maine, and everything else was pretty much my fault. Oh no, ruper Verdock just fired me again. Send me eight hundred thousand dollars to

the following address. That's countdown for this the one hundred and fifty fourth day until the twenty twenty four presidential election and forty seventh day since convicted fellon Donald Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically elected government of the

United States. Use the July sentencing here and use the mental health system, use presidential immunity if it happens, use the not regularly given elector objection option from the Supreme Court to stop him from doing it again while we still can. The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow. Bulletins as the news warrants till then, I'm Keith Oldraman. Good Morning, good afternoon, good night, and good luck. Countdown with Keith

Oldreman is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.