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Today Show Host
Good morning. Welcome to today.
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From back to school to tackling your to do list, the Today show is your best start to the day. It's a new season and every morning we're here to help you take it all along.
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Keith Olbermann
As the forecast calls for football all.
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Keith Olbermann
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- [02:30]
Keith Olbermann
No purchase necessary. VGW Group void where prohibited by law. 21 + terms and conditions apply. Countdown with Keith Olbermann is a production of iHeartRadio let's face this. Trump has already lost the tariff wars. He finally claimed he paused yesterday without really pausing them. Already lost. Only took him eight days. Eight days from liberation day to a day when in any other war, in any other country, literal or figurative, he would have been deposed by now. And never mind how much you and I think he's crazy. A high priced advisor to Macro fund managers says a few of them have quietly wondered if the President might be insane, unquote. And after Wall street came off the ledge and got back to where it was, what, six days ago, only what, 3 trillion lost? 4. 7. You lose track after a while. Trump declared victory up 2,500 points. Nobody has ever heard of it. Gotta be a record. Because he cannot admit he made a mistake, ever. If he did, his head would fall off and his approval numbers have cratered. He's underwater by an average of 6 points. Last Wednesday it was an average of 2 points. Since the election, he's lost 20 points among those over age 65. He's lost 50 points among those under age 30. And he still yesterday raised the tariffs on the Chinese again to 120,000 5%. Because he's mad at them. Because they of course are winning this war. Because the Chinese are not negotiating. The Chinese don't negotiate. The Chinese are as they have been for centuries, for millennia. The Chinese are waiting for their opponents to die. The Chinese are apparently dumping our 10 year treasuries, driving up our debt and they've opened trading partnership negotiations with the head of China, the European Union. Surprise. And for all the claims about pausing the tariffs, Trump says a universal 10% tariff will be maintained on everybody. That's not a pause. Oh, and the very stable genius began the day in full panic. Between 7:46 and 9:37 yesterday morning, he made sure anybody who had not realized that it was and he were in free fall. He made sure they realized we're all in free fall. First one. This is a great time to move your company into the United States of America. Like Apple and so many others in record numbers are doing zero tariffs and almost immediate electrical energy hookups and approvals. No environmental delays. Don't wait, do it now. Free balloons for the kiddies. A few minutes later. Make America great again. After that, Republicans, it is more important now than ever that we pass the one big beautiful bill. The USA will soar like never before. The next one. It is imperative that Republicans in the House pass the tax cut bill now. Our country will boom. Yeah, actually We've, we've been booming. All the destruction and mayhem. That's, that's the sound you were hearing, was the boom. Fixing trade and tariffs is a good thing. Jamie Diamond, JP Morgan Chase Chairman and CEO on Maria B Show, did he call Maria Bartiromo a bee? Be cool. Capitals. Be cool. He wrote in number six. Be cool. Hello, my fellow teenagers. Be cool. Everything is going to work out well. The USA will be bigger and better than ever before. And the last one. This is a great time to buy djt. You're making Herbert Hoover look like Warren Buffett here, Chauncey. And when all that didn't work, he paused kinda the tariffs while his trade rep, Jameson Greer was testifying to Ways and Means. Middle of his goddamn testimony, Greer had already spent four hours looking like an idiot bullshitter when the idiot bullshit he was defending was completely changed. He found out on his phone then he looked like an uninformed idiot bullshitter. I was waiting for. Mr. Chairman, I'd like to amend my remarks. Which, which ones, Mr. Witness? All of them. But the tariffs were not reduced at all against China. They were increased and not apparently the next tariffs, they're not being reduced, the ones against the pharmaceutical industry. Because when you pissed away almost all of your presidential support in eight days, the first thing you want to do then is drive up everybody's cost at the pharmacy counter. And nobody told Treasury Secretary Scott Besant, the guy who looks like a foppish character played by the actor Barry Bostwick, nobody told him not to hint at the next next tariff. It's Main Street's turn. Main street, clothing stores, restaurants, coffee, water, the street traffic of American commerce. Kill it as quickly as possible. Remind people that when those prices double, you know, you can make your own coffee at home and you can buy one plastic bottle and refill it with tap water for the rest of your life. Did you know that we used to do it that way? Make it clear to them that to Trump, America does not have people in it, only companies. And that the point of Trump's America is to charge Americans more for everything. Citizens are a mere infestation in corporate land. The Footwear Distributors and Retailers of America association now says that if running shoes now made in China or Vietnam that now cost you $100 are instead going to be made here, they will cost you three or four hundred dollars. That is not changing. That was not paused. If you drive a car, I'll tariff the street. If you try to sit, I'll tariff your seat. If you get too cold, I'll tariff the heat. If you take a walk, I'll tariff your feet. Sorry, George Harrison. It is so bad, so bad that even the New York Both Sides Times has begun to sit up and take notice. Right next to the surprisingly timely and relevant investigation investigative piece for which it expects to receive the next Pulitzer 7 Ways to Turn a Can of Tuna into Lunch or Even dinner was analysis by David Sanger about this Trump policy. Even though the word policy implies there's some plan or just some similarity from one hour's actions to the next, the quote burn it down first, figure out the consequences later, recklessness, the costs of that approach are now becoming clear. Administration officials knew the markets would dive and other nations would retaliate when Trump announced his long promised reciprocal tariffs. But when pressed, several senior officials conceded that they had spent only a few days considering how the economic earthquake might have second order effects. This was before they were trying to fish all the victims out of the water after Trump deliberately steered into the Rahar iceberg and most of them had already drowned. But some didn't. So Peter Navarro went on Fox Pravda tass and announced, this is one of the greatest days in American economic history. Yes sir, Shrimpy. Just like the day after Black Thursday in 1929. I mean, there wasn't also a Black Friday. That was also one of the greatest days in American economic history, wasn't it? Wasn't it? All right, the too long didn't listen version to all this. The President might be insane. Let me circle back to that Wall street big roller researcher. He is Thomas E. Lee, co founder, head of research at FS Insight by fundstrat because the big money spends none of it on good company names. My old colleague Carl Quintanilla pulled this from Mr. Lee's newsletter. In the last few days we have had many conversations with macro fund managers and their concern is that the White House is not acting rationally, but rather on ideology. Nothing gets past the billionaire, and some even fear that this may not even be ideology. A few have quietly wondered if the President might be insane. I wrote this in 2016. Oh, big piece about could the President pass its sanity test. At least it's nice to know we're not alone in our assessment. For all the the rebounding yesterday, hey, we're hemorrhaging less. There's a problem bigger than all the positives put together. This is from Stephen McDonnell, the BBC's man in China, a sharp Australian who was about a month ahead of every other Western correspondent on that little story coming out of there a few years ago called Covid, quoting him latest message from Beijing via a state media account. Well, that's the way he talks. Linked to China Central television. Washington is trying to defeat countries one by one, but that China will back the multilateral trade system. It says don't go to Trump with your begging bowl. It's what he wants to steamroll you. The message that Trump is lining up countries to steamroll them one at a time could resonate well in the region. Developing countries like Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam are all being hit hard by his tariffs. Now Xi Jinping calling for increased supply chain cooperation with them. The problem for US financial laymen is that Trump may now pretend it's all better and much of Wall street may too. Certainly yesterday's numbers suggested that we're only losing this ball game 132 to 61 now. But China is now out to kill us financially and they're doing it. And every one of our allies whom Trump threatened with a gun now realizes that was just his finger. He was pointing, concealing it in his pocket. And he's got really puny tiny fingers and they're not loaded and they're impotent. Now, the subtext here that most people did not notice because Wall street was too busy reenacting 1929. Is there more to this than sheer insanity and incompetence? Did Trump crash the stock market deliberately, as he boasted online, semi trollingly, so that his insiders could make money? Politico inadvertently fed this narrative. Its chief stenographer and CPAC part time spokesmodel Dasha Burns drank the whole pitcher of Kool Aid on Tuesday. Inside the White House itself, the outlook is downright rosy among a select group of Trump's inner circle. Ebullient is how one insider close to the administration described the mood in the West Wing. Nobody is fearful. They knew this stock market reaction was coming. They feel like everything is going according to plan. If only we'd remembered to write a plan. The key part of that quote, they knew this stock market reaction was coming. They feel like everything is going according to plan. Andrew Ross Sorkin on CNBC said there was real potential that it would not shock me if we were to find out that a whole bunch of people who work in Washington, as our elected leaders are, ultimately sold stocks last week or potentially worse than that, shorted the market. But how could we ever find something like that out? Oh, Marjorie stupid Green. Here it is on a website called Sludge. Read investigative journalism on money in politics, quoting them. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, R for ga. And we know what the R stands for. A close ally of President Trump invested as much as $750,000 in U.S. treasury bonds from mid to late March, according to transaction disclosures reviewed by Sludge. The purchases made in three transactions between March 17 and March 25 align with her vocal support for Trump's recently imposed tariffs. How could we have ever found out? All right, it's Marjorie stupid Green. I knew there was grift here. That's not real insight. There's grift everything in everywhere. Anything he does is grift. And I knew it as soon as I heard Rand Paul as the sole voice of reason. The tariffs debate, he said. The whole tariffs debate is so fundamentally backwards and upside down, it's based on a fallacy. And the fallacy is this, that somehow in a trade, someone must lose. That somehow when you trade with someone, someone is taking advantage of you. I have a trade deficit with my grocery store. The billionaire Ken Langone attacked Trump. The tariff on Vietnam was bullshit. According to Langone, Musk attacked Navarro. Navarro attacked Musk. Scott Besant's mentor, a billionaire named Druckenmiller, posted. I do not support tariffs exceeding 10%. Incidentally, I think they're going to make Besant take the fall here. He just looks like the guy who takes the fall. But the all time Lulu quote was this one. The tariffs are more severe than I would have expected. Particularly the way it is impacting Vietnam, China and Cambodia is more extreme than I would have thought. That was from Wilbur Ross. Wilbur Ross, the ancient Trump commerce secretary. Last time you know how old Wilbur Ross is. He's 206. Of course, this time Trump continues to have only the best people. The inflatable rubber raft known as Kristi Noemi has now been accompanied by the fascist stochastic terrorist influencer who smears liberals. And they gave her a dress up outfit too. So she and the dog killer pretended to arrest criminals even though a civilian can't really legally pretend to be part of Homeland Security. Then the Attorney General, Pam Blondi. I'm sorry, Bondi. Pam got backed into a corner by a reporter admitting that they had deported innocent people. And when they pointed this out to her that she had been backed into a corner, she just walked away from the microphone because she is drowning in this job. And you probably didn't hear this one, but one of Marco Rubio's bodyguards has been arrested in Belgium. This was at the end of last month. The Brussels Times reports Brussels police took a diplomatic security service Shift supervisor. Don't say that. Five times fast. Into custody at the hotel Amigo, when they alleged he got violent with hotel staff because they would not reopen the bar after hours, which that night would have been at midnight. The embassy got him released. I smell the next head of the Secret Service. Then there's Dan Bongino, new deputy director to the FBI director Popeye. More on the FBI director Cash Patel and his guest shot on Russian state television coming up in Worse persons. But this is about his deputy, Bongino and the intelligence community's genuine shock that when the bureau issued a message to its staff, they call it a canvas, asking for volunteer agents to serve on his 24 hour a day protective security detail. They asked for a total of of 20 agents. They need 20 agents to protect this one skinny, useless guy. Like, what are eight of them at a time going to surround him on all sides as he walks down the hall? Actually, that makes sense. That could explain it. They would then be able to make sure nobody gets close enough to confirm that Dan Bongino's hair is not his own. And lastly, of all the things Trump doesn't understand, the thing he most doesn't understand the best is he's a fat old man who keeps forgetting to put bronzer on anything but his face so his hands look like he's holding mashed potatoes. And who the other day managed to shape his hair into an almost perfect square so that he looked like the president of Minecraft. Trump, though, continues to make jokes about other people's faces. Anybody else's face, anybody else in the world's face. 8,062,000,000 faces in the world right now and his would rank number 8 billion 62 millionth. And he still says crap like this. Adam Shifty shifts. Can you believe this guy? He's got the smallest neck I've ever seen. And the biggest head. We call him watermelon head. I'd say how could that big fat face stand on a neck that looked like this finger? Fortunately, Trump has enough extra necks and chins to take care of Schiff and the entire Senate for that matter. I said finally. But I did want to say goodbye first to Gretchen Whitmer, who Gavin Newsomed herself yesterday. First the governor of Michigan came out in favor of tariffs. Some tariffs anyway. On the day Trump would punt some tariffs. Trump signed more executive orders in the Oval yesterday for higher flow shower heads. For prosecuting conservative election monitor Chris Krebs. About shipbuilding, there's some anti Miles Taylor stuff. I don't know. More tariffs Maybe, who knows? And who's in the corner not smart enough to get out of the goddamned Oval Office while all this is going on. Gretchen goddamned Whitmer. Honored to have Gretchen Whitmer from Michigan, the great state of Michigan. And she's been, she's really done an excellent job. Very good person that was Trump. Don't know what route you think you are on politically, Governor, but whenever you get to your destination, say hi to Gavin Newsom when you get there because he's done and you're done because neither of you has learned the Howard Dean Rudy Giuliani rule. Do not start already running for president, especially if it involves compromising with the other side, whom everybody hates. Do not start already running for president four years from now until it's only like 18 months from now. And also, Governor, if you buy one Trump executive idiot order, you get the rest for free. And never ever get the endorsement of the worst leader in the history of the free world. Bye now, Gretchen. Also of interest here in an all new edition, watching Laura Ingraham carrying all that water for Trump, still lying without pause even last night as his Titanic goes to the bottom, bobs back up to the top, then goes to the bottom again. This reminds me of my dates with her. You heard me. Because all the liquid she drank, non stop, non stop. I was worried about the explosion risk, but usefully she explained the nascent prototype of the fascist media ecosphere, which I will repeat things I promise not to tell and in this case, things I'm surprised I survived. And more on Kash Patel, Wayne Gretzky and the hockey writer moron who is defending them both. That's Next. This is Countdown.
- [25:29]
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- [26:29]
Today Show Host
Good morning. Welcome to today.
- [26:31]
Today Show Co-Host
From back to school to tackling your to do list, the Today show is your best start to the day. It's a new season and every morning we're here to help you take it all along.
- [26:41]
Keith Olbermann
As the forecast calls for football all.
- [26:44]
Today Show Co-Host
Across the country, life was stars, live concerts and so much more. Wake up to where it's all happening.
- [26:50]
Today Show Host
We're getting back to all of it. And the best way to start is together.
- [26:54]
Today Show Co-Host
Watch the Today show weekday mornings at 7am on NBC.
- [27:00]
Propane Energy Advertiser
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- [27:27]
Keith Olbermann
Learn more@probane.com it is Ryan Seacrest here.
- [27:31]
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- [27:54]
Keith Olbermann
No purchase NECESSARY VGW Group Void where prohibited by law 21 + terms and conditions apply. George Carlin, pleasure to have you here. Thank you. This is the best news show ever. I told that to one of your producers and I want you to know that I've seen them all and it's just especially the first 35 minutes. Thank you, sir. It's just unparalleled. I got bad news. Between you and I. We got six minutes to completely screw that into the ground. That's good. Still ahead in this edition of countdown. Well, I needed to bring George back here just for the moment because I needed the help today. I'm gonna spare you the details, actually. Good. But discerning. Regular listeners may have heard may hear a roughness to my voice, a side effect of some heavy duty medication for a heavy duty gut problem. Gut? I hope not guts. But it's playing Jiminy Ned with my stamina. So still ahead on countdown. I'll think of something first. Believe it or not, there's still more new idiots to talk about. The roundup of the miscreants morons and Dunning Kruger effect specimens who constitute the latest other worst persons in the world. Here are the nominees. The bronze Worse Joe Manchin, the former senator and pretend Democrat from West Virginia. Joe has just revealed he's writing a book. It's called Dead Center In Defense of Common Sense. It's about his political accomplishments and a defense of his politics. What is it? Four pages long? Preface by Kyrsten Sinema One sentence. I'm great. The best part is the COVID of Joe Manchin dead center in defensive. Common Sense is a tight shot of Manchin's Joe Theisman esque face, but only half of his face. Seriously, it's a photograph of half of him only in terms of how you look at it. Viewer left or viewer right? Only the right half Joe's photo symbolizing the dead center of his politics is actually a photo of the far right. Only the far right. Only his far right. Joe Manchin only on the far right. Kinda summarizes Joe Manchin, don't it? The runner up worser Marjorie Stupid Greene. First I'll read her tweet. Then I'll read the caption of the screenshot she retweeted. Then I will read the screenshot she retweeted first from Marjorie Stupid Greene herself. Quote, left always pays protesters and here's the proof. Meanwhile, we never had to hire anyone to attend and support President Trump at his huge rallies. Then an account called Wall Street Apes. That's what a musk Bitcoin NFT Confidence game account remember NFTs paid to protest positions are being posted on Craigslist. A huge amount of the new positions being posted everywhere are to protest. Cash paid They've always lied. They used to be better at it than this. Here is the list endorsed by Marjorie Stupid Greene. Los Angeles Hands off anti Trump protest merch sales team Cash paid four days ago Los Angeles Hands off anti Trump protest merch sales team Cash paid four days ago Los Angeles Hands off anti Trump protest merch sales team cash paid 5 days ago Central LA sell protest and resistance products at protest rallies in your area. Sales at protest and resistance rallies five days ago Los Angeles Hands off anti Trump protest merch sales team cash paid 7 days ago I'm assuming you have noticed by now what all of those will pay you to protest against Trump. Craigslist ads actually have in common. Not one of them offers to pay you to protest against Trump. They are all trying to hire people to sell merchandise and products at the anti Trump protests, which I believe the fascists, until, I don't know, they crashed the stock market. The fascists used to praise as capitalism and bootstrapping and independent small businesses merchandise. They're not hiring protesters. They're hiring people to sell crap to the protesters. And Marjorie Stupid Greene missed that part. Plus there is a special irony to her assertion that nobody is ever hired to work at the Trump rallies. Given that all the Trump rallies are is merch sales. In fact, all the Trump presidency has been is merchandise sales. This con man sold T shirts with his own mugshot photo on it and merchandise with pictures of the moment he got shot. I mean, consider this just on a human level or whatever it is he is just on a base level. Do you know how stone cold dead your soul has to be if you are not bothered at all by pictures of the moment you got shot? How addicted, how consumed by money do you have to be to ignore that memory of, well, that was almost my last second on this earth and I spent it in that town. Even that, no, he tries to make a profit off of it. There's nobody there there. What can I do with this? Well, if I don't die, I can sell pictures of this. But tell me again about how nobody gets paid at a Trump rally when the ads are all about anti Trump merchandise at the anti Trump rally. Anyway, Marjorie Stupid Greene. Everyone but our winner. Worse even than that. The worst. Frank Surivale, who used to be a hockey reporter. He worked for the Philadelphia Daily News and then for the Canadian sports TV network tsn. He's now on a hockey website you've never heard of, just like I've never heard of, even though I've been covering hockey professionally since 1976. Somehow, though, this Frank Ceravalli is still the president of the Professional Hockey Writers Association. The PHWA Professional applies to the writers, not the association. Frank is a dope and Frank is maga. It happens. Unlike those people, the MAGA dopes, the rest of us, you and I, we don't think that disqualifies you from working in sports or working in general or living in America. Go make your money. Have a nice life. Just stop trying to shove your stupidity down our throats. That's all we ask. But Frank is a real dope and he has now crossed a real line. By way of background. This is not the first time he has crossed a real line. It is not the first time this hockey season. He has crossed a real line. Frank once got the list of the players to be chosen in an NHL expansion draft before the draft actually started. It was to be televised live, so Frank took this list and published it hours in advance without spoiler alerts or anything. And last fall, after the Columbus Blue Jacket star Johnny Goudreau and his brother were killed by a drunk driver the weekend of their own sister's wedding, Frank Cervalli wrote on his website his predictions for the 202425 hockey season, quoting screenshots saved by the Twitter account the Win column, which is devoted to the Calgary Flames team. Here's the first version of what Frank Saravalli wrote about the Columbus Blue Jackets. 14 with a little help from Goudreau. That would be the star player, one of the two who was killed. The Columbus Blue Jackets will win the 2025 draft lottery. It's the only consolation prize on a brutal year. But hope and help is on the way. Bananas that the Blue Jackets have never won the lottery. Somebody, maybe Frank decided that was pretty sick, so he reportedly changed to According to another screenshot from the same source, 14 with a little help from above, the Columbus Blue Jackets will win the 2025 draft lottery. It's the only consolation prize on a brutal year. But hope and help is on the way. Bananas that the Blue Jackets have never won the lottery. Apparently Frank still thought he could finesse this and that he really hadn't done enough on the subject of Johnny Goudreau's death and how this idea got into his head that the Blue Jackets would be compensated for their beloved players heartbreaking death with a draft choice. The third version of the Serra Valley per the screenshot 14 with a little help from Goudreau in heaven, the Columbus Blue Jackets will win the 2025 draft lottery. It's the only consolation prize on a brutal year. But hope and help is on the way. Bananas at the Blue Jackets have never won the lottery. Well, based on your logic, it's because their previous players had not been killed. Remember what I said, Frank Cervalli's a dope. Yeah, this is what I'm talking about. At that point, after the third version of this heinous, unnecessary, gratuitous, indulgent, moronic paragraph, Saravalli gave up now. He had no excuse for this. The fatal accident was in August and the column was in early October. None of this was heat of the moment. None of this was ill advised. None of this was Christ, what did I write that called out Frank Cervalli apologized and said I'll be better. Well, he has not been better. I've outlined here in the last few weeks or tried to the amazing pain being felt in our neighbor's home. Canada as its former hero of heroes, Wayne Gretzky has gradually betrayed his country as Trump's threats against Canada, economic threats, independence threats, insulting references to the the Prime Minister just being the governor of the 51st state, etc. As Trump's done that, Gretzky has incredibly, mysteriously, self destructively gotten closer and closer to Trump. This climax last Friday night as Vladimir Putin's pal Alex Ovechkin tied Gretzky's record for most career National Hockey League goals and Gretzky sat cheering from a suite in the arena, seated next to election denier and Trump thug and fanboy of the January 6th terrorists, old Popeye himself, Kash Patel. Hockey people in both countries, especially Wayne's friends in Canada, have tried to explain to him what he's doing to the nation of his birth and thus to himself. Hockey, which among all sports does a fairly good job of keeping politics out or at least at arm's length. Hockey seems to have uniformly tried to help Wayne steer out of this skid. And lots of people would have been upset if for some reason Wayne Gretzky had been accompanied at that game by the former FBI director Chris Ray, or if he'd been accompanied by J. Edgar effing Hoover for that matter. But that's not the way Frank Cervalli, whose organization represents all the hockey writers in both Canada and the U.S. that's not the way he he sees it. This, he said on some podcast, is an unfair attack on Gretzky's patriotism and on Cash Patel. Saravalli called this all political bs. Here is the clip and as you rage over it, I will explain specifically why Saravalli is so wrong and why this time he is once again such an asshole.
- [40:38]
Frank Saravalli
The continued political BS that came on the back end of Wayne Gretzky celebrating it with the ultimate class as he always does. Alex Ovechkin. Oh, he brought the FBI director Cash Patel to the last couple games. Okay, so what? Cash Patel is a hockey guy. Go look it up. He go watch the video and photos of Cash Patel playing hockey. Guy's a legit hockey guy. So because he's a Republican, because he's in a Republican office, all of a sudden we can't have that? Wayne Gretzky is a traitor.
- [41:18]
Keith Olbermann
Okay, let's start at that beginning. Frank Cerebali called the attack on Gretzky and Patel, quote, political bs. Well, the attack on Wayne Gretzky isn't political BS because it's a little bigger than that. Patel's boss threatened to crush Canada economically and force it to become part of the United States. Implied in this. Eventually, something more than economic pressure would be brought onto the states, force it to become part of the United States. And while he's doing that, Gretzky's at Mar a Lago wearing one of the Trump fascist hats and sitting next to Kash Patel at this landmark moment in hockey history. And the attack on Patel isn't political BS either, because Patel is not just, as Saravalli just put it, a Republican in a Republican office. His aforementioned predecessor, Christopher Wray, FBI director, was also a Republican. And by the way, that's supposed to be neither a Republican nor a Democratic office unless you have a corrupt president in charge. Joe Biden had a Republican. Donald Trump had a nominal Republican who was actually just a trumpican, a Trump slave, a Trump whore. Kash Patel popularized the exploitation and misuse of our national anthem, mixing in, singing with the convicted, sometimes confessed January 6th criminals with them, actually singing, mixing that in along with some of Trump's famous Berchtesgaden speeches, mixed it all together into a revised version of the Star Spangled Banner. Anybody else in American political history who wrote their own version of the Star Spangled Banner would have been living now in Trinidad andor Tobago if they were lucky. Cash. Patel believes, or pretends to believe, the big lie about the 2020 election. It was not fixed. They can keep saying it until the world ends. It doesn't mean it happened. Kash Patel has helped poison America. In 2020, he was accused of risking the lives of two American hostages in Yemen by commenting publicly on their rescue before it happened. There was his involvement in Trump's actions that led to Trump being charged under the Espionage Act. And the story may be a real story, maybe not a real story that Trump declassified everything in that whole thing verbally, but only to him, Kash Patel. And then there was Kash Patel's insistence in the past month that there was no need for an FBI investigation into this year's security disaster. Also touching on Yemen with the Hegseth Waltz Butt Dial Signal chat. He also, if you can believe this, celebrated Ovechkin tying the Gretzky record by doing an interview with Russian state propaganda television. Our director of the Federal Bureau of Intelligence on Russian tv, Russian tv, where nightly they fantasize about nuking Europe and US and by us. I mean Canada and the United States. Kash Patel isn't toxic because he's a Republican, Saravalli. He's toxic because he's an irresponsible, seemingly unstable political fanatic now in charge of and capable of utterly misusing the foremost law enforcement and investigation body in this country. And if for some reason, Frank, he decided to use it against you, you couldn't stop him. And more importantly, he's a hockey guy. Frank Cervalli said, this is all okay because he's a hockey guy. Look it up. Look at the video. He played hockey once. He coached some kids hockey team once. So that makes it okay. I did three years of play by play of my high school hockey team. I attended my first NHL game in 1969, my first Stanley Cup Final game in 1979, covered my first Final game in 1980. And I broke, of all things now, in the context of what's going on, I broke the story of the Wayne Gretzky Gretzky trade to Los Angeles. I'm a hockey guy. And guess what? If for some reason Wayne Gretzky had wanted to have me in that suite with him, that would have been just as inappropriate. Never mind the politics, just like, what the hell is that Olbermann guy doing there? Vladimir Putin is a hockey guy. Frank Saravalli. Should he have been there because he's a friend of Trump's and Ovechkin's? If Wayne Gretzky's got Bobby Orr in there with him or one of Gordie Howe's sons, that's a hockey guy. Kash Patel is not a hockey guy. Kash Patel is a psycho guy. And lastly, and ultimately, there is the baseline hypocrisy and arrogance of the Frank Saravalles of this world. He has dismissed the brokenhearted, lost, confused and angry response over the Gretzky Trump. America threatens Canada. Gretzky brings a Trump whore to the witness the tie in goal controversy story, literally one nation's anguish and another nation's queasy guilt as political bs. He's called that political bs. He's speaking for Canada. Frank Saravalli is from America and he's calling it political bs. Not for the reason that you might call it political bs, because a political flunky and political hatchet man and political thug is there where he shouldn't have been and is intruding on a celebration of hockey history at a time of great stress between two countries caused entirely by this country, of which he is a citizen, of which he is a supporter of our rogue crazy president intruding on a celebration of hockey history which should have featured no politicians. I don't care if it was Barack goddamned Obama on skates. It's not political BS to Frank Cervalli because there should be some lines between politicians and sports. Like when the all time record is broken, especially if the politicians have threatened to attack the country in which the league in which this is all happening is based. It's political BS to Cervali because Cerevalli is a Republican and in the face of any criticism of them, all Republicans are are especially the Magas. As a colleague of mine used to say in a different context, all Republicans are soft as church music Cash Patel shouldn't have been there. Wayne Gretzky shouldn't have been sitting next to him and that great hockey moment should have just been a hockey moment. And Trump and his MAGA assholes should be prevented from trying to exploit everything that happens. As if they had anything more to do with it than somehow managing not to screw up remembering where the rink was. Imagine when the Los Angeles Dodgers went to the White House the other day and handed Trump a Dodgers 47 championship world championship uniform. If instead of wearing number 47 on that, if that uniform number had been number 42 to represent Jackie Robinson who just last week Trump trying to erase from history in the Defense Department website. Imagine if they had done that, what would the reaction to that have been? But criticizing Kash Patel is political bs Insisting Patel and Gretzky were wrong but criticizing Patel and Gretzky were right. That's not not political, is it Frank? Got it Asshole. Frank hey, why don't you write a column demanding they give Patel an assist on Ovechkin's tying goal or give one to Trump Saravalli, today's other worst person in the world.
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VGW Group void where prohibited by law 21 + terms and conditions apply. It is important to know that though Laura Ingraham was the first star of MSNBC literally shown on the COVID of the New York Times Magazine in a leopard print skirt in 1995, a year before MSNBC even went on the air. It's why they hired her the skirt. She did not get her own primetime show in cable News for another 22 years. And she did not get that show until she fully embraced Trump. And as we've seen yet again, as Trump has circled the drain, she sure has embraced him in things I promise not to tell little personal experience about embracing her. My primetime cable news show debuted on October 1, 1997. That would be 20 years before hers, but she Was a guest on my show the first time the next month, November 1997, and she asked me out in December. I think it was long after that that Laura revealed to me that her mother's dying words to her had been, lara, why are you so bossy? I mean, who tells anybody else something like that? Anybody else in the world? Why would you say that? Wouldn't you make up something nicer sounding? Laura, you've been such a great daughter. I mean, how in the hell could I check? Even more recently than that, she had invoked her mother again in public. I think as an excuse for raising the Social Security age or eliminating Social Security altogether, or having 90 year olds screw little screws into American iPhones or something. I can't remember what it was. It's true though, even as Laura flourished in television, she never said, here mom, here's enough so you can retire. Laura boasted in public that her mother, Ann, worked until she was 73 as a waitress full time and boasted that her mother continued to pay off Laura's college loans. Anyway, the Ingram dates and something she told me on the first of these dates has resonated with me literally every month since and is relevant to politics today. I know, I know. I did not so much date her as survive her. Even then, before 9, 11 helped to slide her cheese off her cracker. I find a diary entry referring to her as Hurricane Laura. That was March 15, 1998. Beware the ides of March, Julius Caesar. I didn't honestly, and God help me, nearly 48 years of dating, I have not been a kiss and teller. I have dated, I don't know, dozens. A couple of hundred. Actually thirteen. Seriously, with maybe three exceptions. You don't know any of their names. One of them, now a political writer, basically lived with me for three years. I keep that confidence. So why am I telling this story, violating that? Because not three months after that first date, when we were still going out, Laura Ingram asked me if she could look at a speech I was going to give at Cornell's graduation weekend and offer suggestions. This is so long ago, I literally faxed it to her. Sure enough, couple days later, I'm watching Imus in the morning, which was televised by my network, msnbc. And there on his desk in front of him is the faxed copy of my speech. And he is reading from my fax. I could recognize the exact sequence of the vertical stripes. My cheap fax machine used to streak all of my outgoing pages with Laura, used to go on his show a lot. So to curry favor with Imus. She sent him the speech without asking me. As I told her that day, all bets are now off. So I've told parts of this story before, like she had been a Supreme Court clerk for Clarence Thomas and our first date consisted of taking me on an insider's tour of the court and having me sit in his chair in tribute to him. I did not say or do anything constructive. She then cooked me the largest steak I had ever seen that did not have a rodeo cowboy riding on it. And we watched a woman, later discredited because she could not keep her stories straight, go on 60 minutes and make allegations against Bill Clinton. This is my perfect date, Laura told me, seared into my memory. But the important Laura Ingraham story sitting there in the middle of all the debris, I don't think I've ever told this. The first date was only about six weeks after the then first lady Hillary Clinton got on the Today show and blamed the at best exaggerated scandal about her husband and Monica Lewinsky on the quote, vast right wing conspiracy. That is so stupid. Laura said that night as she showed me her small office upstairs. I expected that she was about to decry the idea that Republicans would exploit television, talk radio and the brand new Internet to try to bring down a president from the other party. And I said, so naive little boy that I was no, not that. Of course we're doing that. She was kind of offended that I doubted the conspiracy part. I explained I'd only been covering politics for two months. At the end of the day, she said, end of the day? Constantly. At the end of the day it's the vast part. It's not vast. Vast right wing conspiracy. Why I bet there's not even 30 of us. Laura Ingraham then explained that she was essentially the central desk for what she called the miniature right wing conspiracy. She showed me a printed page that had the fax numbers of about two dozen people. There at the top are the sources. She said there was Ted Olson, the attorney, founder of the so called Arkansas Project and the husband of Barbara Olson, a constant presence as a talking head on cable news. She later died on 9 11. Everybody liked her. There were several numbers in the office of Independent counsel Ken Starr. One of them read B. Kavanaugh. I said, who's that? She said, nobody important. The only other name I remember was Spencer Abraham, who then was a senator from Michigan. She said they, including the people in Ken Starr's office, sent her all the rumors, the ideas, stuff about Clinton, stuff they made up and she distributed them to the Other parts of the list, that's these numbers. One number was marked Hannity radio, another Hannity TV, O'Reilly Radio, O'Reilly TV. There was one for Limbaugh. There was one marked Justice Thomas. And I pointed to it. He likes to stay in farmed. Now, maybe the most important name's not on that list. That's Matt Drudge. She said Matt Drudge used all of her stuff, but he didn't want any of it to be traceable. Very big on not traceable. So I never fax it to him. She said, I just give it to my brother. This is when she still liked her brother. He sees Drudge all the time. He gives the stuff to Drudge. Now, over here is my baseball collection. See, there were reasons to go out with her. At the time, I could think only of an old cartoon I had once seen. It was an octopus working in the post office, using all eight of its limbs to sort the mail. But every couple of weeks, it dawns on me afresh that I was actually a witness to one of the earliest configurations of the machinery. And there is no doubt today whether it is vast or miniature. It's vast. The machinery that links the right wing politicians and those who are supposed to be above the fray, like Supreme Court justices and special prosecutors and people like that there, with the right wing publicity outlets that pretend to be news organizations like Fox and Drudge and OAN and Newsmax and the ones that don't even pretend, like those who succeeded Limbaugh. This machine is in fact everything that your typical paranoid, conservative, Republican, fascist, Trumpist thinks is being run by George Soros or Bill Gates or Dr. Fauci or me. You want to be able to say there are reports or accusations about some Democrat or liberal figure or celebrity? Well, somebody puts a rumor in at one end of the machinery, or somebody makes up a rumor at one end of the machinery. It is then sent to dozens of other people. They repeat it. Voila. Suddenly there are reports. The reports then get fed back to Fox News or Breitbart or the Wall Street Journal or the Supreme Court, or they're just tweeted by a thousand bots simultaneously. You want to push this ancient racist, anti Semitic paranoia called the Great Replacement, but you want it to come out washed clean enough that soulless opportunists like Elise Stefanik and J.D. vance can say it aloud on the campaign trail without forfeiting their candidacies. This is the machinery. And I saw the machinery when it was just a list of 20 and 30 people. And at that moment, I barely recognized the importance of what I saw. Then again, I was still on that night, recovering from not just the giant stake, but something far more visceral. Earlier that day, as we were leaving the Supreme Court, Laura Ingraham had boasted about getting even with an ex boyfriend by going back into what had been their house and putting up exact copies of all the photos of the two of them together that he had taken down from his walls. And when he got smart and changed the locks, she went back again to finish the job, found her key. Didn't work. So naturally, as you would, she stuffed his garden hose through the mail slot of his front door and turned on the outdoor spigot. $10,000 worth of hardwood floors ruined, she said proudly. And part of me screamed, flee. Flee now. I didn't flee. Later, as I tried to sleep, two noises kept me awake. Snoring. Not my own. And Laura's dog. Laura's dog kept talking in his sleep. I mean, almost in syllables like that. It was something like 25 degrees out and I was on the second floor. And yet I resolved that if her dog really did make that last leap to formulate actual syllables, and it turned out her dog was the one telling her what to do, I was simply going to leave by the window without bothering to open it first. The next morning, Laura and I walked her dog. We got to an empty field. She threw a tennis ball. He went and got it. She cocked her arm back again. He took off, loving life as he did. She did not throw it. He went 40, 50, 60ft, then stopped and looked back at her with such disappointment and. And even a sense of betrayal. And she said loudly, without a trace of affection for him or anything else, wait for it. Which is when I realized I was being courted to be the next dog. A few weeks later, back home in New York, I got home from working an early morning shift, filling in for the commentator Paul Harvey at ABC Radio. I was just waking up from a tortured nap when the phone rang. It's Laura. I'm downstairs. We're going to my old law firm's party at the museum. I said I was exhausted. We're going to. Or I'll just stay here at this payphone outside your place calling you all night. We went. The next option, opportunity probably was going to be me on the wrong end of a hostage drama. Turned out she was not invited to her party. We're crashing it. I'm going to drink heavily. Frankly, it was a great party. I got to meet Hillary Clinton's mother. And her brother. And if you think the fascists are completely sincere about everything, even their neuroses and their paranoia, no. Laura Ingraham hugged Hillary Clinton's mother and Hillary Clinton's brother. They seemed to be friends. Later we wound up meeting friends of her in the Oak Bar at the Plaza Hotel, where she kept drinking. I was astonished after about her sixth cosmopolitan on top of everything she'd had at the party. She began to droop, her head nodding like a bobblehead doll. Her friend said, okay, that's it. We'll take care of the check, you take care of her. She had not gotten a hotel room or anything. And if you've ever heard of anybody who needed to be poured into a cab because they were so drunk, you don't really know what that means until you have to pour them into a cab. Frankly, I wanted to put her in a hotel somewhere, but the spectacle would have made the gossip pages. She basically could not stand up. So I took her to my apartment, put her into my bed, and I went and slept on the couch at the far end of the apartment, which is where I was hours later in the morning when she woke me up, because she came parading through using my phone to call my assistant to get a car sent to my address to take her to the airport and to make sure that everybody in my office knew she had stayed overnight at my apartment. And all I kept thinking was, why didn't I follow my instincts? My instincts said flee. I fleed. Not of course, if I had fled, I would have missed seeing the telephone tree of the miniature right wing conspiracy, wouldn't I? I've done all the damage I can do here. Thank you for listening. Brian Ray and John Philip Chenale, the musical directors of Countdown, arranged, produced and performed most of our music. Mr. Chenal handled orchestration and keyboards. Mr. Ray was on the guitars, bass and drums. And it was produced by TKO Brothers. Our satirical and pithy musical comments are by the best baseball stadium organist ever, Nancy Foust. The sports music is the olderman Theme from ESPN2 written by Mitch Warren Davis, courtesy of ESPN Inc. Other music arranged and performed by the group no horns allowed. And my announcer today was just cause I needed to hear his voice. My late friend George Carlin. Everything else was as ever, my fault. That's Countdown for today. Just 1382 days until the scheduled end of his lame duck lame brain term. Unless Musk removes him sooner or the actuarial tables do, or the billionaires do. The next scheduled countdown is Monday. Illness depending. As always, Bolton's as the news warrants. Also illness depending. Remember, impeach Trump. It won't work now. It will win the Democrats the midterms. And to add to the pressure on the Republicans, I want polling on a presidential recall vote. Even though we can't have a presidential recall vote. Somebody ask people what they think. Till next time, I'm Keith Olbermann. Good morning, good afternoon, good night and good luck. Want some food? Do you? Sit, Stevie, Sit. Countdown with Keith Ulberman 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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Keith Olbermann
Take a deep dive into the stories making the news headlines across the world. The News Agents we're not just here to tell you what's happening, but why? From me, Emily Maitlis and me, John Sopel with Global's award winning podcast the News Agents Dropping daily covering everything you need to know about politics and current affairs and The News Agents USA. Listening to the News Agents on America's number one podcast network, I heart open.
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Keith Olbermann
VGW Group void we're prohibited by law. 21 plus terms and conditions apply. December 29, 1975 Laguardia Airport the holiday rush.
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Keith Olbermann
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