Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio.

Now that we can say with some certainty that if Tyler Robinson indeed shot Charlie Kirk, he shot him for personal reasons, that he saw Kirk as a direct threat to someone he loved, That Robinson was not a stochastic proxy murderer from Antifa or the gropers or the right wingers who had so recently called Kirk a fraud, you know, like Laura Loomer.

It is also clear that there is truly only one person whose words created, amplified, mainstreamed, and manufactured the nightmarish environment that has led to Charlie Kirk's death.

The leading threat in this country in this moment to the safety and the lives of conservatives and Republicans and MAGA commentators, The leading threat in this country in this moment, to the safety and the lives of conservatives and Republicans and MAGA politicians, The leading threat in this country in this moment, to the safety and the lives of conservatives and Republicans and MAGA civilians is not George Soros, is not Antifa, is not Gavin Newsom, is not a Democrat.

He's not a liberal.

It's not a socialist.

It's not an immigrant, it's not a transgendered person.

The leading threat in this country in this moment, to the safety and the lives of conservatives and Republicans and maga is Donald Trump, the individual who, for a decade has slowly, but steadily and ceaselessly erased the lines past the most partisan of partisans would go.

The individual who has mainstreamed political threats, the individual who has normalized political violence, the individual who has perfected stochastic terrorism.

Is Donald Trump.

The individual who's done the most to put the lives and welfare and safety of all of us directly and by his perverted lead and demonic inspiration of others, is Donald Trump.

The America in which Charlie Kirk was murdered, the America in which Melissa and Mark Hortman were murdered, the America in which Paul Pelosi was beaten, the America in which Donald Trump himself was shot, is Donald Trump's America.

This is Donald Trump's America, and all those who are endangered by it, and all those who fall dead at its feet, are the victims of one man, and one man alone, Donald Trump.

The institutionalization of vengeance is Donald Trump.

The introduction of political persecution is Donald Trump.

The inspiration for the only attempted island overthrow and coup against the government of the United States is Donald Trump.

The weaponization of the mob and the government against individuals he names and hopes somebody else hurts is Donald Trump.

The transformation of a flawed democracy into a lethal autocracy is Donald Trump.

The terror is Donald Trump.

At the heart of all the answers to the endless right wing obsession with the indefensible murder of Charlie Kirk and the right winger's equally indefensible exploitation of the indefensible murder of Charlie Kirk, is the reality that all of this, all of this in front of us right now, all of this in this past decade of destabilization and rot and destruction from within, all of this ahead of us in an uncertain but daunting decade ahead.

All of this, all of this, including the true answer to whose words killed Charlie Kirk, is Donald Trump.

Trump said he could quote shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose voters.

Trump reportedly asked his own defense secretary about handling protesters.

Quote can't you just shoot them.

Trump said he wanted to see Liz Cheney surrounded by nine men with guns.

Trump said Hillary Clinton's secret Service agents quote should disarm, take their guns away.

Let's see what happens to her.

Trump said she could be kept from picking judges by his quote Second Amendment people.

Trump demanded of his followers that they quote liberate Michigan, Liberate Minnesota, liberate Virginia, and save the Second Amendment.

Trump told the proud Boys fascist vigilantes to stand back and stand by.

Trump poasted of his own violent fantasy that he somehow gave an adult teacher a black eye in the second grade.

Trump sent the National Guard and even troops positioned the military to molested civilians to help ice, terrorize residents and quell trouble that did not exist in Los Angeles and Washington, d C.

And threatened to do so in Chicago and Memphis and Baltimore and elsewhere.

Trump reportedly wanted to keep migrants out with a moat filled with snakes or alligators.

Trump spent the George Floyd protests in Washington in an underground white House bunker while protesters were outside being attacked with teargas.

Trump pardoned January sixth terrorists who tried to kill police officers.

Trump posted what was claimed to be Obama's address, and one of the January sixth terrorists went there.

Trump said judges were quote on a mission to keep people in this country so they can quote rape again.

Trump said the press was quote the enemy of the people.

Trump said the president of the United States was the destroyer of democracy.

Trump said the president of the United States was a quote threat to democracy.

Trump posted a photoshop of that President Joe Biden hogtied, kidnapped, and thrown in the back of a pickup.

Trump posted a photoshop of himself standing behind the District Attorney of New York with a baseball bat.

Trump said, as a protester was murdered by fascists at Charlottesville that there were quote very fine people on both sides.

Trump laughed at the attack on the pelosis.

Trump responded to his own indictment by threatening, if you go after me, I'm coming after you.

Trump said a Republican who had attacked a reporter was quote my kind of guy.

Trump said his followers should quote knock the crap out of those who protested him.

Trump said one of those protesting him.

I'd like to punch him in the face unquote.

Trump said of another protester that he had quote ties to Isis.

Trump told American Jews who voted for Democrats that they had quote better get their act together and be quote more grateful to him before quote it's too late.

Trump said he was not familiar with the murdered Minnesota Democrat Melissa Hortman or her husband.

Trump reposted a video of a supporter saying the only good Democrat is a dead Democrat.

Trump inspired physical attacks and threats against Judge Chutkin, Judge Curiel, Judge Engern, Judge Edgerun's clerk, the justices of the Colorado Supreme Court, the Secretary of State for Maine, Special Counsel Smith, Attorney General James, District Attorney Bragg, District Attorney Willis, and so many others, hundreds thousands of us.

The list is so long it eventually even gets down to me and a woman newscaster I used to live with.

And most broadly and most impactfully, Trump said, the Democrats quote are the scum of the earth, and the left was quote the scum that spent the last four years trying to destroy our country.

Leaders cannot call their political opponent opponents, not seasoned fascists and enemies of the state because they disagree with their policy priorities.

I mean, this is something we should have learned in grade school.

This type of language spurs, spurs on depraved people, derange people who take that as a cue.

But it has not just been ugly.

Little Johnson this week unintentionally describing Donald Trump, describing all there is to Donald Trump, without which there would be no Donald Trump.

But Johnson was also simultaneously unknowingly describing somebody else who is in this equation at the moment.

I mean, Joe Biden is a bumbling dementia phild Alzheimer's corrupt tyrant who should honestly be put in prison and or given the death penalty for his crimes against America.

The late Charlie Kirk July twenty fourth, twenty twenty three, of whom the laugh out loud stupid Congressman Troy Nells said yesterday that if Kirk had lived in Biblical times, he would have been the thirteenth Disciple.

I guess nails meant of Jesus.

I can't imagine he's serious.

Charlie Kirk was killed in Donald Trump's America.

It is not just that Trump is the leading threat in this country in this moment to the safety and the lives of Conservatives and Republicans and maga it is that he has been for a decade.

Charlie Kirk is dead, as so many others are dead or threatened, or wounded or living in fear because there is a Donald Trump.

As to what precipitated all this, the current state of the Charlie Kirk shooting investigation is almost nothing but a string of extraordinary ironies.

The first of them as the wild, unstable right wing now openly targets and blames transgendered people for the death of Kirk.

The iron is that the transgender person in this case put her country and the law ahead of her own love for the alleged shooter.

He told her to delete his messages, not to talk to the cops.

She preserved the messages and everything else and gave it all to the cops.

She was a model citizen.

The magas are acting like vigilantes, waiting to get at her, waiting to break the law, while she put America first.

Second irony, The discord channel on which Tyler Robinson chatted the place full of people.

Pam Bondi has promised to pursuit of the ends of the Earth turns out to have been broken hearted at what he did.

Calm mature all Second Amendment types who played a lot of video games and didn't understand the whole trans thing, But after he confessed to them, they were praying for him, and for Charlie Kirk's soul, and for Charlie Kirk's family, and for Robinson's family.

Third irony, Trump's minions are trying to exploit Kirk's death.

The most popular phrase used by an adherent to Trump is Reichstag fire.

Kirk's adherents they are enraged by how Trump is proceeding.

The blind, stupid world of the Trump Cabinet with the intellectual depth and literal breadth of an Internet meme will not crash and burn because of Pam Bondy, but the confidence of even the most lurid maga in Pambondy is draining out.

They all reposted Kirk from May of twenty twenty four quote hate speech does not exist legally in America.

Kirk wrote, there's ugly speech, there's gross speech, there's evil speech, and all of it is protected by the First Amendment.

Keep America free.

Unquote Charlie Kirk.

Pam Bondi promptly insisted hate speech exists legally in America, and none of it is protected by the First Amendment.

And she'll find somebody to prosecute for talking Charlie Kirk to death.

Better look at the White House.

There's free speech and then there's hate speech.

And there is no place, especially now, especially.

After what happened to Charlie in our society.

Do you see more law enforcement going after these groups who are using hate speech and putting cuffs on people.

So we show them that some action is better than no action.

We will absolutely target you, go after you if you are targeting anyone with hate speech anything.

And that's across the aisle.

The FCC chair, Brendan Gebel's car said, no, the First Amendment protects virtually all speech.

Quote.

Our Attorney General wrote, the occasionally clear headed Eric Erickson quote is apparently a moron.

I have met Miss Bondi, thus I can confirm this for mister Erickson, She's a moron.

The last irony, of course, is that actor the tug of war over who radicalized Tyler Robinson and who is to be blamed left right Groper's Antifa.

The more and more we learn, the more and more it is evident that the shooting was almost a political and certainly personal.

There has been pushback from almost every quarter about the texts that tell them that personal story, and no, they don't read like the texts of your average twenty two year old.

There are, however, two salient facts to remember when you reach that conclusion.

One, if those texts were faked or altered, that would instantly end the careers of everybody involved in this investigation and prosecution, and would result in the immediate dismissal of all the charges against Robinson.

Period.

If there is one thing left in the American form of government, it is the chain of evidence.

And as we know, if there is the slightest thing to miss or even just sloppy about the chain of evidence, or you can make it look like there's something sloppy about the chain of evidence, your case is over.

Ask oj Simpson and Mark Furman and Judge Itto.

Secondly, yes, complete sentences by text.

Who knew that was possible?

I don't want to feed cliches about groups or religions.

But bluntly Robinson is or was a Mormon, and I say this as a compliment as a believer in complete sentences and ties.

The last complete sentence that will be sent electronically in this country by somebody wearing a tie as he hits sin will be sent by a Mormon.

Probably.

Robinson was also raised by hard right, gun obsessed Trumpists, but a slight change in direction.

He was bisexual.

Reportedly, he said he was in love with a biological man transitioning to being a woman.

He saw the mounting scapegoating of trans people.

He heard Charlie Kirk selling it hard.

He wrote, quote, some hate can't be negotiated out.

If he shot him, he shot him.

Certainly somebody shot him.

At the moment in his speech that Kirk started to connect all transgendered people, started to try to put cause and effect between transitioning and shooting up schools.

To the suspect, Charlie Kirk was threatening someone he loved.

Ultimately, all of this nightmare may have not been more complicated than that it may have been no more hard to understand than that the alleged shooter felt Charlie Kirk was threatening someone he loved.

My thanks go out today to that pimple in a suit, Cash Patel.

He is the latest to reinvigorate trump Stein.

Honest to god, I can't believe I'm saying this, but Cash Patel is dumber than I thought he was.

You've seen most of the files.

Who if anyone did Epstein traffic these young women too?

Besides himself himself?

There is no credible information none.

If there were, I would bring the case yesterday that he trafficked to other individual And the information we have, again is limited.

So the answer is no one for the information that we have in the files, in the case.

File, in the Epstein file, was there that creepy birthday message and Donald Trump had written Depstein.

That's what I was trying to tell you.

You raise a great point.

The estate of Jeffrey Epstein has a voluminous amount of information that they have not released before.

Okay, so that's great.

So wouldn't be great of FBI subpoena the State of Jeffrey est for all that information.

The estate is under no obligation to provide the material, even pursuing too a subpoena.

That's a great joint.

Yeah, that's just false, okay and just false.

You're the frickin' FBI.

You can subpene in the information from this state, and you better do that.

Representative Ted Lou getting Patel to reveal a the doj N FBI have not subpoenaed the estate of Jeffrey Epstein and B that Patel is so stupid he doesn't know that.

Yeah, if if they subpoenaed the estate of Jeffrey Epstein in the estate would have to provide whatever was subpoena or go to court to try to quash the subpoena.

So now there's another Trump cover up courtesy Cash Bettel.

Why hasn't the FBI subpoena of the Epstein estate, especially when Trump claims the estate's biggest contribution to our knowledge of that straight line from Epstein to Trump is a fake.

Representative Jared Moskowitz then trapped Patel into promising to investigate the Epstein estate and how they made or provided or promulgated a fake documents attributed to the president.

Ooh, maybe they did it with time travel.

And then the Republicans in the House Judiciary Committee created yet another Trump cover up of Trumpstein the Democrats moved to subpoena the suspicious activity reports about Epstein by his bankers.

The Republicans blocked that move before Representative Mary Gay Scanlan could finish reading it aloud.

Thank you, boys, we couldn't not keep the story of the Trump cover ups of Epstein's pedophilia alive without you.

Let me also mention Phil Pulty, the Trump banking lunatic who has tried to get Fed Governor Eliza Cook fired for allegedly listing two primary residents on mortgage apps, until oops, turned out she listed one of them as a vacation home.

Remember him.

Then it turned out that three Trump Cabinet members Zelden Chavezda Riemer, and Duffy actually did do that legal contradiction, if not crime.

Then it turned out Pulty's own father and stepmother did it.

Then we found out they had to stop Treasury Secretary Scott Besson from beating the crap out of Pulty.

Now Bloomberg News reports a source tells them Scott Bessen did it too.

However did they get hold of that?

Here the judge in the Luigi Mengione trial, we're killing the healthcare CEO throughout the state's terrorism charge because well, because that charge was bullshit.

It's murder.

He's facing the death penalty on a parallel federal charge.

And just because a murder has a political undertone or overtone, that's not necessarily terrorism.

And Semaphore broke a new Data for Progress poll on what rank and file Democrats really want their party to do, and guess what it isn't Senator Fetterman.

It's none of this centrist bi partisan crap weakness and none of this Chuck Schumer diffidence bullshit, especially about the just starting prospect of the government shutdown.

I'll just read what Semaphore wrote.

Shows seven to ten Democrats support their party with holding votes unless Republicans make changes, even if it risks a shutdown, while a similar share backed their party taking a firmer stand than they did in March.

What's more, Democrats are arguing voters will blame the Republicans who control government for a shutdown, and the poll shows their voters share that view eighty two to fourteen.

Eighty two eighty two percent of Democrats believe that the Republicans will get the blame.

Large majorities of Democrats also think the party should fight President Trump harder even if they don't win.

House Republicans plan to vote this week on a short term spending bill that would extend current funding levels through November twenty one, with the Senate following suit.

Oh no, we need more centrism.

The ideal Democratic candidate would be Josh Guardrout.

One last note, Yes, it is disgusting that the Brits are giving President Dictator an unprecedented second state visit, but that's largely because we're missing the point.

The UK's Prime Minister Kure Starmer and is seeming obsequiousness to Trump already got his country a much better tariff deal from Trump than anybody else got.

You know what, this second trip is clearly an effort to do.

It is, in effect, to take even more money out of Trump's pockets and give it to England.

We should be applauding this.

Starmer and King Charles are playing Trump not like a two dollar banjo, but like a ninety nine cent banjo.

Also, even as Trump revealed to ABC's John Carl that he thinks the term hate speech means people who hate Trump, and even as he threatened the Australian Reporter, and even as they're trying to reduce the length of time that foreign reporters can stay in this country, which sounds kind of vaguely like a distant cousin of sealing the borders.

A lawsuit has been filed or is going to be filed or will never be filed, by Trump against the New York Times because they told the truth about him, and he doesn't know what legal malice means.

He thinks again it's being mean to him because he's a stupid guy, and the lawyers know that the money from a stupid guy counts as much as the money from a smart guy.

This lawsuit, one wag compared it to putting a paper bag over a gun and pointing it at you, only there's no gun, just the paper bag.

Our dying news media, despite all this in this country, our dying news media, might learn something from the British television network Channel four.

While our TV types are still sucking up to Trump on his royal Viva Oh Boy sparklers.

Trump got from Channel four this greeting upon arrival Channel Four's marathon newscast of Trump's lies.

Channel four called it Trump versus the Truth, while only his top one hundred lies, even a marathon couldn't get them all.

In the Jimmy Kimmels story, Bob Iger's moral collapse, and how fascism can only actually be institutionalized in this country if companies like Disney make sure it happens, and yesterday they did something that may have made sure it will happen.

The full Eiger story, and I'll explain to you why Jimmy Kimmel has no recourse after he has been essentially dropped by ABC at least for the time being.

That's next.

This is countdown, all right.

I will try to tell you that Jimmy Kimmel's story while suppressing my rage over it.

On Monday night, Jimmy Kimmel in his program on ABC Late Night said, quote, we hit some new lows over the weekend with the Maga gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it.

There is some reason to think that to say Charlie Kirk's murder was anything other than one of them was a little broad.

Otherwise, that script could have gone into any newscast in America.

It is that close to what has proven to be true, And that statement was made before the news conference explaining all of the correspondence between the alleged murderer and his girlfriend and the motivation for it.

Yes, that's all they have done since Charlie Kirk died, and many of them are doing them, as I mentioned the other day, from a position of knowing only of the Charlie Kirk who was a Bible thumper.

This weird position we are in in which somebody can have two sets of video feeds.

One is seen by normal people like presumably you and me, although I don't necessarily mean to speak for you, and another that is seen by ultra right wingers and Bible thumpers and religious nuts and people who would never have heard that cut that I played earlier Charlie Kirk saying that Joe Biden should be executed.

They would only have heard the ones about stay in school and read your Bible and the family's most important and they would never have seen the rest of it.

So there are some people operating from a position of at least authenticity within their own world.

Then there are the politicians and the political figures who know Charlie Kirk for what he was and are taking advantage of the fact that there are people who do not know what Charlie Kirk really was and the kind of filth that he put out every day, hour upon hour in the guise of being the Bible thumper.

Jimmy Kimmel cut through that.

In the wake of the cancelation of Stephen Colbert.

I continued to maintain that CBS's decision about Colbert was actually almost ninety nine percent financial.

These shows are not making money, and just because you have the top rated one does not mean you are not losing money for your company.

The whole genre is dying.

The audiences under fifty under thirty from which these shows were springing and making all kinds of money, they are leaving in droves the percentages in just the last eighteen months, I believe the audience number under thirty for Kimmel and for Colbert and for the NBC shows was now down fifty percent.

It's not sustainable.

However, the Kimmel move, in which they announced late yesterday that Kimmel was off the air effective immediately on the ABC network because a series of local stations owned by a company called Nexstar, which has its own history of repression of freedom speech, that those stations would not carry Kimmel and were pressuring ABC to drop or suspend the show, and ABC did this also late afternoon yesterday.

The man I referred to in the first segment Brendan Carr, Brendan Goebbels.

Car did something that is quite literally exactly something that Goebels did in the early years of Nazi Germany in his role as the media controller and chief propagandist for Adolf Hitler.

He silenced all criticism by taking the broadcasting companies.

In those days, almost all broadcasting in Germany was radio.

He took all the private radio companies away from their owners, the few that maintained some kind of viability, and also the newspapers.

The few that maintained viability in Nazi Germany were the ones that never criticized the Nazis thereafter.

That's what they want.

Brendan Carr may have said something appropriate about the First Amendment, but of course he doesn't want the First Amendment to apply to private broadcasting because his argument was, we can take the licenses away from ABC, ABC, the network, the Jimmy Kimmel Show, Fox News Channel, all of cable.

There are no licenses for them.

There are licenses for the individual stations that ABC owns, that Fox owns, that CBS owns, that NBC owns.

There are individual licenses, and they can be challenged, and they can be taken away from the owners no matter who they are.

Usually it's under the most dire and extraordinary of circumstances.

I don't know the last time a license was actually taken away from an American TV license holder.

Now the Trump administration, under this despot car would take somebody's license away for being critical of Trump.

There is no pretext being made anymore about why they would go after ABC licenses.

The other reason they're going after ABC licenses is they know Bob Iger is now a collaborator.

He is a quizzling Bob Iger who stood up many times, not just for ABC News, for ABC Sports, for ESPN after Disney and ABC bought ESPN.

Why I was there, stood up for me personally.

Has now abandoned all of that because Bob Iger is the classic person who is vulnerable to professional blackmail.

Bob Iger retired as chairman of ABC and found that he no longer had anything to do.

He wanted the power back.

His successor was not who he thought he was, and he believed and those around him believed too, that he was essential to the future success of Disney, and so he Jay lenoed this guy who succeeded him.

It is pardon parcel of retirement.

I have felt it too, watching people who succeeded me and gone, what the hell are they doing?

Why did I leave?

Why did I semi retire?

Why did I go into this?

Instead of saying there, imagine when it's the level of finance, tens of millions of dollars in salary, hundreds of millions of dollars in value that people like Bob Iger make.

And so Bob Iger came back.

And Bob Iger is a man who wants the money and wants the job, and frankly, he is a coward who values his job over democracy and ultimately values his job running Disney over America.

He has just sold America out by taking Kimmel off the air till further notice.

It is extraordinary.

I'm not utterly surprised.

On Tuesday, Kimmel came back and said, many in Magaland are working very hard to capitalize on the murder of Charlie Kirk.

Yesterday, JD.

Vance, who himself famously called Trump's America as Hitler, hosted the Charlie Kirk Podcast from the White House, where he pointed his little mascara stained finger directly at the left, and then they played the tape of Vance saying most of the lunatics in American politics today are proud members of the far left.

And Kimmel came back on and said, and by statistical fact he means complete bullshit.

Again, probably wouldn't use the word bullshit in a newscast.

Otherwise completely accurate and worthy of an inclusion on ABC World News.

Let me explain to you why they did this again.

Primarily, Iiger did it to protect Iiger to some degree, he did it to protect ABC.

They already gave up sixteen million dollars to Trump as a bribe to keep them from suing.

Further over, the Stephanopoulos quotes about Trump and the Egene Carrol case, so there's already a history there.

They already knew Bob Eiger was a soft target who could be blackmailed into doing what they wanted.

The Kimmel stuff, although it is factually verifiable, still so pointed that it became an easy weapon to use against Iiger, and no doubt there were phone calls made directly to people around Eigre saying, we will go after your licenses, we will go after your theme parks, we will go after everything Disney has that's worth anything.

Ironically, of course, the station licenses are probably the least valuable thing in the equation, because local TV stations are not something you would want to invest in, even if you were only investing fifty dollars, a local TV station is not a big deal anymore.

The network properties, the syndication rights to shows on networks, the shows that networks produce or are involved in the production of, that's a different story.

But the local stations, yeah, you're probably better off just affiliating your programs with independent stations that you do not own.

Nevertheless, the implication here was we already bought you whore, Blifie, we are going to make you whore some more, or we are coming after what we already told you was yours, and we wouldn't come after again.

And Iiger folded.

It is shameful.

It is the only thing he will be remembered for.

After a tremendous career fifty years in broadcasting.

As I said, personal relationship with me that dates back literally to before I went on the air professionally in nineteen seventy nine, some of the greatest advice I have ever been given.

I always had tremendous respect for him, and he made overtures again and again, offering me the opportunity to go back to ESPN after I left.

Called when I was leaving, expressed his regrets, criticized the management beneath him, saying he didn't know I was about to leave.

I had all the respect in the world for this man until the last year, because there is nothing more dangerous than a man who retires and sees that the only thing next in his life is his own death, whenever that may come.

So you have to go back and reclaim your old job, and once you reclaim it, you will kill to maintain it, metaphorically speaking.

And what he just metaphorically killed was freedom of commentary in this country.

Several people ask me in the wake of this announcement late last afternoon early evening, can't Kimmel sue about this?

Isn't this obviously damage to Jimmy Kimmel and against the contract, And doesn't the contract say you're doing the show and you're being paid this much money.

All television contracts are pay or play.

All the company has to do is pay you.

They don't have to play you.

So the roughly sixteen million dollars that Jimmy Kimmel is still owed in the twenty twenty five to twenty six television season that just began and ends May June July of next year, as long as they pay him that money, he has no recourse.

If they do not absolutely slander him in any announcement about canceling the show or in any suspension of the show, if they do not materially damage him, he has no recourse.

He can only do one of two things, take the money, or come out and slam ABC back and then probably forfeit the money because then they could fire him for cause.

And I know this intimately because this is exactly what Fox did to me on a much smaller scale, literally one twentieth size, in two thousand and one.

Fox wanted me out.

They were overspending on their cable sports operation, and I was something like forty percent of the budget.

When I found that out, I sold my house because I knew the thing couldn't last much longer.

But what Fox realized early in two thousand and one was they were paying me an inordinate amount of money for something that was not going to last much longer, and they needed to take a gamble.

Yes, they owed me one hundred thousand dollars a month for the remaining eight months of my contracts, but they could probably piss me off enough that I would say something incredibly stupid and they could fire me for cause instead of paying me eight hundred thousand dollars to do nothing for the next eight months while I was free to look around and try to get a new job and then trash them once I got the new job, and not before bad call on their part on my worst day.

I'm always going to take that eight hundred thousand dollars to do nothing and just save up all the terrible things I intended to say about Fox, which I have been saying NonStop since January first, two thousand and two.

But it's exactly the same situation.

There is nothing, and there was nothing in my contract, and there is nothing in Jimmy Kimmel's contract that says you have to be on the air.

You do not have to be on the air.

You only have to be paid.

That's it.

There are no other elements.

Sometimes something can be twisted in such a way that you may be able to say to your employer, you took me off that show, you have breached my contract, you owe me all the money, and I'm free to leave now, which also happened to me at NBC.

But you really cannot force your way back onto a television show or onto a television network just because you have a contract.

Your contract is to do the show if they let you.

Their contract is to pay you whether you do the show or not.

So no, there is no recourse for Jimmy Kimmel, and there is, efidentally, no recourse for America.

ABC could have stood up, could have whether the storm that would be coming, could have fought back, And unfortunately, as I explained earlier, of all times, for an egotistical old man holding on to his last remaining glory before death, for him to be in charge of a company like Disney, this is the worst for the purposes of freedom of press in America, freedom of comment, freedom of political expression, simply freedom.

Bob Iger on the side of the devils, taking it out on America so he can maintain his power.

I don't know how this turns out.

Perhaps Bob will get some sort of inspiration from the realization that he's about to sell his country to the fascists and participate even further in that process.

Perhaps the ABC people will all walk out.

The problem, of course, is this the same financial considerations that essentially made the Stephen Colbert Show a financial impossibility.

Certainly, going forward, we'll make the Jimmy Kimmel Show a financial impossibility.

If they're not making money with the highest rated late night show, why would they be making money with the second highest rated show.

And I know Kimmel disagrees with all of the finances and all of the accounting, and I understand that because I have said that before in the past.

I happen to think in this case that part is legit.

I will repeat, I believe.

And it certainly isn't an indicator that Colbert was not fired for political reasons.

Because Colbert is still on the air.

Depending on what he says about Kimmel, perhaps they will try to fire him for cause at some point, but they have not done that yet, and the schedule is for Colbert to continue into next year.

The only thing, though, that CBS would be required to do into next year is pay Colbert, and there could be at any point in the next eight months or so the opportunity for them simply to take him off the air and hand him the cash.

Sadly, that is the way commercial broadcasting works in this country.

It is dependent on the goodwill and the courage of the people who run it.

I can tell you, having now worked in television for forty four years, that the amount of courage and goodwill among the people who manage and own television operations in this country, news and otherwise, it could fit into a thimble.

And nobody knows that better right now than Jimmy Kimmel.

Also of interest here, Robert Redford died.

I interviewed him once, I interviewed baseball immortal Ted Williams about him once, and a producer of mine humiliated me in front of Robert Redford once.

That's next.

This is countdown through the number one story on the Countdown and things I promised not to tell in my favorite topic, me and particularly when I make the recent news into something else about me.

This is about the passing of Robert Redford, who lived a good, long, happy life with great success and extraordinary popularity and a very happy family life, and he was able to use his fame for good works.

At the end of it.

I had a brief encounter with Robert Redford, an interview which was very warm and very and I will get to it in a minute because it also has one of the stupidest things that ever happened to me in television connected to it.

But two preliminary things.

First off, as people review the life and particularly the movies of Robert Redford, Yes, The Natural, The Way We Were, Butch Cassidy in the Sun Dance Kid, and I would recommend one that's probably not in most top ten lists with Robert Redford, a movie called The Hot Rock, which is about the burglary of a very big, famous diamond.

And it is really not Robert Redford's best work, but there's something about him in the middle of this cast of extraordinary character actors, the stars of character acting in the sixties and seventies, and Robert Redford is the centerpiece to this Zero Mostelle is in this movie, and Paul sand is in this movie.

And there is a guest appearance a cameo by Christopher Guest as a young man, and the score is by Quincy Jones.

It's just right, and it also contains one of the things about Robert Redford that people are only noting now in retrospect, after he had announced his retirement from acting, and he hadn't acted in a full leading man's role in many years.

But something people noticed Robert Redford was perhaps the best actor in which he had to pretend there was another actor involved, and there wasn't on the phone acting, as they said, if you watch All the President's Men, another great must see Robert Redford film.

He's fantastic getting on the phone playing to somebody who is not visible and who is presumably not even audible while the scene is being recorded being filmed.

He's great at that.

And he's also great in sort of a sublimated ham bit.

In other words, the end of The Hot Rock is of him walking through the streets of New York and emitting joy.

And I don't want to in case you're going to go see it, I don't want to go into the details.

I guess to some degree that's as spoiler as it is, but he's emitting absolute joy.

My father liked the closing sequence of The Hot Rock.

He said, it was the feeling that he has striven for his entire life.

And to see Robert Redford at the end of this film makes me think of my father and his goals in his life, and particularly it is it's several minutes of him going through the streets of early seventies New York, so visually to me, it's my childhood.

Plus he's just at his best in that film in those few minutes, and he doesn't say a word.

And again it's all of the non acting acting that made Robert red It's so good.

The Natural, of course he's superb in even though that film bears almost no resemblance to the novel and the point of the novel.

I will now do a spoiler alert in case you have not seen The Natural and you're going to go see it in some sort of personal retrospective on the movies of Robert Redford that you have not seen.

In the book, Robert Redford's character Roy Hobbs throws the game.

In the movie, he doesn't and becomes the hero and retires and is reunited with his son from his true love played by Glenn Close.

That's not the Sun played by Glenn Close.

It's his true love was played by Glen Close.

The book The Natural is a cynical deconstruction of every baseball cliche and mythical story.

And as you know if you have seen The Natural, and it's I think a great entertaining film, although it's totally different than the book and defeats the purpose of the book and just becomes a good film as opposed to a real cynical story that Bernard Malamad told in the novel.

You've got the home run that wins the pennant, which is Bobby Thompson from the nineteen fifty one season.

You've got the magical bat, which is from somewhere.

You've got the thrown games from the nineteen nineteen World Series.

You've got the Derrelic franchises.

You've got the story of the baseball being hit so hard that it unraveled in mid air.

I forget who the batter was in that, and the one scene that they always play from it in which he hits a home run off the clock, supposedly the big glass enclosed clock on the scoreboard at Wrigley Field in Chicago, and it shatters Da Da Da da da Randy Newman's score at its brassiest, and you see all the glass fall, and that actually happened and was a home run hit by a baseball player and I think nineteen forty five named Bama Rowel.

So all of these stories are rolled into one, and The Natural is a tremendous film.

But in the Natural they emphasize the obscurity of the character that Redford would play in the movie that in the novel of The Natural, Roy Hobbs, I think, wears number sixty one at a time when if you had a baseball player's number that was higher than thirty, he was a derelict or a temp or, a nineteen year old rookie.

And Roy Hobbs wore number sixty one, he might as well have warn number one hundred and ninety three.

And in the film, and this was widely known.

In nineteen eighty four when the film came out, Robert Redford said, I'll do this, but I'm not wearing that number.

Give me number nine for Ted Williams.

So they filmed the movie at the Old War Memorial Stadium in Buffalo, which they dress up to look like nineteen thirty nine.

It didn't take much because it looked like they had not cleaned War Memorial Stadium in Buffalo since nineteen thirty nine.

And they film it and they do an absolutely terrific job of making everything looknineteen thirty nine ish.

Many times you go and you see a movie set in the past, and everybody's hair is wrong sideburns, of the wrong length, people are they don't look right.

They've got a bunch of guys in that movie who look like they came off baseball cards from nineteen thirty nine.

So it's great in that respect.

When the film came out, I was working in Boston and they sent me to cover for the local news in the sports cast.

We had such a long seven or eight minute sports cast in the six o'clock news in those days, that they sent me to do a live shot from the premiere and then do a report on the movie in the sports cast at eleven o'clock.

So I'm reporting, and I'm wherever this film premiered in Boston, and I came back in eleven o'clock and did a review, a mini review with a little highlights, and I said, this has this film has enough syrup in it to cover every pancake that will be served tomorrow morning here in New England, which I thought was a pretty good line, and they apparently liked it.

The Channel five in Boston, where I worked.

A couple of weeks later, the Red Sox held an old Timers Day.

And this is long before the death of their immortal Ted Williams.

But he'd been retired for twenty five years, and his relationship with the Red Sox was intermittent and difficult at times, and yet this was one of the good periods, and he came back and he participated in Old Timers Day, and in batting practice he hit a home run to the right field corner at Fenway Park, probably about three hundred and fifty feet away, and he had another one into the bleachers in right center field, over the bullpen, somewhere near the red seat where he once hit a home run which was I forget, I think something like five hundred feet away from home plate, but this one was just barely into the bleacher, so it was probably only four hundred something feet away.

And then he hit a couple opposite field shots as well, and the couple were pulled down the line at the Monster and I just double check to make sure that the number was correct.

He did this he was sixty six years old, and now I'm sixty six years old and I could not hit the ball past the pitcher's mount.

I'm not saying this is some sort of failure on my part.

I'm just using it for comparison purposes.

And now I'm trying to interview Ted Williams, and he agrees to talk to me if we do not stop.

So we are walking with Ted Williams off the field, up the staircase into the Red Sox clubhouse that was being used for old timers, and I only get in two questions, and one of them is did you know have you seen the Naturally?

Yeah?

It was pretty good Redford?

I met Redford.

He's a great actor and he looks like a ballplayer in that film.

I said, did you know that he changed Roy Hobb's number to nine because you wore number nine and you were his favorite player?

And he stopped.

Ted Williams, who was in the hurry to get away from me and every other reporter, stopped and went really, And I said, yeah, that's terrific.

Thanks for telling me that shook my hand, then starts walking again, goes and closes the clubhouse door behind him, and I never saw him again.

But that's my little Robert Redford's side story into meeting Ted Williams and get in kind of a thank you from Ted Williams.

So now at the other end of my career, literally twenty five years later, I'm doing the newscast on MSNBC and somebody comes in one day in my office and says, would you like to have Robert Redford on the show?

And I said, sure about what?

And it was environmental issues relative to some bill that I think was on the table either in Colorado or in the Congress or Senate.

And we have this arranged by one producer who was working at the assignment desk, so she was technically a booker hoping to become a producer, and she produced segments in her spare time.

The roster size of a show like Countdown would have had usually four employed full time segment producers who were responsible soup to nuts for all the stuff in the number four story or everything in the number one story, making sure the guests was there, making sure there were good graphics done, making sure getting it on the air, getting it all done, and making sure and not being responsible for booking the guests.

That was not the responsibility of the segment producer.

In this case, the segment producer because we were short, somebody was on vacation, was the booker.

So the woman who made the arrangements and we'll just call her that made the arrangements to get Robert Redford was the person who had actually produced that segment and she wanted not to be a booker anymore, not that there's anything wrong with that job.

It's probably much tougher than producer.

She wanted to be come a segment producer because it paid more.

So fine.

This was kind of an audition, and we put necessarily Robert Redford in is the number one story, the last thing in the show.

And most segments, most interviews were only four minutes, maybe five Robert Redford.

We gave something closer to ten.

With the theory that it's Robert Redford.

We can keep talking about it all show and people will stick around to watch Robert Redford.

And we warned Rachel Maddows producers, Okay, we're going to have this.

We're not necessarily going to finish on time stroke of nine o'clock.

No, no problem, Because of course they would get the ratings at nine o'clock whether we were done or not, so their first item would be the tail end of my interview with Robert Redford.

So no work on their part except being willing to come on at like nine thirty two or something or nine oh one pm.

So we're all set and there's Robert Redford and I didn't.

I don't didn't usually talk to the guests in advance, not for time guests.

And I did, like, oh yeah, get Bob on the phone for me.

It wasn't like that.

All I know is the producer her.

She says to me, he likes the show.

Well that's good, that's comforting.

Then I don't have to try to explain what the hell I'm talking about too.

So we come into this and live joining us now from his home.

I guess it was in wherever, in either Utah or Colorado.

The great actor and director and environmentalist Robert Redford.

And a great pleasure to have you, sir, And he says, Keith, I watch this show almost every night.

It's my pleasure to be here.

This is one of the highlights of my career.

Well where do you go from that?

Well, the only thing I could think to say was well, I doubt that's true, but I hope not to screw it up too much.

And he laughed, and I laughed, and we went on and had a very nice, warm conversation about some very important issues.

He indulged me with a couple of questions about the Natural and Ted Williams in Uniform number nine, and I did a plug as I just did now for the Hot Rock, and he said, I'm glad you liked that film, and I told him the story of my father.

He said, I'm very moved by that.

I worked very hard on that particular scene, and I always thought those were special events that really needed to convey emotion.

And I don't want to pat myself on the back, but I'm glad he liked it, because I don't know that film went over that well.

So I'm glad both of you liked it, and I'm really I'm delighted by that.

That has also made my day.

So there's a great interview with Robert Redford and we're just finishing.

We're in the last question and it's probably eight fifty nine and forty five seconds and he's still at full steam in his last answer, and he's talking to me like this, and we're prepared to go long as they say, past the nine o'clock deadline.

And Rachel knows about this, and her staff knows about this, and everybody knows about this, and Redford is going on about this topic.

We're back on one last environmental point that he wanted to make.

Finally, and he says, and the on it.

Wait, did somebody say, excuse me, Keith, did you say rap?

And I said no, I didn't.

Somebody he's Robert Redford says somebody, somebody just told me to rap.

I said, well you can.

You can ignore that.

Please pick up your point.

The booker, who wanted to be a segment producer her decides that it's almost nine o'clock and she has to conclude the interview with Robert Redford because whatever Rachel Maddow has on at nine o'clock won't last till nine oh one, and they don't want Robert red It was the stupidest thing I think I ever saw a line level person do in broadcasting.

And since then, and as I think we've discussed, this is about to be the fiftieth anniversary of my first commercial broadcast, so I've seen a lot of stupid things, and I've done a lot of stupid things, but rapping Robert Redford telling him to shut up, basically during the end of his interview.

When he didn't do live TV interviews, he just didn't do these things.

And here he was, and we're having a great time, and people are probably sitting at home saying that's great.

You interrupt him while he's talking live on national television, and you, while he's making his final pitch about the environment, trying to convince people who are there to look at the star as he did for the last thirty years of his life, trying to use his fame to get you to think about the environment.

This woman gets in his ear and goes rap like this, and I just I just thought, to that day, I could not have been more embarrassed by anything that had to that point been going well if we had planned it.

And the thing I did do, which I rarely ever did, was say, when we finished, open up his ear piece, please let me.

He apologized to him, and I did, and he said it's no problem.

And I said, well again, thank you for saying that, even though frankly I don't believe it, and he laughed and he said, great to talk to you.

Anytime you need me, give me a call.

I'll come on the show whatever you need me.

And he was absolutely fantastic.

And the producer told him to rap, and I'd just like to add she did not get the promotion.

I've done all the damage I can do here.

Thank you for listening.

Sorry for the short close here.

A bit of an eye problem going on, nothing serious, but I really can't see the scripts.

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That's countdown for today, Day two hundred and forty three of America held hostage again, just two hundred and thirty days until the scheduled end of his lame duck and lame brained term, unless he is removed sooner by Maga trump Steen or that pavement on his hand, or who knows.

The next scheduled countdown is Monday till then.

I'm Keith Olderman.

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

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