ARIZONA GOP WANTS TO MAKE ICE MANDATORY AT VOTING BOOTHS - 2.19.26

Summary

Podcast Summary: “Countdown With Keith Olbermann”

Episode: ARIZONA GOP WANTS TO MAKE ICE MANDATORY AT VOTING BOOTHS (2.19.26)

Date: February 19, 2026
Host: Keith Olbermann
Podcast: iHeartPodcasts

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Overview

This episode centers on the alarming proposal by the Arizona GOP to mandate the presence of ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) officers at ballot locations in the upcoming election. Olbermann analyzes the ramifications of this move within the context of increasing authoritarian tendencies in the Republican party, ties it to the historical dismantling of public trust in media and democracy, critiques the state of U.S. news media, and honors the influence of the movie "Network" on understanding modern media decay.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Trump’s Appearance and Mental Gaffes

• Olbermann opens with observations on Donald Trump's "drawn and unnaturally thin" appearance, speculating on health and image manipulation ([02:10]).
• He humorously reflects on Trump’s “heroin and steroids” workout jibes and media appearances with Kid Rock and RFK Jr.
• Notably, Olbermann focuses on what he sees as a new mental misstep:

  “He confused Harmeet Dhillon with Phyllis Diller, which I for one cherish.” (04:39)

• Trump’s persistent pattern of making "astonishing gaffes" reminiscent more of a four-year-old than a president ([05:14]):

  “Things a 4-year-old would say or think until they are corrected, and then the four-year-old would never say or think it again. Trump has been repeating them for 76 years now, every day.” ([05:14]-[05:34])

2. The Penn Station Post Confusion

• Olbermann discusses Trump’s recent remarks confusing the origin of New York’s Penn Station:

  “He let slip that he doesn’t know why it’s called Penny, quote, also the naming of Penn Station. I love Pennsylvania, but it is a direct competitor to New York… This is impossible… It was Pennsylvania Station since the original one opened in 1910 because it was built by the Pennsylvania Railroad, not because of the state…” ([07:28]-[09:05])

• He uses this to highlight Trump’s detachment from reality and potential cognitive decline beyond his usual pattern.

3. Arizona GOP’s ICE-at-the-Polls Proposal

• Olbermann details Arizona State Senator Hoffman’s "striker bill," which would require local cooperation with federal immigration authorities at polling places:

  “Not only authorize Trump and Homeland Security to send ICE and Border Patrol and anybody else they can find with a gun to ballot places… they would… be required to be there…” ([10:40]-[12:05])

• He warns of the direct connection between this proposal and fascist, militaristic intimidation of voters, though reassures that with a Democratic governor, the bill isn't likely to pass ([12:20]).
• Key provisions read verbatim, showing intent to permit ICE at early voting locations and ban certain kinds of voter interference except where “otherwise allowed…” ([12:35]):

  “Might as well say you can’t shoot anybody in the face ICE except where authorized by law.” ([12:40])

4. Deterioration of Federal Agencies and Political Scandals

• The episode spirals into the current turmoil and corruption at DHS and ICE, lampooning officials like Kristi Noem and Corey Lewandowski.

• The Noem scandal involving a fired press spokesperson and nepotistic grants further exemplifies the mismanagement and grift in federal agencies ([14:45]-[16:48]):

  “The desperate life deciding struggle between fascism and utter stupidity is likely to get even more dangerous in the days and weeks to come, but also way more entertaining.” ([16:43]-[16:48])

5. Media Failures and the "Network" Prophecies

• Extended critique of right-wing media (Laura Ingraham, Fox News) for scapegoating trans victims and propagating MAGA narratives.
• Ample ridicule for the lack of shame and journalistic integrity remaining on the American right ([16:48]).
• Critique of CNN (notably Jake Tapper’s self-promotion scandal) and CBS’s decision-making, linking newsroom dysfunction to a broader decay ([21:28]-[23:38]).
• Death of Robert Duvall (clarified as an error or bit—he had not died as of 2024) prompts a long reflection on the prophetic nature of the 1976 film "Network."

  “He portrayed every television executive now ruining television. He is David Zaslav and both Ellisons and that cipher Mark Thompson at CNN… Hackett, like the Zaslavs and Ellisons… aren’t really alive anymore. They’re just dollar bills wearing overpriced suits.” ([29:05]-[30:19])

6. "Network" Movie and the Decay of TV News

• Olbermann outlines at length how “Network” foreshadowed almost every major trend in TV news debasement, offering examples from Beale’s breakdowns to corporate control over messaging, to the transformation of news into rage-fueled entertainment ([38:12]-[47:34]).
• Emphasizes the transition from impartial public service news to profit-driven, propagandistic media:

  “Everything that’s gone wrong with TV news is in the movie Network with Robert Duvall.” ([35:13])

7. “Worst Persons in the World” Segment

• Segment resumes after the detour into media criticism, lampooning:
  • Rep. Tom Emmer for twisting requirements for ICE ID badges into a voter ID talking point.
  • Peter Navarro for misunderstanding financial basics (confusing Dow points with dollars):

    "Here is one of Trump's primary financial advisors, and he literally doesn't know the Dow Jones isn't dollars, it's points." ([73:09])

  • Candace Owens, as roasted through the viral “Candace Owens Trying to Read” Twitter/X account, for persistent mispronunciations and apparent illiteracy regarding basic English words:

    “The woman cannot read. This person cannot read aloud. And she's in the reading aloud business. And she cannot read aloud.” ([75:45]-[76:30])

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Memorable Quotes

• On Trump's cognitive pattern:

  “Trump has been repeating them for 76 years now, every day.” (05:34)

• On the Arizona ICE bill:

  "Mandatory Gestapo at the voting booths this November… it will change all the extant laws… they would in Arizona be required to be there." (10:40-12:05)

• On media decay and 'Network':

  "Everything that's gone wrong with TV news is in the movie Network with Robert Duvall." (35:13)

• On the modern Republican project:

  “The desperate life deciding struggle between fascism and utter stupidity is likely to get even more dangerous in the days and weeks to come, but also way more entertaining.” (16:43-16:48)

• On media personalities and self-promotion:

  “There should be no use of websites, QR codes or links to drive personal sales… Even when what is being advertised is work by a leading CNN journalist.” ([22:30]-[22:39])

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Notable Segments & Timestamps

• Trump’s Appearance and Behavior: [02:10] - [07:00]
• Arizona GOP ICE Voting Bill: [10:40] – [14:30]
• Federal Agency Corruption/Noem: [14:30] – [16:48]
• Media, CNN/CBS Critique, Colbert/Cooper: [21:28] – [28:20]
• Robert Duvall, 'Network,' TV News Decay: [29:05] – [47:34] (continues after break [50:17])
• "Worst Persons in the World": [66:22] – [79:01]

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Tone and Style

Olbermann’s tone is sardonic and confrontational, blending pointed political critique with pop culture references and biting humor. The mood vacillates from exasperated outrage at Republican authoritarianism and media corruption to darkly comic observations about public figures’ cluelessness and incompetence. There's a nostalgic but urgent reverence for lost journalistic values, and the episode is heavy with anecdotes, analogies, and direct citations.

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Useful for Listeners Who Haven’t Tuned In

This episode is a full-throated warning about creeping authoritarianism—on display in the Arizona GOP’s willingness to station ICE at the polls—and the catastrophic decline in the integrity of both political and media institutions. Olbermann leavens his jeremiad with wit, memorable rants, and cultural touchstones (especially the movie "Network"), making the episode both an entertaining and alarming listen.

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End of Summary.

Transcript

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[Keith Olbermann]

Countdown with Keith Olbermann is a production of iHeartradio. Is it just me or does Trump look drawn and unnaturally thin in the face? Like lost a lot of girth in the face? The kind of thing where people who don't know say you lost a lot of weight, you look Great, except you don't. Or is it just wishful thinking again? Also, the Republicans in the Arizona Senate are moving to make ICE mandatory at polling places there this November. Mandatory local cooperation with ice. Mandatory Gestapo at the voting booths this November. It won't pass this time. Let me finish up on Trump's appearance first, because there are like six ICE stories. Happily, half of them are ICE versus ice, metaphoric violence, so let's group them. But about Trump, we've all been through this before. He looks like shit. He always looks like shit. I met him in 1983. He looked like shit. He looks like he can't last the week. He always looks like he can't last the week. His hand yesterday wasn't just black, it was red around the black.

[Keith Olbermann (co-host or guest commentator)]

And the makeup looked double thick.

[Keith Olbermann]

That's not what got my attention. What got my attention here is he looks too good.

[Keith Olbermann (co-host or guest commentator)]

The turkey neck, it's half its normal size. The mottled, inflated cheeks are.

[Keith Olbermann]

Are skinnier. Maybe he's been hitting the gym with RFK junior and Kid Rock. You know, RFK Junior's heroin workout regimen. Heroin and steroids in the RFK Kid Rock video that has in the background a confederate flag. I know you're shocked.

[Keith Olbermann (co-host or guest commentator)]

The only reason I give this hunch.

[Keith Olbermann]

Any merit at all. I was gonna say any weight.

[Keith Olbermann (co-host or guest commentator)]

Is that he has made his first.

[Keith Olbermann]

Mental gaffe I have ever heard that.

[Keith Olbermann (co-host or guest commentator)]

I absolutely do not believe he has always made his Black History Month speech.

[Keith Olbermann]

Yesterday was standard. It was about the 2020 election and how he knows Mike Tyson and everything else except Black History Month.

[Keith Olbermann (co-host or guest commentator)]

And he confused Harmeet Dylan with Phyllis.

[Keith Olbermann]

Diller, which I for one cherish.

[Keith Olbermann (co-host or guest commentator)]

However, he looked like his collar fit. And then there is this one mistake he made that defies traditional Trumpian explanation. Whatever ultimately proves to have been his specific brain malformation and disease and sociopathic evil. It has produced in him the ultimate Dunning Kruger disease, wherein he knows almost nothing of earth outside those handful of subjects that give him power over other people. And he is likely to make the most astonishing gaffes.

[Keith Olbermann]

Things a 4 year old would say or think until they are corrected, and then the four year old would never say or think it again.

[Keith Olbermann (co-host or guest commentator)]

Things that are perfectly understandable in a four year old's mind, but once you tell them, they go oh, and they.

[Keith Olbermann]

Never repeat them again.

[Keith Olbermann (co-host or guest commentator)]

And Trump has been repeating them for.

[Keith Olbermann]

76 years now, every day.

[Keith Olbermann (co-host or guest commentator)]

The easiest is the homonym asylum. Asylum. He decided there's only one kind of asylum, therefore, political asylum. Since 1946, also means crazy.

[Keith Olbermann]

The end. Perfectly normal people do this when they're four.

[Keith Olbermann (co-host or guest commentator)]

Not to compare my dear sister to.

[Keith Olbermann]

Trump, but it is an endearing family.

[Keith Olbermann (co-host or guest commentator)]

Legend that on a Florida vacation one year when she was 4, during a.

[Keith Olbermann]

Car trip, she asked me where we were going and I answered Miami.

[Keith Olbermann (co-host or guest commentator)]

And she scolded me, no, we're going to Daddy's. Amy, that's actually pretty damn smart for a 4 year old. Unfortunately, it's not for a 79 year.

[Keith Olbermann]

Old or a president of any age.

[Keith Olbermann (co-host or guest commentator)]

Or anybody with the ability to order the Department of Justice to skip the investigation and the buildup and immediately try.

[Keith Olbermann]

To start a coup by getting two Democratic senators and four Democratic congressmen indicted. And when the drunken U.S. attorney doesn't get a single member of the grand jury to raise their hands and vote for any indictment, all he tells her.

[Keith Olbermann (co-host or guest commentator)]

Obviously, is to try it again. Like, what time is it now? Next week? Anyway, my point, and I do have one, is that Trump's behavior is consistently insane, consistently that of a diseased, over intelligent 4 year old forever frozen at age 4. He has the same worldview now he had in the summer of 1950. It has been updated only by things he has constantly been exposed to in his family near his home when he's found faster ways to manipulate people or steal their money or avoid having any of them be beat him up. Except here's one brand new that doesn't fit this the Penn Station Post. You saw it, the Penn Station Post, where he lets slip in passing while he's lying that somebody else suggested they rename Penn Station after Trump. He let slip that he doesn't know why it's called Penny, quote also the naming of Penn Station. I love Pennsylvania, but it is a direct competitor to New York and eating New York's lunch to Trump Station. Blah blah, blah, blah blah. Pennsylvania. This is impossible. This is not something he thought of briefly in 1950. It solidified in cement in his brain and he has not revisited this since. Nobody who grew up in or around New York or the other places, by the way, that has Penn Stations, but specifically nobody who grew up in New York, especially anybody who had ever come in from Long island to Manhattan. Nobody who grow up in New York or lived here or Traveled here since 1910 could possibly not have realized, known, understood that it was Pennsylvania Station since the original one opened in 1910 because it was built by the Pennsylvania Railroad, not because of the state of Pennsylvania, not because the trains went to Pennsylvania, not named in honor of Pennsylvania. When they tore down Penn Station in 1963 it was because the Pennsylvania Railroad was going bankrupt and we tore it down exactly the same way.

[Keith Olbermann]

Whoever owned the pyramids would have torn.

[Keith Olbermann (co-host or guest commentator)]

Them down if they were losing money.

[Keith Olbermann]

And there was money in tearing them down.

[Keith Olbermann (co-host or guest commentator)]

This is Trump from the Trump building family, the Trump rental family, the Trump real estate family going into it. If Trump somehow did not know it was the Pennsylvania railroad station in 1950, he had to have found it out during the years of pain as the Pennsylvania Railroad station was torn down in the 60s. Or he had to have known it during the land grab that put Madison Square Garden at dump where the Pennsylvania Railroad station used to be. Or he knew it when he went to the University of Pennsylvania later in the 60s. He knows this or he knew it. And if he doesn't know it now, this ain't the same old crazy, brain Damaged actually celebrating 79 years of being challenged Trump. It's the new something's really wrong Trump. We'll see. Okay, to Arizona. It won't pass again. It will not pass this time. But a state senator named Hoffman and he's not some sort of rogue. The state Senate Republicans have announced this formally has introduced a so called striker bill Striker Striker that would change the laws for this election and not only change them in Arizona, but strike the current laws, hence the name Striker and not only authorize Trump and Homeland Security Security to send ICE and Border Patrol and anybody else they can find with a gun to ballot places in Arizona on November 3rd, not only do that, but it will change all the extant laws. So don't worry about ICE trying to find an excuse to be outside or inside the voting booth with you. They would in Arizona be required to be there again. Will the not pass might pass in a vote in the Arizona Senate, ever increasingly Democratic. But the surviving MAGA there are among the most diseased and corrupted in the nation. But the governor is a Democrat. She is essentially veto proof certainly for this undisputed 100% fascistic militaristic MAGA means Make America Gestapo all over. Bill, you ready? Here's provision one. Requires county recorders and each county BOS Board of Supervisors notwithstanding any other law and for the 2026 general election only to enter into a written agreement with a federal immigration law enforcement agency to provide for a federal immigration law enforcement presence at each location in Arizona where ballots are cast or deposited, end quote.

[Keith Olbermann]

I will not read the entirety of the rest of it verbatim. This is largely a troll job, but you understand Arizona Republicans are bluntly rubbing themselves over this one however, two things to read verbatim. Part three requires ICE or Border Patrol at early voting locations. Parts five and seven are elegantly phrased shivs thrust at the heart of the Constitution. Five Prohibits federal immigration law enforcement personnel from interfering with the casting or depositing of ballots except as otherwise authorized by law. Might as well say you can't shoot anybody in the face ICE except where authorized by law. Item 7 on this prohibits county recorders, each county BOS and federal immigration law enforcement personnel from questioning, questioning, detaining or arresting a voter solely for the purpose of determining voter eligibility except as otherwise allowed under state or federal law. Again, this will not go into effect barring a full authoritarian takeover in the next eight months plus which kind of makes this one bill almost irrelevant. But it does put the lie to the defenders of ICE who say there is no chance ICE would ever be used to intimidate or invalidate the vote or drag off voters before they cast their vote and then say later, oops, sorry, but you missed the vote. This is the dream if not the plan. This this measure Mandatory federal troops with guns at local ballot places. This is the dream if not the plan. This is the super bowl if not the win in week three. Happily, right now ICE is in such a mess that the Department of Homeland Security could not now tell the difference between Arizona's elbow and Kristi Noem's artificial ass. The response to the bad press that might still cost Noem her job? Well, of course she got her Press spokesperson Trisha McLaughlin. Ohio Gestapo Barbie fired Noem and lover boy Corey Lewandowski were nice enough to garrot her and then leaked to the Washington examiner the implication that she McLaughlin was the source of a negative story about Customs and Border Commissioner Rodney Scott that was in Politico.

[Keith Olbermann (co-host or guest commentator)]

And then that she was also the.

[Keith Olbermann]

Source of POLITICO's break about her own firing.

[Keith Olbermann (co-host or guest commentator)]

Why did Christy Noem boast in her.

[Keith Olbermann]

Autobiography about shooting her daughter's puppy in the face? We all wondered.

[Keith Olbermann (co-host or guest commentator)]

Because it was an audition.

[Keith Olbermann]

Regardless, Noem is currently looked at askance in the White House. I mean, each time she goes in there it it is with a new face. So maybe they just don't recognize her. Lewandowski obviously has something on Trump. Or this hapless Ichabod Crane wouldn't keep getting re employed by Trump. This latest disaster led to the revival of a ProPublica headline from last November. Quote Firm tied to Kristi Noem secretly got money from $220 million DHS ad. The company is run by the husband of Nome's chief DHS spokesperson and has personal and business ties to Nome and her aides. DHS invoked the emergency at the border to skirt competitive bidding rules for the taxpayer funded campaign. Yes, the spokesperson referenced is McLaughlin who just got fired, man. Her husband got the money anyway. Happily for them, they have found a Trump loyalist to replace McLaughlin and a Fox News guest to replace the Trump loyalists. So the net skill level at DHS will be even lower than it was last last week. So stay tuned. The desperate life deciding struggle between fascism and utter stupidity is likely to get even more dangerous in the days and weeks to come, but also way more entertaining.

[Keith Olbermann (co-host or guest commentator)]

Still.

[Keith Olbermann]

Once again, we can be confident that one outcome will not trouble our horizons. ICE and otherwise. MAGA will not atone and will not rejoin the plane of existence the rest of us call reality Laura Ingraham show devoted to trashing the Rhode island hockey shooter as trans. Not a mention of the social media history of this person. Which is of course what you would do if you're trying to set up a pogrom against trans people and especially deflect away from the fact that the shooter was maga. But this is a new high in low. It is a new indication that there are no barricades over there anymore. There is no shame. There is no vestige or shadow of shame. There is no marker to previous shame. The social media record of the shooter in Rhode Island. The shooter regularly reposted clips from Laura Ingraham's show. But of course, pogroms against trans people. The Trump administration would never target any minority group and buy giant warehouses to warehouse them and eventually torture and kill them. Of course not. You people who predicted everything else. You're still just alarmists. Senator Mike Rounds of South Dakota, one of the most obedient of the fascisti, a real estate guy, went on Fox and explained the updated poll tax they have disguised as voter id. Quote, you take out your driver's license if you've got a little. You got a little yellow star up on the right hand corner. That means I didn't hear the rest of it actually. Little yellow star on your IDs. Little yellow stars. Didn't bother Mike Rounds. Didn't bother host Larry Kudlow. Hell, why would it bother Larry Kudlow? Glug. This Nick Shirley guy, the slow kid does an expose on a woman in California who got her dog registered to vote there. Did not mention the woman was maga. Did not mention she did it as a stunt cuz she thought it would prove voter fraud. It happened in 2021. She's currently facing charges. This is called a self fulfilling prophecy in which a MAGA fraudulent voter got caught by the state of California and will probably now go to prison. And this Nick Shirley guy turns it into a MAGA talking point. And Trump's latest endless Ukraine peace talks have broken up the war he said he would settle in 24 hours. He's now off by like, oh, 9500 hours. Maga waves these talks like a banner proving Trump is, I don't know, peace president. He's tough, he's Nobel winner, he's not incontinent. It should be tragically obvious that Trump's job in all of this assigned by Putin no doubt is to waste time to stall that Putin and Russia are so incompetent that there are murmurs coming out of there, not that they're going to now defeat Ukraine, but that the Russian economy is about to collapse. That's not Trump's fault. Trump's actually done his job here, even if Putin hasn't. His job is pretend to negotiate, then stop the negotiations, mention some other period of time in the future and come back and do this all over again. The media will never notice. Poor Zelensky has to go on the off chance that something will happen that will improve his chances back home. Putin has now taken sterner steps and always look to Moscow for what Trump will try two years from now. His puppet parliament, that's, that's Putin's, has voted to give him the right to turn off the Internet or specific Internet sites. The Moscow Times reports that it also.

[Keith Olbermann (co-host or guest commentator)]

Lets him block phone calls.

[Keith Olbermann]

Number please. Texts. He can block texts and the mail. This, says a Putin spokesman, is to confuse enemies as a lot of enemies. Spoiler alert. It confuses no one, except maybe some Russians and of course Trump. Good news everyone. Two unexpected media victories.

[Keith Olbermann (co-host or guest commentator)]

UCLA has canceled. Its speaker at the Daniel Pearl lecture was supposed to be Barry Weiss, the.

[Keith Olbermann]

Anti journalism chief of CBS News who would have probably fired Daniel Pearl if he had worked for her. And apparently somebody at CNN just discovered Jake Tapper has been using a channel to sell his crap. Book underscores the fact that nobody is watching cnn, not even its own management.

[Keith Olbermann (co-host or guest commentator)]

In breaker, Lachlan Cartwright reports that two.

[Keith Olbermann]

Weeks ago CNN issued what seemed like a company wide memo, but is in fact Tapper getting slapped on his. Well, Tapper quoting Cartwright, quoting the memo. CNN's editorial platforms are meant to distribute.

[Keith Olbermann (co-host or guest commentator)]

And showcase CNN's journalism. That our audience comes to CNN for what audience? Because they know content.

[Keith Olbermann]

We present goes through our editorial review. There should be no use of websites, QR codes or links to drive personal sales.

[Keith Olbermann (co-host or guest commentator)]

We should not mix news and advertising.

[Keith Olbermann]

Even when what is being advertised is.

[Keith Olbermann (co-host or guest commentator)]

Work by a leading CNN journalist.

[Keith Olbermann]

There's not an asterisk here and says asterisk. Also Jake Tapper Cartwright notes a historical curiosity that I must mention too. Until the fascists bought cnn, what was.

[Keith Olbermann (co-host or guest commentator)]

It, four years ago now, books by.

[Keith Olbermann]

CNN anchors were rigorously fact checked and.

[Keith Olbermann (co-host or guest commentator)]

Then could be promoted on air with some dignity.

[Keith Olbermann]

That's not Jake Tapper's forte.

[Keith Olbermann (co-host or guest commentator)]

The punchline here is who did the fact checking in the good old days.

[Keith Olbermann]

Five years ago, four years ago, it.

[Keith Olbermann (co-host or guest commentator)]

Was then executive vice president of Newsstandards Rick Davis. Not that Rick Davis was there forever. But the day I broke into TV at the end of CNN's first year on the air in August 1981, when I was 22 years old, my direct boss, my first true TV boss, the guy who used to assign me my.

[Keith Olbermann]

Stories, the man I used to argue with was CNN's original executive producer of sports, Rick Davis. And we still get along.

[Keith Olbermann (co-host or guest commentator)]

So if somebody says I'm fatal to.

[Keith Olbermann]

Employers, well, it's certainly not literally true. But back to Jake Tapper's on air book clearance sale.

[Keith Olbermann (co-host or guest commentator)]

A 200 for one deal as I understand it. Reaction from Tapper, who still thinks this is 2015 and CNN has credibility, writes Mr. Cartwright, quote, how has this new edict gone over with the mild mannered Tapper?

[Keith Olbermann]

He is very, very unhappy about it.

[Keith Olbermann (co-host or guest commentator)]

One CNN journalist told Breaker. In fact, Tapper is so enraged by it that he has gathered several other anchors who are now demanding a meeting with CNN CEO Mark Thompson to discuss the new policy. Wow. If you can get six CNN anchors into that meeting, you'll have a larger audience than Jake has on cnn.

[Keith Olbermann]

I told you I expected this podcast would eventually morph into a media podcast. And here we are. So you already know about Stephen Colbert, who reported Monday night that he had been prevented by CBS from having Texas Democratic Senate primary contender James Talarico as a guest. I have no use for Colbert, as.

[Keith Olbermann (co-host or guest commentator)]

You know, but in 100 battles between.

[Keith Olbermann]

Him and Barry Weiss, I'll take Colbert side 101 times.

[Keith Olbermann (co-host or guest commentator)]

He says they even threatened him. Told him not to say.

[Keith Olbermann]

They told him not to say.

[Keith Olbermann (co-host or guest commentator)]

They said he couldn't have Talarico on. This is pretty strange, pretty condescending given that Colbert show is sunsetting in like two months.

[Keith Olbermann]

What are they gonna do, cancel him?

[Keith Olbermann (co-host or guest commentator)]

But as we have seen, the new people at CBS are not very Smart. They also reportedly threw out the FCC equal time regulations as if it would scare Colber. Which is hilarious because the erasure of these regulations began under Ronald Reagan 45 years ago. And anyway, this is a primary. The only candidate Colbert would have to have on to satisfy these zombie rules nobody enforces anymore would have been Jasmine Crockett. And Jasmine Crockett has already been on Colbert show several times. It's all bullshit. It's the fascists from Skydance taking over cbs. I guess they think maybe some of them at least have been told they will make money somehow by now convincing the same people they have spent 75 years convincing that CBS stands for communist Broadcast System. That this is now the home for right wing nutjobs like Barry Weiss. Especially right wing nutjob news viewers. Stupid ones. People like Barry Weiss, they won't. They'll go broke. On the other hand, with the actual amount of money they'll lose here, they'll just write it off and they'll get a nice note from Trump or whoever succeeds him. There has been a lot of this at CBS and Skydance. This week Anderson Cooper announced he's leaving 60 minutes to spend more time with his family. Which I think is kind of an inside joke. Since when I worked with Anderson Cooper at CNN years ago he used to sarcastically in the office that his colleagues at CNN were his family. And he didn't mean it. Anyway, Oliver Darcy of Status Reports. Cooper chose not to re up at CBS specifically because of Bari Weiss turning CBS News into the intellectual equivalent of a fourth grade class newspaper. Only with less editorial integrity. As I have no use for Colbert, so have I no use for cooperation. But in 100 battles between him and Barry Weiss, I'll take Anderson Cooper's side 102 times. That of course won't stop me from making the obligatory joke. Now when you don't watch Anderson Cooper, you can only not watch Anderson Cooper on cnn. Again, back to the point. The same people who are destroying cbs. Nah, I think we can. We can say they've accomplished it. I mean the nine funniest words in media right now are.

[Keith Olbermann]

This is the CBS Evening News with Tony Decouple. Those same people are now getting another chance to buy the same scumbags who destroyed cnn. David Zaslav's Warner Bros. Discovery. Poor Anderson Cooper gets off the sinking CBS ship only to reboard the already sunk CNN ship that they're now going to refloat and torpedo again. Lusitania. Hello. Believe it or not, this ties in to a very solemn and Sad story, the death Monday of the great actor Robert Duvall. From the Godfather to the Natural to Mash to Tender Mercies to To Kill a Mockingbird, you will find yourself hard pressed to pick just one immortal Robert Duvall role in one immortal Robert Duvall movie. But there is no question as to what his most important role was, his most meaningful role relative to our society today. He portrayed every television executive now ruining television. He is David Zaslav and both Ellisons and that cipher Mark Thompson at cnn. And for that matter, he's also Jeff Bezos and the people corrupting newspapers for Trump as well. He portrayed the aptly named Frank Hackett in the movie network. And in 1976, he gave life. Well, sort of life. Hackett, like the Zaslavs and Ellisons of the real world, they aren't really alive anymore. They're just dollar bills wearing overpriced suits. He gave life to what would happen when television news finally lost its immunization, its immunization against being judged solely by.

[Keith Olbermann (co-host or guest commentator)]

How much money it made or lost.

[Keith Olbermann]

What network was when it came out in 1976 was a seemingly ridiculous, impossible sci fi portrayal of a world in which cbs, ABC and NBC stopped doing the news as it existed, stopped doing the news as its corporate payment, as its financial give back to American society for using the publicly owned American airwaves to make money that it was no longer going to be part of the public service requirement, the public service requirement that is still on the books, by the way, for every radio and TV station in America to do something for the public good in exchange for all this free money. And in particular, it was to tell the truth no matter what it hurt and no matter what it cost. In the movie Frank Hackett, Robert Duvall was put in charge of a television network that was hemorrhaging money, one that was actually on the verge of bankruptcy. And when by coincidence, his newscaster started drawing audiences by simply threatening on air suicide and by having prophetic visions and by getting so agitated on the air he would pass out up close and personal. Frank Hackett saw the gold mine. It actually wasn't like that then. Now, money often did mean censorship in all that time, we tend to Forget that since 1954, we've left out one little detail from the valiant story of Edward R. Murrow versus Senator Joseph McCarthy. Murrow put the first big knife in Joe McCarthy and McCarthyism. The final knives were administered by my heroes, Bob and Ray, the comedians. That's when roy Cohn knew McCarthy was finished, when radio comedians were humiliating McCarthy every morning for two weeks in New York anyway, everybody applauded Murrow and CBS. Everybody said TV and TV news had come of age and the golden era was born. And then, and this is the part they leave out. At the end of that TV season, at the end of 1953, 54 weeks after Murrow's McCarthy broadcast, William S. Paley quietly changed his CBS schedule around.

[Keith Olbermann (co-host or guest commentator)]

And what do you know?

[Keith Olbermann]

Edward R. Murrow never had a weekly series in primetime on television ever again. Not in news, anyway. He had that interview show.

[Keith Olbermann (co-host or guest commentator)]

He never did the news on a.

[Keith Olbermann]

Regular basis in prime time ever again. Just specials. He was, in effect, as finished as McCarthy was. But that, happily, as terrible as it was, was the exception in the 50s and the 60s and the 70s and.

[Keith Olbermann (co-host or guest commentator)]

Even part of the 80s.

[Keith Olbermann]

Now it is the rule, as CBS is so bluntly and unimaginatively showing us now. Quislings like Barry Weiss and Tony decouple and whoever chased out Anderson Cooper, but platformed Stephen A. Smith admitting he doesn't know any of the issues but he's gonna read about them and run for president anyway. The dipshit, they are all pointing out, they are all underscoring that Frank Hackett.

[Keith Olbermann (co-host or guest commentator)]

As personified by the brilliance of the.

[Keith Olbermann]

Late Robert Duval, as created by the brilliance of the late Paddy Chayefsky, was.

[Keith Olbermann (co-host or guest commentator)]

Not only part of the future, he was the only future.

[Keith Olbermann]

We're here in the future now. And the Frank hacketts destroyed American TV news.

[Keith Olbermann (co-host or guest commentator)]

Took them 50 years, literally.

[Keith Olbermann]

The 50th anniversary of the premiere of Network is this November 27th. After the midterms, the unraveling of TV news.

[Keith Olbermann (co-host or guest commentator)]

It began at CBS as they began.

[Keith Olbermann]

To cut back and demand profits in the late 80s. Dan Rather tried to stand up against it. It didn't work.

[Keith Olbermann (co-host or guest commentator)]

Everybody tried to stand up against it.

[Keith Olbermann]

I even tried to stand up against it. Didn't work. I got us all in the end.

[Keith Olbermann (co-host or guest commentator)]

The thing is, everything that's gone wrong with TV news, everything that has reduced.

[Keith Olbermann]

It to the place where it was the weakest and the first of our.

[Keith Olbermann (co-host or guest commentator)]

Guardrails to go, reduced it to the.

[Keith Olbermann]

Place where, if it all vanished tomorrow, every bit of it, from an affiliate in Sandusky, through all of PBS News, through ms, through Fox, if it all vanished tomorrow, if there was no news.

[Keith Olbermann (co-host or guest commentator)]

On TV in this country tomorrow, the quality of TV news in this country.

[Keith Olbermann]

Would immediately double or treble.

[Keith Olbermann (co-host or guest commentator)]

Everything that's gone wrong with TV news.

[Keith Olbermann]

Is in the movie Network with Robert Duvall.

[Keith Olbermann (co-host or guest commentator)]

I've often said, if you told me.

[Keith Olbermann]

To pick my all time number One film.

[Keith Olbermann (co-host or guest commentator)]

But you said the rule is it has to be only one movie.

[Keith Olbermann]

You pick two and you forfeit.

[Keith Olbermann (co-host or guest commentator)]

And it's not the movie you'd watch.

[Keith Olbermann]

Or bring to the.

[Keith Olbermann (co-host or guest commentator)]

It's the only movie you get to.

[Keith Olbermann]

Watch for the rest of your life.

[Keith Olbermann (co-host or guest commentator)]

Of course, we do let you watch.

[Keith Olbermann]

It after you're dead. Still, that's the rule. I'll take Network. It is a prophetic movie. I don't know of any other movie that accurate about the future. And we're talking about an H.G.

[Keith Olbermann (co-host or guest commentator)]

Wells film called Things to Come that predicted the Second World War. More or less on the start date.

[Keith Olbermann]

Network is better.

[Keith Olbermann (co-host or guest commentator)]

I made a list once of the nearly two dozen material changes to television news that Chayefsky and director Sidney Lumet and the actors, especially Duvall and Peter Finch and Faye Dunaway showed us in advance.

[Keith Olbermann]

We were warned about this and we.

[Keith Olbermann (co-host or guest commentator)]

Didn'T do enough about it.

[Keith Olbermann]

I'm not sure what else we could.

[Keith Olbermann (co-host or guest commentator)]

Have done, but we did not do enough because they've won, I think, with what's happening at cbs, and let me use a phrase that Finch used in.

[Keith Olbermann]

The movie, what shit will be peddled for truth on this network? I think especially with the passing of.

[Keith Olbermann (co-host or guest commentator)]

Robert Duval, this is a good time to go through that list of the.

[Keith Olbermann]

Prophecies within Network yet again. The irony, of course, as I begin.

[Keith Olbermann (co-host or guest commentator)]

That list again about Robert Duvall's role as the executive as Frank Hackett, is that the eternal quote from the movie is not by him, it's by Peter Finch. Well, you knew this was coming.

[Keith Olbermann]

I'm as mad as hell and I'm.

[Keith Olbermann (co-host or guest commentator)]

Not gonna take this anymore. Network starred Peter Finch as the newscaster, William Holden as his best friend, the network news boss, Faye Dunaway as the network programmer who sees in Newscast a gold mine. And Robert Duvall as the ambitious new network chief who sees in the newscast his ticket to the corporate boardroom. When I first saw Network As a 17 year old aspiring TV broadcaster, my jaw dropped and it stayed dropped. And in the last 46 years, my jaw has barely moved from that position. The world of TV news that network predicted was not unthinkable in 1976, but it was a nightmare. Today, virtually everything Chayefsky saw in the future has come true and is accepted as conservative broadcasting. The movie was so prophetic that younger viewers sometimes see the quality of the film and its artistry and its genius. But they can't imagine what the big deal was about its content. It's just showing TV news the way it's Always been so.

[Keith Olbermann]

A while ago, I sat down and watched Network and I took notes. I counted 23 major things about TV news news that were not true when network came out, but are true now. And they cover basically everything in the business. First of these the on air breakdown of a newscaster. Peter Finch's Howard Beale announces he's going to shoot himself on the air in one week. There was a local news anchor named Christine Chubbuck who had already shot herself during a newscast in Sarasota in 1974. But she did not give advance warning nor show any indication of emotional distress. Sadly, tragically, she just did it. But after network, things began to come apart at the seams in local news and Network News. In 1988, after reporter Bree Walker of New York's Channel 2 News had concluded a story on birth defects, veteran anchor Jim Jensen questioned her at length about a hand and foot deformity which she herself suffered from, and whether or not her parents would have aborted her had they known in advance she had the condition. Shortly afterwards, Jensen, who had been on the air in New York forever, entered.

[Keith Olbermann (co-host or guest commentator)]

A rehab center for treatment of alcohol.

[Keith Olbermann]

Prescription drug and cocaine abuse and depression. Later in 2004, Dan Harris had a live panic attack on ABC's Good Morning America, losing his breath and cutting his newscast short. Second of the prophecies. Network posited that such a breakdown would.

[Keith Olbermann (co-host or guest commentator)]

Lead not to treatment nor removal from.

[Keith Olbermann]

A broadcast, but to greater success. Fifteen years ago, Glenn Beck began to regularly weep on the air. If that was not an indication of emotional trouble, it might have been the attempt to convey that feeling legitimate or contrived, Beck was rewarded, and the ABC newscaster I just mentioned, Dan Harris, would.

[Keith Olbermann (co-host or guest commentator)]

Go on to do a World News.

[Keith Olbermann]

Tonight feature on his own on air breakdown. Third prophecy.

[Keith Olbermann (co-host or guest commentator)]

When Howard Beale first tells his boss.

[Keith Olbermann]

Max Schumacher, played by William Holden, that.

[Keith Olbermann (co-host or guest commentator)]

He will kill himself on the air, Schumacher goes off on a drunken flight of fancy about a new Sunday night news show he called in his mind.

[Keith Olbermann]

The Death, suicides, assassinations, mad bombers, Mafia hitmen, automobile smash ups, he says, and.

[Keith Olbermann (co-host or guest commentator)]

A terrorist of the week. Schumacher's utterly dystopian forecast has not made air yet, but the terrorism of 911 did play out live on all networks. And parts of that terrorism are repeated minimally annually. Much of a network like TruTV consisted of programs that were merely edited highlights of disasters, centering, in fact largely on, as Max Schumacher phrased it, automobile smash ups. The fourth network prophecy Beale swears repeatedly during his newscasts in the last few years. CNN in particular has made the decision to quote words that would have been bleeped less than a decade ago. And at least one broadcast television program, the Late Late show with Craig Ferguson on cbs, produced its show live to tape with an audience and in real time let the host swear copiously and then would bleep him just as copiously for the broadcast itself. Maybe the scripted swear in the newscast is not far away. Fifth of the network prophecies newscasts did not do stories about other newscasts before network premiered. When Beale announces his intention to kill himself, all of New York's local 10 and 11pm newscasts made it their lead story at this point. And in ensuing years, even monumental retirements such as Chet Huntley's retirement in NBC in 1970 or Walter Cronkite's retirement from CBS in 1981 had only merited the briefest of footnotes on rival network programs. But by the time of Peter Jennings lung cancer announcement in 2005, a newscast or newscaster could become the lead story on another newscast. Indeed, when I left MSNBC in January 2011 announcing it mid show, CNN's Anderson Cooper 360 not only led its live broadcast at 10pm ET with it, it devoted a dumbfounding 22 minutes to to something that would have been ignored even a decade before. Understand how long 22 minutes is on CNN? I retired from the broadcast countdown on MSNBC and was able to get home before he was done covering the story of my retiring from the broadcast.

[Keith Olbermann]

6Th and this was the key to everything in network and cinch network. Paddy Chayefsky and his script forecast a moment in which newscasts would be required to make money. It had not been that way before news divisions were considered public service, the price the networks paid to make billions off entertainment shows. Robert Duvall as Frank Hackett the executive attacks UBS's cruddy news division and its annual $33 million deficit. As Hackett later tells UBS stockholders, in effect the news division would be reduced from an independent division accountable to network. After CBS was sold in 1987, the news budget was cut in half and the moment arrived newscast from there on in had to be profitable. In 2012, NBC took it to a new level by appointing a programming executive with no news experience to oversee all news on all of its networks, stations and even local cable systems. The reason Pad Icafsky could see this when others could not was that he had worked in live television drama in the 1950s, particularly on one show called you'd are There, in which CBS News reporters and actors reenacted great moments from history. The newscasters could make extra cash on the side and the network made huge profits. The host of youf Are There, Half news, half Entertainment was Walter Cronkite. The seventh Network Prophecy Criminals videotaping their own crimes. A series in network is created after a terrorist group called the Ecumenical Liberation army shoots film of its own members robbing a bank. This was inconceivable in 1976, yet is today a facet of every act from the simplest self taped vandalism uploaded to YouTube to actual terrorist attacks, recordings of which are made by and then disseminated to news organizations by the perpetrat the eighth Prophecy of Network Television News as Rage Quote the American people want somebody to articulate their rage for them, says Faye Dunaway's character Diana Christensen.

[Keith Olbermann (co-host or guest commentator)]

Relative to cable news in particular.

[Keith Olbermann]

Does this even require me to elaborate at all? Ninth, Christensen, not a news executive is then given control over and permission to program Beals newscast the UBS evening news. Although there was a history of news personnel being involved in entertainment programming, Edward R. Murrow also did an interview show.

[Keith Olbermann (co-host or guest commentator)]

Called Person to Person.

[Keith Olbermann]

Evening newscasts were sacrosanct. Today the fiction may be maintained that they're still sacrosanct, but since the advent.

[Keith Olbermann (co-host or guest commentator)]

Of the consultant on the local news level in the late 1970s and early 80s, more and more decisions about not just who does the news but what.

[Keith Olbermann]

Goes on the news have been made.

[Keith Olbermann (co-host or guest commentator)]

By non news executives.

[Keith Olbermann]

The Tenth Prophecy Diana Christensen also foretells.

[Keith Olbermann (co-host or guest commentator)]

The various genres of five nights a.

[Keith Olbermann]

Week network programming that didn't happen before.

[Keith Olbermann (co-host or guest commentator)]

Network she sees a profit center in a cheaply produced low budget program that can run Monday through Friday and which.

[Keith Olbermann]

Happens to be about the news.

[Keith Olbermann (co-host or guest commentator)]

The other networks then try to find their own outlandish newscasts and run them five nights a week.

[Keith Olbermann]

Patty Chafsky is now anticipating every genre.

[Keith Olbermann (co-host or guest commentator)]

Of craze that followed in news from Nightline to Dateline to Wants to Be a Millionaire to American idol to the NBC 2009 experiment in which they put Jay Leno on for a comedy show every night at 10pm the 11th Prophecy Network anticipates government deregulation and what it would do to TV when the UBS president objects to a pornographic network news show and warns the FCC it'd kill us. Robert Duvall as Hacker. It dismisses him and the FCC and foretells the declawing of the commission. The FCC can't do anything except rap our knuckles. Again. Does anything the FCC has not done in post network television need any detail from me? 12th news commentary devolving into rants and takes. Wait, what did I write here? News commentary devolves into rants and takes. I've never heard any news commentator ranting what the hell is this? The rest of this rant about the relevance of the movie network right after.

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[Keith Olbermann]

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Life, and all the bizarre ways people are using the Internet.

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Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Keith Olbermann]

Before the break, I was about halfway through my look at the remarkably prescient 1976 film Network, which foresaw things we thought impossible then, ranging from TV news covering TV news as news to terrorists videotaping their own terror and giving it to newscasts, to the 12th thing that network foretold, the evolution or devolution of news commentary into takes and rants. What in substance are we proposing? New network chief Hackett asks his horrified colleagues. Then he answers his own question, merely to add editorial comment to our news show. Brink, Severide, Reasoner all have their comments. Now Howard Beale will have his Hackett's erasure of a line between nuanced, thoughtful scripts of commentary agonized over by commentators, producers and executives and ad libbed madness foresaw the similar real life change. Not merely were comments added to newscasts, but the standards for what constituted useful public commentary dropped from an ages old tradition of newspaper editorials and columnists to verbal graffiti spontaneously letting out his anger. The thirteenth Network Prophecy Newscasters and commentators never used to claim that God told them what to say. Though Beale specifically quotes the voice who tells him to tell the people the truth as also saying that that voice is not God. Beale still says he feels imbued and connected to all living things. Belief for a commentator, from hearing your inner voice to hearing somebody else's inner voice, was preposterous enough as it was. But reality took it further.

[Keith Olbermann (co-host or guest commentator)]

While Glenn Beck may not have claimed.

[Keith Olbermann]

God was writing his commentaries for him, in April 2012, according to the UT.

[Keith Olbermann (co-host or guest commentator)]

San Diego News, he told an audience in Rancho San Diego that God did tell him to quit his job at Fox News Channel on the day he decided to leave, they wrote. Beck said he walked up to a floor to ceiling window in his New York apartment and asked his wife how could this possibly be God's plan? As I stood there the Lord whispered to me, if you do not leave now, you will lose your soul, beck said. It was the easiest decision I've ever made. Beck also later announced that God not only wanted Mitt Romney to be president, but had put him behind in the polls so that when Romney won, everyone would see a modern miracle. How'd that one turn out for You Glenn? The 14th Network prophecy network accurately predicted that journalists would stop throwing themselves in front of Professional train wrecks. The same year that network was released, a House committee wanted correspondent Daniel Shore of CBS News to testify about where he got copy of a secret report. He refused. CBS pressured him to testify, so he quit. He quit his job, but network foretold that Shore would be among the last to do something like that. William Holden's Max Schumacher tries to derail the Howard Beale prophecy and rage newscast by telling Robert Duvall's Frank Hackett, you want me out of here, you're gonna have to drag me out of here kicking and screaming. And the whole news division kicking and screaming with me. Hackett dismisses him. You think they're gonna quit their jobs for you?

[Keith Olbermann]

Not in this recession, buddy.

[Keith Olbermann (co-host or guest commentator)]

The premise of the integrity of news people was as widely held as the integrity and inviolability of a news division. And yet in each downsizing, redesigning and bowdlerization of the old standard concept of news, again, Paddy Chayefsky foresaw correctly the number of public protests, let alone public exits, has been negligible in the last 30 years. Dan Rather railed against the gutting of CBS in 1987.

[Keith Olbermann]

That's been about it.

[Keith Olbermann (co-host or guest commentator)]

And for all the other good things Dan has done, he didn't quit his job. Fifteenth network foresaw reality television and the staging of news. When Christensen meets with the activist Lorraine Hobbs and her attorneys to program their terrorism show, the Mao Zedong Hour, she is not merely reflecting the coming amorality of reality television, nor just amplifying the already extant if it bleeds, it leads mantra of local news. Through her, Paddy Chayefsky is also foretelling a time when television would begin not to cover the news, but to orchestrate it. If the networks have yet to actually be guilty of misprision of a penalty regarding terrorists, we hope surely on a lesser scale. The 1992 NBC scandal over faked video of Chevy trucks exploding after collisions confirms the basic premise of adding programming helper to the actual news. Somewhat more remotely. Event recreations were once absolutely impermissible in news. They are now one of its staples. There are eight more prophecies, and they all fall into one category.

[Keith Olbermann]

Howard Beale's revised newscast, the network NewsHour has components in it, eight of them, that would have been thought absurd in any newscast anywhere the day that the film Network premiered in 1976. Number one, it has a studio audience. Countless newscasts, particularly on cable, have now used studio audiences. MSNBC's Donahue did it nightly in 2002, 2003. Others like Anderson Cooper and Chris Matthews and Chris Hayes have experimented with it. Number two Predicting the news. On the Beal Show, Sybil the Soothsayer actually predicts the news. Well, nobody has done that yet, not literally. But what does every specialty newscast, especially political ones, do in its last broadcast before Monday? Almost invariably there is some kind of prediction or forecast for the week ahead, what to look for. And if it is not institutionalized in that distinct a manner, the show still contains pundits who do nothing but forecast tomorrow's news. As long ago as 1998. We would try on Thursday night to guess where the Clinton Lewinsky story was going and what we could give them to put in the pre recorded promos that would run on Monday three days later. Number three Trial Obsessed TV News There.

[Keith Olbermann (co-host or guest commentator)]

Is a Howard Beale segment called Jim.

[Keith Olbermann]

Webbing and His it's the Emma's Truth Department. The script is a little vague.

[Keith Olbermann (co-host or guest commentator)]

We don't know. Is the end emis truth, a series of hard to believe news stories?

[Keith Olbermann]

Does the giant logo behind Jim Webbing of Justice carrying her scales suggest it's a regular report on trials and the law? Or is the emphasis on EMIs as in you've been lied to? Here's the real truth, not the coverup? Which is it? Well, does it matter which? Do we not have all of them concurrently every hour? 4th Public Sexual Scandal coverage another Beale segment stars Ms. Mata Hari and her skeletons in the closet, and she stands in front of a giant keyhole. This is something beyond just gossip, and it has become the sustaining joy of all newscasts from the cheesiest local station to pbs. The public sex scandal? Ask Bill Clinton. Ask Madison Cawthorn. Fifth Opinion Polls as News Beale has a regular segment called Vox, the Calculation and Reporting of Public opinion. This one is the hardest to explain.

[Keith Olbermann (co-host or guest commentator)]

To younger viewers of the film network.

[Keith Olbermann]

But the idea of running polls, especially.

[Keith Olbermann (co-host or guest commentator)]

Polls conducted by the news organization that would then televise the results of those polls, was laughable when Chayfsky saw it.

[Keith Olbermann]

Come now. TV news organizations like MSNBC will not only employ somewhat reliable polling morning, noon.

[Keith Olbermann (co-host or guest commentator)]

And night, but they'll also employ text.

[Keith Olbermann]

Polls in which viewers are asked if.

[Keith Olbermann (co-host or guest commentator)]

A particular Republican is a evil or b just stupid. Moreover, every newscast believes in, relies on, and most of them commission their own polling for everything and treats the results as breaking news. Guilty is charged here. I did it, then I do it in this podcast. 6 the Corporate Influence Beale opens the first edition of the network NewsHour with the death of network President Ed Ruddy and the ascent of Frank Hackett and the full control of UBS by the company CCA? Beale asks, when the 12th largest company in the world controls the most awesome goddamn propaganda force in the whole godless world? Who knows who what blank will be peddled for truth on this network? The cross promotion between GE and NBC and its various networks and channels, or Universal Studios when the former owned the latter, or between Disney networks and Disney products, abc, espn, the cross quotation of one News Corp. Print entity by a News Corp Broadcast entity, or Fox News and the like. That was only the start. But what is Fox News? What is oan? What is Newsmax? What is the serious coverage of the entire big lie about the 2020 presidential election? You think those are the newscasters thinking all that up? It is exactly what Chayefsky had Beal warn of. What if the corporations own all the television networks and tell you what they the corporations want you to hear? 7. Direct involvement of corporate CEOs in news content well, I know of no meeting in which a real life equivalent to the Ned Beatty character, one of the great characters in motion picture history, Arthur Jensen, preaches fire and brimstone to Howard Beale to get him to do what he Jensen wants.

[Keith Olbermann]

But I can tell you without fear of contradiction as a witness to this this that corporate CEOs will tell individual newscasters what they want personally, directly and with the threat of retribution, spoken or otherwise. Just yesterday here I mentioned Jeff Immelt, the head of GE in the summer of 2009 during the well publicized GE swoon over MSNBC's criticism of Immelt's friends at Fox News.

[Keith Olbermann (co-host or guest commentator)]

Eventually it was all resolved when Immelt had me come up to the private.

[Keith Olbermann]

GE NBC dining room, a top 30 rock in New York City, along with NBC president Jeff Zucker to hash it all out. This thing lasted two hours. When I finally asked Imelt, is this a question of never criticizing Fox again.

[Keith Olbermann (co-host or guest commentator)]

Or how much we criticize Fox? He said how much? And I said well, I can do less. And he said said well great, really?

[Keith Olbermann]

Then it's resolved.

[Keith Olbermann (co-host or guest commentator)]

Let's eat.

[Keith Olbermann]

And that's when Immelt confirmed that he had met on this topic with Rupert.

[Keith Olbermann (co-host or guest commentator)]

Murdoch, the CEO of News Corp, and.

[Keith Olbermann]

That Jeff Zucker had met with Roger Ailes, who ran Fox News, to discuss what the Fox Corporation and the NBC.

[Keith Olbermann (co-host or guest commentator)]

Corporation would and would not allow their.

[Keith Olbermann]

Television networks to report about each other.

[Keith Olbermann (co-host or guest commentator)]

8. And lastly, assassination. Spoiler alert.

[Keith Olbermann]

About the movie network. I don't think anybody has actually been killed by his own bosses for having.

[Keith Olbermann (co-host or guest commentator)]

Lousy ratings, but the moral equivalent character.

[Keith Olbermann]

Assassination of a network's own newscasters.

[Keith Olbermann (co-host or guest commentator)]

That is a regular technique to undermine.

[Keith Olbermann]

Them, to discipline them, to make them more malleable, to get away with firing them.

[Keith Olbermann (co-host or guest commentator)]

Them.

[Keith Olbermann]

In Aaron Sorkin's newsroom, his employers were.

[Keith Olbermann (co-host or guest commentator)]

Themselves leaking gossip about their newscaster, played by Jeff Daniels, to the tabloid newspaper they also owned.

[Keith Olbermann]

But I know for a fact that.

[Keith Olbermann (co-host or guest commentator)]

Past bosses of mine at NBC leaked.

[Keith Olbermann]

To the New York Post in hopes of making me fear for my job.

[Keith Olbermann (co-host or guest commentator)]

When Current TV tried to fire me to get out of having to pay me roughly $50 million it still owed me, it actually hired a former White House spin doctor to make and spread stories with his contacts about me in hopes of getting themselves off the financial hook. If you have never seen the Movie Network, all that I've been through in the last 20 minutes probably makes it sound like some sort of drab, almost academic treatise on declining journalistic values and personal moral decay. Well, it's anything but that. It is exciting, hilarious, surprising, terrifying, and it's virtually perfect, with brilliant acting and a subtle but perceptible sense that everybody in the film and everybody watching the film is detaching slowly and slowly and more slowly detaching from reality and the reliable world they thought they knew with every passing minute of the film. But mostly it's just a great flick. If you have not seen it, see it now. To paraphrase Finch as Beale so turn off this podcast and go watch network. Turn it off now. Turn it off right now. Turn it off and leave it off. Turn it off right in the middle of the sentence. I'm speaking to you now.

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[BBC Interface Host]

Approval if there was a big red button that would just demolish the Internet, I would smash that button with my.

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Forehead from the BBC this is the Interface, the show that explores how tech is rewiring your week and your world.

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This isn't about quarterly earnings or about tech reviews.

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It's about what technology is actually doing to your work, your politics, your everyday.

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Life, and all the bizarre ways people are using the Internet.

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Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Keith Olbermann]

Among his other credits, Mo used to host a TV show called Things I Hate about you. You. I'm sure I've seen that program, only I believe it's now called Countdown with Keith Olbermann. So I juggled the format here because of CBS and Robert Duvall and network. And so we close in unfamiliar order with the new idiots to talk about the roundup of the miscreants, morons and dunning Kruger effect specimens who constitute today's other worst persons in the world, the bronze worse Tom Emmer, Congressman from Minnesota, the House Majority Whip. And no majority ain't short for whip smart. Tom is a moron. Tom, though, is one of the dozens of MAGA who got the memo and can read it aloud. They can memorize this much. The Democratic Senate requirement in negotiations that all the ICE Gestapo have to wear ID badges of some sort. You know, like cops do not have their home address on it. It's just numbers or some way of identifying them without giving away, you know, their home address. They have decided the MAGA have Tom Emmer has, the others have that they can twist this into something else to say on tv. Tom Emmer was on CBS and the host managed to get in news before they fire him and replace him with, I don't know, somebody from Real Housewives of Bari Weiss, who knows. And this guy Emmer Spouted the idea that it was intellectually dishonest. As if intellectually has ever entered into MAGA for one second. That it's intellectually dishonest for Democrats to demand IDs for ICE if they won't.

[Keith Olbermann (co-host or guest commentator)]

Accept IDs to vote.

[Keith Olbermann]

You know what these things have in common? The initials ID. That's it. Because IDs to vote are actually just a modernized version of the Jim Crow poll tax for minorities and women. And IDs like an ID badge doesn't even have your picture on it, let.

[Keith Olbermann (co-host or guest commentator)]

Alone your address, let alone you have.

[Keith Olbermann]

To pay for it, let alone you have to have it before you shoot somebody. They're totally different things. It's like saying I don't know, it's got ID on it. So it also means Idaho IDs for a cop or ICE IDs for voting and ID for Idaho, same thing. You're telling me ICE has to move to Idaho. Same intellectual through line. Well finally somebody questioned him him about how much of a stretch this is and how much he is an asshole Congressman.

[Keith Olbermann (co-host or guest commentator)]

When they're asking for IDs they don't.

[Keith Olbermann]

Mean identification in the way we as ordinary Americans carry them. They mean a badge number like a cop would have. Emmer does not simply vanish in a ball of smoke. Emmer. You can interpret it that way for sure. But that isn't necessarily what they're asking for if you listen closely. Actually it is.

[Keith Olbermann (co-host or guest commentator)]

Especially if you listen closely.

[Keith Olbermann]

It's exactly what we're asking for. Now you can interpret it that way for sure because a badge with a number on it telling you who is threatening to shoot you in the face is not the same as a new.

[Keith Olbermann (co-host or guest commentator)]

ID with your picture and address on it that you have to go and.

[Keith Olbermann]

Buy after a five hour drive in order to vote. And when you do the five hour drive, you find out they have closed all the places you could buy that id. And it's also not the same as Idaho.

[Keith Olbermann (co-host or guest commentator)]

I don't want to hear any of.

[Keith Olbermann]

You MAGA F's say this is the same as Idaho. Somehow it's like my own private Idaho.

[Keith Olbermann (co-host or guest commentator)]

What happened to the privacy in my own private Idaho? I almost would be willing to accept fascism in this country country if these MAGAs weren't so effing stupid. Just try a little harder.

[Keith Olbermann]

Nope.

[Keith Olbermann (co-host or guest commentator)]

Next example. How could you top that?

[Keith Olbermann]

You're the runner up. The worser Peter Navarro. He can top that. White House senior counselor and lawn jockey.

[Keith Olbermann (co-host or guest commentator)]

The economy sized economist Peter Navarro, the guy who sold Trump on terror tariffs and last time actually went to jail for Donald Trump. This is one dumb mofo. But I always assumed, not being an economist myself, that Navarro had some kind of credibility financially, even on behalf of his fellow fascists like Trump and Kushner and Lutnik, who are looting the treasury as we speak. Not Peter Navarro on Maria Bartiromo. Oh, God. Peter Navarro on Maria Bartiromo show. God, now I got that picture in my mind. Peter Navarro on Maria Bartiromo's show. Bartiromo, by the way, another financial ignoramus who thinks she's a genius. Quote, it's the perfect Trump economy in 2026, Navarro said. Quote, it's a Goldilocks economy.

[Keith Olbermann]

Quote.

[Keith Olbermann (co-host or guest commentator)]

What are we seeing? We're seeing stock market. Over $50,000. It's not the stock market. The number he's quoting, it's not over $50,000. What are you saying? The stock market is worth a total of $50,000. We're in a lot of trouble, aren't we then, Pete? And I don't mean it's below 50,000. He's talking about the Dow Jones. The Dow Jones has been below above around 50,000 for about a week. Navarro is quoting where the Dow Jones Industrial Average is, but he doesn't understand what the Dow Jones Industrial Average is. What the number is. Yes, it's around 50,000, but not dollars, Peter. It's the price of the stocks in the average, then divided by a figure to balance it out and produce a statistic. Statistic. An index. The number is roughly 0.16 or something.

[Keith Olbermann]

It isn't.

[Keith Olbermann (co-host or guest commentator)]

The outcome isn't dollars. It's points. It's 50,000 points or 49,274 points. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed down 28 points today. It's at 49,000 points. I mean, I've been hearing this since like 19. 1967 on the TV. Even I know this. Here is one of Trump's primary financial advisors, and he literally doesn't know the Dow Jones isn't dollars, it's points. How long has this twerp been making this mistake? You know how old Peter Navarro is?

[Keith Olbermann]

He's 206.

[Keith Olbermann (co-host or guest commentator)]

In July. Actually, he'd be 77, but he looks 206. And yet this is not the worst. The winner. The worst. Candace Owens. I know Twitter X is dying. Activity is down. Blue sky is improving. They are letting you manipulate your own algorithm on threads. Although I still look at threads through suspicious and slitted eyelids and think Zuckerberg is doing something bad. But there is one Account of on Twitter X. I cannot recommend too much. It is reading 1c a n d a c e R E a d I n g 1 andice reading 1. That's the handle. The title is Candace Owens trying to read parody. It's blue checked and it's worth going on Twitter X just for this account. If you follow no other account, not one Candace Owens trying to read andicereading one. Because of all the transparent frauds out there trying to grift off the stupidity of people so stupid they can't see through Elon Musk and Donald Trump, Candace Owens is the dumbest. She's dumb enough to replace Barry Weiss as the head of cp. I mean, she not only behaves like a creature created in a test tube, she behaves like a creature created in a test tube who was released into the wild 17 hours before the experiment was finished. Candace Owens just acts like she has never been on this planet before. I mean, not before this morning. Like every day is her first day here in this part of the galaxy. And you don't have to analyze what she thinks in her political commentary to find this out. You don't have to lose yourself in the wormhole that is her conspiracy driven brain. You don't have to ask yourself, her eyes. What the hell's wrong with her eyes? They're almost literally on opposite sides of her skull. Is she, Is she not of this earth? You don't have to go that far. It's much simpler than that. The woman cannot read. This person cannot read aloud. And she's in the reading aloud business. And she cannot read aloud. She does not recognize English words, American English words. She cannot say what might be words that she's never heard somebody else read aloud before. We all have words like that. Lackadaisical trips out most people. But her word, one of those words is grandiose. She can't say grandiose. She also can't say words like bureau, words that she must have heard somebody else say aloud before. Bureau. You don't believe me about bureau. You don't believe me about grandiose. This is where andiceread1 comes in. This guy or gal has like 49,000 followers, and to me, they should have 49 million. You must follow them now, Candace. Candace is spelled with an a, Reid, as in, you know, read things she can't do andissread one. This is priceless. This account, for a few moments at least, gives me not just hope that we will defeat the fascists because they are so stupid. It Gives me confidence that we will. So I'm going to just rip andissread one off just once. Go sign up for it. It's a final score grandiose and Bureau 18 Candace Owens nothing blackscorpio writes I.

[Political Commentator or Caller]

Am so very disappointed in Kash Patel, Dan Bongino and Pam Bondi who all made these grandoids promises to get the Epstein files. We also learned that last night a bomb squad and agents from the Borough of Alcohol and Tobacco Firearms the ATF obviously what is the borough doing? Has anybody traced this down? Were you brought into an FBI borough who's a former Borough of Prisons chief? Because there is a borough that has been corrupt rebuilding this bureau Borough chief of the Utah borough is the borough's public facing spot cleaned house at the state borough of the old Federal Borough of Narcotics with the Federal Borough of Investigation Federal Bureau of Investigation Federal Bureau of Investigation out of all of the FBI boroughs in the United States, 55 main boroughs and over 350 satellite bureaus, the FBI sent the specific Connecticut borough, that borough to uvu. I wonder what moved them to send that particular borough which just feels like you got a lot around you, a lot of options. It wasn't exactly like were you brought into an FBI borough.

[Keith Olbermann]

Candace Owens live from the Grand Oz borough. Thanks to Andice Reed 1 Today's other worst person in the world. Grand Oise. The Grand Oise Burrow. She climbed out of a Grand Oise Burrow. I've done all the damage I can do here. Thank you for listening. Most of our Countdown music was arranged, produced by and performed by Brian Ray on guitars, bass and drums and John Philip Chenale handling orchestration and keyboards. They are our musical directors of Countdown. This was produced by TKO Brothers. The music was. Our satirical and pithy musical comments are by the best baseball stadium organist ever, Nancy Foust.

[Keith Olbermann (co-host or guest commentator)]

The sports music is the olderman theme from ESPN2 written by Mitch Warren Davis.

[Keith Olbermann]

Courtesy of ESPN Inc. Other music arrangements.

[Keith Olbermann (co-host or guest commentator)]

And performed by no Horns allowed.

[Keith Olbermann]

No horns allowed.

[Keith Olbermann (co-host or guest commentator)]

Yeah, make fun of other people for not being able to talk. No horns allowed. I was thinking of saying Dick Cheney and Dick Cheney's voice came out in my mouth.

[Keith Olbermann]

No horns allowed.

[Keith Olbermann (co-host or guest commentator)]

I'm Dick Cheney.

[Keith Olbermann]

Our announcer today was Dick Cheney.

[Keith Olbermann (co-host or guest commentator)]

The late ghost of Dick Cheney lives.

[Keith Olbermann]

Here in the studio. This program was co produced by Ted and Kit.

[Keith Olbermann (co-host or guest commentator)]

Everything else was, as always, my fault. That's Countdown for today. Day 396 of America held hostage again just 1,067 days until the scheduled end of Trump's lame duck and lame brained term unless he is removed sooner by Epstein Trump Stein. The next scheduled countdown is Monday. Bulletins as the news merits until the next one, I'm Keith Olbermann. Good morning, good morning, good afternoon, good.

[Keith Olbermann]

Night and good luck. Countdown with Keith Olbermann is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Most people think their insurance will cover them when disaster strikes. The truth?

[Keith Olbermann]

Many are wrong.

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[BBC Interface Host]

If there was a big red button that would just demolish the Internet, I would smash that button with my forehead.

[BBC Interface Host (alternate)]

From the BBC, this is the Interface, the show that explores how tech is rewiring your your week and your world.

[Washable Sofas Advertiser]

This isn't about quarterly earnings or about tech reviews.

[BBC Interface Host (alternate)]

It's about what technology is actually doing to your work, your politics, your everyday.

[BBC Interface Host]

Life and all the bizarre ways people are using the Internet.

[BBC Interface Host (alternate)]

Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

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