TRUMP TIPS HIS HAND: HE'LL BACK OUT OF THE DEBATES WITH BIDEN - 5.16.24

to pull out of these debates and blame Biden. But there's also another possibility, which is Biden has also intentionally or otherwise given himself an emergency exit from these debates as well. There is and I know this is an unusual thing to hear from a political analyst of any kind. There is always the chance I might be wrong. I know who says that. There is always the chance I might be misreading this. This is only my interpretation, but

I'm right. But if you go through the timeline of what happened yesterday, I don't think I am misreading this. I think this has been deliberately set up so that Trump can pull out and blame Biden for it. Biden makes his challenge and then they agree to the ABC debate and the CNN debate, and Biden puts out his video and Biden taunts Trump, all of which is great for Biden. Then CNN reports that Trump is irked because Biden has, in the words of its reporter, taken control

of the narrative on the debates, a relevant point. Trump then posts, please let this true, and a reminder, truth is a brand name for Donald Trump, like Trump steaks. Please let this Trump steak serve to represent that I hereby accept debating Biden on Fox News. The date will be Wednesday, October second. The host will be Brett bhar and Martha McCallum. Thank you three tells in that the word represent the weighted word in his world hereby, and the thank you at the end. Those three words are

code for listen up, you Rubes. This is a legal document. I'm accepting this offer that I can debate Biden on Fox News on October second, with Bear and McCallum as the anchor. There's been no offer. He has accepted it in advance solely so he can say he accepted it

and if it doesn't happen, it's Biden's fault. Now, What use is that to him in October when the other two debates would be in June and September, the CNN one in Atlanta at the end of next month, and then the one on ABC coming up later in the early fall. I'm not sure what that would help him with if he were to cancel somehow afterwards after doing those first two debates, although that would give him an out, would it not. But I think it's for use far

earlier than that. Sometime between now and the official announcement the full details of the CNN debate, he says, I will be there as long as Biden recommits to our debate on Fox News on October second, and when he doesn't, he calls them all off. And I think the Biden campaign already knows about this. There was a statement after this crazy by accept debating Biden, and I will pay him twelve Trump stakes on Wednesday, October second. The hosts

will be Lara Trump and Christy Nome. Biden's campaign Jen O'Malley Dylan issued a statement after this crazy Trump Truth Truth is a brand name. It's meant ironically. She said, Trump has a long history of playing games with debates. Well, she's already clued in as to what he was doing yesterday, complaining about the rules, breaking those grules, pulling out at the last minute. Hello, where does Keith get this crazy idea that Trump will pull out at the last minute.

It says it right here, pulling out at the last minute, She wrote. He said he would debate President Biden any time, and he where any place. In fact, he said and posted it dozens of times, with varying degrees of comprehension and basic grammar. Ooh nice. I would have been proud to say that myself. President Biden made his terms clear for two one on one debates, and Donald Trump accepted those terms. No more games, no more chaos, no more

debate about debates. We'll see Donald Trump on June twenty seventh in Atlanta if he shows up, unquote, what does that mean if not that the Biden camp and campaign are both prepared for Trump not to show up for these debates that they may. In fact, as I suggested earlier, there is a slim chance. Although I put ninety percent of the weight on this on Trump pulling out, there's a ten percent chance that this has been set up this way so Biden can pull out when Trump insists

on whatever he would insist on. In this case, he immediately insisted on a third debate on Fox, by the way, with Brett Bahar, who he formerly said would never serve as an MC or as a participant in any debate Trump ever did again, as you know, nothing that Donald Trump has ever said previously applies today. The past is irrelevant in Trump Land because there is no reality. There is no history. There is only him now radiating his wonderfulness.

That Trump statement is his standard fake legal document. Hereby, you've won ten million dollars if you have all seventy three numbers drawn an hour lottery. But the Rubes believe this. That's why there were Trump steaks. Please let this serve to represent represent that I hereby accept well. That means he was offered it. The date will be thank you. The Rubes believe this. In that world, there are three debates,

and one of them will be on Fox News. In the real world, Trump agreed to the ones on CNN and ABC, and that's it. So between now. In June twenty seven, Trump demands Biden reconfirms his commitment to October two on Fox. Biden tells him to f off. In fact, in some respects the statement from the campaign yesterday already told Trump to f off and there are no debates.

Biden may have anticipated this, You could read it that way too, in which case he says, I tried, I challenged him, I committed to it, he committed to it, he backed out. He's a coward. And of course to pay this off. It's very simple. Joe Biden shows up at the CNN studios on June twenty seventh in Atlanta

and says, helloooo, and there's no Trump. Because think about the other aspect here, Setting aside the possibility that Trump is fully aware that he is beginning to glitch significantly and making a fool of himself and really putting a hole in people's perception that he is he is the sharper one. And let's not get into why that's the perception. It is the perception. He may be aware of that.

But even if he's not, it's irrelevant to my point, why would Trump agree to these two debates under the circumstances and the details as provided to the public yesterday. The debates will have no audience, no audience. Who does Trump con to if there's no audience. Who is he trying to sell, Who is he trying to smooth, Who is he trying to use, Who is he trying to get to cheer? Who is he trying to get to gasp? Who does he want alternatively on his side or oppose

to him. If there's no audience, how do you have WrestleMania only? It's politics. The point of Trump and Trump's campaign is when he got involved in the wrestling world, he realized what his milieu was for politics to turn it into professional wrestling. Well, you cannot have professional wrestling without an audience. It may be twenty thousand people, it may be two hundred thousand people, or it could be twenty people. But if it's no people, there's no reason

for Trump to go to it. There's nobody to con And if there's nobody to con on top of everything else that is inherent and necessary to the Trump perspective and the Trump campaign. If he's not conning somebody, Donald Trump dies figuratively, at least he's no longer alive. The other rule, each answer will be timed and the mics will shut off at that time. Well, that's worse than letting the moderator cut off the microphone. Why would Trump agree to that? Why would Trump agree to the mics,

Why would he agree to no audience. There's nothing in this for him except the potential for those two disasters hurting him, plus his own increasing dementia or aphasia or whatever. It is becoming more and more evident in areas where it has not been seen. And yet there is also the even larger issue, the even larger risk for Trump. The risk is all on Trump's side because in Trump World, the belief is they still believe Joe Biden will be

withdrawn as the Democratic nominee. To this date, they are expecting, depending where you are in there, Hillary Clinton or Michelle Obama or Rachel Maddow or I don't know who they're expecting, but they really believe that something is going to happen, and Biden is going to get up one day and

go and he's not going to be the nominee. It is, as with every other Republican accusation, a confession about the situation they themselves find themselves in, which is that Trump is the one who is much more likely to say. But the outcome of any debate in Atlanta, in New York on ABC, on CNN, on Fox, going door to

door with it. The outcome of any debate that does not include Joe Biden passing out or Joe Biden saying something in a tongue in a language only he knows, in some form of ancient Native American dialect that has not been spoken in five hundred years. If that does not happen, Biden wins, and more importantly, Trump gets hurt, and Trump has to confront the reality that what he believes the world is is incorrect and he can't do that.

The whole thing about Trump, the entirety of Donald Trump's life, has been to avoid any inconvenient reality that would face him and challenge his perverted, twisted view in which he is king of everything. Whenever that is threatened, he shuts down. Why do you think he's falling asleep in court? It's his only way to get out. I don't think there will be debates. I'm not absolutely sold on this process.

And again, I hope you've awakened from losing consciousness when I said I might be mistaken, but I might be mistaken. I don't think there will be debates. Ninety percent chance Trump pulls out because Biden has He'll say renegged, pulled out too scared? Whatever about this imaginary debate on Fox News, I hereby accept debating Biden. I'd serve to represent your mileage, Mayberry. Remember FDI see costs may be higher west of the Rockies.

Trump knows what that post was. This truth served to represent. The inclusion of Brett Bear was the tell Trump is slipping. He's already said he wouldn't have anything to do with Brett Bher and I know, as I said before, everything changes, But he included Brett Bhar in there. He might as well have said Tucker Carlson on Fox. It's a tell that he did this sloppily and in panic. I don't

think there will be debates now. There's sidebar fund to this whole process, because there is nothing more hilarious than seeing the entirety of the print journalism world go crazy because they have just been removed even further from the mainstream. There's nothing more hilarious than seeing pundits step on their own schwantzes. They are angry because now with Biden having cut out the Debate Commission and the Debate Commission out of the picture, all the writers are one further step

removed from the debate process. There used to be not just writers involved in all the presidential debates. There used to be multi writers. There used to be two or three of them on a panel with a TV guy more or less as just the TV guy asking a question or two, but generally turning it over to Hugh Sidey from Time magazine, who has a question about the relationship between electromagnetic fields and the ratings in Poland. Used to be writers at the debates who dominated the debates.

Some of the greatest questions in all of the debate's history were posed not by John Chancellor or Walter Cronkite or anybody else, or Howard Smith and Kennedy and Nixon in nineteen sixty, but by writers. They're all gone now, and their dream, which is the dream of everybody who writes politics for a living, that they will be the star of the campaign, that it will be remembered as their presidential campaign, is one further step away from reality. It was never reality to begin with, and has not

been for more than twenty five years. But that doesn't stop. As evidenced by some of the things that were written yesterday. Nate Silver savaged Biden for cutting that Debate Commission out. Nate Silver, You're supposed to be the candidate who stands up for norms and traditions, and now you're ducking this tradition, Oh Nate. On April fourteenth of twenty twenty two, so three April fourteenths ago, the Republican National Committee pulled out

of the Debate Commission. The Debate Commission has been dead for two years. Nate Biden didn't end in tradition and a norm norms dead April fourteenth, twenty twenty two. The Commission on Presidential Debates is biased and has refused to enact simple and common sense reforms to help ensure fair debates, including hosting debates before voting begins and selecting moderators who have never worked for candidates on the debate stage. You know who said that? You know who didn't stand up

for norms and traditions. Who cut the commission out? Nate Silver. Rona McDaniel said that you may remember her from such films as Meet the Press. Okay, you've met the press, get the hell out, and I had the shortest career in TV history two years ago. She said this, Nate Silver is another one of these, who is largely my fault. I knew him from baseball statistics when he proved in a way we didn't know nearly twenty years ago now

that the numbers had their own numbers. That if you got enough baseball statistics together, and you factored in things like which ballparks each player played in, and you adjusted them for how a player would get better to a certain age and how he get worse after a certain age, you could predict next year's baseball statistics. And then Nate said, you know, you can do this with poles too, And I said, great, come on Countdown and talk about it. And to be fair, Nate was pretty good at it

as long as he stuck to the numbers. Once Nate tried words, we got things like you're supposed to be the candidate who stands up for norms and traditions, and now you're ducking this tradition which died two years ago. Only I didn't even bother to google it before I wrote this tweet. I'm Nate Silver, I'm now seeking treatment. This was also great. This is Jonathan Martin And to go back and use another sports analogy, forgive me for this Politico stole Jonathan Martin from The New York Times

like he was showhey flipping Otani. Oh, we've got Jonathan Martin, the Great Jonathan Martin, the eternal. Jonathan Martin is leaving the Times to join us here at Politico, the sausage factory of politics and politics news. This guy's not show Heo Tani. This guy might be shoe Heyo Tani's interpreter in terms of hefton reliability. April twenty eighth, Meet the Press, Jonathan Martin quote, Biden's folks don't want him to debate.

They don't want to give Trump that platform and risk exposing Biden like that on National TV Jonathan Martin yesterday, which would be eighteen days after he said Biden's folks don't want them to debate, They don't want to give Trump that platform and exposing Biden with that a National TV. Eighteen days later, he subtweets Biden's video best reveal Yet, dar Biden does believe the polls. We think that was supposed to be that. Biden does believe the polls. Best

reveal yet, Dar Biden does believe the polls. Dar and knows his only way back is to drag Trump back into living rooms, which the trial ain't doing. Oh my god. April twenty eighth, he says Biden's folks don't want him to debate. Eighteen days later, he says Biden's desire to debate proves that Biden does believe the polls. And of course he's just gone out onto another limb because now

he's acting like the debates are going to happen. Definitely. Look, it's going to drag Trump back into the living rooms, which the trial ain't doing, which, by the way, the trial is doing the reason Every once in a while is revealed why people like Jonathan Martin and other pundits lean towards Trump. Maybe not politically, maybe not societally. Maybe if push they would actually say, nah, you know what, I'll stick with democracy. I won't go with Donald Trump.

But in their heart of hearts, they like Trump, and they like Trump because they yearn to do what Trump is able to do. Say A one day about something and then say Z the next day and not only get away with it, but get a raise and more power. Eighteen days between these two statements, for Jonathan Martin, you do that on television, and he did do the first one on television? Well, I meet the press. You do that on television and they don't let you talk anymore

if you're that bad at it. But it's what Trump does. And so in this era, Jonathan Martin is sho heey Otani's interpreter. Last sidebar. There is no NBC News in this equation. Eh Now they're doing ABC and CNN. No NBC News. Well done, you little both sides as twits.

There's no CBS News at least for now. Who gets the debate of the broadcast networks ABC where George Stephanopoulos went out onto a limb and frick a Seed jd Vance one week and Nancy Mayce a couple of weeks later, and Chris Sinunu somebody who actually stood up for half an hour and called liars liars, And ABC says it will not hold this exclusively. It will offer its feed of its debate, which may just be Joe Biden. But it will offer its feed of its debate to the

other networks. They can run them live if they want. CNN will not do that. Well, how could CNN offer its feed of its debate to anybody else? I mean, if it shared the debate with other networks. I mean, if it let MSNBC run the debate live, CNN would finish second in the cable ratings with its own debate, maybe finished third. Trump on Trial. And yes, the sign is this infection continues. It is getting better, but I still have to limit what I'm doing and the amount

of work I'm doing. So this is ad libbed and a little ragged, but I'm beginning to enjoy it. The legal news, Trump's surrogates violating the gag order. We have no idea if the DA followed up yesterday. They do tend to keep this stuff close to the vest. We have no idea if the judge followed up. We do know. And there's an awful lot of MSNBC and here. Sometimes I'm being complimentary towards it, and sometimes i am not.

And this is one of the I knots. MSNBC mes missed a huge scoop because its host stopped listening to its guests. The author Andrew Rice went on there late Tuesday, and he said he was in court Tuesday during the testimony of Michael Cohen, and he was sitting close enough to Trump that he could read over Trump's shoulders and see what Trump was looking at during the testimony, and to quote him, he was actually reading the quotes that these individuals were, meaning the ones who attended on Tuesday,

presumably Speaker Johnson, Vivek Ramaswami. This is a scam. Politician, child, child, don't kill me, Trump, don't kill me. He was actually reading the quotes that these individuals were and going through and making notations with a pen. Chris Hayes adroitly asked before or after, meaning was he looking at the comments before or after the surrogates made them? And Rice took it wrong. He thought he was being asked whether these reviews of the quotes were done by Trump before or after.

Michael Cohen testified, and he said during and instead of going back to this and clarifying it, where you go, What do you mean you saw Trump editing the comments that were being made on his behalf about the judge's daughter and how he's an innocent man, and what the Speaker of the House prostituted himself in front of everybody, and this interference in a criminal case that bordered on obstruction of justice. What do you mean? What did you see?

What time did you write it? Down. Do you have witnesses? Did anybody else see instead of saying that Alex Wagner came in and changed the subject. Mean, there is a reason we did not hire Alex Wagner when we needed somebody like her in twenty ten. She changed the subject,

and we've heard nothing more about this. This guy saw Trump looking at the quotes that were said on Trump's behalf because Trump can't say them because of the gag order, and he was making notations of some sort, going through and making notations with a pen as opposed to in blood or something, and they changed the subject. It appears that Justice meyr Shan self starts on these gag order violations. This is not like the case with Jack Smith and the case in Washington where he has to file for

hearing that Mershawan schedules his own hearing. Let's hope he does one and calls Andrew Rice and says what Alex Wagner did not say, which is, what the hell did you mean? He needs to call Trump's surrogates. And by the way, we're calling them Trump's surrogates. You know who called them Trump surrogates? Trump called them that. What does the word surrogate mean? Legally, it means several things, one

of which is you're the legal spokesperson for somebody. You are the legal representative for somebody when you are there, surrogate or the legal representative if they're unable to speak because they're in a coma. We should be so lucky. He called them his surrogates. They went out and said things he could not say. I wonder if there's some connection between these two things. He was actually reading the quotes that these individuals were and going through and making

notations with a pen. On another matter, what about Michael Cohen's hairstyle. The judge needs to find Trump responsible for those violations by proxy and say, read the whole gag order. You can't say this stuff, and you cannot instruct anybody else to. And this is sufficient evidence in my mind that you did that. You instructed these people to say

these things. And the next group that shows up on the next day of court, which would be oh, check's watch today, they better watch their asses because they may be called into this hearing too, because Trump has violated the gag order. And you know what Mershawn said last time, Lock them up, plenty of room and rikers, lock them up. And lose the key. Lock them up, and forget which celly you put him in. Just lock them up, Lock

them up already. Imagine me being called to testify in Trump trial and Todd Blanche Trump's attorney says, have you ever said anything negative about Donald Trump? And I go yes, and he goes like what? And then I keep talking for three years. Speaking of MSNBC, also of interest here quote how MSNBC's leftward tilt delivers ratings and complications. NBC's leaders have been forced to grapple with how to square it's cable news networks embrace of progressive politics with the

company's straight news operation. Un Quote the headline, Yes, I was just thumbing through my scrap books from two thousand and six and two thousand and seven and two thousand and eight and read that about how MSNBC's leftward tilt deliveries ratings and complications and what what that wasn't in the New York Times from two thousand and seven. That was in the New York Times yesterday. Deja vu all over again. That's next. This is countdown. This is countdown

with Keith Oberman postscripts to the news. I've forgotten the whole spiel. I give it the start of postscripts to the news. So I'm just not going to say it. I will say though, Dateline New York. I swear to goodness, this was in the New York Times yesterday and I suddenly felt young again. I read this and I was forty six years old and going out onto a limb in Secaucus, New Jersey, saying, nobody watches this network anyway. Management does not watch it, nobody cares. I'm just going

to tell the truth. Let's see what happens. It worked for Warren Batty in that movie, didn't it. And the coverage that began after I started to criticize George W. Bush was at first glowing an extraordinary and then suddenly it turned dark. Yes, MSNBC is making a profit of one hundred and fifty million dollars after losing about one hundred and fifty million dollars every year for the last decade. However,

look at all the inconvenience it's covering up here. It's causing these executives at thirty Rock to have to stay an extra fifteen minutes and answer phone calls, and never mind the executives from the company. My goodness, the chairman of ge His mommy called him up and complained because of something she saw on Fox News. Time to tell that story again too. But first, this my point in going back in time, and I felt my hair get darker,

and my knee get better, and my belly get smaller. Yesterday, Jim Ruttenberg and Michael Grinbaum wrote in The New York Times this story, the headline of which I gave you before the break, and the top of it was MSNBC placed a big bet on becoming comfort TV for liberals. Then it doubled down. First off, you're welcome. The moves have been a hit with viewers. Once again. Let me just interject here, you're welcome. MSNBC has leap frog passed its erstwhile rivals CNN in the ratings. Yeah. Actually we

did that in two thousand and six. You're welcome. I once beat CNN in the ratings for a George Bush press conference with a burst appendix. I was dying of sepsis and I got rated CNN. So you're welcome. MSNBC has leaped. That'll be the last time I do this, Probably. MSNBC has leap frog passed its erstwhile rivals CNN in the ratings, and has seen viewership rise over the past year, securing second place in cable news, behind the perennial leader Fox News. Again, we did this in two thousand and six.

I don't know how this qualifies as news, Jim Rutenberg. But MSNBC success has had unintended consequences for its parent company, NBC. An original Big three broadcaster that still strives to appeal to a mass American audience. Okay, there's no what is this big three broadcaster? We're talking it's nineteen ninety four again, before there was a Fox, before there was streaming, where everybody had their own television network, an original Big three broadcaster.

Half the people alive watching television have no idea what this means. It's like saying original six in hockey. There's no such thing as the original six. The original six were the teams that didn't go out of business before the start of World War two. Original Big three broadcast. How about original Big four broadcaster. Let's include the Dumont Network, which went out of business in nineteen fifty five, even though it had Jackie Gleeson and the Honeymooners, and by

the way the National Football League. But I digress significantly. NBC's traditional political journalists, grin Baum and Rutenberg wrote yesterday, although this could have been written in two thousand and seven, NBC's traditional political journalists have cycled between ranker and resignation, that the cable network's partisanship, a regular target of mister Trump,

will color perceptions of their straight news reporting. My first decide here is NBC's traditional political journalists have cycled between ranker and resignation. Have a lot of them resigned? Has Chuck Todd resigned? Did Tom Brokaw resign? Lester Holt resigned? Lester Holt who's career was saved by MSNBC and they put them on NBC News only because Brian Williams went pew up into the sky. Now they haven't. Really, that's

not the way he meant resignation, I'm sir. The other thing about this is, since sometime in the late two thousands, two thousand and eight nine, I never got the exact date of this, the role of Horace and cart at NBC News switched MSNBC and CNBC and the other smaller cable news entities within the NBC News family A dysfunctional family like the Manson family. The NBC News family used to be led by NBC News, The Today's Show, Meet the Press, NBC Nightly News used to make all the money.

And then people stop watching network television. Anybody who could afford cables started to watch cable. And sometime around two thousand and seven two thousand and eight, when frankly what I did, and then what Rachel Matdow did, and to some degree, what Chris Matthews did, started making MSNBC money. Suddenly it was MSNBC and CNBC were making more money, and NBC News was being carried by the cable networks.

And I don't know what the numbers look like now, but I know at some point around two thousand and fifteen, the ratio was about cable producing two dollars for every one dollar produced by NBC News. So if the NBC traditional political journalists are cycling between ranker and resignation about the cable network's partisanship, then they should resign because the partisanship on MSNBC, and by the way, the reverse partisanship the right wing fascist we pray to God for more

money every night CNBC partisanship. Those two partisanships keep NBC News alive. If you cut off MSNBC's partisanship and CNBC's partisanship tomorrow, the first thing you would notice would be all the NBC News broadcasts from here on in would be done in black and white to save money. To resume mister Rutenberg's article, local NBC stations between the coasts have demanded again and again that executives in New York do more to preserve nbc DA's nonpartisan brand, less MSNBC's

Blue state bent alienate their red state viewers. If you would like to invest in something in which you can be guaranteed to lose all your money, invest in a local NBC station between the coasts, or in fact, a local ABC station, or a Fox station, or in fact, almost any local television station or local television broadcaster in this country. If you would like to lose your money and you can't find any interurban trolley lines to buy in the year twenty twenty four, buy a local TV station.

If you want to buy a local TV station and it isn't between the coast, you want to buy KNBC in Los Angeles, WNBC in New York. I'm sure all you have to do is open the window and yell out, Hey, NBC, I want to buy Channel four. I have cash, and they will call you within five five minutes. They are losing money hand over fists as if they were an ancient god with sixty one hands and thus sixty one

fists local NBC stations. If local NBC stations called NBC headquarters in New York, collect the operators would be instructed not to accept the charges. This account of the tensions roiling NBC and its corporate overseers is based on interviews with more than two dozen people with knowledge of the company's inner workings, almost all of whom insisted on anonymity

to share details of internal discussions. Well, I have to say, although executives have long Phil Griffin gone to The New York Times to whine and complain, particularly about talent, that they did not have the guts to talk to personally.

Although that was the case once upon a time when at NBC, particularly at NBC News, were offended that things became more and more difficult for them because their Republican friends We're calling up and complaining of that that on MSNBC they used to put their own names on him Tom Brooker, there's nothing new to this. I really don't understand this piece. It is from two thousand and seven, it is written in twenty twenty four. And the problem is that all the rationalizations for why they need to

reel MSNBC in have now weighted against them. The fact that MSNBC is the thing that makes money within NBC News and everything else hemorrhage's money, or at least does not make enough money that the investors would be willing to start it anew if it was offered and presented to them tomorrow. That is the reality of cash, and for some reason, that's not included anywhere in this rather lengthy piece by Mistertburt and mister Grinbaum, and I don't

criticize them. Although mister Ruttenberg and mister Grenbaum had simply repeated an article written for The New York Times by Brian Stelter circa nineteen two thousand and eight or two thousand and nine and put their own names on it and changed a few names in it, nobody would have known the difference. It's the same damn point. Those MSNBC

people are ruining it for us. Do you know what kind of trouble we'll be in when we go fascist next year, Trump's gonna come and arrest all of us rather than just those guys on the third and fourth floors there at MSNBC. Screw them now. The other part that was left out of this is this desire to reel back in MSNBC. I'm not going to spend a lot of time talking about another one of my exes. It's one of my greatest faults. It wasn't my intention for this series, at least not my primary intention for

this series to talk about my exes. But Katie Turr is a disaster of biblical proportions, and then they have her on with Andrea Mitchell and the two of them are acting like it's the year eighteen eighty four and they know women will never have the right to vote, so why bother. Joe Scarborough also is not a liberal.

Joe Scarborough is playing a liberal on TV because trying to be Trump's vice president twenty sixteen didn't work out for him, and they'll never admit him back inside the conservative club, even though he's just as conservative now as he was then. There are no actual principles or morals in Joe Scarborough, and he's on television five hours a day simply repeating gossip and hosting people like Jonathan Martin,

who will change his opinion eighteen days from now. The rest the rest in here was about the protests of criticism of the Gaza Israel war in the hours after the attack by Hamas on October seventh, the ronal McDaniel disaster, like that was MSNBC's fault. Hey, Rachel, who do you think we should hire? I think we should hire ronal McDaniel. I don't think that conversation happened. I've had some criticisms

of Rachel matdow here. You may have heard them. One of them is not that she was intending to hire ronal McDaniel. And the rest of this was about how the problem ultimately is insoluble, that there's no way for these two operations to continue, NBC News and MSNBC. It can't go on much longer, even though even though we're going to celebrate in about a year my first special

comments twentieth anniversary, but it's never going to last. And those billions of dollars that MSNBC has made for NBC, first for Ge and now for Comcast, all of which, excuse me, all of which originates from my going screw it, nobody's watching. What's the difference. They'll fire me. I'll go back work at ESPN again. I have another ab I can do. I don't need this job. I'm a fully

qualified brain surgeon. The rest of this article is about how this problem is insoluble, and how that they even thought maybe they could spin MSNBC off and stop saying it was news, and they could do this and they wouldn't use it as a spillover for NBC programming or an attempt to amortize the cost of sending a reporter somewhere to go do a stupid story on the stupid Today Show for two minutes and then throw it back. And then they wait, wait, wait, wait, wait wait, go

back to that last one. They thought, maybe spin MSNBC off and exceparate the two operations and maybe call MSNBC something else. Oh my good god. We proposed this to them in two thousand and four. The first thing I did when I went back there for my second stint at the beginning of two thousand and three, the first thing I said was, you know what would make everything a lot easier for you, not for us, but for you. Don't put the NBC logo on this. We have to

have the NBC logo on if this is what sells it. No, no, no, no. Don't you understand the people who are watching MSA NBC are the ones who've already decided they don't want to watch NBC nightly news. They don't want more Tom Brokaw. They don't want God Love Him, Carrie Sanders or more of Carrie Sanders. They want the two. Maybe they'll watch nightly news. I notice you never let us run nightly

news on MSNBC. You want us to run leftovers. For years, we argued, and it was one of the few times I ever agreed with the then president of MSNBC, Phil Griffin. We argued, we have to have a separate identity, keep the two operations with the proverbial wall of China between them. Don't have people who are on MSNBC appear on NBC News. Don't have people who are on NBC News appear on MSNBC. And for a while we did that, and we made billions of dollars, and then somebody went, you know what,

we could save one hundred and twenty seven dollars. If we had the same person do the early morning news on MSNBC and the newscast part of the Today Show, that same band would be great, brilliant, crossbro Synergy. It's synergy, and it saves one hundred and twenty seven dollars. And that's where all this problem originates, re originates, re reriginates.

We killed this problem off in two thousand and eight, and then it came back in twenty fifteen, and then when MSNBC tanked and nobody would go on MSNBC from NBC, it was solved again. And then MSNBC rose again, and now they have the same problem because they're trying to use people on both networks. We solved this. I didn't see that in the article either, But of course all of this could have been averted if I had simply said, sure,

what the hell? When the phone call came in the summer of two thousand and nine and it was Jeff Zucker, and he said, you and the executive producer better get up here now to my palatial office on the fifty second floor, because the chairman of GE has just told me that he's going to take MSNBC off the air and replace it with cartoons because he doesn't want to be bothered with these phone calls anymore. And I said, whoa wait, We're making two hundred million dollars a year.

Do you think that matters to him? Get your ass up here? And I did, so let me retell that story, because that's next. This is countdown. I said, Jeff Immelt is going to take MSNBC off the air. I didn't need any of my overwrought visions from two years earlier of the future of liberal news commentary falling out the NBC window to its death on the rink. This was

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

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

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

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

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

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

doesn't emmelt own like twenty camera crews? There, he bring a camera crew, You'll bring two camera crews. Zucker started to not like me again. Now you suggest that where were you in? All right, never mind, it doesn't matter. Emmel says, if there's one more story on Bill O'Reilly about ge manufacturing components for roadside bombs in Iraq, he's taking MSNBC off the air immediately. It'll just be twenty four hours of lock up and I'm fired and you're fired.

And then he pointed at Chris Matthews, producer and Matthews is fired. And he pointed at poor Ed Schultz and you're fired, and Ed whimpered, So Smart asked, what the f do we do? I feigned all the nonchalants I could feign. If I could have lit a shroot by striking a match on the sole of my boot, I would have. It's manageable. But Jeff, why is Emmelt so worked up about what O'Reilly said about him. Only O'Reilly's

nutjob viewers actually believe any of that crap. Nobody at GE, nobody investing in GE, could possibly believe we're building components for roadside bombs. Zucker inhaled deeply. Emmelt's mother believes it. All the heads in the room turned toward the president of NBC. Missus. Emmelt back in Cincinnati is a devoted Bill O'Reilly viewer watches him every night, sees this, calls him, says, Sonny, why are you manufacturing components that were used in roadside

bombs built in Iran to kill Americans in Iraq? I had not expected that, I said to Zucker. So so he'll really burn what two hundred million a year in profits just between Rachel and me? Because his mom watches Bill O'Reilly, Zucker got angry again. You bet you're effing ass he will now you said it was manageable. How how the hef do we manage it? Ulderman? Just a minute? How old is she? Zucker summoned all his annoyance? How old is who ML's mother? How old is she? Jeff

Zucker was really annoyed. How should I know? You're missing the point? I had him really worked up, nearly to the boiling point. It was great, guess, Zucker fluttered. I don't know. He's in his mid fifties. She's got to be eighty ninety something. I stifled a fake yawn. Yeah, you're right, probably closer to ninety now that I think of it. So the problem is she watches O'Reilly. She tells him what's on Fox? What O'Reilly's saying about Ge? Well,

I think you have a simple solution. I'd say the first thing you do is you send over a couple of big guys to her house and you pull the freaking cable out of the wall. Zucker actually gasped. My producer, is Hepovich unsuccessfully stifled a laugh, and I saw Rachel crack a smile. Zucker regained himself. This isn't funny, Olderman. I crossed my legs. Oh, it's a little funny. And anyway,

it's not essential. If the problem is emailed is threatening to take the network off the air because O'Reilly is avenging himself against me by attacking him and attacking Ge. The short term solution is easy and in fact, it is manageable. The long term solution that's not easy, and that's not manageable. But the short term one that's simple. Rest of this week, next week, maybe the week after that. Even we just don't mention Fox News on MSNBC something

resembling a smile across Zucker's face. It made him look a little less like a lizard person and more like a monkey with glasses. You do that forever? No, not forever. I would not do that, I said to Bias time. Yes, but remember who was it who was in my office last winter telling me that I should go on the

air and just to f with Fox? I should ask why Rupert Murdoch was still running a huge international media company like News Corp, despite all the reports that he's suffering from dementia, even though there haven't been any reports that he's suffering from dementia. For everybody's sake, here, who was that again who told me to do that? Zuker's goodwill was gone? Again? Obviously that was me. What's your point?

My point is, we built this new brand of ours organically on a couple of themes, a couple of statements of principle and one of them is to use your words just to f with Fox. If we don't f with Fox for a couple of weeks at the start of the summer, who's gonna care, Who's gonna notice? But like after two weeks, three weeks, our viewers are gonna notice, and the TV writers are gonna notice, and then the crap we'll hit from every direction you can think of.

Temporary freeze on mentioning Fox and mentioning O'Reilly and mentioning Murdoch. Fine, permanent freeze. Might as well let em Milk turn us off in the morning. After all, I don't think Zooker actually heard the last part about em Milt turning us off. After all, the lack of color was returning to his face. Okay, breathe, he kept saying to himself. Breathe, breathe, Okay, breathe. He

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

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

this is June two thousand and nine. She still felt that way then, and especially one I don't work for. I will walk out first. I cannot have the audience wondering what else I have not told them. I don't do a lot about Fox on my show, but if there is a story about Fox, I will not honor this freeze. I will report that story. And if I'm from reporting that story, I will leave. Whereupon she left, Zucker barked Phil Olderman, is he stay? When the rest of the room had cleared, Zucker blew air out of

his mouth as if it were smoke. He gestured violently at me with his right arm. I told you, she was a mistake. You didn't listen to me. I told you. Now, she's your problem. All this is your problem. Get her back on the reservation or else. Now I had run out of goodwill and jokes. Oh, I'll get her back

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

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

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

And I said, just give me as much time as the French government took before fleeing during the Nazi advance in nineteen forty. I said, give me, what was it, thirty three days? Give me thirty three days. If we aren't back where we were this morning, we can both quit on the air. I mean that'd be fun, right. Three nights later, well after midnight on a Friday, my

NBC issued BlackBerry buzzed with a quick email from Rachel Maddow. Hey, she wrote, don't necessarily quote me because I'm really drunk, but just make the best deal you can for us. I trust you, we don't need to do Fox all the time. I never do Fox stories anyway. I just had to say that, and this is the best platform we will ever have. Well she was right, at least

for the time being. A couple of weeks later, I had to sneak in a script that blasted Fox, and at ten thirty at home that night, I got a call from a drunken Phil Griffin shouting into the phone, I have a Zucker had to go meet with Roger Ales secretly inside thirty Rock, and I hope they remember to clean the room afterwards, and MLT even had to

meet with Murdoch. And then, happily, some idiot GE executive decided to boast to The New York Times about getting us little talent children under control and a big deal with the executives over at Fox and how they'd settled everything, which blew up the whole deal instantly, because the moment the deal went public, NBC looked so stupid, and even

NBC News was now risked. The only point of the whole thing was to keep the Immelts and the Zuckers and the Griffins and the ales Is from throwing us and our little island of liberal commentary out of that window at thirty Rock. But as Rachel Mattow and I would be constantly reminded in the ensuing years, thirty Rock has a lot of freaking windows. I've done all the damage I can do here. Thank you for listening. Countdown. Musical directors Brian Ray and John Phillip Schaneil arranged, produced,

and performed most of our music. Mister Ray was on the guitars, the bass, and the drums, and mister Shanelle handled the orchestration and the keyboards. It was produced by Tko Brothers. Other music, including some of the Beethoven compositions, arranged and performed by 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 Howard Fineman, and everything else was pretty much my fault. Let's countdown for this the one hundred and seventy sixth day until the twenty twenty four presidential election, but two hundred and twenty fifth day since Dictator Jay Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically elected government of the United States. Use the legal system such as it is, use the mental health system, Use presidential immunity if it happens, use the

not regularly given elector objection option. Use the campaign to stop him from doing it again while we still can. The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow. Again, I'm going to label that as probable game time decision till the next one. I'm Keith Olderman. Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and good luck. Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio Apple Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.