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Countdown with Keith Olbermann

Countdown with Keith Olbermann

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“Countdown With Keith Olbermann,” the landmark news and commentary program that reordered the world of cable news, returns as a daily podcast. Olbermann’s daily news-driven mix will include his trademark “Special Comment” political analysis, the tongue-in-cheek “Worst Persons In The World” segment, and his timeless readings from the works of the immortal James Thurber. The man who turned SportsCenter into a cultural phenomenon will broaden the content to include a daily sports segment, a daily call for help for a suffering dog, and a remarkable series of anecdotes covering a career that stretched from covering the 1980 Olympic Miracle on Ice a month after his 21st birthday, to anchoring the 2009 Presidential Inauguration and the 2009 Super Bowl pre-game show in a span of just twelve days, to rejoining ESPN as a “rookie” baseball play-by-play man at the age of 59.

408 - REPORT: NBC TRIED TO THROW JEN PSAKI UNDER THE BUS TO SAVE RONNA McDANIEL - 3.28.24
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  • 408 - REPORT: NBC TRIED TO THROW JEN PSAKI UNDER THE BUS TO SAVE RONNA McDANIEL - 3.28.24

    SEASON 2 EPISODE 148: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

    A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: The head of the POLITICAL unit at NBC News is now reported to have been actively working with the former Chief of Staff of the Republican National Committee to try to stir up a social media groundswell to save Ronna McDaniel’s job at NBC. And she – and perhaps the CHAIRMAN of NBC News as well - were reportedly willing to throw MSNBC under the bus - specifically, willing to throw its ex-Biden-Press-Secretary, now budding star Jen Psaki, under the bus, and throw Chuck Todd under the bus, in hopes of saving Ronna McDaniel.

    Puck News is reporting that after Ronna McDaniel debuted on “Meet The Press” on Sunday and after Kristen Welker told the audience she had no say in McDaniel’s hiring and after Chuck Todd attacked the hiring, NBC News Chairman Cesar Conde and Vice President Carrie Budoff Brown were unnerved, but both quote “seemed to anticipate the impending insurgency and frantically tried to pre-empt it. On Sunday, Budoff Brown reached out to McDaniel’s aide and former chief of staff at the RNC Richard Walters, to see if there were any friends or colleagues who could speak up on her BEHALF. The two sides also discussed having those folks call attention to what they saw as a double standard – after all this was the same network that was turning Psaki… into a Maddow-adjacent prime time star. Walters later assured Budoff Brown that they’d been able to advance conservative pushback on social media against (Chuck) Todd, specifically, and that this might give NBC News some cover, for which Budoff Brown thanked him,” unquote.

    The report - and a similar story by The Hollywood Reporter - also highlights MSNBC President Rashida Jones's role in hiring McDaniel, and raises questions about Kristen Welker's on-air denial that she was at all involved in the hiring (it says she was AT a meeting at which Budoff Brown continued to pitch McDaniel).

    It's a disaster, it's still unfolding, and there's no telling how many different NBC News executives will follow McDaniel out the door.

    B-Block (28:19) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: First Maria Bartiromo blamed the Baltimore bridge collapse on "wide open borders." Now she wants to make sure no money is allocated to rebuild it. James Comer claims Merrick Garland and The Deep State are indoctrinating people into believing he has no evidence against Biden. And Sage Steele, with whom I once co-anchored SportsCenter, says the devil tried to keep her from speaking out against liberals by hitting her in the mouth with a golf ball.

    C-Block (40:30) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Okay, the still-evolving Ronna McDaniel scandal is a doozy. But this is NOT NBC/MSNBC's worst crisis ever. Let me take you back to the thrilling day of Existential Challenge when the Chairman of GE was ready to shut the network down, pay everybody off, and fire all of us, because his Mommy had seen Bill O'Reilly criticize him on Fox, because of what I said about O'Reilly on MSNBC. 

    See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

    Thu, 28 Mar 2024
  • 407 - TRUMP IS SO SICK HE'S NOW MAKING UP WORDS; RONNA, GONE-A - 3.27.24

    SEASON 2 EPISODE 147: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

    A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Those were Trump's marbles he just lost.

    At 2:49 PM, Eastern Dementia Time: “I’m not running to terminate the ACA, as crooked Joe BUDEN… DIS-INFORMATES and MIS-INFORMATES all the time, I’m running to CLOSE THE BORDER..."

    There is no such word as “Disinformate.”

    There is also no such word as “MIS-informate.”

    Also, unless I've been getting it wrong since 1973, "BUDEN" is not how the president spells his name. Trump's cheese has slid off his cracker.

    It is impossible to say that he cannot possibly last like this,  what with the forces of aphasia and dementia and narcissism and head injury and whatever else there is, pulling him apart… but of course he’s lasted in approximately this same space for months now – and in spaces not really that much BETTER than this one for years and decades and if the early anecdotes are correct, a lifetime. Still: inventing your own words, is a sign of a dozen different PHYSICAL problems, to say nothing of psychological ones like bipolarity and environmental ones like huffing D-Con Roach Room Fogger.

    HELP ME RONNA, HELP HELP ME RONNA: And now she belongs to the ages. Five days, one show. Not the shortest tenure in television history nor the fastest-cancelled program (still held by an ABC comedy show from 1969, cancelled just before the first commercial). But NBC's decision to ax Ronna McDaniel - no matter how tortured, self-serving, and late the protests from its stars might have been, does offer some small hope.

    The point of all this – and perhaps the value of this internal rebellion – is that perhaps the somnambulant American political media, especially the American TELEVISION political media – has awakened from its naïve stupor. I have been saying here for eighteen months that EVERY news organization in this country has had the same meeting: what do we do if Trump regains power. Not “what do we do journalistically” but what do we do to protect our profits – and what do we do so when Trump starts jailing reporters and TV executives, he’ll leave us alone. Or, more realistically, he’ll let us become one of his propaganda channels.

    Remember, in the minds of its executives, television news isn’t a kind of NEWS, it’s a kind of TELEVISION. It is designed to fill the places between the commercials. If it serves some kind of public purpose, hey, great, as long as that doesn’t mean we have to go TOO many hours cancelling all those advertisements just because some POPE died or something.

    Putting Trump on and taking Mehdi Hasan off and hiring Ronna McDaniel was INOCULATION, nothing more, nothing less. It was proving to Trump and the MAGAs that while no, we aren’t shuttering MSNBC and we’re not in favor of this whole “end the peaceful transfer of power” and “fascism is the new democracy” stuff – hey, go on… we’re listening.

    American TV news isn’t going to save us from creeping fascism. But maybe – MAYBE – the scattered, largely selfish, righteous-ehhh-kinda righteous indignation at NBC means American TV news will stop HELPING fascism creep faster. Guard rail? No. Scattering spike strips across democracy’s highways? Uhh, ok, maybe we’ll stop.

    Also, I sing. I mean: "Help Me Ronna"? I was supposed to RESTRAIN myself from THAT?

    B-Block (30:57) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Congressman Tim Burchett sued by the Kansas City man he claimed was a) a Super Bowl parade shooter and b) an "illegal alien." He was neither. Ari Fleischer actually slams Biden for supporting George W. Bush's war in Iraq that Ari helped sell to a gullible America. And Maria Bartiromo, Nancy Mace, David Sabatini, Matt Schlapp, Glenn Thrush and a random named Rose Graham share the honors for spreading conspiracy theories about the Baltimore bridge accident.

    C-Block (42:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: I mentioned those tortured anti-Ronna comments from MSNBC. Lawrence O'Donnell was astonishingly wrong in his recap of how TV news in the old days didn't reward, say, Nixon's Watergate conspirators with gigs (other than Pat Buchanan, John Ehrlichmann, Robert Bork, Gordon Liddy, plus Ollie North from Iran-Contra and a series of ice cream commercials for Ehrlichmann). Since I've brought him up, I might as well tell you what a schmuck he is, 

    Like when he guest hosted Countdown and while I was out a few weeks, he tried to get me fired so he could take over the show and when that didn’t work he just stole a couple of the producers and got his own show. Oh, by the way, I WAS away for a couple weeks because my Dad was dying.

    See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

    Wed, 27 Mar 2024
  • 406 - TRUMP GOES NUTS, COMPARES HIMSELF TO JESUS - 3.26.24

    SERIES 2 EPISODE 146: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

    A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Sure, the split legal decisions in New York courtrooms matter. Trump got a brief reprieve in the business fraud case ($500 million bond reduced to $175 bond, he gets an extra 10 days grace; but his son said even a $15 million bond was almost impossible) but the Stormy Daniels election hush money case starts as scheduled April 15.

    But in the span five hours, Trump posted a psalm he claimed to have "received" from somebody in which he was compared to Christ, and said that he would have to sell his "babies" due to Judge Engoron, and he announced to an uncomfortable crowd of reporters "You can’t have an election in the middle of a political season."

    He's NUTS. Besides which, I always thought he'd decide he was not Jesus but Napoleon.

    RFK JR'S NEVADA OOPSIE: He celebrated getting enough signatures to be a Trump stalking horse on the ballot there. Then somebody noticed that your petitions have to mention just not the presidential candidate but the VICE presidential candidate. And he's not announcing who that is until today. He has to refile all the signatures. Hopefully the likely Veep, the ex-wife of the founder of Google who wanted a divorce settlement of a billion, can front RFK Jr the cash.

    THE CONTINUING RONNA McDANIEL DISASTER: No, Maddow didn't stop it last night. She could've stopped it last week, or last month if she'd stood up and threatened to quit when her bosses overruled her - live on the air - and reversed her dictum that MSNBC would not carry Trump speeches live.

    And no, MSNBC's president did NOT say McDaniel won't appear on the network. And no, Chuck Todd didn't put himself at risk by speaking out. And no, don't even get me started about Joe Scarborough. 

    In the old days we used to have a more direct way of stopping such subversions of journalism. I threatened to quit, on the spot, at least twice. Rachel did it at least once. Scarborough used threats on a regular basis. Brokaw did it. 

    Ultimately the problem is: people paid big salaries to make essential decisions about the coverage of an election that will decide whether or not we still have a democracy next January, thought she was a GREAT HIRE. And nice as the protests from Todd and Welker and “Golly I hope they reconsider” Scarborough were, bluntly, the moment the hiring of Ronna Romney McDaniel was announced, MSNBC anchors and producers and writers, and NBC NEWS anchors and producers and writers, should have literally walked off the job. Gone on strike.

    Because it comes down to this: the hiring of Ronna McDaniel didn’t represent some kind of political balance. It conceded – STIPULATED – that there can be some kind of balance, some kind of yes-but, some kind of bothsidesism, between the reality of the 2020 election, and election deniers and the Trumpist cult. She IS the flat earther, the climate change denier. She might as well be Q from Q-Anon. She is reality, trying to appease hallucination and mental illness in hopes of making… more… money. Her presence as an NBC News employee LEGITIMIZES the election deniers and the conspiracy theorists… and Trump. It is an act of journalistic self-defenestration and – for the future democracy in this country – an act of self-immolation.

    B-Block (30:50) IN SPORTS: Shohei Ohtani makes it worse: nobody has explained the money transfer to the bookie. Now the NBA has a burgeoning scandal: the fringe player who everybody placed "prop bets" on (33:40) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: The sad post-mortem for Flaco the Central Park Owl, and farewell to Bill Jorgensen. (50:50) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Rece Davis isn't actually one of them but his dry sense of humor created another mini-sports wagering mess at my alma mater. Now we know what Jeff Yass bought Trump with. And Charlie Kirk wants to use machine guns and whips at the border.

    C-Block (57:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Since I've asserted that the NBC News/MSNBC protest over Ronna McDaniel is tepid compared to the Him-Or-Me ones we had in the 2003-11 era, I'll tell you everything I know about them. It stars Tom Brokaw, John McCain, Scarborough, Michael Savage, Chris Hayes, Maddow, me, and a cast of thousands. Pull up a chair: it takes 27 minutes.

     

    See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

    Tue, 26 Mar 2024
  • 405 - VALET'S J6 TESTIMONY: TRUMP IGNORED ASHLI BABBITT SHOOTING - 3.22.24

    SEASON 2 EPISODE 145: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

    A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: His Republican minions in the House thought releasing the previously unreported January 6 Committee transcript of an interview with a White House valet would help the desperate need to "prove" Trump tried to stop January 6th.

    Instead it shows that he was told that Ashli Babbitt had been shot in the chest and he did and said nothing and now he uses her at his fascist rallies and his inhumanity and selfishness is more apparent than ever. The testimony also shows Trump thought to call General Mark Milley and then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi about the National Guard (the GOP will play that part up) and then... didn't (the GOP will ignore that part). And it details how he threatened Mike Pence that morning and even as the coup failed his only concern was himself, and how Pence "let me down."

    It is an amazing self-own by Trump's congresswhores.

    ALSO the NY Attorney General has begun the paperwork to seize at least one Trump property, the NYC DA says that 100,000 page document dump is virtually irrelevant to the case and trial should begin April 15. And Merrick Garland makes a jackass out of himself yet again.

    (16:46) THE SHOHEI ME THE MONEY SCANDAL: Yesterday, I said they had to answer – as quickly as possible – the old Watergate cliché: What did Shohei Ohtani Know And When Did He Know It? Since then, the actions of Ohtani and his representatives and the Dodgers and Baseball (keeping Ohtani away from the press; insisting there's no MLB investigation) have QUINTUPLED the number of questions that must be satisfied as quickly and thoroughly as possible:

    WHY have you issued two or maybe three different official versions of this story; HOW could Ohtani have acknowledged he sent the bookie four and a half million dollars then insist the money had been stolen from him AND then insist he knew nothing about any of this; HOW long did the TEAM know about this disaster; IS the interpreter just trying to take the fall for Ohtani; WHY did a Dodgers source remind ESPN that whatever happened, it happened when Ohtani was playing for the Angels (the answer is: the Dodgers are covering their asses if Ohtani goes down); and maybe most saliently: the fired translator Mizuhara told ESPN his annual salary was between 300-thousand and 500-thousand dollars. What kind of self-respecting bookie would let a guy with THAT level of income, run up four and a half million dollars in unpaid gambling losses?

    B-Block (28:19) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: The Tampa Bay Rays spoil it. The pitcher for whom they just traded will NOT become Joe Rock of The Rockies. A Republican congressman retweets the GOP's favorite news source: Russian State TV. And Liz Harrington thinks Peter Navarro can appeal the Supreme Court's verdict to...Jesus. (Jesus!)

    C-Block (36:00) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: It's the start of another baseball season (and maybe another baseball scandal of biblical proportions!) so let's celebrate with Thurber's epic mixture of Brooklyn Dodgers Play-by-Play and the jujitsu of the little man: The Catbird Seat.

    See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

    Fri, 22 Mar 2024
  • 404 - TRUMP WON'T DENY TRYING TO GET THE $464M FROM RUSSIA OR SAUDIS - 3.21.24

    SERIES 2 EPISODE 144: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

    A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Trump’s lawyer in the case is refusing to deny that Trump is trying to get somebody from Russia or Saudi Arabia to pay off or guarantee or underwrite the $464 million he has to pay the state of New York by Monday, or begin to see the Attorney General seize his property in the state. Fox asked Alina Habba point-blank if they had sought it from foreign sources and she made up some crap about rules and regulations and strategy and then swerved to a word salad about election interference instead of the one and only correct answer: NO EFFING WAY!

    Trump, still pre-trial on 33 charges of mishandling classified documents and American government secrets, and already charged with espionage, has just handed the Biden Administration an excuse to deny him the traditional candidate National Security Briefings. It would be safer for the government to give him the half billion dollars he needs, then to give him the secrets he could SELL for half a billion.

    MEANWHILE the jig is up at the House Perpetual Unending Non-Impeachment Hearings. Lev Parnas accused literally everybody from Senator Ron Johnson to Sean Hannity to Putin of being behind the crap he gathered for Rudy Giuliani. The Republicans' only remaining witness who isn't in jail was good enough to be unable the simple question: What crime did you see Joe Biden commit.

    THE CRIME IN LOS ANGELES IS ILLEGAL SPORTS GAMBLING: First Shohei Ohtani's friend and translator said he'd screwed up and Ohtani had covered his gambling debts. Then Ohtani's lawyers said, no, the translator had stolen the money ($4,500,000 by ESPN's account). The Dodgers fired the translator and authorities are investigating. But this isn't some low-level clown. He's been perhaps Ohtani's best friend in this country since 2017 and once quit his job rather than being denied the chance to work with Ohtani for a few weeks during a labor lockout.

    Baseball certainly has an Ohtani-Adjacent Illicit Gambling Crisis. It might conceivably have an Ohtani Himself Illicit Gambling Crisis.

    B-Block (28:30) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Lauren Boebert becomes the latest GOOPER to vote against a spending bill then claim credit for it (get a grip on yourself). Fox's Eric Shawn again shows he has something on his bosses, bless him. And Ohio Republican Derek Meyer screwed up and conceded early. Why are we mocking him? HE'S A REPUBLICAN WHO CONCEDED AND DIDN'T CLAIM RIGGING OR THAT HE WAS HACKED OR IT'S WOKE!

    C-Block (37:25) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: By coincidence I was recently asked to help the grandchild of the guy who bought the radio network at which I had my second job. This not only means I'm REALLY old, it also means I have to tell you the great tales of the place including the time we desperately needed George Steinbrenner to be an anonymous source for a story, couldn't find him, and on my walk home, I turned a corner and there he was, literally shouting the exact information we needed from him!

    See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

    Thu, 21 Mar 2024
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