Transcript

[drum roll]

I'm Keith Olbermann, and this is The Resistance.

Kellyanne Conjob says if the media continues

to call the press secretary's lies lies,

and by extension if it continues

to call the President's lies lies,

We're going to have rethink our relationship here.

Fine, do not interview Kellyanne Conjob.

Press Secretary Spicer comes out for

what is allegedly a White House press briefing

and shouts a bitter, angry statement at the media

and then refuses to take any questions.

Stop carrying his press briefings live on television.

Trump says the media are among the most dishonest

human beings on earth right.

Stop covering his speeches live.

Use a delay, employ a team of fact checkers,

play his rants, each time he lies,

stop the tape, state the facts.

Resume the tape, wait for the next lie.

Stop the tape again, state the facts again.

Do not participate in the Trump propaganda game.

And do not reply to me that you are obligated to do so

because otherwise you could be accused

of delegitimizing the presidency

because it is impossible to delegitimize

something that was never legitimate in the first place.

And do not reply to me that you must cover these liars

because of the market place of ideas,

or because of commercial competition.

In short order, nobody who believes Trump

or Conway or Spicer or any of the other pirates

will be watching ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, BBC, MSNBC, CSPAN

or anything similar anyway.

In a time when democracy is being rapidly sabotaged

by a lunatic president and his amoral flying monkeys

like Conway and Spicer, your market,

and incidentally your obligation as citizens

in that bleeding democracy,

your market and your obligation are identical

to identify the lies and refute them

twice as often as they are told.

The hard-core Trump crowd, the fascist's,

corporatist's, racist's, authoritarian's,

they're gonna watch FOX and read Breitbart

and watch and read the new ones,

worse than FOX and worse than Breitbart

that are gonna pop up in the weeks and months to come

and there isn't F all you can do about that.

This was the exact scenario in the by-gone days

when George W Bush was still widely believed about Iraq.

And every television news operation decided

it was gonna waive the flag just like FOX News,

or try to out do FOX,

one of them put Michael Savage on tv.

And everyone of them promptly got smoked in the ratings

and then some guy at MSNBC I think it was,

said uh, the emperor is not wearing any clothes.

And all of a sudden the truth started pouring out

and by the way, the hundreds of millions of dollars

of profit started pouring in.

The danger to our society of for-profit journalism

especially in television, has been evident

ever since the Fairness Doctrine was eliminated

and the FCC stopped enforcing the Community Service

and Equal Time regulations.

That's when you could start to begin to say

as much as you wanted on television or radio

about any controversial topic without ever

being obligated to offer Floyd R Turbot

two minutes of air time to give an editorial or reply.

But the blessing to our society of for-profit journalism

especially in television has been evident

ever since the backlash against Bush a decade ago.

Being state run television is profitable.

Being anti-state run television is nearly as profitable.

To paraphrase the immortal Bill Hicks,

the gaslight channel, oh there going for

that gaslight marketing dollar.

That's a good market, they're very smart.

Wait, the anti-gaslight channel?

Ooh, you know what Keith's doing now?

He's going for that righteous indignation dollar,

that's a big dollar.

A lot of people are feeling that indignation

we've done research, huge market.

He's doin' a good thing.

It would take a conscious and conscientious decision

to leave those news consumers who believe an administration

elected on, built on and trading on nothing but lies,

but it is also practice for a worse time

that may be yet to come.

The previous Republican administration

exploited a terrorist attack in this country.

It took the natural tendency at times of crisis

of liberals to put aside party divisions.

And the natural tendency at times of crisis

of conservatives to exacerbate party divisions

and then multiplied all that by

their FOX-led Republican media echo chamber

and then they insisted on something

they branded Patriotic Bi-partisanship.

But which was in fact mono-partisanship

in which they were to make all the decisions

and the role of Democrats was to acquiesce

to them or be branded disloyal.

And if they are given or if they fabricate

another such crisis

they will play the same card.

You know, something happens about which to quote Trump

I alone can fix it.

Thus now and especially later there must be channels

and sites and newspapers that devote huge swaths

of their resources to blasting back the truth

towards the Trump lies factory.

It must report the lies about healthcare,

the lies about the release of tax returns,

the lies and inevitable attempts to use

the mighty mechanisms of government against Trump's critics.

It must report the truths about broken promises

to release tax returns and falsified government statistics

and passive-aggressive influence peddling.

It must learn and it will learn

how much the Russians swung the election

even if it takes four years to learn it.

And how many acts of war the Russians directed against us.

And how much they had on Trump.

And how much they expect him to deliver.

And how many of the main stream Republicans

will remain loyal not to the Constitution

of the United States but to Vladimir Goddamn Putin.

And until all of that is found out

it can simply report all day, every day,

that the Russian investigation is still ongoing

exactly the way FOX News spent nearly three years

insisting that Obama's birth certificate was still ongoing.

Those who own the news media especially in television

are timid types and by nature conservative,

until being either of those things threatens

their investments.

Well, fellas, Trump has decided to destroy your investments

if you tell the absolute truth he will try to bury you.

If you tell his version and give air time to his supporters

but you also have others there to fact check him,

he will still try to bury you.

Appeasement will produce what appeasement always produces.

The victim's wasting the resources

and time they should have used defending themselves.

The good news for the good news media is in fact

this little garage band kinda series right here.

As of this one we will have done 65 commentaries

under the banner of The Closer and The Resistance

and as of number 63 last week,

we had crossed the threshold of 100 million views.

That is an average of around a million 600 thousand

views per commentary and a million 600 thousand

views of anything

not only suggests there's a ready audience

for the product in question,

whether it's anti-Trump politics

or learning how to tie your shoes.

An average audience of a million 600 thousand

is larger than the average audience at CNN or MSNBC.

So remember that thing before the election, Trump TV.

Well it is now time for anti-Trump TV

and it will make somebody at least half a billion dollars

in profits in the next four years if he lasts four years.

And yeah, oh by the way it also might be one the few chances

we have to stop the United States of America

from fully descending into fascism.

You know, in case that still matters to anybody.

Resist.

Peace.