Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio.

The man handling of Jimmy Kimmel and the blackmailing of ABC may turn out to be the biggest gift this year to the Democrats.

And if that is not a big enough plot twist, I am hearing from multiple sources that, at least right now, ABC thinks Jimmy Kimmel will stay on the air and will return on the air in the same show as early as later this month, maybe even this week.

Kirk the Trump self impeaching memo to BONDI he tweeted in a stupor a lot more momentarily.

But is Kimmel news first and a caveat.

I'll believe it when I see it.

However, these are the landmarks my sources pointed at, and a couple I thought of my own self.

First, they haven't fired him.

Second, they actually haven't said anything about him.

ABC has not said anything about Jimmy Kimmel since that one sentence announcement about taking him off the air.

Third, he hasn't said anything about ABC good, bad, or indifferent.

Can you imagine me in this?

Fourth?

Remember the Sinclair owned local stations that started all the trouble the next Star stations, the ones who were bribing Trump and the FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr by demanding kimmelby sidelined so Trump and Carr would waive the rules and let Sinclair buy more than the legal limit of local TV stations.

Remember their plan after the Kimmel suspension to run a Arly Kirk tribute last Friday Night in Kimmel's timeslot.

What happened to that?

They didn't run it.

They didn't put it on the Sinclair stations.

They put it on YouTube, no other explanation, They just didn't run it.

Why didn't they run it?

They won?

Fifth, what happened to the Sinclair demand that Kimmel apologizes and pays a bribe, I'm sorry, make a donation to Kirk's scam Turning Point Company Incorporated?

Sixth, how much grief did ABC take and how much grief did Disney take for folding to Trump and for not defending Kimmel as the entire right wing misquoted him so much that no human mind can estimate it.

And Seventh, how could you possibly put all the Kimmel and Kirk toothpaste back into the tube?

As Eric Idle once sang, all you need is cash.

The resurrection of Jimmy Kimmel.

It has been rumored almost since ABC yanked him.

Variety had a piece over the weekend about peace feelers.

CNN had a story saying the outreach began the same day they took him off, led not by chairman Bob Iger, who really did destroy himself over this, no matter how it turns out, but by Disney Entertainment co chair Dana Walden, whom they report called Kimmel that day quote, everyone deeply values him and wants him to come back, but he has to take down the temperature.

That was when the temperature was still warm, before the temperature turned ice cold for Disney and Bob Eiger.

And that was also before anybody realized that any scenario in which Jimmy Kimmel returns to the air on ABC is a win for Jimmy Kimmel and for ABC and a defeat for Trump and a defeat for fascism, and especially a defeat for Brendan Carr, who could get fired over this.

And one of the reasons they realized this was you gov hold on this whole story On Thursday, the margin of adults thinking Kimmel's monologue on Monday was acceptable was forty three to thirty six percent in favor, a lot of undecideds, but barely more than one third who were opposed to it.

Half of adults disapproved of ABC taking Kimmel off the air, and forty two percent said they strongly disapproved of it, by our margin of forty three to twenty six.

Responding to the threat by FCC Commissioner car we can do this the easy wayer, we can do it the hard way quote, forty three to twenty six adults thought that was unacceptable.

Again, I believe it when I see Jimmy Kimmel on my TV on Channel seven.

Still, that's what everybody is telling me.

So why how well?

Given that last week Trump boasted he had avenged Charlie Kirk by getting some guy's show canceled, even though the guy never disparaged Kirk, and then he said no, I had nothing to do with it, Given that there were still new articles saying that Jimmy Kimmel has been canceled that were published as late as Saturday night, the answer is the fccs Goebbels, Brendan Carr, May in fact, go into history as a hero of the left.

Because it dawned on the right all of a sudden, like a bunch of flies deciding all of a sudden to move six feet to the left in a box in the middle of summer.

It dawned on the right all of a sudden, late Thursday, early Friday.

Maybe that they have not only authorized the left to the next time the left is in power, shut down Fox and Murdoch and Sinclair, take away all of Murdoch's waivers, take away all his stations, manage its news channels, destroy Murdoch's newspapers.

But the right has now made this almost mandatory, and it has awakened in liberals something we always and sorely lack imagination.

Remember, not every maga has a brain, but every other maga has a podcast.

And as they were recording them and celebrating the downfall of Jimmy Kimmel, it hit them what government censorship could mean for them.

These are the only circumstances in which anything will register with any of these people.

It's not right or wrong, it's not even what they can get away with.

It's just self interest.

I mean, what would the world look like if Elon Musk's x was actually under true government supervision in a world where cut turn posts something that has to wait twenty four hours before it is approved or it isn't.

At the same time, it's awakened the right and the realization that they just handed out rocks and said, please, please, everybody hit conservative media in the groin with your rocks.

The Trump FCC blackmailing of ABC and the bullying of Jimmy Kimmel maybe a worse cell phone even than Trump's cover up of the Epstein fliles.

Just the immediate blowback against Trump and Carr and for Kimmel from the right has been, I'm sorry, shocking, refreshing.

Yesterday, Rand Paul went on this Week on ABC instead of the Kimmel disaster quote absolutely inappropriate.

Brendan Carr has got no business weighing in on this.

The FCC should have nothing to do with it.

Sinclair pulled out.

They were disgusted by the comment.

That's their rights, but the government's got no business in it, and the FCC was wrong to weigh in.

No, the same, Ran Paul, and I'll fight any attempt by the government to get involved with speech.

And I played these clips from Ted Cruz on his podcast, which he knows would be one of the first ones we would censor.

I played these clips from Ted Cruz in the Friday Night bulletin I did on this.

They're worth hearing again, as tin ear as him suddenly breaking into a bad dialect is my god.

Otherwise Ted Cruz could be reading one of my scripts here.

I think it is unbelievably dangerous for government to put itself in the position of saying, we're going to decide what speech we like and what we don't, and we're going to threaten to take you off air if we don't like what you're saying.

And it might feel good right now to threaten Jimmy Kimmel, Yeah, but when it is you to silence every conservative in America, we will regret it.

And and and so again.

I like Brendan Carr, but we should not be in this business.

We should denounce it.

It's fine to say what Jimmy Kimmel said was deplorable, it was disgraceful, and he should be off air, but we shouldn't be threatening government power to force him off air.

That's a real mistake.

He threatens explicitly, we're going to cancel ABC's license.

We're gonna take him off the air, so ABC cannot broadcast anymore.

And I gotta say he threatens it.

He says, we can do this the easy way, but we can do this the hard way.

Yeah.

And I got to say, that's right out of goodfellows.

That that that that that that's right out of a mafioso coming into a bar going nice by you have here, it'd be a shame of something happened to it.

And that was Ted Cruz and not me.

Scott Adams Gilbert podcast quote I'm on Jimmy Kimmel's side.

Unquote Ben Shpiro.

I do not want the FCC in the business of telling local affiliates that their licenses will be removed if they broadcast material that the FCC deems to be informationally false.

Why because one day the shoe will be on the other foot.

If Democrats win the presidency and you got a Democrat in charge of the FCC, you got Adam Schiff in charge of the FCC.

Please God, Please God, Please God.

You know which affiliates are going to get threatened, all of the Fox affiliates.

You know what's gonna happen, Ben Shapiro, you have unsuspected depth.

With the perspective of just a few days, this became such an obvious own goal that not only is Trump denying Brendan Carr did this, but Ewick Twump called into the mud Travis Bunk Sex Bump Show to deny that Dadams had anything to do with it.

Quote, Listen, the guy has been a jerk.

No, he's talking about Kimmel, not his father.

Listen, the guy has been a jerk.

He hasn't been funny.

But honestly, I think the network used this as a way to get him out based on, you know, bad ratings.

Eeriic had to say that because Dadams promised the exact opposite of what he and Carr just did to Jimmy Kimmel and ABC, and he promised it during his inaugural address.

After years and years of illegal and unconstitutional federal efforts to restrict free expression, I will also sign an executive order to immediately stop all government censorship and bring back free speech to America.

Oops.

Just say oops and get out now.

Just roll through the list of the great intellects of MAGA and they are one hundred percent on this issue, and they're not on Brendan Carr side.

Quote.

If the idea of free speech enrages you, the cornerstone of democratic self government, then I regret to inform you that you are a fascist.

Unquote Stephen Miller, April fifteenth, twenty twenty two.

Congratulations, Brendan Carr.

Stephen Miller just called you a fascist.

This is even worse than that.

The Attorney General of Missouri sued the then surgeon general for alleged government suppression of the anti vaccine bullshit online Murphy versus Missouri went to the Supreme Court listened to this from an amicus brief challenging any government censorship or pressure.

Quote.

Perhaps most disconcerting of all is the pressure applied to the platforms to enforce the government's new role as arbiter of truth, imposing a new federal orthodoxy, and that's in italics upon citizens speech.

That plan clashes with the Court's clear declaration that government may not quote prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion.

Amicus brief was filed by H.

Turning Point USA and Charlie Kirk.

The Claremont Institute filed a similar brief in that case, and it has the name on it John Eastman.

In a separate Supreme Court case last year NRA versus Vullo about pressuring groups to cut off the NRA, the National Rifle Association, in business dealings and the like.

The Court ruled nine nothing against government infringement of opinion nothing a shutout the forfeit score.

The unanimous opinion was written by Sonya Soda Mayor.

Quote, Government officials cannot attempt to coerce private parties in order to punish or suppress views that the government disfavors.

You want more.

What Brendan Carr did was not only self harm, it may have been illegal when the New Republic, quoting Ana Gomez, one of the three FCC commissioners, the only one appointed by a democratic president, quote, what the administration is doing violates the First Amendment and the Communication Acts.

This administration is increasingly using the weight of government to suppress lawful expression.

Gomez also decried Trump's campaign of censorship and control to quote silence dissent.

Brendan Carr may want to relocate.

We can do this the hard way, Brendan, or we can do it the easy way.

So now, obviously ABC has to get Kimmel back on the air.

In the worst case scenario, they don't and he sues.

He sues the federal government and Donald Trump and Brendan Carr personally.

The Trump part gets thrown out, but not until after the headlines.

Jimmy Kimmel right now has a lawsuit against Brendan Carr and the FCC, to say nothing of enough lawsuits to potentially own Disney.

I don't know why you'd want to own Disney, but there it is.

To get him back on They will not give him full ownership of Disney, but they will have to throw some sop to the right to give them a climb down.

Though, why let them fall off the cliff.

They so carefully built this cliff.

But they certainly will have to assuage Jimmy Kimmel's fears of going through this again.

And that's always one of two things.

A new longer contract his runs out next spring, or more money.

They're both.

I flashed back to my one thing that touched on something like this when the Republicans came in in two thousand and eight, after I said something they didn't like.

During the Republican convention when they showed a snuff film and claimed it was a nine to eleven tribute, and I said, if we had shown you that video, I'd be here apologizing for showing you the video of the people from the World Trade Center.

When the Republicans went in and blackmailed Tom Brokaw and said, our guy won't show up to your debate, and Brokaw went in and blackmailed NBC management into taking me and Chris Matthews off the air.

They called and told me.

My agent called and told me while I was at a ballgame in the press box, and I told her, you called them back and tell them I quit and they can deal with the aftermath of this.

I got in the subway and went home, and by the time I got out of the subway twenty five minutes later, it had dawned on me that not only was I not going to quit, but I was going to say to them, I'll make you a deal if I quit, or if this just goes out and I don't quit, you guys will lose the entire MSNBC audience.

They will literally walk away.

This is either just days before we were to premiere Rachel Meadows Show, or days after we did.

There was no other presence on that network but me.

I was the network and they were silencing me.

And if they wanted to throw away what we just built, they could do that, or I would say it was my idea to stop doing the part that the GOP wanted, which was me and Matthew's off the debates.

I said, I'll take myself off that and I'll claim it's my idea and I'll sell it as best I can, and you give me, let's see, twelve million dollars three million dollars a year over four years.

They gave me the twelve million.

So an end result of this might be Jimmy Kimmel gets a raise and a contract when his contract and presumably his show was supposed to end next spring.

But our purposes, we're not all Jimmy Kimmel.

Our purposes.

Given how much Trump fouled this up with his own people, with the right wing, how much they are opposed to this, Democrats need to hit the gas while it is still sitting there.

Push on this.

We need House and or Senate resolutions condemning car that the Republicans have to vote for or against.

We need Rand Paul co signing something with AOC.

We need something House and or Senate resolutions, something reaffirming the First Amendment.

Just something like it is the sense of this House that we reaffirm the First Amendment.

See how many Republicans are willing to sign off against that something?

I mean just Democrats who go on ABC News or ABC shows.

They need to hit ABC for doing this to Kimmel on ABC until they put Kimmel back on the air.

The Democrats can do all the public investigation they want of this man car and especially what is clearly a quid pro quo about Sinclair Next Star and approving those stations.

They can tie up those approval and in court for years.

Mister Jeffries, mister Schumer, this is something so obvious, so obvious, so easy, so win win, win, win win.

Even your strategists and consultants have probably heard about it by now.

Still, maybe the best part of the Kimmel Kirk saga is that, of course they wind up giving Kimmel and Jimmy Fallon and Seth Myers, maybe even Colbert in a different venue, Extra Life.

Those franchises were are winding down.

Myers was down to three workdays week.

Now, if Kimmel goes back on the air, it'll have to be with something providing security for both parties, and it will be with the wind at his back.

Suddenly people will want to see what Jimmy Kimmel has to say, and Myers and Fallon and even FN Colbert.

The second best part of the Kimmel Kirk saga is it took the Kirk shooting and it transformed it politically into the Kimmel Kirk saga until the weekend began and the canonization of Saint Charlie of Kirk in Phoenix yesterday loomed.

Google searches for Jimmy Kimmel were greater than or equal to those of Google searches for Charlie Kirk.

And of course, as I suggested last week, it is increasingly evident the right canon will continue to insist otherwise.

But the killing of Charlie Kirk was a personal act, maybe with political undertones, and BC reported quote one person familiar with the federal investigation said that quote.

Thus far, there is no evidence connecting the suspect with any left wing groups.

Every indication so far is that this was one guy who did one really bad thing because he found Kirk's ideology personally offensive.

Unquote.

I had suggested last week that he saw and again I condemned shooting anybody, but I especially condemned shooting political commentators because g guess what, I'm a political commentator.

I condemned shooting anybody, but I suggested the alleged shooter saw Kirk's demonizing of transgendered people as a direct threat to someone he loved who is transgendered.

End of story, not that it will end the story.

If you heard our bulletin Friday night, you know Trump declared criticism of himself on television is illegal.

He made up statistics that it's ninety seven percent bad that coverage is, or maybe he didn't make it up.

Hell, his presidency is eighty seven percent bad.

Maybe the coverage is completely accurate.

But clearly, between that and the whole Kirk mess and everything else he did over the weekend, the last remaining fraid damaged, diaphanous, decaying line tethering the good blimp Trump to reality has snapped, and it's snapped on this subject.

Prosecute them anyway, I don't care if there's no crime, and convict them anyway.

I don't care if there's no evidence and jail them anyway.

I don't care if the jury found them not guilty.

I'm paraphrasing, of course.

That is the memo or text or whatever that was he composed Saturday night that began perm semi colon that he somehow wound up posting on truth Social instead of sending it to somebody to send a Pam Bondy or whatever he was trying to do, text it to her, email it because Grandpa Shardy really is losing it.

It was full of stuff that had nothing to do with Eric Sebret prosecutor resigning rather than prosecuting Letitia James over mortgage paperwork.

It was full of the lies Trump tells himself He's always done this.

There's one way to never be wrong.

When you are wrong, just lie to yourself.

Is it me or is it them?

Oh?

It's them, Pam.

I have reviewed over thirty statements in posts saying that essentially same old story as last time.

All talked, no action, nothing is being done.

What about Komy, Adam, Shifty Shift, Letitia, They're all guilty as hell, but nothing is going to be done.

Then we almost put a Democrat supported US attorney in Virginia with a really bad Republican past, awoke Rhino is never going to do his job.

That's why two of the worst DEM senators pushed him so hard, even lied to the media and said he quit.

We had no case, No I fired him.

There's a great case of many layers legal pundency.

So Lindsay's a really good lawyer, likes you a lot.

We can't delay any longer.

It's killing a ripping and credibility.

They impeach me twice and knighted me five times exclamation point over nothing.

Justice must be served now, President dj TA.

Oddly enough, Trump deleted that rather than lying and pretending he did not mean to do that, or lying and pretending he did mean to do that.

Lindsey, by the way, is not Lindsey Graham as you might have thought.

It's Lindsey Halligan, an insurance attorney who Trump sicked on the Smithsonian, who has never prosecuted a case, but has really great TV hair, And we'll do whatever Trump wants in exchange for free perms.

Next, Trump is going after the US attorney in Maryland, Kelly Hayes.

Trump wants her to prosecute Adam Schiff for I don't know, illegal possession of soup spoons.

This is different than the Siebert case with Letitia James.

Trump can tell himself that Sebert was a Democratic plant.

Hayes is the same prosecutor who approved the crack of Dawn's search of the home of John Bolton, which turned up found a spoon.

Sir, she is a loyalist and Trump offing a Trump loyalist is a different thin tight rope for the fat man to try to walk across his man Poulty over to finance the Renfield who dug up the mortgage info, most of which appears to be wrong and totally legal, and the same thing that Paulty's father did.

He's still at it.

He still doesn't get it.

Look up Brendan Carr online, mister Poulty.

He's still insisting the Fed governor Lisa Cook must be prosecuted.

He tweeted.

Would a doc be allowed to see patients if he was accused of a crime punishable by jail?

No, I don't know, mister pault Is this a Trump doctor?

Also, this is all incredibly impeachable.

Pressuring prosecutors to prosecute your political enemies, or not to prosecute your friends while you our president.

Well, Hillary Clinton got it right yesterday writing of the posted memo to Pam Bondy.

Quote, imagine if Richard Nixon had just tweeted out the Watergate scandal rather than putting it on secret tape.

This is not having the impact it should because he did it in front of everybody.

Another secret to Trump's success.

Why waste all that time trying to be secretive when most people don't know what they're seeing anyway, And of course he can now claim maybe he wasn't writing to Pam Bondy, maybe he was writing to Pam Anderson.

I think you could make a really good attorney general.

The other thing is you don't do this as high profile, front facing goons from your own dictatorship turn out to be digging their own professional grapes.

You've heard about Tom Homan, the bully from Ice, and the recording of him taking fifty thousand dollars from two FBI agents he thought were businessmen who wanted to win Trump government contracts.

Firstly, this is the cheapest bastard, the cheapest corrupt politician since Spiro Agnew took cash in a bag in the White House Office when he was Vice president, Like nine hundred dollars fifty thousand dollars, I could buy Tom Homan for fifty thousand dollars.

What do I get for one hundred thousand dollars?

Okay?

So then after this Trump's DOJ shut the investigation down even though there is a tape, and the person who recommended shutting it down was Emil Beauve.

Anybody in this missing, anybody?

We can't send a jail for this, shouldn't They have brought in Alina Habba to f this up.

Words come on, as I noted online, how in the hell did we not see this coming?

Tom Holman literally has the word ho in his name.

Dave It's Cough of the New York Times and the Great book about the Movie Network pointed out that if you like cliches, the fifty thousand dollars was literally inside a bag a bag, as in it's in the bag, or he's left holding the bag, or Tom Holman is Trump's bag man, but the winner is From Saturday Night Live writer Brian Tucker quote, Look, Tom Holman has not had a trial and has never been proven guilty, So let's all take a step back and do what he would do.

Send him to a secret prison in El Salvador until we can figure this out.

Cass please well, by the way, Russia violated Estonian airspace now fighter jets not drones this time, and Poland had to scramble its jets again after another incursion.

Trump slept through that MAGA is concerned only about one thing.

When is Charlie Kirk coming back from the dead?

And don't shout at me about that you think I made up that idea.

I have lost count of how many social media posts there are right this minute asking if that's possible, or saying, oh, wouldn't it be great if he came back from the dead during the thing you didn't maybe tomorrow.

The canonization of Saint Charlie of Kirk is the only thing they have left here.

The Kirk memorial couldn't even break the NFL's hold on Sunday afternoon trending topics on social media, but they are in full Jesus mode here.

A spokesman for Kirk's turning point in Doctrination Group actually put out a statement transforming the lack of an exit wound into a miracle, not a metaphor not like a miracle or kind of almost No, a miracle, and he quoted a surgeon.

Now the surgeon is anonymous, and he's being quoted by a spokesman who needs turning point USA to continue.

Even without Charlie Kirk, Fox ran this as a major story yesterday.

Are you ready?

Even in death, Charlie Kirk may have saved lives.

The surgeon explained that quote, I've seen wounds from this caliber many times, and they always just go through everything.

This would have taken a moose or two down, an elk, et cetera.

It was an absolute miracle that someone else didn't get killed.

The doctor described, kirk bone is quote so healthy and quote so impressive that he's like the man of steel.

All Right, anybody recognized the problem with saying he's the man of steel when he's not living anymore.

Back to this fantasy from Fox News, the spokesman concluded, quote, even in death, Charlie managed to save the lives of those around him.

Remarkable, miraculous.

Ah.

Of course, they are helped by morons like Thomas Cardinal Dolan of New York.

First, the Cardinal said he'd never heard of Charlie Kirk, and then he said on Fox that he had looked at some videos, apparently in order to get the guest shot on Fox.

Guess which videos he looked at?

He looked at the Bible ones or did he look at the we should stone transgendered people and execute Biden and force twelve year olds to watch public executions with guillotineans and the ones about the great Replacement theory?

Which ones do you think he watched?

Cardinal Gullible added, this guy is a modern day Saint Paul.

He was a missionary.

He's an evangelist, he's a hero.

He's one I think that knows what Jesus meant when he said the truth will set you free.

Also, Stone a transgendered person today, he said, Cardinal Dolan.

Also, you know that Charlie Kirk called Pope Francis a Marxist and suggested Pope Francis was a heretic, right, and that Kirk's first religious mentor was Jerry Folwell, Junior, Jerry, have I introduced you to my wife?

And if so?

Can I watch Fallwell Junior?

They're not doing this well, the canonization of Charlie Kirk.

There's Congressman Mike Collins of Georgia blasting the fifty eight Democrats who did not vote yes on the motion condemning the Kirk murder.

And that's when somebody told Congressman Mike Collins that he also did not vote yes on the motion condemning the Kirk murder.

Congressman Collins walked off the House floor without casting a vote.

He said, it was a mistake, Mike, You bet your ass it was a mistake.

But the winner the all time Lou Lou kat Kerr, who is a troubled woman who says she is a prophetess.

She says she was brought to heaven to watch Kirk's ascension.

She does not stop to explain why they went to such trouble to bring her there, and yet still nobody in the afterlife will help her at all with her purple red nightmare hair.

But she did explain that Charlie Kirk's reward in the afterlife was a quiver with a thousand arrows of light and a large ice cream cone.

She says she saw him eating an ice cream cone in heaven.

Oh man, there are so many many terrible, terrible jokes available here.

I don't even have to lean forward in my chair to grab the worst of them.

But I won't make any of them because I won't make any of them even.

About Charlie Kirk.

Now, I'll make them about Nancy Mace.

Also of interest here add me to the list.

I think Nancy Mace has announced she's going to end my career or she's going to end her career.

It was a little unclear, Like everything else, she says.

This would mean, though, if it's me, it's now forty one years in a row, that somebody has made a threat to end my career and I'm still here eating ice cream and they are all gone.

In fact, some of them are dead.

It's a general manager in Boston audios.

See you.

That's next.

Oh there's ice cream in heaven large cones.

This is countdown.

This is Countdown with Keith old woman still ahead on this edition of Countdown.

Good old Nancy Mace, half congresswoman, half plastic inflatable doll has retweeted me saying Charlie Kirk and Sinclair Broadcasting are both going to hell if thet nothing else this week.

Attacking Charlie Kirk as a guaranteed way to end your career, she wrote apart from Nancy leaving a few words out there.

I mean, I get what she means, but technically she's saying the left has has already learned this, and it's I'm not sure what she wrote.

Anyway.

What are you gonna do, Nancy?

Get me fired from Current TV, get me fired from my Disney pension.

I'm independent.

I literally work for nobody, and I have all the money I need for the rest of my life until I linger to like one hundred and twenty two plus Nancy.

People have been threatening to end my career since literally nineteen eighty four.

He will never again work in this business.

The Boston executive said to my agent, guess what he's dead now.

A young writer who wrote My career was over in two thousand and one in a national magazine just starting there.

He's already retired and I could die before this finishes posting.

But professionally, right now, I'm still here and all of them are not.

Goodbye, Nancy, Good evening, and welcome to the end of my career.

Well not yet anyway.

Next in things I promised not to tell first, believe it or not, there's still more new idiots to talk about.

The roundup of the miscreants, morons and Dunning kruegerffect specimens who constitute today's other worst persons in the world, The brons, Congress and Randy Fine.

Now, every time I think they found the dumbest person in America and elected them to Congress, we locate a dumber one.

Now it's Randy Fine.

Now, I've slimmed down, but I've been overweight my whole life since they took my tonsils out when I was six.

In retrospect, that was a mistake.

Swallowing was difficult.

Then one day it was not difficult at all, and the food began to flow night and day.

So I genuinely start here talking about Congressman Fine in a place of concern.

So I'm not going to pretend to you.

I don't end in a place of concern.

But Congressman Fine is like three hundred, three hundred and fifty pounds.

He's a big guy.

I want to tell you I saw him sitting on the George Washington Bridge dangling his feet in the water.

Hey, I'll tell you so.

Fine goes on CNN and bash is Kimmel quote.

We live in a world where a meaningful percentage of people now believe violence is legitimate as in aside Randy, who did that?

Yes, Randy, it was Trump.

I got to flash back to bo Jack Horseman there, Randy, is this your fault?

Dana Bash?

And this might as well have been the lead story today.

Dana Bash actually pushed back against Randy Fine, which, again, if you've ever seen him, it's quite an accomplishment.

Quote kim didn't legitimize violence.

Fine kept throwing his weight around those comments, blaming MAGA for the death of Charlie Kirk.

Well, Bash interrupted him again, that's not what Kimmel said.

Fine still finished.

I gasped when I read it.

Randy is one fat guy to another.

That gasp that may have been caused by something else.

See Your Doctor Runner up worser Stephen A.

Smith.

Steven A.

Smith has decided he is a political commentator.

He does a show called an XM radio show called straight Shooter.

Now that's offensive in light of Charlie kirk and in the background of the video version of this, there's the capitol.

So that makes him a political commentator.

Again, I don't have any objection to anybody going sports to politics.

That would be like me saying, hey, Randy Fine is a big guy.

Oh, it's a bit like, No, I get it.

I did that, I know.

But the call in line for people calling into the Stephen A.

Smith Straight Shooter Show, the number ends in one of the letter equivalents P O t US, so it's you dial whatever the number is potus.

Problem is Steve is not doing the work on this to use the kids phrase, tell me you didn't actually see the Jimmy Kimmel references to Kirk.

Without telling me you didn't actually see the Jimmy Kimmel references to Kirk, the.

Only thing that I would say, as it pertains to Jimmy Kimmel was where was the joke?

Because you're a late night host and obviously.

That has a comedic attachment attachment to it.

Where was the joke?

Obviously it wasn't anything funny about that.

However, No, it wasn't a joke.

You're right about that.

It wasn't a joke on a late night show.

Surprise, like when Letterman did the first show after nine to eleven and he didn't make any jokes.

You just back tears and the shows that were done after every assassination, and you know, the night after Martin Luther King was killed, that Johnny Carson didn't do jokes, and then you know they postponed these show.

When you know Charlie Kirk gets shot, you don't go for the joke, even if you're Jimmy Kimmel.

That wasn't supposed to be a joke.

Stephen does not get this.

Stephen thinks the controversy is that whatever was said about Kimmel or by Kimmel about Kirk wasn't funny.

That's what he thinks was wrong.

That's what he really thinks.

This is about.

Where is the joke.

Steve doesn't doesn't doesn't get this.

He went on at length to blame Kimmel.

I ha note Stephen is after all, paid by the people who caved on Kimmel, people like Bob Iger.

Steven is a company man.

Steven explained that Jimmy's failure was he didn't understand quote the game that he is playing.

Steven is a very very simple view of the world, as evidence by thinking that everything is a game, and that every political show is like every sports show, where the point is how much time can you kill without saying anything?

That's Stephen a Smith's specialty.

I mean, honest to god, he's one of the all time greats.

You have one idea and stretch it out the three hours a day, that's pretty good.

That's his specialty.

Anyway, Steve's naivete and his unwillingness to do the work, like read the quotes, watch the videotape, just have somebody pull it up on your gold plated machine for you.

His unwillingness to do the work is going to be terribly exposed in the weeks and months to come, as will the fact that all those rumors about people encouraging him to run for president as a Democrat, they were all started by by him.

How do we know this because, as I mentioned, the number for the telephone call in line for listeners ends in botus.

He chose that, Steve, you need to be a little more subtle.

Your political audience is not as dumb as your sports audience is.

Holy crap, But our winner the worst.

Speaking of naive Vanity Fair magazine editor Mark Guiducci, We've already been through this with Mark about the new editor there breaking in by trying to put Milania Trump on the cover of Vanity Fair and the Vanity Fair staff, which leans a little to the left, threatening to walk out.

It was thought their response might lead this guy Mark to reel himself in a little bit.

It did not.

Last week he named a new West Coast editor for Vanity Fair, responsible for some writing and for quote editing stories across platforms and topic areas, with a focus on events, industries and culture of the Pacific region.

And the new editor is Alivia Newsy.

She's back now.

Look, she's the mother of my dogs, at least the two oldest dogs.

So I'm not being cynical or ironic or anything when I say I will always value her for that and my introduction to the world of dogs, and if she's ever in real trouble, I'll help, no questions asked.

I offered that last year, reached out to her agent and said, I don't know what help I could be, probably none.

If she can think of anything, it's hers.

I do have to figure out what to tell the dogs, because when we broke up, I told Rose and Stevie that Olivia had gone to live on a farm upstate.

But she wants to make a comeback after the whole RFK Junior disaster.

I'm fine with it.

Maybe she learned something from a mistake everybody does eventually after mistake number nine hundred, one hopes one would learn from that mistake.

Any who, she did what I always recommend in that situation, she waited.

She waited nearly a year plus.

Selfishly.

This lets me remind people that it turned out who knew that when we broke up?

I was too young for her.

However, the reaction in writing circles has not been as forgiving two writers on Blue Sky.

These guys made me gfaw Andrew Dignan or Dingion.

Maybe Vanity Fair bringing Newsy on to cover the all important who's sending first traps southeast to members of Trump's cabinet?

Beat oh oh, oh, man, I can see this is going away soon.

And then Colin Dicky uh, obviously an expert on this subject.

I'm sorry, Vanity Fair.

Hiring Newsy is such a effing gut punch to all the great underemployed journalists out there who don't sext with their sources, which, to be fair, is pretty much everyone except Olivia Nowsy.

Oh oh, and you thought I had complaints about her?

My goodness, Oh Mark, what if I just cut out the pretense and named her West Coast sexting editor Guiducci, good luck with being Olivia's boss, Today's other worst person in the world.

Call me anytime.

Oh so, here we go again.

As I mentioned an offhand comment or retweet by plastic Woman Congresswoman Nancy mace Of, I forgot Stupidville has now joined the list of people who have promised to end my career or how I should know that if you criticize Charlie Kirk, sat Charlie of Kirk, your career is over.

All I can say is madam, take a number.

We'll call you when we are ready.

I'm still dealing with the other three or four dozen people who have told me in the last forty one years that my career is now over.

To our number one story on the countdown, and good evening, and welcome to the end of our careers, or more particularly the end of my career.

No, I'm not retiring.

I'm just quoting myself from nineteen ninety three in the launch of ESPN two and the subject of career ending announcements.

Career ending announcements.

Recently, a colleague of mine told me he was done, and I had to go through all of the times I have been told I was done.

The first one was in nineteen eighty four.

This would be in a previous century that I know.

To a lot of younger listeners, seems like it might as well be eighteen eighty four.

I have told before the story of my limited career in Boston, for which I waited about a year to start and lasted about half as long because I went to work at the wrong place, in the wrong city, outside in the wrong suburb of Boston, with the wrong boss, where they said, don't make any jokes, and I said, what did you hire me for?

And I left very very quickly, and then they tried to fire me while I was filling out the terms of my contract and staying there until they could get a replacement.

And the whole thing went up in flames.

And the result of this was that the news director of the station Channel five in Boston, a man who actually answered to the name Philip Scribner Balboni, went to the Boston Globe TV sportswriter when they had such things as TV sportswriters, and said, oh, it was such a shame about Keith.

He was potentially such a major talent.

I will not deny that the use of that phrase did inspire me to some degree to get cracking on my career.

On the other hand, I didn't work for nearly a year later, as I was taking care of some family business back home and sort of put everything about my own interest on the shelf.

Off the record, the general manager of the station I had worked for, a man named James Coppersmith, said to my agent something that made Balbony's statement look like a compliment.

Coppersmith said, he will never again work in our business.

That got me motivated.

I believe I read recently that Coppersmith died.

In any event, I worked again in his business.

The punchline to this one, and they all have punchlines, is that at some point around two thousand and seven, I got an email at MSNBC and the return of was Philip Scribner Balboni, and there was a great email from my old brief news director Boston Channel five in Boston, who explained that I had been potentially such a major talent and was quoted on the record as saying that.

And now he was saying how he watched Countdown every night and was so proud to have been in there at the start of my career.

Not a word about the other part, about the oh, potentially such a major talent.

I guess he meant it in the past future, perfect sense of the I don't know, my grammar education is not what it should be.

But he managed to wriggle out of it.

Never made any reference to it.

And the one thing about surviving repeated announcements that your career is over is to never really go back and criticize the people who were wrong about it, because they know they were wrong, and your success is the best answer.

Nevertheless, this all came up, and I thought i'd retell it to you because I had to retell it to a friend who recently told me his career was over.

But as I said, that was just the first time that had ever happened in a fully professional setting.

In two thousand and one, and I was just reading this, I guess about a year ago.

I came across it somewhere online.

I was reading it for a punchline in and of itself.

It was a piece in Sports illustrated by a man named Chris Ballard, I believe, and Chris Baward wrote an article about my being fired by Fox Sports, which he wrote as I had resigned from Fox Sports, and went on to explain that I did not respond as Sports Illustrated's request by emails and phones for comment.

I never received any of them because it never occurred to him that when they fired me and told everybody I had resigned, they cut off my access to my email and my phone, and they said to him when he wanted to talk to me, oh, just send him an email.

He'll get back to you.

And I didn't, and thus he made me look like a jerk.

In any event, The article explained in two thousand and one that having gone through ESPN and now ESPN's sort of mini me rival, Fox Sports News, that there was nothing left for me to do in the business.

I had tried news briefly in nineteen ninety seven and nineteen ninety eight.

Clearly my career in both fields was over.

I could not possibly work again in television, in news or in sports.

We're now coming up next year if I get to it.

Well, it's been twenty three, twenty four year.

Okay.

I recently saw this article and was inspired to look for it online because Chris Ballard was retiring from Sports Illustrated and I'm still here one question that came up as I was retelling the story of my various career ending moments that did not in fact end my career from my friend who's very worried about this, was how I managed not to have my career.

And when Ballard's premise was not completely wrong, he was certainly looking at what he thought happened in television.

He was not the TV sports writer for Sports Illustrated for very long.

It was not a natural subject for him.

Most people who did this job thought that it involved simply watching sports on TV and then writing what they thought as opposed to understanding an industry or its complexities, or its parameters or its sort of weird voodoo customs.

In any event, I said, well, look, it's not very difficult to survive these things.

You just have to acknowledge that perhaps your next job, after some sort of cataclysmic departure from an ESPN or a Fox Sports or an MSNBC or wherever else, perhaps it's not going to pay you quite as much as the last one did.

And so, when my agent and I began to look around for more work in two thousand and one, and I might add that after Fox fired me, they had to pay me for another eight months at one hundred thousand dollars a year.

And if you can't survive on a job requires you to do nothing for eight months and pays you eight hundred thousand dollars that you can salt away.

If you can't survive on that and enjoy your life while you're doing it, you're doing things wrong.

In any event, what I said was just the next job.

Just take a job that allows you to do what you can do and do it well, and you will succeed in it.

You have talent a lot of other people don't.

You will be low costs, so they're much more likely to overlook anything that happened in the past, and most importantly, if it is successful, you can then hold them up on the second contract negotiation.

So I went first to CNN after the Fox Sports experience started to work for them for not a lot of money, and although they did not ultimately exercise this, they signed me to a contract to do the eight PM show on CNN for a certain large amount of money, and there were two finalists they wanted us lined up in advance, and they made the clever decision to choose Connie Chung instead of me, but they had sort of reauthorized me.

They had re established me.

By it was well known within the industry that I was the runner up for the job at eight o'clock, and within six months of them saying, nah, we think Connie's the right person to lead us into the future here, within six months of that, I was doing the eight o'clock show on MSNBC for in fact, twice what the agreement had been at CNN, And within three years they'd signed me to a new deal that was worth three times that more than I had ever made in my life.

So the key thing to it is to be flexible financially.

You sock them for the money while you're successful.

And then by the way, once again, if you can't succeed in the business, if you can't succeed in life, when you have received in one year anything north of three million dollars in one year, four million dollars, maybe I forget what the actual financial floor is.

But if you've made that much money in one year and can't live basically off that and simply in interest from the bank that that will provide you, if you can't do that, you must have some sort of addiction to drugs, because guess what, you can go a long way still.

I mean, yeah, it's true, four million dollars is what it used to be, but guess what it is now.

It's still really good.

I never failed to see one of these articles in which somebody who's lost a job paying in you know, the tens of millions of dollars, and I always finished.

Now It's like, yes, he's finished.

Now he can sit on a beach, he can hire somebody to do his exercise for him.

He can sit on a beach and eat the money, and it won't make a difference.

He doesn't have to do it again in any event.

So the pattern here that I have described already has continued in subsequent years, even after I came back from the dead after my experience in Boston, where I was dubbed the dark prints of TV Sports and was winning awards in Los Angeles the next year.

Although, to be fair, after that quote in nineteen eighty four about how I was potentially a great talent, I did get down to about my last one hundred dollars in the bank, and actually I actually had to borrow money from my dear sister to get on the bus to take me to the airport in New York so I could take the flight to Los Angeles to start my job there.

That's how close I cut it.

Another week and I would have been borrowing money for food.

That's where I was.

But you have to be willing to walk that tight rope to pull this off in any event.

So that was Boston became the Los Angeles job, and the Los Angeles job.

When they eliminated that, it's like, well, his career is over now.

The next job was ESPN.

ESPN led to NBC.

When that didn't work out and I pushed to get out of there, they sold me to Fox for a million dollars and they paid me a lot of money and continued to pay me a lot of money even after they stopped putting me on TV.

And that led to a doldrum period where I got to read about the guy who's now retired from Sports Illustrated explaining what network will sign him now, what team will sign him now?

Whither Keith?

This is two thousand and one.

I was forty two years old.

It's like I get nostalgic reading that, going, yeah, you were forty two years old.

They fired you at that point people thought your career was over.

Yeah, but I was forty two.

My hair was dark most places in any event, So that led into the MSNBC job, and the MSNBC job, as sort of messy as that ended, the second one, anyway led to the Current TV job, and as disastrous as that was, since it was kind of a confidence trick, there was a day where between the money I got for leaving NBC and the money I got for joining Current TV, I made sixty eight million dollars in one day.

I had to sew a lot of people afterwards to get all of it, but I got just about all of it.

In any event, I'm now boasting back to the point of this whole story.

An old friend of mine came in when I was doing the videos for GQ The Closer and The Resistance in twenty sixteen.

In twenty seventeen, came in to watch me do this and started to ask very very graciously and very gently about, well, isn't this something of a come down for you from the MSNBC experience where you had a staff, And I said, well, first off, the MSNBC experience consisted of two cameramen and a floor director and me and sometimes a guest in a studio.

The staff, whereas they were all certainly dedicated to the project, consisted of basically a core of six or seven people.

It never really felt like a big deal.

I know it had more influence than I was ever led to understand, but it wasn't like, oh, well, you know those movies that you did with Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor and Tom Cruise, and now you're just sitting at home with a camera.

It didn't have that feel in the slightest.

And I said to him, did you see the thing from CBS News the other day?

And he went, what thing from CBS News?

I said, don't you have the Google at the New York Times?

And he said yes.

I said, Google, Social Flow, Facebook, and he did on his phone and he read this political pundit Keith Alderman found a way to channel concerns about mister Trump.

This is July twenty seventeen, started hosting a series of political commentary and special interviews titled The Resistance with Keith Olderman, with the first episode featured on GQ on November sixteenth, twenty sixteen, reaching fifty four million people equivalent to one in six Americans, And I said, look, I understand that if you measure things solely by the idea that I'm on your TV every night, Well, yeah, that the doing a video and coming into a studio that isn't really designed for TV and there's an echo in it might seem like the end of my career.

Fifty four million people saw that video and interacted with it in some kind.

They either forwarded it, or watched it, or put a comment on it, or sometimes all three.

That was, in fact the number one political video or story on Facebook in the period of time after Donald Trump's election.

I think that's something of a success.

And I said, by this point, I don't need the damn money.

The money I'm making from doing this is going to dog charities.

Okay, So we could go on at length about other small versions of that.

I once went back and forth with this guy who now is one of the people at Puck News who insisted that I had not been negotiating with the then chairman of NBC Jeff Schell, about returning to MSNBC in twenty nineteen twenty and twenty one, because NBC News had insisted it wasn't true.

And I said, who told you that, and they said a spokesman.

And I said to this guy, his name was Dylan Byers, I said, well, who was the spokesman.

Well, it's just supposed to be a spokesman, I said.

So.

They wouldn't even put their own name on it, not even a made up name Jim Jones, NBC News spokesman, which would have been, by the way, appropriate name for a series of NBC News spokespeople.

They didn't even do that.

And he said no.

They were insistent, there's never been any contact between you and Jeff Shell.

And I went hang on, and I called up from my phone twenty three emails and texts from Jeff Shell.

I photo shot at them, I screen shotted them and gave him to the guy.

And I don't think this guy Buyers has recovered since his worldview was totally destroyed.

He was writing a story about how I had deteriorated to the point where I was hallucinating about being in contact with Jeff Shell from NBC News or from NBC about returning to NBC News and MSNBC when we were deep into negotiations about it, and we're delayed only by the pandemic.

And as I pointed out here before the vetos of certain people working on the air at MSNBC, most of whose careers I started.

But that's another story which I've already discussed.

His whole worldview was shattered by this because should do be He could not comprehend that an NBC News spokesperson would lie to him, And he really said this.

He said, I don't understand why would they lie to me?

And I said, you don't have to understand that the idea that they would not put their own name on this statement might have suggested to you that they were lying to you.

Oh, I'll keep that in mind.

Well, he didn't keep that in mind.

But that's again another story about Dylan Byers, and we'll get to him somedayday too, somewhere soon.

Somebody asked towards the end of July twenty twenty four about my recent comeback and how I'd just gotten back into political commentary now with the new podcast, and I said, it's two years old.

On August first, it was approaching five hundred episodes.

We're doing like a million listens a week, a million audience participants a week.

I mean, it's challenging certain hours on CNN for total audience.

Good God, what do you mean recent comeback?

But this is, as I said, if I had ten million dollars for every time somebody told me my career was over, A career is sort of over because I'm now of advanced years and now I've done something that I really didn't understand until the year twenty eleven, until I left MSNBC to go to Current TV, and there was built into this transfer a three month period of time where I could not work anywhere in television.

I had not had such a period of time except for the aforementioned period when I was taken care of family members who were in trouble in nineteen eighty five after the Boston experience, I hadn't had such a length of time without being on the air somewhere.

And in fact, during that period in nineteen eighty five, I did a lot of freelance work just to get the cash that I didn't have to borrow from my sister, who was, by the way, seventeen years old at the time.

Yeah, Jen, have you got a twenty Yeah, I need to go buy a cigar.

In any event, the point of this was until twenty eleven, i'd really not had a day or at least a week without deadlines media deadlines.

You have to have this written by eight o'clock because the show is starting with or without you.

I hadn't had a day or a week without those since I was sixteen years old.

I was to my shock.

I found I really enjoyed not having those deadlines.

And when we went back on the air in Current TV in June of twenty eleven, I was kind of disappointed, not because the studio was actually not a studio but more like a you know, a portal to Hell and not that part of it, which was disappointing, but not as much as I really enjoyed, you know, not shaving every weekday and not having to write, you know, ten thousand words a day, and not having to read the twelve seconds of script inside the twelve second window before the sound hit, and just the number of deadlines I suddenly did and a half.

So since twenty eleven, I decided to cut back to four days work a week generally speaking, that's my concession to my mid sixties.

And as I was preparing this to tell you this story, in light of the experience I had with my friend who thought his career was over, and I was reciting this, I realized that I had left out in telling him the story, and I have deliberately left it out of the chronological order of these tales of the actual first time I was told my career was over, I had forgotten completely about the day that the sports director what was then a prominent radio station told me that not only would he and the news director there not hire me, even though I had been told I was a candidate for a sports job there, but he told me that I would never get a job in radio or television of any prominence because of my attitude.

No one will ever hire you.

His name was Ernie Jackson, and I believe he left the town we were in to get a job selling airtime on a radio station in Cincinnati, and after that, I don't know what the hell happened to him.

The news director was a guy named Bob Lynch, and he shortly thereafter moved to a job that I think he spent his entire professional career at traffic reporter in a plane above the beautiful city of Rochester, New York the date that mister Jackson, on mister Lynch's behalf told me that my career was over.

The first time I was told you will never again work in this business, the first good evening and welcome to the end of my career, was October nineteen seventy seven.

I've done all the damage I can do here, and yet thank you for listening.

Most of our countdown music was arranged, produced, and performed by Brian Ray and John Phillip Schanel.

Our musical directors have countdown.

Neither of their careers is over.

It was produced by Tko Brothers.

Mister Ray on the guitars, bass and drums, mister Chanelle handling, orchestration and keyboards.

Our satirical and pithy musical comments are by the best baseball stadium organist ever, Nancy Faust, who's also heard that same message and whose career is also not over.

The Olberman theme from ESPN two, written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN, Inc.

Is the sports music I can't speak to mister Davis.

I don't know him personally, but ah, how many times has ESPN been declared dead since nineteen seventy nine and it's still here.

Other music arranged and performed by the group No Horns allowed.

I don't think they're still in business.

Individually, They're all still in business, but I don't think the group performs anymore, so maybe their career is over.

My announcer today was my friend Johnny Banks from Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul.

His career ate over everything else was as always my fault.

So that's countdown for today.

Day two hundred and forty six of America held hostage again, just twenty seven days until the scheduled end of Trump's lame duck lame brained term, unless he is removed sooner by MAGA than Jeffrey Epstein or Tom I put the hoe in home Man, or the pavement on Trump's hand or whatever.

The next scheduled countdown is Thursday.

Until then, I'm Keith Olberman.

Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and good luck.

Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio.

For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.