← Countdown with Keith Olbermann
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- [00:00]
Keith Olbermann
This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human. Here's something that'll freak you out. Most people think their insurance will cover them if disaster strikes. But here's the truth. Many are wrong. You pay your premiums, you assume you're protected. Then the fine print hits, exclusions, limits, loopholes, and suddenly that coverage you counted on isn't really coverage at all. It's not your agent's fault. Their job is to sell policies. But you need someone in your corner who protects you, not the insurance company. My policy advocate takes your actual policies home, life, auto, whatever you got and breaks them down in plain English. They show you what's really covered and what isn't. Here's the best part. Costs just 27 cents a day. That's less than a cup of coffee for peace of mind to make sure your family is protected when it matters most. When a disaster hits, you don't want surprises. You want certainty. So before you assume you're covered, don't go to mypolicyadvocate.com, let them review your policy. You might be shocked at what you find.
- [01:01]
Commercial Announcer
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- [01:36]
Keith Olbermann
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- [02:04]
Commercial Announcer
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- [02:24]
Keith Olbermann
50% off regular price for new customers. Upfront payment required $45 for 3 months, $90 for 6 month or $180 for 12 month plan taxes and fees. Extra speeds may slow after 50 gigabytes per month when network is busy see Terms Countdown with Keith Olbermann is a production of iHeartradio. This is Trump's terrorism. This is the Kent State of our time. A peaceful unarmed protester murdered by Trump's ICE while Trump's lie factory. And Trump personally smeared her, blamed her, made up a story of threat where there was no threat, altered images, lied about her, lied about what the Gestapo did. The Gestapo they sent to kill Americans in American cities in order to make videos to feed the sadistic blood lusting psychotics who support Trump. And if you support this, if you support Trump, if you countenance this on our streets against citizens or non citizens or police or anybody, you are a sadistic bloodlusting psychotic. That is Donald Trump's base. Two weeks from Saturday. It will have been 10 years since he said it. Ten years. January 24, 2016. I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose voters. And once again, his stochastic terrorist murderous wish has come true. Only it was not on Fifth Avenue. It was on East 34th street in Minneapolis. One of his Border Patrol ICE militia gang shot and killed Renee Macklin Goode.
- [04:28]
Commercial Announcer
Get the fuck out of our neighborhood.
- [04:30]
Keith Olbermann
ICE and Border Patrol. And by proxy, Trump killed her. And then they slandered her. Oh my God. What the dude? What the.
- [05:02]
Commercial Announcer
Dude?
- [05:02]
Keith Olbermann
You did a murder for what? A poet? She was a poet. A prize winning poet from Old Dominion University. We are lucky her passengers survived the crash that followed the ICE shooting. Trump and Kristi Noem and Homan and the rest of these worthless scumbags had Renee Good shot and killed because militia members, Trump gestapo claimed she was trying to run over one of their thugs. Multiple videos show without a shadow of a doubt this is not true. Those who now say this having seen the video, are lying as a car, which was not even blocking the street, moves out of the way of an ICE vehicle. A Trump terrorist exits his car, approaches the victim's car from the back and the side, while another runs in front of her car, pivots around it and Renee Goode is then shot three times in the face. The agents, the scum, are never in any danger. The car does not touch any of them. The murderer was parading up and down the Minneapolis street, moments later gloating. The murderer of whom Trump had just written, quote. Based on the attached clip, it is hard to believe he is alive. But is now recovering in the hospital, unquote. If it is hard to believe the shooter is alive, it is because even under these conditions and this fascist provocation and this madness, this unsustainable madness that is the presidency of this psychopath, Trump, even against all that the citizens of that neighborhood had the common sense and some kind of baseline respect for human life to not respond to those who had just committed murder in broad daylight on their streets, understandably getting less attention but just as dangerous. Hours later, this fascist gang sent by Trump attacked a Minneapolis high school. I will quote Minnesota Public Radio. An official from Roosevelt High School in Minneapolis told NPR news that armed U.S. border Patrol officers came onto school property during dismissal Wednesday and began tackling people. They handcuffed two staff members and released chemical weapons on bystanders. The guy, I'm telling him, like, please step off school grounds. And this dude comes up and bumps into me and then tells me that I pushed him and he's trying to push me and he knocked me down, said a school official who spoke to NPR News on condition of anonymity. Unquote. Human garbage in masks given weapons, terrorists, murderers, Trumpists. And if you think this next detail is coincidental, please reconsider your naivete. Trump chose the evening of the day of his crime by proxy in Minneapolis after the murder there to insist that he has, quote, determined that the military budget for this country for the year 2027 needs to be increased from the already obscene level of $1 trillion. Your money and mine, it needs to be increased by 50% to a trillion and a half. That is the military he wants to use against American civilians on American streets. That is the military he just used against American civilians on American streets in Minneapolis, 34th and Portland. One and a half trillion dollars to kill you. The Department of Homeland Security's liar in chief, the nation's foremost Botox experiment subject already in progress. Kristi Noemi, a cheap cowboy hat pulled down over her face to protect it from melting, said, quote, it was an act of domestic terrorism. If she had stopped there, she would have been telling the truth. She did not stop there. ICE officers got stuck in the snow. They were attempting to push out their vehicle, and a woman attacked them and those surrounding them and attempted to run them over, unquote, none of which was true. An additional ICE statement, unsigned, claimed its militia members were actually run over. There is no evidence that that is true. A further statement by the ICE spokesperson, an idiot named Tricia McLaughlin, added, quote, One of these violent rioters, there was no riot weaponized her vehicle. That did not happen. Attempting to run over our law enforcement officers. They're street thugs. In an attempt to kill them. An act of domestic terrorism. Once again, only the final five words are even vaguely correct and not in the way this idiot meant them. It was an act of domestic terrorism. There was no ICE vehicle stuck. There was no ICE vehicle struck. There was no attempt to push any vehicle out of snow. There was a path on the streets so clear that at least one and a half vehicles wide. And it was not only free of snow, no, it was dry. There was no attack by any civilian. There was no attempt to run anybody over. There was no weaponization of a vehicle. At best, this blithering idiot Homeland Security Director Gnome, the dog murderer, is completely uninformed and must resign or be impeached and prosecuted. At worst, she is not being honest and must resign or be impeached and prosecuted. This spokesperson, McLaughlin, is at best completely uninformed and therefore must resign. And at worst, she is not being honest and must resign. As Governor Tim Walls himself targeted metaphorically by Trump, thus far only metaphorically, as Governor Walls issued a warning order to his Minnesota National Guard units, as he put it, a standby to a possible activation of the Guard to prot Protect Minnesota from what is now unquestionably, if there were any remaining doubt, what is now unquestionably a rogue government without any moral authority to rule this country. A rogue government whose leaders must be prosecuted for this woman's murder, whether in the next year or in 2029 or in 2049. While Governor Walls suppressed his righteous rage at the fascist government of the United States in a way I cannot summon, as he managed to control himself with far greater provocation than I have received about the terrorist government of Donald Trump. Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Fry suppressed nothing.
- [12:24]
Commercial Announcer
I do have a message for our community, for our city, and I have a message for ICE to ice, get the out of Minneapolis. We do not want you here. Your stated reason for being in this city is to create some kind of safety, and you are doing exactly the opposite. People are being hurt. Families are being ripped apart. Long term, Minneapolis residents that have contributed so greatly to our city, to our culture, to our economy, are being terrorized. And now somebody is dead. That's on you. And it's also on you to leave.
- [13:08]
Keith Olbermann
Mayor Fry speaks for every sane citizen of this country today, and what he says should apply to every street corner in this country. Because what happened at 34th and Portland in Minneapolis yesterday can now happen outside your front door tomorrow. Ice, get The F out. Get the F out of Minneapolis. Get the F out of Minnesota. Get the F out of our country. Get out. That day has been coming for these 10 years. We once thought Trump was being metaphorical in some way about shooting someone on Fifth Avenue. In fact, the only thing he did not mean literally in that statement was the idea that he would actually do the shooting. He would never have the courage to do such a thing. In fact, he wanted others to take that risk and that blame for him. He has wanted to shoot protesters on the border. He has wanted to shoot protesters during Black Lives Matter. He has wanted to shoot protesters outside the White House in 2020. He has wanted to shoot protesters during his fascist rallies. He has wanted to shoot protesters during his 2024 campaign. And most infamously and brazenly and tellingly of all, on Fifth Avenue. That was no metaphor. And now Donald Trump's stochastic dreams have come true. His domestic terrorists, inspired by him, budgeted for by him, with some remove, hired by him, have shot and killed an American citizen, an award winning poet who was peacefully exercising her right, my right, your right to protest. And she was executed by unidentified, masked, bloodthirsty scum. Trump now has his wish. The Trump administration has begun its shooting war, its reign of terror against the peaceful and unarmed citizens of the United States. It can be disputed whether Renee Macklin Good was the first. It cannot be disputed that unless Trump is legally restrained, Renee Macklin Goode will not be the last. Okay, back to Trump trying to kill people in and to destroy other countries. Trump's Don Roe doctrine says that as long as another country, let's say Greenland, indicts Trump under its own laws for any crime remotely affecting it. As long as Greenland legally indicts Trump, Greenland is then entitled to send 150 planes to bomb Trump's compound and seize Trump and seize Melania, even if she's at her latest photo shoot. Or the plastic surgeons and rendition the pair of them to Kakartok or Upernavik and put them on trial there. Just so long as they've indicted Trump beforehand. Totally legal. Oh, and just so long as they have made a deal with JD Vance beforehand in which they agree to let him become the new president, providing he swears fealty to Greenland and gives them our oil. That's all you need, right? That's what Venezuela has taught us and the world, right? All you need is an indictment and a deal with the vice president and presto, instant coup. Trump is bi, Felicia. And it's legal. Well, you Heard it. Greenland or China or Russia or Mexico or Canada. Or Mexico and Canada working together. The Don Row Doctrine. Exactly what we did in Venezuela and what Trump and Rubio and Hegseth and Lindsey Graham and these other neo neo cons are ready to try in Cuba, Iran, maybe Mexico, definitely Greenland, with Deputy Reich Marshall Stephen Miller on deck to take over wherever he's needed. It's all legal, at least according to Trump. According to the Don Row Doctrine. Just get an indictment of Trump from your local neighborhood version of Pam Bondi in Greenland. Mariam Kalim. It would probably be done out of Mariam's office in the capital of Nuke. That's downtown nuke, where the 20,000 residents actually live. Not out in the suburbs. The greater Nuuk Metroplex. Ridiculous. Could never happen. That's not the point here. The point here is that Trump just established a legal precedent that would apply in this country if another country decided to remove him. If any country wanted to effect regime change here. Have a blast, guys. You do have to get away with it militarily, which I guess is the baseline issue of human existence anyway. But for most of our 250 years, we as a nation had tried to superimpose other values and elements, like, right. Instead of just might. And by Trump's banditry in Venezuela, all that is gone. It's literally just, can you get away with it? Can you catch American defenses with their pants down? I mean, with the Secretary of Brill Cream Pete Hegseth, gotta say, the chances are are greater than zero. I mean, what is the point of any international law, any system of justice, if you not only say, hey, we can remove your president under our laws, but you basically invite countries even worse than our own to invent worse laws? What if Greenland, no offense, Greenland, but what if Greenland passed a law simply saying it is illegal in Greenland for Donald J. Trump to be President of the United States? Oh, look, there he is. Being President of the United States, that's illegal here in Greenland. Indict him. The outcome of the raid. Pro tip. Look for him at a golf course or a McDonald's, or especially a golf course near a McDonald's. The outcome is problematic, but it's like we just decided that you could only do something like that via a treaty of extradition. Unless, that is, you do not have a treaty of extradition with the country in question, in which case you say, since we don't have a treaty of extradition, no problem, we're just gonna go in there and take the bastard anyway. Tails. You win. Heads. I lose. And, and also I, I as I'm giving out pro tips. Don't forget to do the deal with JD Vance to obey in advance. And the pro tip here is look for Vance on a couch. By the way, small chance the case against Maduro will be dismissed because of Trump's stupidity and Trump's ego. Small. But again, it is a non zero chance because the case is in front of a 92 year old piss and vinegar judge appointed I believe by Teddy Roosevelt. And this judge ran out of Fs before electricity. The basis of our rogue state's renditioning of Maduro is you couldn't do that to an actual head of state. But Maduro isn't an actual head of state. He was holding office illegally, even under Venezuelan law. The US in fact stopped referring to him as president or leader or head of state or el Presidente in 2019 and then Trump effed that up. 2:21am January 3, quote, the United States of America has successfully carried out a large scale strike against Venezuela and its leader, President Nicolas Maduro, who has been, along with his wife, captured and flown and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So he calls Maduro president and the leader of Venezuela. So if you're Judge Alvin Hellerstein and you want to throw this case out, boom, swish, turn your sets off there. Oh, and there is also still the chance for the courts to throw the case out because whether he was the president or the janitor in Venezuela, we have laws in this country about seizing, kidnapping, capturing or renditioning people in other countries and bringing them here, unless there was a state of war between us and the other country. And as you have heard all week from the tapes of Pete Hegseth from December and August and May when he said he lived Iraq and Afghanistan. And you saw the consequences. And we're not going to try. No more nation building. We're not going to change an entire society through military intervention. We've seen that movie before. He said, guess what? We were not at war with Venezuela when we took its leader. Well, that's what Trump called him. Also, part of Trump's accusations for seizing Maduro was that he is the head of, quote, the vicious cartel known as Cartel de la Souls, which flooded our nation with lethal poison. While surprise turns out the Cartel de los Soul doesn't exist. There is no such cartel, no organization, certainly nothing called the Cartel de los Souls, which is literally a colloquial phrase used by Venezuelan media since the 1990s that refers to government officials there who have been corrupted by drug Money. It's like arresting Stephen Miller and indicting him for being a kingpin in the murderous, bloodthirsty gang called, quote, the Trump administration. I mean, we get the point, but it's still bullshit. They, in fact, had to rewrite one of the prior indictments of Maduro to eliminate this part about the cartel. So that's another reason the case could get tossed by law, our law. Judge Hellerstein could dismiss the charges against Maduro. Now, as to what comes after this. Well, yes, Greenland comes after this, but I meant relative to Trump and Venezuela. Brian Beutler writes, he is almost there, but not quite. I'm with him. The candidates for the Democratic nomination in 2028 should be declaring lots of things. I will level the Trump Ballroom and rebuild the East Wing. I will take Trump's name off every government building and the Kennedy Center. I will prosecute his family and the members of his administration. I will expunge the fictitious Orwellian rewriting of the history of January 6th on the White House website, et cetera. But Beutler wants them maybe to go a step farther, quoting him. The next Democratic president should be willing in his or her heart to honor extradition requests for Trump from countries where he's unilaterally violated the domestic law. Such as, for instance, Venezuela. Yes, please. In fact, by then, it may be necessary to hold something like the NBA draft lottery for the Trump extradition rights. Let's see. Venezuela has a 14% chance. Canada, 12.5. Greenland, 10.5. Mexico, 9%. And oddly enough, in our draft lottery here for the Trump extradition rates, the New York jets have a chance of 4%. Also of interest here. Trump is still nuts. And there's more evidence that he's getting nuttier. And the Tony Decouple story means the Katie Turr story. And I swear somebody posted on Threads. What does Tony Decouple's cringy CBS rollout and bow to maga? Tell us about Katie Tur and Ms. Now. And somebody replied to that. What Keith Olbermann has been saying for years. Well, it may be even worse than, you know. What may have been behind his hiring and what may have been behind their marriage. That's next. This is an all new edition of Countdown. Here's something that'll freak you out. Most people think their insurance will cover them if disaster strikes. But here's the truth. Many are wrong. You pay your premiums, you assume you're protected. Then the fine print hits, exclusions, limits, loopholes, and suddenly that coverage you counted on isn't really coverage at all. It's not your agent's fault. Their job is to sell policies, but you need someone in your corner who protects you, not the insurance company. My policy advocate takes your actual policies, home, life, auto, whatever you got and breaks them down in plain English. They show you what's really covered and what isn't. Here's the best part. Costs just 27 cents a day. That's less than a cup of coffee for peace of mind to make sure your family is protected when it matters most. When a disaster hits, you don't want surprises. You want certainty. So before you assume you're covered, go to mypolicyadvocate.com let them review your policy. You might be shocked at what you find. MyPolicyAdvocate.com yo, do you know Ball well? Come through with a free $10 from Better Picks, Download the Better app, pick more or less on your favorite player's stats, watch the games and win some cash. It's that simple. Must be 21 or older. In a jurisdiction where Better Picks operates, terms and conditions apply. Better Picks Sports just got better.
- [27:54]
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- [28:15]
Keith Olbermann
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- [28:24]
Ed Zitron
I'm Ed Zitron of the Better Offline Podcast and I want you to join me at this year's Consumer Electronics show in Las Vegas, Nevada. Starting January 6th through January 10th, 2026, we're doing 10 radio style podcast episodes about the world's biggest tech conference and we're going to dig into the latest and weirdest gadgets, gizmos and horrible AI gear that the tech industry is desperate to sell you all while covering the biggest stories in Silicon Valley as the AI bubble threatens to burst. I'll be joined by David Roth, Chloe Radcliffe, Adam Conover, Cory Doctorow, Edongueso junior, Robert Evans and an incredible cast of the greatest talent in the tech media with over 18 hours of interviews, commentary and bizarre stories all told from the Better Offline Pop up studio connected to its own open bar.
- [29:05]
Keith Olbermann
Today I did five hours of back.
- [29:07]
Commercial Announcer
To back panels on artificial intelligence. It included a number of great moments including an entire room full of people.
- [29:14]
Keith Olbermann
Laughing about people losing their jobs due to artificial intelligence.
- [29:17]
Ed Zitron
Will we make it out alive? There's only one way to find out. Tune in starting January 6 through January 10, 2026, and listen to the literal best tech podcast ever recorded. Listen to Better offline on the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcasts. Wherever you happen to get your podcasts.
- [29:33]
Keith Olbermann
This is Countdown with Keith Olbermann. Still ahead, the Tony Jacobal story, which is, as you may suspect, also the Katie Tur story, which is also, as you may have suspected, necessarily becomes the me story. But first, postscripts to the news. Some headlines, some updates, some snark. This is the Countdown podcast, and these are the places where there's news. Dateline an asylum. No, not political asylum. The other kind of asylum. To Trump's insanity again. And if you had any doubts, he's crazy. Since he seized power again, he's talked to Joe Scarborough six times. And no sane man on earth would do that more than once. Trump's own continuing fight against mental health is almost always on display. And the more we see of it, the more I am convinced that anosognosia, which I have been pushing down your throat as a component to this since the year 2017. Anosognosia, yeah, I got that one right. It's involved. He is psychologically or neurologically totally unwell. They test him for it. They may even be treating him for it. They give him test after test after test that even most impaired people would eventually recognize is a screening test for dementia. Yet Trump remains utterly and I think, sincerely convinced that they are testing him in order to give him updates on how much higher his IQ is than it was last time. He really thinks that the part of his brain that should tell him he has a disease is broken. It has a disease. It won't tell him he has a disease. It won't let him remember anybody else telling him he has a disease. It will invent an alternate explanation for anything about the disease that it cannot forget or wish away. Like the tests. And Tuesday he was still talking about the test. The third one fourth, 1, 38th one. We don't know, cuz he's clearly lost count. And in what may go down in history as one of the maddest moments of his madness at the Republican Congressional retreat, rarely, even for Trump, has there been so much insanity on so many topics in so short a time. Just go and look at Getty Images for the still photos of him. He looks like a guy making faces at a monkey at a zoo. We'll start with Those God damned exams for dementia that he thinks are, I don't know, screening tests for Nobel Prize eligibility. Then move on to reminding everybody we can impeach and remove him next year if there is a blue wave in the midterms, which he was nice enough to mention, then hinting at canceling the midterms and still leaving the door open to, you know, Maduro ing the presidency and illegally retaining power as dictator. Fasten your seatbelts.
- [32:52]
Donald Trump
We should give everybody like these competency tests, right? The cognitive. They call it cognitive. You know, I'm the only president that went for cognitive. I think every president and vice president should be forced to take cognitive exams, mental tests like, are they intelligent? Wouldn't it be nice? But you got to win the midterms because if we don't win the midterms, it's just going to be, I mean, they'll find a reason to impeach me. I'll get impeached. We don't impeach them. You know why? Because they're meaner than we are. We should have impeached Joe Biden for 100 different things. We have to even run against these people. Now, I won't say cancel the election. They should cancel the election because the fake news will say he wants the elections canceled. He's a dictator. They always call me a dictator. Who? Nobody's worse than Obama and the people that surrounded Biden. Not Biden. I don't think it was Biden. He didn't know what the hell was going on, okay? The election was rigged. He had no idea what happened. He still doesn't. I could have the most unbelievable four years and I guess they're not. I'm not allowed to run. I'm not sure. Is there a little something out there that I'm not allowed to run, but let's assume I was allowed to run. I could have. This could be a constitutional movement.
- [34:19]
Keith Olbermann
Uh huh. Constitutional movement. You'll notice he doesn't say amendment. This is presumably that fascist group retrofitting of the 22nd Amendment which says two terms. That's it. And they're trying to twist it, and have been for years, into that. It really means two consecutive terms so that you could serve 11 terms as president, provided that only two of them are consecutive. So Trump could run again in 2028 because he hasn't served two consecutive terms, but Obama and Clinton could not, or Bush even, for that matter. I think that's what it means. I don't know. Regardless, this is a man who is gradually working towards the kind of career climax that Hitler had or Mussolini or if he's lucky, Castro or Mao. And he thinks again annozagnosia he thinks there is a groundswell of support for him for a third term, not just that he's going to seize power. Anybody can seize power. But you really have to be specially nuts to convince yourself that everybody wants you to seize power when your approval ratings are are in the low 30s. It is fitting, and it provides a neat callback to something earlier in the show. If I close on this particular issue of Trump's actual popularity versus what he thinks in his delusional head is his popularity. It's from the Cleveland Clinic. Quote Anosognosia Anosognosia is a condition where your brain can't recognize one or more other health conditions you have. It's extremely common with mental health conditions like schizophrenia and Alzheimer's disease. I wonder if they have any tests they could give him for any of that. Here's something that'll freak you out. Most people think their insurance will cover them if disaster strikes. But here's the truth. Many are wrong. You pay your premiums, you assume you're protected. Then the fine print hits, exclusions, limits, loopholes, and suddenly that coverage you counted on isn't really coverage at all. It's not your agent's fault. Their job is to sell policies, but you need someone in your corner who protects you, not the insurance company. My policy advocate takes your actual policies home, life, auto, whatever you got and breaks them down in plain English. They show you what's really covered and what isn't. Here's the best part. Costs just 27 cents a day. That's less than a cup of coffee for peace of mind to make sure your family is protected when it matters most. When a disaster hits, you don't want surprises. You want certainty. So before you assume you're covered, go to mypolicyadvocate.com let them review your policy. You might be shocked at what you find. MyPolicyAdvocate.com Nothing in life is free except.
- [37:15]
Commercial Announcer
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- [37:52]
Keith Olbermann
Spin Quest is a free to play social casino Boyd where prohibited. Visit spinquest.com for more details.
- [37:58]
Ed Zitron
I'm Ed Zitron of the Better Offline Podcast and I want you to join me at this year's Consumer Electronics show in Las Vegas, Nevada. Starting January 6th through January 10th, 2026, we're doing 10 radio style podcast episodes about the world world's biggest tech conference and we're going to dig into the latest and weirdest gadgets, gizmos and horrible AI gear that the tech industry is desperate to sell you all while covering the biggest stories in Silicon Valley as the AI bubble threatens to burst. I'll be joined by David Roth, Chloe Radcliffe, Adam Conover, Cory Doctorow, Edon Gueso Jr. Robert Evans, and an incredible cast of the greatest talent in the tech media with over 18 hours of interviews, commentary and bizarre stories all told from from the Better Offline Pop up studio connected to its own open bar.
- [38:39]
Keith Olbermann
Today I did five hours of back.
- [38:41]
Commercial Announcer
To back panels on artificial intelligence. It included a number of great moments, including an entire room full of people laughing about people losing their jobs due to artificial intelligence.
- [38:51]
Ed Zitron
Will we make it out Alive? There's only one way to find out. Tune in starting January 6th through January 10th, 2026 and listen to the literal best tech podcast ever recorded. Listen to Better offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever you happen to get your podcasts.
- [39:12]
Keith Olbermann
To the number one story on the countdown. And it's just not clear how much longer the CBS Evening News with Tony decouple Even the new fascist dumbed down unwatchable Nevermind Fox News. We've gone directly to copying Alex Jones. CBS Evening News with Tony decouple can remain the CBS Evening News with Tony decopal the first edition in which when there were technical problems, decopal basically froze and complained. Which is exactly the first two things you are not supposed to do if you're the anchor actually showed a slight ratings rise from the season average. But given that a first episode or the first episode of a new anchor is almost always the peak for at least a few years, this program is going to vanish quickly. The second episode Tuesday, featured a lighthearted feature on our Secretary of State introduced with decouple saying Marco Rubio, we salute you. And of course, this was all preceded by the worst rollout video in the history of television in which decouple trashed the memory of Walter Cronkite, implying the CBS Evening News then wasn't as transparent as the CBS News with Tony Ducopel is. And I'm guessing he spit on Cronkite's grave because the CBS Evening News was never actually anchored by Edward R. Murrow. He wasn't as transparent as I am. You know, transparent can also mean we can see right through you, pal. Anyway, the flaw in the plan is pretty obvious. The show has been reimagined as a really stupid MAGA friendly half hour newscast featuring anchors and reporters. MAGA has been brainwashed for 40 years to hate. MAGA won't watch this. Barry Weiss could come on and do a striptease every night. MAGA won't watch this. Any incumbent CBS audience, and they were not just last, they were really last in the ratings, they won't watch it either. And decopal doesn't seem to know how to get out of the way of such a terrible game plan. I once did a show for ESPN called ESPN2 Sports Nights which had 18 coordinating producers and not one of them had the same idea for what the show should be like. And it was dead on arrival too. And other than a couple of self deprecating jokes, we the anchors, Mitch Albom and Susie Culver and me, we just went out there and did the show. Stu Scott and Bill Pedo, a couple of other people involved in the show every night, Deb Kaufman. And we just did the show and we never claimed it was the greatest thing ever. We just tried to survive it. Tony decouple does not seem to be trying to survive this. Were this the old cbs, the shelf life on Tony would be exactly until carry the one. Thursday, February 5th in 1986 in Los Angeles when I was working at another station in la, KTLA kcbs. The CBS newscast in the second largest market in the country introduced a revolutionary news format that it was supposed to be a template for every newscast on every CBS station in the country. Or on September 15, KCBS replaced its regular old local news thing. Here's the four o' clock news with this couple, then the five o' clock news with this couple, then the six o' clock news with this couple with the News wheel. The News Wheel. It was a series of 20 minute segments over two and a half hours anchored generally by one news person, although I think they did 20 minutes of hard news at the top of the hour at 4 and 5. Anyway, these were all sort of wacky segments. One was 20 minutes remote with the weatherman called California Living, I think there was a Hollywood only segment, 20 minutes, all showbiz stuff. There was also the news wheel also had an actual. An actual wheel. There was an actual news wheel. The set had been redesigned at great cost to be turned into a Lazy Susan with a motor and desks on it. Many desks, many sets. The first 20 minutes would end, the newscasters would get the hell off the news wheel. The business guy or whoever would go onto the news wheel and then the thing would move. They'd throw a switch and the thing would rotate like Hank's Look Around Cafe in the Larry Sanders show and it would reveal another set while the first 4 to 420 newscast set disappeared in the background. Then at 4:40 it would rotate again and God help you if you didn't get off the wheel fast enough. This didn't go over well. People still watched and cared about local news in 1986. And there was only, oh, I'd say, six articles a day in the Los Angeles Times for the following four weeks. The news director, a future friend of mine named Eric Sorenson, resigned, I think on day 28, the general manager of the station was fired. The next Monday, the news wheel was scrapped. Two days later, one month and one day after it had been launched, we tried to reinvent the wheel. In fact, they got rid of it on a Wednesday. Didn't even wait till the start of the week. Gone by a bye Felicia. They didn't even change the set. They just switched off the motor. When I went to work at KCBS two years ago, and by the way, news director Sorensen had been rehired in the interim and he gave me seven times what I was making at ktla. So I'll always defend the news wheel. The old news wheel was still there two years later and I asked if the old weatherman from California Living was, you know, actually fired the way they told the story, or if he was just stuck in the back part that we couldn't really see anymore. How do you feed him back there? So in the old days at cbs, the CBS Evening News with Tony Dacopol would have lasted until February 5th. Who knows about now? They may like this. I've never met Tony Ducopo, but I am assured he hates me. I take this assurance from his then girlfriend, now wife, Katie Tur, who told me this repeatedly while we were still talking. Michael Senior senior Ellie, excuse me, who really did post on Threads asking what decouple's willingness to collaborate with the MAGA thing says about Katie Tur on Ms. Now. And somebody answered, quote, what Keith Olbermann has been saying for years. To which I replied, gabby Olbermann is right. And then somebody else said I had awful taste in women. And I replied, you bet I do. Back to the point, there are two things I think you may not know about Tony Dukopol. One is he has two children who live in Israel, which is not only fine, it's also, who cares, you can have kids of 17 different faiths in 17 different countries. What's the difference? Provided it doesn't impact what goes into your newscast. I mean, the CBS Evening News used to be guest hosted by Charles Kuralt. And I believe Charles Kuralt was the one who had like an extra wife somewhere, a second life. When he would go on vacation or go on the road, it was with the different Mrs. Kuralt than the one who lived at home. I mean, these things don't really matter unless you, unless you don't mention it or if it affects the newscast. But if he was handpicked by Barry Weiss, who is obsessed with trying to stamp out even both sides coverage of Israel and you don't work some kind of disclaimer in there just once, just once about, well, he has family in Israel, that's it. If you don't do that though, why are you not doing that? You're in ethical trouble as it is. Especially given that it was the backlash against Decouple's harsh interview of TA Nehisi Coates that started the process that ended with Decouple anchoring the CBS Evening News until February 5th. CBS reprimanded him over how he had treated Coates on the Palestine, Israel part of Coates's book. CBS's owner at the time then reprimanded her news people and hinted at antisemitism. She then sold CBS to the Ellisons, who hired Bari Weiss. And now, bingo. Tony decopal is the anchor. Pro tip, if you want to do something after this other than maybe at Fox News, Tony, quit now. Apologize and quit right now. This is not going to get better. It might. As Mr. Signorelli's post suggests, it might begin to erode Katie's career too. And she's done enough to erode it as it is. Plus there's the other thing you may not know about. I will never shake my conviction that they are married because of her book, because she was desperate to get a ghostwriter for it. And I have that from her. They were dating. She and I were still talking like eight years after I had asked her to move out of my house. And she said she liked him, but she didn't think he was like long term material and he had these other kids and, and, and, and anyway, on January 22, 2017, Katie Turr of MSNBC asked me to write her Trump book for her. She was serious and there are receipts. I'll get back to the book story. But first, since last spring when her second book came out, I have read story after story that boiled down to one of the headlines I read that was Katie Turr's relationship with Keith Olbermann haunted her. Now, the articles have not been overtly negative except in a passive aggressive sense, although try out that headline on yourself there and see if you like to be described as haunting someone. But she wrote a book claiming that many experiences, somehow, including the time she lived with me, hurt and slowed and limited her career. So all this time I have remained silent about the nearly three years she and I lived together and the eight years after that during which I remained her good and loyal friend. And I have remained silent even though the day she moved into my place in New York, she expected a New York TV station would hire her with no experience and no audition tape. And I have remained silent about how her father, whom she has never stopped trashing, sent her $10,000 worth of cameras and editing equipment to help her get started. And I have remained silent about how I pushed her to not just sit there staring at all that equipment her dad sent, but to use it to go cover stories so she could at least make a tape. And I have remained silent even though once she didn't like something I told her and she immediately said she was thinking of calling the New York Post gossip page and telling them terrible things about me. And I have remained silent that after I asked her to move out, I paid her rent at a new apartment for a year so she could keep working and living in New York. And I have remained silent even though I paid off her college loans. And when she complained that every time you Googled her name, you also got my name, I loaned her the money to hire a company that altered her Google Google results. And I have remained silent even though I introduced her to her first agent and to all the people who hired her at News 12 and WPIX and WNBC and NBC News. And I have remained silent even though when she happened to be assigned to Trump's campaign announcement and Trump knew who she was, because when we lived together, it was in one of these Trump buildings here and she got to do the last great actual interview with him, and NBC promptly offered her the chance to be its reporter on his campaign. She called me and said, no, I'm going back to London. I don't like politics. You know that. I was the one who told her she was nuts and this wasn't politics. It was dark, terrible history in progress. And she sighed and said, fine, okay, send me some books about it. And I have remained silent, even though she sent me nearly all of her scripts for her NBC News stories, including her Trump campaign coverage in 2016, and I edited nearly every one of them, and several times I had to completely rewrite them for her. And I have remained silent, even though when her father announced he was transitioning, the friend she called up in hysterics was me. And I have remained silent even though she twice lied to reporters and editors at the New York Times and the Washington Post telling them she had asked me on their behalf to do interviews with them about her. And I have remained silent even though she lied to them that I had declined the interviews. And I have remained silent even though six days after my emergency appendectomy in 2007, she started punching and slapping me with real intent to do harm because the living room wasn't clean enough in our place. And how exactly do you even try to defend yourself against a woman 125 pounds lighter and a foot shorter than you? So yesterday I'm reading stories about her husband getting a vasectomy, and I'm sitting there waiting to see how she managed to make this one my fault. When Katie's first book came out, she reduced our entire history to a throwaway anecdote defending Kellyanne Conway. The story described me as somebody she had dated briefly in her 20s after the book came out. And frankly and calmly, I don't know for certain who wrote her first book. I mean, people who can't write suddenly can find their muse. It's possible she wrote it and her other books, too. But after the first book came out that dismissed three years of our shared life as dating briefly in her 20s, I told her she had been awful to me, and she replied, I'm sorry. You're right, I'm a terrible person, and it is the last thing we ever discussed. I told her I would not communicate with her again, and I have not, nor have I spoken about her publicly. But I do keep wondering about that book. I still have a text from her from 9.14pm on December 11, 2016, after she had signed her contract for her book, which became unbelievable. An ironic title, it reads, do you still want to share your Trump doc with me? Doc here, meaning my trove of documents, my hundreds of pages of Trump notes that I had kept for use in my GQ video series. And I joked back, sure, how much? And she joked back, 10, $20. And I emailed it all to her for free that night with only one request. Don't leave me out of your acknowledgments in the book. And guess what? She left me out of the acknowledgments in the book too. More than a month later, at 2:35pm on Sunday, January 22, I had just returned home from Los Angeles and doing Bill Maher's show and Katie Tur texted me why they had never invited her on. And then she switched topics to ask, quote, want to write this book? I had taken a nap, so it was not until 5:32 that I replied, what? Well, you're not serious. How would that work? That's when she phoned. She was about to give the advance money back to the publisher. She said, I can't write a book. I'm like 50,000 words short and it's terrible. I'll give you half the money. I'll give you more than half the money. I pointed out to her that I had written or rewritten dozens of her stories for NBC News and msnbc, and it was not a question of money, it was a question of what we could get away with. No viewer, and maybe only one executive in a million would ever notice that one sentence or one paragraph of script in her two minute report was actually written by me. First of all, she was the one saying it each time I wrote or rewrote in her name for NBC. It was a fireable offense for her, but one that nobody would ever think to look for, even though there is necessarily an email trail 10 miles long. But writing a book for her about Trump in my writing style, not read aloud by her, but in print, I have a pretty distinct writing style which I don't think I could ever sufficiently hide for more than about 17 words at a stretch. Somebody would notice. Her publisher might cancel it or even sue, or if it got published, NBC might notice it and fire her. It was not just a bad idea for her and very dubious ethically, but it stood an excellent chance of destroying her career and damaging mine. Maybe she said, okay, you're right. And she told me she was going to talk it over with her boyfriend Tony from CBS that night and her thought was to give back the advance and cancel the book. And I said, ghostwriter maybe, and she said, like who? And I said, I had no idea. I tried to joke her out of these grim prospects by reminding her that at least for the several thousand dollars worth of research I gave her, I had cut the price to no dollars and no cents. And anyway, the next thing I knew, the book was published. There isn't a paragraph of it that reads like the rest of her writing and I get reduced in it from the guy she lived with for three years who started her career to somebody she dated briefly in her twenties and the dark half of an anecdote defending Kellyanne Freaking con job I will say I think the things I glossed over before about the New York Times and Washington Post were genuinely deplorable. The thing about the Post First, a Washington Post reporter I'd known for more than a decade named Paul Farhee called me up and asked me to do an interview with him about Katie, and I had my doubts, as I said to Paul, this is at least a little sexist. When I broke through at MSNBC in 1998, nobody called up one of my ex girlfriends, even the ones in the business, to ask one of them about me. This was an unfair gradient for her or any woman that the first thing a reporter or just somebody Googling her brought up or found was her boyfriend or ex boyfriend, especially me. It is utter misogyny. In fact, on the other hand, there could be a calculation in which it is useful to Katie if I do the interview and amplify the publicity. It is also one of the things I had warned her about, literally the day we started dating, and in fact I reminded her of it the night of the first real date at an Al Gore book event at the Museum of Natural History in New York in the Whale Room. Sure enough, I went from the Whale Room to the men's room for a moment. While I was out, an online gossip clown who had been following us around went over and pretended he knew her or something, and when I got back she was bubbling over, telling me she'd met a friend of a friend and told him all about us, and I asked if she had remembered my warning and she obviously had not. And quote, katie Tur new girlfriend of Keith Olbermann was online before we got home, so when she found there was a way to scrub your Google searches so every time somebody plugged in her name, they would not also get Keith Alderman's girlfriend or Keith Alderman's ex girlfriend, as I said, I helped her pay to use that service. I get it. The sexism prevails Maybe it'll go away someday, maybe it won't. So anyway, when Far he of the Post called me up, I called Katie. She said she thought it was sexist. And anyway, she wasn't participating with the Post's story on her, and it would really help if I did not do so either. So I declined the interview. And a week later, there in the Washington Post was a big feature on Katie Tur. Because guess what? She did participate with it after all. Complete interview. And worse yet, she told far he that she had encouraged me to do the interview with him. So he put it in the paper that I declined to be interviewed. So I looked like an idiot. And another thing, I'm not mad. Please don't put in the newspaper that I got mad. I called her up and I yelled at her and she apologized and she promised she would not do anything like that ever again. And she promptly did something even worse. A month or two later, the New York Times article comes out. It is a huge profile of her, I think, in the magazine or Weekend Edition. And in it, Mr. Olbermann refused to be interviewed for this story. This is a complete surprise to me. I didn't even recognize the writer's name. I found her contact info and I reached out to her and said, have we ever spoken? And she says no. And I say, emails, texts, and she says no. And then I say, then when did I refuse to be interviewed for your Katie Tur article for the New York Times? And she says, oh, I asked Katie Tur to ask you, and Katie Tur asked you, and you told Katie Tur you refused to be interviewed. And I said none of that happened. And there is a long silence on the end of the phone. And then the writer says, let me call the editor to take that part out. And the Times changed the online version of why I didn't do the interview, although they do not note that they changed it. And I later got a note from a Times editor apologizing, she just lied to this reporter from the Times. Just lied. Oh, I'll call him and ask. Oh, he told me he doesn't want to talk to you about me. Just lied. And I just sat there and I know, very unlike me, I have to say I was actually too angry to do anything. Anyway, as I mentioned, Katie Terp published another book this year, and a lot of the publicity was about how I haunted her and she had to go to great lengths to separate her career from mine, even as she keeps mentioning me, and even though she asked me in dead seriousness to write the first book for her. The book, the second one is mostly about all the impediments and roadblocks she has faced while, what's the word? Forging her career. But I will add this last point and then drop the subject. I hope forever. For 43 years, full time, I have done this and counting college, it's, God help me, 47 years. And throughout that stretch I have tried to acknowledge anybody and everybody who helped me in my career, even the ones I don't like, even people who are totally, utterly politically opposed to me. I still think fondly of Stuart Varney from Fox News because he taught me, when I was right up against it one night, how to use a teleprompter. I'll always cherish the memory of working with Stuart Varney. He was such a help to me politically. We could have a duel. But of course, as I said, the dynamic is different. I'm a guy. Still, her book is about people who hindered her, and almost none of it is about people who helped her. She is rapidly turning into a kind of professional martyrdom. I saw this in its earliest stages 16 years ago, and she is now going from making it martyrdom into a brand. And I'll say this lastly and sincerely, if your story of your career is all about people you think held you back and not even mostly about the people who bent over backwards to help you along, that is all just very, very sad. I've done all the damage I can do here. Thank you for listening. Most of our Countdown music was arranged, produced and performed by Brian Ray on the guitars, bass and drums, and John Philip Chenale handling orchestration and keyboards. They are our musical directors of Countdown. It was produced by TKO Brothers. Our satirical and pithy musical comments are by the best baseball stadium organist ever, Nancy Foust, who also today served as my announcer. The sports music is the old rimmen Theme from ESPN2 written by Mitch Warren Davis, courtesy of ESPN Inc. Other music arranged and performed by the group no horns allowed. This program was produced by Ted. Everything else was, as always, my fault. The Countdown for today, day 354 of America held hostage again, just 1,109 days until the scheduled end of his lame duck and lame brained term unless he is removed sooner by MAGA or Jeffrey Epstein. Affordability. Marble armrests, Venezuela ice shooting innocent civilians could be anything. The next scheduled countdown is Monday. Bulletins as the news merits already two of them this week. Until the next edition, I'm Keith Olbermann. Good morning, good afternoon, good night and Good Luck. Countdown with Keith Ulberman is a production of iHeartRadio. 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