Countdown with Keith Olbermann

SERIES 2 EPISODE 219: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Trump’s nephew Fred III – the one who likes him – says Trump told him, in the oval office, in May 2020, that the disabled, quote, “these people…the shape they’re in, all the expenses, maybe those kinds of people should just die.”

It is somehow worse than it seems.

Fred Trump III has a son William who has spent the whole of his 25 years on this planet fighting illness after illness and complication after complication. When the medical fund the family set up for William began to run dry in 2020, William called his uncle and asked for more help. “I don’t know,”Fred Trump quotes Donald Trump. “He doesn’t recognize you. Maybe you should just let him die and move down to Florida.”

There are lots of words for this: euthanasia, mercy killing, assisted suicide, quietus; for the elderly senicide or geroniticide, the Nazis called it Akt-zone T-4. We all have our differing moral north stars but for most of us I think there are at least some circumstances in which it is valid and justifiable.

You and I both knew Trump was this kind of monster. What we must realize is that while others might see individually justifiable acts of assisted suicide, with Trump we are talking forced euthanasia - mass murder. I have asserted here before that we saw of Trump during Covid suggested this was at the heart of his attitude towards people: that they were just another commodity. Kill a few… kill a few thousand… so what. Just let them die and move down to Florida. Round them up by the millions in camps before deporting them, leaving lord knows how many to DIE in those camps. "These people. The shape they’re in, all the expenses, maybe those kinds of people should just die."

It's kind of amazing that in Fred Trump III's upcoming book he quotes his uncle using the N-word to blame damage to his car and that's barely an afterthought here. Which circles back to the campaign against Harris. Brian Kilmeade of Fox may have said the Vice President was going to a "college sorority" and he may have said "colored sorority" but two weeks ago Trump flunky Sebastian Gorka proudly called Harris "colored" - and the birtherism has started again.

This while Biden gave a moving and eloquent farewell address, Kim Jong Un told Trump to stuff his friendship, CBS reported there are a dozen potential VP candidates, and the next round of polls shows her - in a wildly conservative poll - just a point back in Pennsylvania, and cutting Trump's lead in half in the CNN poll while improving 5 points on Biden's last numbers among female voters and 11 among young voters and 16 points among black voters

B-Block (27:46) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: To analyze how the fascists are NOT running a misogynistic campaign against Kamala Harris, NewsMax brings on Mark Halperin and Ed Henry - both fired for harassment and worse. If you think Trump has been screwed up by Biden bowing out, The New York Times is down to criticizing HOW he bowed out and the astonished headline "The Most Ruthless Political Operator in the Country Is a WOMAN." And Russell Brand, super-genius, thinks melatonin controls skin color.

C-Block (42:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: The old joke about this hated baseball figure was: you're in a boat with this guy, Hitler and Mussolini. You have a gun and two bullets. What do you do? Answer: shoot this guy, then throw Hitler overboard, then throw Mussolini overboard, then shoot this guy again just to make sure. The saga of how the Los Angeles Dodgers "lost" several million dollars in 1964 while making a huge profit.

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SERIES 2 EPISODE 218: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) I have been thinking for awhile now that there will come a point, this year, this election, maybe this MONTH, where we will all be saying “Can you believe we came THIS CLOSE to not making Vice President Harris the nominee?”

You have heard about THE poll: Ipsos for Reuters (Harris 42 Trump 38 Kennedy 8 third-party race; Harris 44 Trump 42 head-to-head) that's a four point shift TO Kamala Harris… in a week. But have you heard the OTHER polls? Marist for NPR and the PBS News Hour? Harris 42 Trump 42 Kennedy 7 / Trump 46 Harris 45.YouGov for Yahoo News? Harris 46 Trump 46. These numbers are from the FIRST FULL DAY of the Harris campaign and she is already in a statistical tie. Harris's favorables are at a net -2, sounds meh. Biden's? A net -18. Trump's? Net -19.

More jaw-dropping still? The top Republican internal pollster in Georgia has Harris starting off there, trailing just 48-47. And best of all: Do you agree or disagree: at 78 years old Trump is too old to work in government? Agree – 53%. Disagree – 43%. Trump's pollster issued a panicked memo lowering the bar just as the Reuters poll was coming out. Funny he never mentioned the age issue!

Polling, polling, polling.

Plus it's hard to tell what the Fascists are freaking out about the most: the polls, Kamala declaring war on their suddenly oldest-ever candidate, or their leadership's insistence that they can't call her "colored" (like Sebastian Gorka did a week ago) or use racial epithets and especially not call her "DEI." Which, of course, is what they immediately called her.

Or maybe it's J.D. Vance. There's instant buyers' remorse because he's so bad on stage that they can't tell if he's inflated or stuffed - or both.

B-Block (35:00) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Colombian emigre Valentina Gomez is running for Secretary of State in Missouri on an anti-immigration platform and now she's illegally used the balcony of the Speaker of the House on which to film an ad. An Ohio State Senator becomes the last Republican to threaten Civil War, and the New York Post and Senator Mike Lee both fall for the worst fake announcement of the fake death of the fake Jimmy Carter on fake stationery imaginable.

C-Block (47:10) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: I mentioned Aaron Sorkin yesterday. Time to explain the story of the day I was watching one of his TV shows and suddenly my father's favorite saying was coming out of the mouth of Aaron's lead character because Aaron had gotten in the habit of borrowing my life.

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SERIES 2 EPISODE 217: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Oh, nothing. Kamala Harris only raised $223,000 a MINUTE or $13,380,000 an hour in her first 24 hours as the Democratic presidential candidate-presumptive and will only rap up the pledged delegates by today or tomorrow and has already opened her campaign five points closer to Trump than any other Democrat.

And as somebody mentioned (cough; cough cough) Friday it turns out if President Biden had not seen the wisdom of the choice and bowed out before the new week started Nancy Pelosi was ready to go public - with polling. And now, everybody's together again and everybody's endorsed here and even that moron Manchin has gotten out of the way and the only question is where in town do you want YOUR Joe Biden statue to be.

ON THE OTHER HAND Trump intends to sue. Somebody. Maybe Hannibal Lecter. The man who is suddenly history's oldest presidential candidate wants to be reimbursed and the debate moved and they want to force Biden to stay in the race AND resign as president and don't you know Trump was shot with a wadded up piece of gum so you must defer to him.

If there's anything more delightful than watching Trump implode because it never occurred to him the other side had better tactics, it's watching Hannity complain that Kamala Harris has a funny laugh when... shoot... who has ever actually heard Trump laugh? Like a person?

There's a lot to go through, including the reminder that if you're worried about this nation's racism and its misogyny: in the last four US elections: we have elected a man of color president, then re-elected him, then a woman candidate won the popular vote, and most recently, a woman of color was elected VP defeating a ticket led by racist incumbent 

Assume nothing. But - Excelsior!

B-BLOCK (37:40) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: So. Much. Stupid. Takery. Aaron Sorkin, Brian Stelter, Olivia Nuzzi and Katy Tur could've forged a four-way tie (well, three; Sorkin would've just 'borrowed' one of their ideas).

C-BLOCK (56:15) IN MEMORY OF MINET: I'm a little unfocused today and when I get unfocused I get verbose because I'm ad libbing. And if you didn't see it on social media, my extraordinary 17-year old rescue pup, Minet, died Sunday just six days after hitting that amazing milestone of longevity. If you've been scared off adopting a senior dog or even a geriatric one, please listen to Minet's story and how much he gave me - and consider getting one yourself!

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SERIES 2 EPISODE 216: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-BLOCK (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: I’m sorry to write this, but it is now time for Joe Biden to withdraw his name for nomination for re-election as president of the United States. He should release his delegates with instructions to vote for Kamala Harris for president. We can, I hope, spend the next twenty years embracing Joe Biden and the greatest sacrifice made by any American politician in our lifetimes while we celebrate Trump being turned down by the pardon board for the twentieth consecutive year. For now, we must approach this without emotion because what is now a problem is on the verge of becoming a disaster. Its essence can be boiled down to five points.

First: democracy lives or dies on this. Also the climate and thus continuing life on the planet. We have to choose whatever path offers the best odds.

Second: the long awaited FOB (Friends of Biden) push in private is complete. Friends of Biden. Obama’s warning to “allies” that the Biden path was “greatly diminished” followed Pelosi, Schumer, Jeffries, and possibly the Clintons reaching out in private to the president to tell him he must exit. I believe if he does not do so by next week these same leaders will risk a temporary rupture of the party by publicly saying they can no longer support him.

Third: as I said previously America will always choose the old man yelling at the cloud, especially over the old man whispering intelligently but inaudibly. This nation elected Reagan twice.

Fourth: the president has said he will be re-elected because he’s done such a good job. This, sadly, is no longer predominant in elections. And it is no how you beat a liar promising the gullible eternal life.

Fifth: the polls are cratering. The last 47 of them, Trump leads. I’m beginning to spot a pattern. In new polling by Emerson College, Biden is down by four nationally, and now an average of five-and-a-half in the seven swing states. On the other hand, the same poll pitted Trump against a mythical “younger Democrat who is qualified for the job.” As ludicrously vague as that is, and as much as the rule that the Imaginary Candidate always out-polls the real one, the results are too staggering to totally ignore. In those same seven swing states, that imaginary Democrat beats Trump by an average of seven points. The pendulum swings nearly thirteen points, and even with all the caveats it should at least reassure Democrats that they would not be throwing away their only chance of victory by changing – even now. 

MEANWHILE: Evidence continues to mount that Trump was not hit by a bullet but by debris knocked towards him, and is lying about it - as he lies about everything else. The usual idiots were fooled into believing he’d pivot. His acceptance speech at FascistCon24 was the pivot everyone expected, until he demanded that all the charges be dropped against him CUZ UNITY. And the exploitation of the firefighter killed at his rally kind of went off the rails when he brought what was supposedly the man's uniform onstage as if it were a religious icon - and they had misspelled his names. And one of Trump's longest-standing pro-conspiracy co-conspirators is dead. Lou Dobbs – an original birther and a despicable human being – died yesterday.

B-BLOCK (32:25) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: We now have more information on who thought MSNBC would do better taking Joe Scarborough off the air as the Republican convention opened and replacing him with NBC’s online-only news anchors. It’s Cesar Conde, the NBC News boss who’s as bad as all the other NBC News bosses. Matt Gaetz spoke at the RNC and he either got too much botox or he had himself laminated. And we have that rare consecutive edition winner. Van Jones of CNN is back and badder than ever.

C-BLOCK (47:47) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: So the Republicans have officially nominated a convicted felon still scheduled to be on trial for espionage and for leading an attempted violent overthrow of the government. In view of that, I must again read you the story James Thurber wrote about Trump fifteen years before Trump was born: The Greatest Man In The World.

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SEASON 2 EPISODE 215: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: It is now my expectation that if by next week President Biden has not withdrawn from the presidential race, a coterie of key Democrats led by Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries will publicly announce that they and their caucuses cannot support his candidacy.

The first true dam break in that process occurred Saturday, but only became known last night when ABC News reported that Schumer went to the president's Delaware home and "forcefully made the case that it would be better for Biden, better for the Democratic party, and better for the country if he were to bow out of the race." The Schumer office issued something less than a non-denial denial and the White House press office put its head down and shouted full steam ahead.

But the Schumer news followed a day in which it became more and more apparent that those key Democrats no longer care if this becomes public. Congressman Adam Schiff, soon to be Senator from California, publicly called for Biden to step aside. More and more ugly details emerged from a Zoom call between the president and House Democrats. A really startlingly tepid defense of Biden's continuing on the ticket by Bernie Sanders was published by The New Yorker. And it was revealed that Schumer and Jeffries working in concert got that "virtual roll call" confirming Biden's nomination delayed into August.

There was also new polling (65% of Dems want a new candidate, Associated Press) that wasn't so new (66% of them wanted one in April, Pew Research). 

And then there was that weirdly timed presidential positive test for COVID yesterday in Las Vegas forcing the cancellation of a speech and a trip back east. From all I can tell that's what it is: the virus. Your willingness to compare it to the "cold" President Kennedy suddenly developed while on a campaign tour during The Cuban Missile Crisis is up to you.

ALSO: Five days after the assassination attempt and we now have to assume that Trump is LYING about getting shot.

That he was SHOT AT, is not in doubt.

That the blood came from - in the unfortunate phrase he himself chose – his EAR BEING PIERCED, by a bullet – has been verified… by absolutely nobody.

Nothing from Butler Memorial Hospital in Pennsylvania.

Nothing from the Secret Service.

Nothing from the Department of Justice.

Nothing from ANY branch of government.

Nothing from the FBI even though it has gone to unusual lengths of confirming the INVESTIGATION is of an assassination attempt AND domestic terrorism AND they’ve broken into the shooter’s phone AND they know there were eight shots AND they know who ELSE was shot AND they released names AND

Nothing from ANY news organization, each of which has cleverly and almost ARTISTICALLY avoided saying Trump WAS shot and avoided saying Trump WASN’T shot. 

The entire official medical report from the Trump campaign is that he is quote “fine,” unquote.

100 hours and they can't get an anonymous statement from a hospital. We now have to assume he's lied about something about the attempt.

B-Block (25:00) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: It's been awhile. Time for Ted Cruz to make a jackass out of himself again. The Washington Post editorial writer with the unfortunate name of "Shadi" asks if Trump not dying was "God's will." And CNN must fire Van Jones. Its remaining 837 viewers will accept no less.

C-Block (37:10) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: The onetime American counter-culture soccer star Alexi Lalas is now just another D-list "celebrity" at the Republican Convention. But once he was the straight man in an ESPN commercial that rings through the ages.

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SERIES 2 EPISODE 214: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Whaddya MEAN Tucker Carlson warned Trump last month that he might be assassinated if he DIDN'T pick a non-Neocon VP like J.D. Vance? Whaddya MEAN The New York Times had Carlson warning Trump weeks ago that if he chose somebody besides Carlson's choice - Vance - "the U.S. intelligence agencies would have every incentive to assassinate Mr. Trump in order to get their preferred president" - and they put it in paragraph 69 of a 71-paragraph article? Anybody ASKING Carlson about this, uh, coincidence? Or the Times about the sources? Or Vance?

Trump still hasn't called the family of the man murdered at his rally; England's Channel 4 says the 2016 Trump Campaign had the shooter's family in a special database of battleground state voters who probably owned guns. Nothing new from the Pittsburgh station's report that there were Trump signs in front of the family home.

There's new polling on who voters blame for the atmosphere that led to the Trump shooting (Trump), their reaction to his selection of Vance (27% of Republicans think he was the best choice; 56% have no idea who he is), Rudy Giuliani falls at the convention, and why nobody should ever compare Trump to Braveheart. 

BIDEN MEANWHILE is going to run against Trump AND the Supreme Court and propose term limits and mandatory ethics. And while he is reportedly not broadening but tightening his circle of advisers about the race, the impossible happens. The polls show Trump ahead by about two - no "near miss bump" - but the 538 Electoral College simulator shows Biden with a 53% chance of winning (and by 16 votes).

B-Block (24:00) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: I got Jon Stewart interviewing Bill O'Reilly in a kind of Old Timers' Day of frauds. Joe Scarborough is so mad at NBC for suspending his show to appease the Republicans that he's risked firing by calling them out on the air (who do you root for in THAT battle?), Katy Tur seems to have forgotten Trump tried to get her killed, Ron Johnson becomes the latest to lose in Republicans Versus TelePrompters, and inexplicably Hugo Lowell deletes the greatest tweet to emanate from the Republican convention

C-Block (35:50) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: MSNBC silencing Joey Scars and having Tur praise him seems awfully familiar to some of us and when I say 'some of us' I mean: Me. The Republicans blackmailed NBC to get ME off the air after their convention in 2008 because nothing is more easily scared than a billion dollars.

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SERIES 2 EPISODE 213: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: This is the America Trump wanted. This is the America Trump got. He was shot at by a gun-obsessed MAGA kid, with Trump signs in the front yard of his home, in a MAGA world in which stochastic terror threats are Trump's only campaign, only belief, only religion.

Republicans! Stop shooting at Trump!

This wasn't an MSNBC viewer and it wasn't a Democrat and it wasn't the fault of the corporate media and Biden's oratory didn't impact him and this didn't happen because I keep saying Trump is a Hitler. TrumpIS a Hitler. The Republicans trained the weapon on Trump and they fired. 

And shame on Biden and the other Democrats and the eternally gullible media for falling for the promises of a Trump pivot. He said we need to unite the way the extraterrestrials put "To Serve Man" on their Twilight Zone cookbook. The moment the Democrats took the bait, he explained what his demands were: as part of "unity" he expects all criminal charges to be dropped against him immediately. He probably secretly hopes the Democrats will also nominate him.

Same fraud. Different con.

ALSO: Anybody see those photos of him as he screamed "Fight!" like a giant rabid rodent? When he let his true soul out? They were chanting that as the GOP convention yesterday. There is no joining of hands here. As always, when the Republicans mean unity, they mean everybody has to agree...to do what they say. Nice timing on delaying the Documents case, "Judge" Cannon, until the morning the GOP Convention opened, and dismissing it.

Bluntly, Biden should take presidential immunity and use it. What would Trump do in the mirror image of the assassination attempt? Less than four months before the election and the guy ahead in the polls gets shot at. And the Secret Service clearly screwed security into the ground. And we don’t know WHY a kid registered with the same party as the candidate would try to kill the candidate. And we don’t know WHY a local police officer confronted the shooter moments before the shots only to back away. And we don’t know why, most insanely of all, the kid had a cameo in a Black Rock commercial for retirement plans. And we DO know it is being investigated as an act of domestic terrorism. And you know, you KNOW, a Trump in charge would look at this and say ‘good enough excuse for me! I am declaring a national emergency and invoking the insurrection act.”

Do it, Joe. 

AND: please, stop with the "violence has never had a role in America." Our politics is a river of blood. 20 of the 45 presidents have either been shot and killed in office, shot and wounded in office, shot and wounded while seeking to regain office, or the subject of shooting plots averted at the last minute or last hour. If we stopped lying to ourselves about how peaceful we are, maybe we could begin to fix our bloody story.

B-Block (27:52) SPECIAL COMMENT II: The conventional wisdom of the electoral effect of the assassination attempt against Trump is - as always - wrong. The attempted murder of a Republican gun nut by a Republican gun nut using a weapon Democrats tried to ban is no longer even the lead Republican story. It may have no impact on the election at all. Candidate victims in the past have always lost.

C-Block (41:30) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: So many fascists said so many stupid things before the truth came out about who the shooter was, that the list today is literally EIGHTEEN PEOPLE LONG, climaxing with Chuck Todd, Lester Holt, Mike Johnson, Elon Musk, Mike Lee, Mike Collins, and J.D. Vance - who once compared Trump to Hitler (those Biden ads are gonna be lit)

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SERIES 2 EPISODE 212: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: I've never actually seen it done before: somebody put the toothpaste back into the tube.

Not all of it. Not hardly. There are still a thousand reasons to ask President Biden to leave the ticket. He called Zelensky "Putin" and Kamala Harris "Vice President Trump" and when Trump tried to mock him on it he shoved it up Trump's posterior. And more importantly, for 50 minutes he interwove foreign and domestic policy, his own post-debate mistakes, the history of the relations between South Korea and Japan, his own calculations and miscalculations about retaining the presidency, and expressed an openness to change both his approach and maybe candidates.

It was unprecedented.

Simply, if he had been like this at the debate, or if he had held this news conference the day after it, it is impossible that the events of the last two weeks could've unfolded the way they have. So I do not know what to think (that'll get me kicked out of the pundits club) but I think there is a germ of an idea here if the plan is to stick with Biden atop the ticket:

Put him on TV live once a week. Press conferences, sit-down TV interviews, Town Halls. Put him on TV to do THAT every week and maybe he will put all the toothpaste back in the tube.

In the interim, he needs to offload many of his campaign advisers and handlers because they are killing him.

B-Block (25:25) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Chuck Todd somehow transfers his own selfishness and personal failure onto Biden. In humorous relief, the Toronto Globe and Mail asserts that a man fought for his life while being interviewed by NBC. And Lauren Boebert gets caught speeding. Was it because she couldn't handle a stick?

C-Block (30:20) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: Fitting for an examination of the dumbing down of America and how it has kept Trump viable: the woman who thought MacBeth wasn't as good as her standard paperbacks: "The Macbeth Murder Mystery."

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SERIES 2 EPISODE 211: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: "I am not a member of any organized political party. I am a Democrat," said Will Rogers.

I said in February that the worst outcome was the scenario in which this played out in public and Biden dug in and those who doubted him kept coming back every 48 hours and saying “what about NOW?” And yet here we are. In February, Axios reported, quote: “When White House aides appear on MSNBC's "Morning Joe," they're often booked between 7 and 7:40 AM ET. That's so they'll reach one crucial and loyal viewer: President Biden.” Guess who was on yesterday at exactly 7:39 AM? To speak to the proverbial audience of one? Nancy Pelosi.

And she soft-soaped him and urged him to make his decision. Obviously the point is: she said he should make a decision and of course he has not only insisted for ten days now that he’s MADE his decision but he PUT IT IN WRITING. Why? So it alarms him, without looking like she’s providing a platform or encouragement for the Joe-Must-Go’s – encouraging them YET anyway.

THE BEST THING SAID YESTERDAY was actually from Biden's former White House Communications Director Kate Bedingfield: “I know first hand better than almost anyone,” Ms. Bedingfield writes “how smart the Biden team is about DATA and about ignoring the noise. They are right that the game here is to convince voters, not pundits. But when the battle over the public data is so overwhelmingly negative, it’s a good moment to put forward your theory of the case. If they have data that supports the path to victory that they see, they should put it out there now and help people who badly want to beat Trump, rally around it. People want to see the path.”

The thing is, there actually ARE indicators that there IS a path: a study suggesting that Biden retains 94% of the support he had before the debate while Trump only retains 85%.

And “Asked about the upcoming presidential election,” Warner Bros Discovery CEO and CNN Uber-boss David Zaslav, "said it mattered less to him which party wins, as long as the next president was friendly to business. ‘We just need an opportunity for de-regulation, so companies can consolidate and do what we need to, to be even better.”

Good morning fascism!

B-Block (26:14) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Yeah the Federalist Society sure is backing up Trump's contention he knows nothing about Project 2025. It is a SPONSOR of the Republican National Trump Fascist Convention. There's a new exoplanet in the neighbor and to put it bluntly it smells like Fart. And speaking of which, Trump whore Sebastian Gorka just called Kamala Harris "Colored."

C-Block (29:46) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Since I'm trashing corporate media it's a good time to talk about how, in the span of a couple of minutes in 1905 or so, my great grandfather made a great observation and a terrible mistake that handed as much as $70,000,000 to a big American corporation.

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SERIES 2 EPISODE 210: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: It's over.

If President Biden and his campaign team and his party discipline team can handle Trump and the electorate and the news conferences and the debates as efficiently as they have turned around the effort to push him off the ticket, they are going to win the election in a landslide.

You never say it’s over, especially not with Biden headed for a news conference tomorrow as the NATO summit in Washington concludes in which literally two bad answers or one REALLY bad answer could end his candidacy before noon on Friday. But for now, and skipping for a moment the obviously larger question over whether this signals the start of democracy’s going out of business sale… it… is… over.

Final score: Number of Democrats in the House who called for him to step down, on the record… SEVEN.

Number of Democrats in the Senate who called for him to step down, on the record… NONE.

Number of ex-presidents who called for him to step down… NONE.

Number of historians he loves who called for him to step down…NONE.

Number of former Speakers of the House who reportedly told friends in private she’s deeply uneasy with his continued candidacy and of whom a Biden confidante said "He would listen reluctantly, but he'd listen to her”who called for him to step down… NONE.

Semafor News asked an attendee, off the record, if the mood was comparable to that at a funeral. The answer? “That is an insult to funerals.”

Now there’s just one problem in all this and I think you already know what it is. The only problem it solves is the one Joe Biden had, or has. Out here on the going-out-of-business sale floor, the President is suddenly losing Wisconsin by five, and the Cook Political report just moved Arizona and Georgia and Nevada from Toss-Up to Lean Trump; and just moved Minnesota, Nebraska-Second, and New Hampshire from Likely Biden to Lean Biden.

And the Biden Campaign seems to think this is over, rather than permanent. They will find out otherwise tomorrow night when he gets parsed at that press conference like he was a newly-found Dead Sea Scroll.

ALSO: Two Senators actually call for a Special Prosecutor to investigate Clarence Thomas! Project 2025 is trending. And we'll play another edition of "What Crime Did Trump Commit TODAY?"

B-Block (27:00) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: There are people preparing to be cryogenically frozen at the facility where they still keep Ted Williams in a jar who are setting up thousand-year investment funds for when they get thawed. Brian Stelter is so desperate to be rehired by The New York Times he's pretending his old paper also wrote an editorial calling for Trump to bow out. And Dana Bash? Jake Tapper? Trump praised your work on the debate. Your careers are thus over.

C-Block (38:10) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: I watched an Atlanta Braves game the other night and was thus flashed back to the World Series I covered there where the hotel put me in a room next to all-night choir practice.

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SERIES 2 EPISODE 209: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: The dam was supposed to break yesterday, against President Biden. It didn't. Meetings were delayed and stances were softened. And if we are really going to do this, I finally have some actual advice for the president. If you want to change the topic, REALLY change the topic:

Arrest the Trump terrorists. This Federalist Society president who again yesterday vowed revolution against the government of the United States and implied he was ready to make it bloody and violent? Arrest him. The North Carolina Republican candidate for governor? Who called for mass killings of the people he doesn't like? Arrest him.

The Supreme Court - corrupt, insane, amoral - was also ultimately unimaginative. It tried to give Trump absolute immunity from prosecution for official acts. It didn't even think it was giving Biden the same tools.

Use them, Mr. President.

Arrest Kevin Roberts for calling for the violent overthrow of the government. Arrested Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson for terroristic threats. Arrest Trump's gang. If need be, invoke the Insurrection Act as Trump intends to - and arrest him.

If you really want to change the topic, CHANGE THE TOPIC.

Change it from words, to action.

Save the nation. Now.

B-Block (25:30) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Maureen Dowd finally writes a column about Maureen Dowd writing a column and misquoting Biden in it. Marjorie Taylor Let's Compare Biden's Acuity To Hers Greene lists a dozen signers of the Declaration of Independence, there are only eight names on it, and six didn't sign it. And of all times, NOW the Biden Campaign is posting online ads looking for... a Rapid Response Director?

C-Block (36:20) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Perfect time to retell it, forgive me if you've heard it before. 17 years ago I was taken to lunch by a senator looking to stop sounding crazy when he was angry, and instead sounding more like my righteous indignation. His name was Joe Biden

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SERIES 2 EPISODE 208: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) COUNTDOWN BULLETIN: In a disturbing end to an otherwise low-news interview with George Stephanopoulos of ABC News, President Biden was asked how he will feel if he stays in the race and loses to Trump. "As long as I gave it my all and I did as good a job as I know I could do, that's what this is all about." I'm not sure how that question could be answered, but that answer is terrifying.

As Mr. Biden undertakes his second rehab tour this year, with the interview and a rally in Madison, Wisconsin, Senator Mark Warner of Virginia is reportedly convening a meeting among his Democratic colleagues to urge them to join him in a trip to the White House to burst what they see as an informational bubble around the president. In the meantime, Governor Maura Healey of Massachusetts, who just six weeks ago led a big-money fundraiser for the president, issued an on-the-record statement urging Biden to carefully reassess whether he's the right candidate to defeat Trump. And House Minority leader Jeffries will convene his committee ranking members on Sunday to discuss the situation.

While a groundswell seems to be forming for a consensus Kamala Harris candidacy, there seem to be two questions to ask yourself in formulating your own opinion as to what to do next: 1) the debate is two months from next Tuesday. Do you want JOE Biden participating in it? And 2) Do you want a story, the lead story, or the only story every day between now and the debate to be some form of: How does the president seem?

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SERIES 2 EPISODE 207: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: “No one’s pushing me out. I’m not leaving.” The President yesterday on a conference call with his campaign staff, and notably ALSO with Vice President Harris. “Let me say this as clearly and simply as I can: I’m running. I’m the Democratic Party’s nominee. No one is pushing me out. I’m not leaving. I’m in this race to the end…” the President’s fundraising email last night. “I had a bad night… I screwed up,” he told a radio interviewer.

I understand why the president said what he said, and I understand why the email reads as it does, and I understand he may fully or almost fully believe all that and I do NOT understand WHAT they are doing at The White House. The New York Times led a succession of reports that President Biden had told an ally “that he is weighing whether to continue in the race” although, perhaps crucially, after the White House issued a flat denial the Times ALTERED the hook and the story to focus on the idea that “he may not be able to salvage his candidacy if he cannot convince voters that he is up to the job."

I do NOT understand the litmus test the President and his advisers have apparently convinced themselves will be the magic wand. I’ll quote The Times: “Mr. Biden’s allies said that the president had privately acknowledged that his next few appearances heading into the July 4 holiday weekend must go well, particularly an interview scheduled for Friday with George Stephanopoulos of ABC News and campaign stops in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.”

The interview with Stephanopoulos is not live. It is taped. The campaign stops in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin are presumably going to follow all the other campaign stops with teleprompters. If someone is telling the President that doing well in more totally controlled, utterly contained, hothouse environments, is going to quell in the slightest the impact that continues to resonate from a week ago in Atlanta, THEY are crazy. And if the PRESIDENT thinks doing what amount to canned events will quell the impact, he is DOOMED.

And between them, if he gets through a pre-recorded sitdown interview, and he gets through two speeches and there AREN’T questions from reporters or at minimum questions from THE CROWD, and he and the campaign boast about these events as some kind of TRIUMPH, then the outcome will be this: he will have forced HIMSELF off the ticket, NOT because of the debate, but because of the week AFTER the debate.

The way to steer out of the skid, the way to find the magic wand, the way to “salvage his candidacy” as the Times put it and “save his reelection bid” as CNN put it and “stay in the race” as ABC put it, was – maybe still IS – to hold a news conference, and I mean call a news conference on 20 minutes’ notice – not one next week at the NATO summit in DC, but NOW, and take whatever they’ve got for you; and it’s to do a town hall somewhere (or as Jim Clyburn says, a series of them), and if you want some comparatively comfortable exercise, that Stephanopoulos interview has got to be LIVE. And it would be best to do these things on consecutive days.

B-Block (19:49) JULY 4TH AND THE BAD PRESS LOU GEHRIG GOT FOR DYING: It's a remarkable reflection on media then and now. We think of the tragedy of the New York Yankees star as having moved 85 years of fans and writers and just humans. Not so. One columnist insisted Gehrig was faking it. Another insisted he had infected his teammates. Funny you don't hear those articles read often. I'm going to do it for you.

C-Block (47:00) GOOD NIGHT AND GOOD LUCK

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SERIES 2 EPISODE 206: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: “I wasn’t very smart. I decided to travel around the world shortly before the debate,” the President has now said at a fundraiser in Virginia. He then described his arduous travel through 15 Time Zone changes for the G7 and D-Day, and how it affected him at the debate: “I didn’t listen to my staff and then I came home and nearly fell asleep on stage.” The debate was June 27. He returned from his travels on June SIXTEENTH.

This followed by only a few hours a suggestion from Nancy Pelosi that Biden (and Trump) takes an acuity test: "Both candidates owe whatever test you want to put them to, in terms of their mental acuity and their health — both of them. I think it's a legitimate question to say, is this an episode or is this a condition? When people ask that question, it's completely legitimate — of both candidates."

Pelosi thinks Biden has an episode?Or a condition? If there were anything Pelosi could have said that would do LESS to contain all of this, I am hard pressed to guess what it could have been.

And there are disastrous new internal polling numbers leaked from Democratic pollsters OpenLabs to Puck News. Since the debate, New Hampshire has now become Trump by three, Virginia is Trump by one and a half; that the president now has leads of half a point or less in New Mexico, Maine, and Minnesota; that Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Arizona, George, North Carolina and the Nebraska Second are all Trump by four or more and it’s seven in Michigan and Pennsylvania. Biden’s support dropped by roughly two percentage points in all twelve of these states and in Colorado and Minnesota. If he cannot recover all of this, the Democrats are looking at a loss of at least 100 electoral votes.

The profound moments of American political history – secession, Watergate, Teapot Dome, the retirement of Lyndon Johnson, all the rest – share one commonality. These stories have each taken on a momentum of their own; they have each reached a tipping point when – whether quickly or imperceptibly – the other option began to disappear. The momentum in the Biden Re-Election story changed yesterday. And the tipping point may have been reached.

The good news could be that suddenly the only candidate with the age problem, would be Trump. The only candidate with the uncertain grip on reality, would be Trump. The only candidate to be called feeble or gaffe-prone or lost, would be Trump. And if Biden really were convinced to retire from the ticket and the office in order to send Kamala Harris into the campaign with the incumbency, she would be the first woman president of the United States asking the voters to validate her with a full term of office – and doing so when a primary plank of the Democratic campaign is the Republicans’ assault on the rights of every woman in this country.

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SERIES 2 EPISODE 205: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) BULLETIN:  I now believe the President is going to stand aside and Kamala Harris will replace him as the nominee, and I think there is as much as a 50-50 chance he will also resign his office before the election.

This is NOT based on sourced reporting or inside information but merely an accumulation of new developments during the course of Tuesday, and I take no pleasure in making any of these conclusions, and I haven't even thought long enough about them to be certain if I concur or am opposed to this outcome.But

After Nancy Pelosi's comments today about President Biden and how "I think it's a legitimate question to say, is this an episode or is this a condition? When people ask that question, it's completely legitimate" and how nothing she could have said would do less to tamp down speculation or debate, and especially after today's report of leaked internal swing state Democratic polling, I think - as my friend of half a century Will Bunch put it, "it feels like an energy shift in the force."

The polling is described in detail. The bottom line is that in the 72 hours after the debate, Democratic internal pollsters OpenLabs reported that the six swing states had become twelve swing states and Biden had lost about two points in both of them and was now trailing Trump in Michigan and Pennsylvania by seven.

It's not sustainable. 

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SERIES 2 EPISODE 204: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: If Joe Biden had been pulling his punches in fighting back against the Trump/Supreme Court conspiracy to subvert democracy, he stopped doing so last night. To my mind he should take the Court's unprecedented decision to transform our form of government into a monarchy by the fabrication of something called 'presidential immunity' by showing how it works, announcing he was adding six seats to the Court by Executive Order, and daring SCOTUS to stop him.

But as a start, Biden took off the gloves, insisting the American people should join him and Justice Sotomayor in dissenting from the Court immunity decision. Biden attacked Trump by name, said that because the Supreme Court had done “a terrible disservice to this nation” by preventing a Trump trial on January 6th before the election, that therefore the people “must decide” on Trump, and acknowledged “there are virtually no limits to what a president can do."

It was a clear declaration of war on the Supreme Court; it was a clear re-positioning of Trump from an unprincipled political opponent to a menace to our form of government. “Any president will be free to ignore the law.”He closed with “may god help preserve our democracy.”

The Supreme Court has thrown out 248 years of American history – more really – at the start of the week in which we CELEBRATE that 248thbirthday. As Sotomayor also noted, Alexander Hamilton was specific about the necessity to have a FORMER president be subject to possible prosecution for any crimes he committed, IN OFFICE, because THAT would be one of the key differences between the new United States and the Kingdom of Great Britain, from which we had to stage a revolution to free ourselves. THEIR king was “sacred and inviolable.” OUR president would be subject to “personal punishment and disgrace.”

As to the nomination uncertainty: the polls continue to be inconclusive and the tightrope just gets longer. I remain agnostic on the outcome (I want whatever wins). But I want to suggest that the logical extension of calling for Biden to drop off the ticket because you don't think he's sharp enough to win re-election and/or serve another term, is to say he's not sharp enough to be president NOW - and should resign. If you're going to be cynical enough to force him out of office later, why not now, when you could still offer new president Kamala Harris as the incumbent on Election Day?

B-Block (31:40) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Ken Dilanian of NBC, Matthew Belloni of Puck, and Ben Smith of Semafor all miss the point of the Biden candidacy story. Ralph Nader blames Hillary for the Chief Justice appointed the president who is Nader's fault. Worst Persons Hall of Famer Bill O'Reilly makes up a story about Biden quitting (but it must be true! It's from the Bill-O'Reilly-Dot-Com-News-Headquarters!)

C-Block (42:10) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Another 4th of July falling in the middle of another week, just like it did the year I started my professional career in network radio simply because... the 4th of July was falling in the middle of another week and they needed somebody unemployed, cheap, and immediately.

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SERIES 2 EPISODE 203: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:40) BULLETIN: The New York Times has called for a candidate to drop out of the presidential race after his performance in a debate - a debate which has IMPROVED his standing against his opponent in several polls.

No, President Biden is not dropping out. And that wasn't a family oligarchy intervention Sunday at Camp David to tell him to. It was an offing photo shoot.

There are no indications (and let's not fully exhale; we don't know if the impacts might appear long-term) that the debate had any significant impact on the presidential race. CBS-YouGov polling released Sunday says even in the wake of the understandable blunt-force trauma we all went through as we watched, 55% of the Democrats have NO interest in changing horses while after the same debate 54% percent of EVERYBODY says TRUMP should drop out. “I am finishing my second battleground state poll post-debate,” writes the Democratic pollster Geoff Garin, “and both surveys show the same thing: the debate had no effect on the vote choice. The election was extremely close and competitive before the debate, and it is still extremely close and competitive today.” Morning Consult and Data For Progress polled right after the debate, the percentages of those who think Biden should drop out went up like four points, but the Biden-versus-Trump match-up… Biden went UP a point. In Survey USA he went UP THREE points. Translation: yeah, maybe he should drop out but if he doesn’t, I’m still voting for him.

The almost negligible impact on Biden’s poll numbers may be as transitory as whatever it was that impaired the president during the debate, because his health and age is baked-in to the voters’ perception of him. There was nothing before the debate, nothing in his grueling international travels to the G7 and Normandy and elsewhere that was as bad as what he did during the debate. He was clear the day before and the next morning. And there is a plausible and intuitively satisfactory possible explanation for what CAUSES something like that in an 81-year old man. If the President had a cold – and I don’t know about you, but I’ll admit it: I’VE had colds in my life, and his hoarseness, it sounded to me like a cold – if he had a cold, did he take cold medicine? You know, like just Tylenol. Cold medicine.

The Yale School of medicine professor, cardiologist and head of outcomes evaluation at Yale New Haven Hospital Center Dr. Harlan Krumholz wrote a piece for Newsweek: “Biden's symptoms are consistent with someone suffering from temporary drug-induced cognitive impairment. Most people believe common over-the-counter cold medications such as Dayquil, Tylenol, or Advil to be harmless. While generally well tolerated, these medications have well-documented side effects and can cause reduced alertness, diminished attention, poor memory, and reduced reaction time, especially in older individuals. These impairments are transitory but can appear consequential and alarming. Every experienced clinician has seen this effect thousands of times…"

The real illness right now may be in our media. NBC News got the Camp David thing utterly wrong. The Times made fools of its editorial board and top columnists and based on something a staffer wrote there is every reason to suspect that it acted as it did because if Biden were to drop out it would prove the Times wasn't a fatally broken organization that put its thumb on the scale because he wouldn't give them a one-on-one interview.

Regardless: the breaking news is - nothing's broken.

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A-Block (1:40) SPECIAL COMMENT: As I reported in our live video version of this podcast on YouTube and Twitch right after the "debate," there were three participants in the CNN event last night, not just two. President Biden was competing against the tag team of Trump and CNN. 

I warned here on Wednesday that CNN's abrogation of the primary responsibility of any journalistic effort anywhere and at any time in the history of the world (when the guy urinates on your leg and tells you it's raining, you're supposed to SAY something) had the potential to render the first Biden-Trump "debate" into a repeat of the network's disastrous live Town Hall with Trump last year.

But in that one, and though she failed, Kaitlin Collins at least tried to push back against Trump's firehouse of lies. Last night, Jake Tapper and Dana Bash disgraced themselves and disqualified themselves from any future reportorial credibility (under the guidance of CNN political director David Chalian and new chief Mark Thompson). CNN gave Trump 45 minutes in front of an audience that may have topped 100,000,000 to lie about everything from January 6th to his own golf performance. I documented 40 of the lies. I think I missed two-thirds of them, or more. CNN pushed back against exactly none.

The network had promised to at least not abide Trump's lies about the 2020 election and having set the truth bar as low as it could have gone, failed to reach even that.
It's not just that Bash and Tapper should be fired (and Chalian and Thompson and anybody else in management responsible for this utter, corrupt pandering to Trump). If I had done what they did, I would have resigned and fled the country by now. And probably changed my name.

In a just world, CNN would be forced off the air and out of business, today, and its offices evacuated and the empty buildings leveled. The operation where I began my TV career in 1981 and resumed my news career in 2002 is dead and its credibility is now marked with the NewsMaxes and RSNs of this world.

As to Biden's halting and hoarse performance, he is bloodied but unbowed. More on that in the third segment of this podcast.

B-BLOCK (17:01) MORE SPECIAL COMMENT: We'll review some of the key clips from the Trump Town Ha--- I'm sorry "CNN Presidential Debate" including the remarkable truth that while one of the candidates is seeking the office to avoid prison and will do anything to anybody to win - as he tried to do in 2020 - Tapper and Bash did not even bring up the topic of democracy until the 39th minute of the "debate," and waited even longer to question Trump about his status as the worst criminal in our nation's history.

C-BLOCK (40:28) QUESTIONS FROM YOU: Observations from viewers of the debate and the live podcast and my replies - including the three or four different components to one obvious question: "Is it too late to replace Biden?" There are three answers, the most important of which is: if you do, you trade a still likely victory over evil for certain defeat. No would-be replacement comes within 10 points of Trump in polling. It's that simple.

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SERIES 2 EPISODE 201: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: As debate day arrives there could not be a more potent nor ominous metaphor for our political crisis than the one in DC. There, a 3000-pound replica of the Lincoln Memorial is… at this hour… melting in the hot sun.

As Trump tries to destroy democracy and Biden tries to destroy Trump, the climate disaster that has already begun and on which Trump would apply the finishing touches, has so imperiled the six-foot tall wax statue of Lincoln outside a Washington elementary school, that the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities has removed Lincoln’s head “to prevent it from falling and breaking.”

Can you think of worse imagery?

Polling indicates more than half of voters expect to watch tonight, and that a rather startling 11% actually expect to have their opinion of who to vote for changed by the results. The three groups produce the most voters who feel that way are the ones in which Trump has had the most unlikely growth: voters under 35, African-Americans, and Hispanics. If Trump actually blows that growth tonight he's cooked.

And we will either have a debate right after the Supreme Court rules on this Trumpian "Presidential Immunity" nonsense, or the night before it. It becomes a simple, tangible truth that if the Court invents this immunity and declares this nation a monarchy, the king won't be Trump but Biden and he can take any steps he wants without fear of consequence. It's kind of hard to believe but it is literally true that if SCOTUS creates immunity today, Biden could have arrest Trump tonight - during the debate.

B-Block (17:22) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Jamaal Bowman didn't lose because a Nevada Republican called him names, or because AIPAC spent millions, or because progressives are in retreat. He lost because of Jamaal Bowman. The sports TV world is in such trouble a Major League Baseball team is now in essence PAYING its fans to watch its game broadcasts. And Hung Cao, the nut job GOP candidate for Senate in Virginia, tries to get out in front of a huge scandal by blaming a USA Today story that he may have padded his military resume on... the font their reporter used in their email.

C-Block (30:35) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: He should've been one of the greatest of all-time in the news business. But bad luck and bad survival skills combined to lay Will Spens low: The Most Talented Man I Ever Worked With.

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SERIES 2 EPISODE 200: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: 

With the news that tomorrow night, debate moderators Danna Bash and Jake Tapper will NOT fact-check Trump in real time, CNN has abrogated yet another journalistic imperative at yet another Trump event offering him yet another step towards imposing a dictatorship on this nation.

Oh, ok, says CNN: on the 2020 election, yeah, they’ll push back. But otherwise?The moderators “are not participants in the debate. They are facilitators,” said a CNN spokesman. CNN’s woeful political director David Chalian – largely responsible for the Trump Town Hall debacle last year – told the New York Times that a live debate “is not the ideal arena for live fact-checking”even as that spokesperson who refused to give their NAME to Axios said that there WOULD be SOME fact-checking of major falsehoods and smaller details on secondary CNN platforms. So they’re going to do it, they’re just not going to do it where it matters or when it matters. Just to further confess that the decision to NOT fact check Trump’s firehose of lies as he makes them, WHERE he makes them, is another principle thrown away to make sure Trump shows up or doesn’t batter the network, or both, that SAME spokesman said that Trump's lies about 2020 are “inaccuracies.”

WHAT SHOULD BIDEN DO? When Trump says something crazy – about sharks OR the economy OR anything in between – START by saying “Donald Trump is insane. And he’s wrong. Here’s why.”

This is especially true if Trump tries the “are you better off now than you were four years ago?” Emphasize Trump’s criminal culpability about Covid. The million dead. The bleach. The putting light in your body. The economic collapse. The fact that in February Trump knew it was airborne and lied to the public for months as Americans died. Say it, Mr. President, say it bluntly: Trump killed a million Americans. There are American millions HE killed for whom there is no question – they ain’t better off now than they were four years ago.

AND bluntly say that he killed the economy. That the inflation we are finally stopping now is TRUMP Inflation. It’s TRUMP COVID inflation. That the president with the worst job records since Herbert Hoover was Trump. That violent crime exploded under Trump. That there were two kinds of criminals under Trump: muggers and murderers on the street… and ex-presidents who tried to overthrow the government.

And the most important truth to hit him with – the most important truth to dispel what Brian Beutler dubbed “Trump-Stalgia and Trump-Nesia” – the most important truth to enrage Trump – is the truth that he lost. That he lost the election. That he’s a loser. And that instead of taking it like a man, he had other people try to overthrow the government, he didn’t even have the guts to go to the Capitol during the coup.

B-Block (21:30) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Troy Nehls has been wearing a combat medal he never deserved. The military took it back. He says it's the establishment trying to punish him. Vivek Ramaswamy praises the Julian Assange deal, rips the Julian Assange deal, blames Biden, even though he was indicted by Trump. And Missouri's Attorney General sues New York State to somehow impact Trump's 34 Felony Convictions here and says there would be no way some rogue D.A. would have taken Abe Lincoln off the campaign trail in South Carolina in 1860 for being anti-slavery when, of course, Abe Lincoln was taken off the BALLOT in South Carolina in 1860 for being anti-slavery.

C-Block (33:44) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: I did an interview about my doctor and friend Renée Richards over the weekend so it's time to tell how I met her - and more importantly why - when she treated me after I slammed my head on the front of the 7 Train at Shea Stadium in New York in 1980.

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SERIES 2 EPISODE 199: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Trump and his henchmen opened not one but two emergency exits for him to bail out of Thursday's debate against The President and blame it on Biden. And in doing so, his dumbest press secretary yet went on CNN and called Adolf Hitler "HILTER." H-I-L-T-E-R, Hilter.

I don't know if she should be fired for invoking HItler, or if she WILL be fired for getting the name of Trump's role model wrong.

It's Karoline Leavitt, the former centerfielder of the St. Anselm College softball team and the idiot who previously insisted the word 'damning' is correctly pronounced 'dammaning,' tried to filibuster CNN's Katie Hunt about how biased debate hosts Jake Tapper and Dana Bash really are. As Hunt cut first the answer and then the interview off, Leavitt insisted anybody could spend five minutes googling how many times Tapper had compared Trump to "Adolf Hilter." Bypassing the whole Hitler/Hilter stuff, "Damaning Hilter" Leavitt adopted the traditional pose of the Martyred Trump Huckster and did the rounds of the fascist media outlets. When she went on Steve Bannon’s outlet he said either CNN apologizes to her, or Trump should cancel the debate.

Hours later, Trump opened a second emergency chute, again demanding drug tests before the debate, as his personal quack Congressman Physician Prescribe Thyself Ronny Jackson wrote a long letter to the White House requesting such tests (and saying nothing about any stashes he may have left there).

Who knows if Trump really will bail. But he's got FOLAD (Fear Of Losing A Debate) all covered.

MEANWHILE: it's a long shot but I'm beginning to wonder if somebody on Jack Smith's side is laying the groundwork for indicting Trump anew - in New Jersey. There has been a second news leak in just three business days, about Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Espionage Scandal. Yesterday’s leak via ABC News did not resonate among American news media which can generally only BARELY handle one thing at a time – like the debate. The story itself – about Trump making an almost-secret special trip to Florida in July 2022 to make sure nobody had touched the documents he stole from the White House and hid from his own attorney - may not be much more than another one of those threads that you pull on and maybe it just comes off in your hand – or maybe it unravels the entirety of Trump’s size 62 suit. I don’t even think prosecutors know what they have here.

But he went down there two weeks after he had bankers' boxes shipped from Mar-a-Lago to the Bedminster Golf Course. They didn't contain Ivana.

B-Block (20:35) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: I have somehow forgotten, for years, maybe 35 years, the first and arguably the best joke I ever made about Trump. I'll correct that here. Not only are the British Conservatives on track for a historic loss in the July 4 election but two candidates, a party official, and a security guard have been caught allegedly wagering on which day their prime minister would select for Election Day! And the rare two-wins-in-a-row for Puck media guy Dylan Byers, carrying still more management water as he turns gutsy Washington Post reporting on the paper's ongoing management scandal into “a plan to dig for unflattering information.”

C-Block (27:20) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: How did I forget to tell you this one through the first 500 episodes of this podcast? How could I have missed the 24th anniversary last week? I'll just mention the principals: my mother, me, a former New York Yankees infielder named Chuck Knoblauch - and Babe Ruth.

.

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SERIES 2 EPISODE 198: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: The New York Times' sourced story - that a year ago first a senior federal judge in Florida phoned Judge Aileen Cannon and urged her to hand off the Trump Espionage/Stolen Classified Documents case to some other judge, and when Cannon ignored the idea, the CHIEF federal judge in Florida phoned Cannon and warned her that the optics of ruling on the president who appointed her with disastrous - is not just a great bit of reporting.

It's a clear shot across the bow of Cannon. It's an indicator that this is her last chance to voluntarily recuse from a case she has so mishandled that even when both Trump and Jack Smith said they were ready to start the trial, SHE refused. I think it's a legitimate inference that if she again ignores it, a real move will be made against her (maybe even against her fitness to continue as a judge). The chief judge who issued the warning was appointed by Governor Bush and then President Bush and to me it's clear this was a planned leak. Let's hope it works.

MEANWHILE IT'S TIME FOR RFK JUNIOR TO DROP OUT. The nephew of a martyred President and son of a man who easily could've won the office has now threatened to jail Dana Bash and Jake Tapper of CNN - and the whole network management and production staff - because the network has excluded him from the debate next week.

Kennedy's farcical, dangerous, insane Trump stalking horse campaign has to end. He isn't a victim and he isn't being persecuted. He's nuts.

AND DONALD SUTHERLAND HAS DIED. This spectacularly talented man was, I am proud to say, my friend. He appointed himself my "acting father" after my Dad died. He was supportive, insightful, hilarious, and I think I can tell you something you may not know about him: he was as good a writer as I've ever read. I will read you one of the dozens of emails he sent me. I will restrain myself and chose one about baseball, not one about...Jane Fonda.

B-Block (27:55) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: What if a Tucker Carlson fell over in Australia and nobody was there to hear it? His speaking tour? Plenty of good seats available. Jeff Bezos still won't do the obvious: Will Lewis has to be fired before he crashes The Washington Post. And Dylan Byers trots out words like "hero" and "great" for my late friend Howard Fineman. 14 months ago he gratuitously and painfully insulted him in a story that gad nothing to do with Howard just because he felt like taking a shot at somebody. Byers, a management-jock-sniffing jackass, might meet the same fate 30 years from now - except nobody will remember his work.

C-Block (40:02) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: One of the existential premises of his work was: everything in the world could be reduced to a husband and wife arguing over the dumbest of things. This week he has her insisting that he is murdering her wrong in "Mr. Preble Gets Rid Of His Wife."

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SERIES 2 EPISODE 197: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Joe Biden, five points behind Trump in the Fox News poll in MARCH, a point behind him last month, is now two points AHEAD of Trump in the Fox News poll in JUNE. .

There are also some remarkable internal numbers in the poll. Doesn’t sound like much, but Fox says 32 percent of its respondents now believe the economy is in excellent or good shape - and that is the HIGH WATERMARK for the entire Biden Presidency. Fox also says voter CONFIDENCE in Biden on the economy has swung wildly towards Biden. They favor Trump by FIVE points, but that last month it was Trump over Biden by THIRTEEN.

Also: A top midwestern political reporter says the Trump Campaign is now warning LOCAL media that it will VET all questions for Trump at the Republican Convention and only give access TO Trump to local outlets whose questions have been APPROVED in advance.

And a week before the debate, as rumors continue to swirl that Trump will back out as soon as he can find some way to blame it on Biden, it is not only a certainty that Robert Kennedy Junior will NOT be at the debate, but it’s beginning to look like he is on FAR fewer state ballots than his campaign has been claiming.

And is Trump going to bail out of the debate? Why? Just because he told a reporter Joan Rivers voted for him in 2016 - when she died in 2014?

B-Block (20:10) SPORTSCENTRAL CENTER NEWSDESK TONIGHT: The day Willie Mays deliberately turned a double into a single - and why it's testament to his genius as a baseball player. And Justin Turner's pretty smart but his new World Series idea is really, really dumb. (31:04) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Georgetown University celebrated the late New York Times writer David Carr as a great man, which he was. But they also celebrated him as a great journalist, which he most decidedly was NOT. ETTD: Everyteam Trump Touches, Dies. And Greg Gutfeld explains Fox doesn't make crap up which means I guess that they gave Dominion Voting $787,500,000 because Rupert has too much money?

C-Block (47:45) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Just started to get hot here and whenever that it happens I remember the day I went to work at 3 AM after spending the previous day drinking roughly 40 beers. DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME.

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SERIES 2 EPISODE 196: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Yesterday in Milwaukee the melting of Trump's brain reached - or at least neared - its completion.

He called the President of the United States and the obsession of his life "Joe Bride." He had lots of other episodes, but this is the all-time new high in low. JOE. BRIDE. 

No - he’s fine. Ask Dr. Johnson. Dr. Jackson. Dr. Johnson. Dr. Jackson. My sister. My daughter. Joe Bride. 

Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita, who are in essence running the Trump CAMPAIGN, are reportedly “worried” about Trump – specifically about his deteriorating mental condition. Can’t imagine why (JOE BRIDE).

And this is coming from two former Republicans still plugged into THAT side of the ball. Wiles and LaCivita, per Rick Wilson, are going to friendly journalists and, quoting Wilson, “are starting to whisper that ‘no one can control (Trump)’.” Former Republican Senate aide Tom Nichols meanwhile put his finger to the wind and said that the FLOOD of Trump campaign efforts to make it look like the no one can control PRESIDENT BIDEN are making HIM suspicious. Nichols now writes quote: “Republicans and their media ecosystem seem to be in a panic about their candidate… if Trump is doing so well, why is his campaign and its support system in right-wing media resorting to easily disproved lies?”

 Trump also stepped into it AGAIN not IN Milwaukee but ABOUT it. His campaign had to deny a heavily-sourced report from the ABC Television station in Chicago that during the convention – in Milwaukee – the place he called HORRIBLE last week – he won’t even stay in a hotel there; that he will stay in his building in Chicago and COMMUTE.

MEANWHILE: Roger Stone may conceivably have cost Judge Aileen Cannon her job.

In the latest undercover audio released by my friend the investigative journalist Lauren Windsor and her colleague Ally Sammarco, Stone – at a Catholics for Catholics event AT Mar-a-Lago – made the mistake of hinting that the fix is IN in Trump’s trial for stealing and keeping classified documents and other espionage act crimes… that when the Trump-appointed Cannon conducts a hearing day after tomorrow on the Trump motions to DISMISS all or most of the charges on the fabricated premise that the Special Counsel was unlawfully appointed, Stone seems – even for him – unusually confident Cannon really WILL throw the case.

AND TRUMP JUNIOR tweeted a photo of CNN’s Jim Acosta and wrote “LOL. Looks like CNN Fake News loser Acosta got an embarrassingly bad hair dye job.” Talk about “embarrassingly.” Bad hair dye job? Remember that among other living hells, Don Jr. is the guy who on a regular basis mounts that gargoyle Kimberly Guilfoyle who at age 55 trying to look 35 now has SO much make-up and SO much hair dye that she looks like Bette Davis in the movie “Whatever Happened To Baby Jane?”

B-Block (21:19) Willie Mays, two days before he and the Negro Leagues in which he played, are to be honored with a San Francisco Giants' game at Rickwood Field where Mays' first team the Birmingham Black Barons played, has died at the age of 93. (32:17) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Josh Hawley spreads the "Biden wants to sit during the debate" lie. The BBC's unfortunate typo about self-identification for job applicants and what it did to the word "deaf." And Jeff Bezos sends an email to his Washington Post staff about the building being on fire and stuff and talk about getting a roll of stamps and e-mailing it in!

C-Block (42:05) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Since Bezos is in the news, let me tell you of when I worked with his fiancé Lauren Sanchez, blackmail victim, and when I worked with David Letterman's future blackmailer.

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SERIES 2 EPISODE 195: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Trump is losing his mind.

If Joe Biden gave a speech in which he claimed everybody agreed he was in full robust mental health because he’d passed a test administered by Doctor Anthony… Hopkins. Or Anthony Bourdain… or Anthony Michael Hall – any Anthony except the doctor who gave him the theoretical test, Doctor Anthony FAUCI. If that had happened to Joe Biden there would be nothing else on television or the internet.

But Trump has gotten away with it in part because he is so crazy, so loudly, so often, that it all runs together and, perversely, each Trump mental disaster stops seeming like it’s part OF a sequence. Each Trump mental disaster REPLACES the one before it. I have a thought experiment about that to underscore how that’s even MORE true than you or I might assume it is.

But the second half of the headline? That he's losing his mind AND the election?New Ipsos poll for Politico yesterday: ONE THIRD of all voters say they are now LESS likely to support Trump. Among independents, same number, a third, less likely to vote for him; only 12% of independents say MORE likely to vote for him.Ipsos also dug a little deeper. Are the convictions IMPORTANT in your decision whether or not to vote for Trump? 22% say the convictions ARE important AND make them less likely to vote for him. 

He's losing. And Biden has dfinally called him a "convicted criminal" in an official campaign ad. Next? The President saying it himself. I think that is also coming.

B-Block (41:47) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Another GOP flag scandal: Newt Gingrich is back because his eyesight is almost as weak as his intelligence. The Michigan Republican who posts, disavows, then embraces an AI endorsement from Martin Luther King. The Associated Press puts out a transparent ad for Trump. And Royce White, would be Republican Senator from Minnesota, would have you believe that there is a crime wave there caused by... water fountains?

C-Block (50:02) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: The almost certainty that Turner Sports is about to lose the NBA reminds me of the summer Ted Turner almost got the rights to the NFL. Not the games - the entire league.

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SERIES 2 EPISODE 194: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) Trump and Mike Johnson are plotting for House Republicans to somehow "overturn" Trump's convictions in the Stormy Daniels Election Interference trial.

That was what they were SUPPOSED to talk about when Trump met with the House GOP yesterday but amid all the threats and terrorism and dictatorship and violence we forget that at his core, Trump is a moron. Whether he and Johnson actually got around to conceive some extra-constitutional scheme to enact ex post facto measure, before or after the election, who knows. All we do know is that Trump wound up insulting and enrages Milwaukee, a month and a day before the Republican Convention is supposed to open there.

The blowback was a welcome respite. Three different Wisconsin Congressmen made up four different excuses for Trump calling Milwaukee "horrible." One of them, Bryan Steil, first said Trump said no such thing, then in a local TV interview contradicted himself and said Trump did say it, but was referring to "specific things."

The upshot of all of this - and Trump's word salads - and Trump's manic blinking at his news conference where he couldn't handle any questions - is the ever-increasingly obvious reality that Trump is currently losing his mind. And that means for all its bravado and fealty the Republican Party is shackled to a corpse.

B-Block (24:30) TRUMPDATE: Late breaking news about Trump's fear of going to prison and the likelihood that if he goes it'll be in a place that is halfway between New York City and ESPN (huh?) (26:14) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Rishi Sunak explains he grew up deprived because he didn't have the British equivalent of HBO. The downward spiral of ex-human being Mark Penn gets worse. And Lauren Boebert is caught vaping in public again and you know WHAT HAPPENED LAST TIME!

C-Block (34:00) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: For the first time, a chapter from Thurber's only non-fiction book "The Years With Ross." It includes a quote from a New Yorker Magazine writer that to me is one of the five or ten greatest things uttered by anybody in the history of the world.

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SEASON 2 EPISODE 193: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: I have no use for Merrick Garland, in large part because he is one of those people who would never think to do this, and never realize that his Republican counterpart would do it in a heartbeat. Found in Contempt of Congress for ignoring a subpoena, as rammed through by Jim Jordan, who BEGAN to ignore a Congressional subpoena two years and a month ago? Garland should get a grand jury to indict Jordan TODAY.

LET THE ASS-KISSING BEGIN: Trump goes to Capitol Hill for the first time since his attempted coup. Just to ratchet up the imagery, he'll be at the Capitol Hill Club, which is where the still undiscovered terrorist left one of his/her pipe bombs the night before. 

COULD SCOTUS DECIDE TODAY? It is to issue decisions today and tomorrow. One of them may be about Trump's imaginary "Presidential Immunity." Or not. Or maybe they'll keep it a secret. Or run it up a flag poll to see who'll salute. Another bid to make them follow SOME rules has been vetoed by Lindsey Graham.

AND IN MEMORY OF MY FRIEND HOWARD FINEMAN: There is a tiny silver lining in Howard's story, which he honored me by sharing with me since his diagnosis and prognosis 18 months ago. He was with me from literally the HOUR my political career began through last Wednesday when his "intro" to the B-Block last ran. He was brilliant, supportive, honest, indefatigable, funny, beloved, and I will tell you why his fight made our sadness just a little easier to endure.

B-Block (25:14) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: So she felt she had to tell everybody to stop calling Jill Biden "Hunter Biden's mother" because she wasn't his biological mother. Someone wrote - and I could not find a clip to confirm this - that she then implied that when the President referred to his wife, and to Hunter as "their son" it was a sign of dementia.

So we need to talk about what's wrong with Katy Tur.

We'll start with the fact that Katy is herself the step-mother to two children. I have known that families and motherhood have been issues for her since we met in 2006, even before we lived together. But to drag this onto the air - onto news coverage - is unforgivable. It's time for MSNBC to find somebody else.

C-Block (45:02) GOOD NIGHT AND GOOD LUCK

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SERIES 2 EPISODE 192: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: 

Trump has now floated reinstating the Military Draft.

He put the words in the mouth of the last of his Secretaries of Defense and that guy – Christopher Miller who sat back and watched January 6th unfold nearly as much as Trump did – dressed the draft up as “A National Service Requirement.” It seems to be targeted at 18, 19, and 20-year old American boys and girls (and maybe 17-year olds) and it would start with a mandatory military aptitude test administered BY the Pentagon IN your local high school and any kid who refused to take it might be prevented from graduating and any school that hesitated to go along with this would lose ALL federal funding.

Trump breaking precedent and using the American army domestically to suppress protests and conceivably kill civilians is not the bottom of the plan for the military-dictatorship part of his dictatorship. Those army soldiers, and marines, and whoever else, firing on other Americans – many of them or most of them or maybe all of them, would be draftees.

And when The Washington Post reported it, and the story got no traction and no pick-up at all, and even though the paper reported Trump had not expressly endorsed the draft, within six hours Trump posted an enraged denial reading “In fact, I never even thought of that idea” which even for him is a disastrously transparent non-denial denial. Of course HE never thought of that idea: when has Donald Trump ever thought anything about a military draft – except how to dodge it.

Somebody ELSE thought of that idea. The somebody else is that former Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller. The Post interviewed Miller and he said a national service requirement should be “strongly considered. He described the concept as a common “rite of passage,” one that would create a sense of “shared sacrifice” among America’s youth."

The impact this Washington Post story, could have on Trump’s campaign would be nothing short of fatal – if only it were to be handled correctly by BIDEN’S campaign:

Trump wants to reinstate the draft.

The. DRAFT. 

Is there a more powerful campaign message than “Trump wants to draft your kids”? “Trump Wants To Force Your Kids To Kill Or Be Killed?” Actually there is. Because the voting age is not what it was in the ‘60s. The 18-year olds vote. There IS a more powerful campaign message and it is “Trump wants to draft YOU. Trump Wants To Force YOU to Kill or Be Killed.”

ALSO: Trump's felony conviction means he can't own a gun in Florida. So why has he had one longer than Hunter Biden had his? And what about Washington State's law allowing any voter to challenge any candidate's ballot position if he's been convicted of a felony? And why is Alvin Bragg voluntarily appearing at Jim Jordan's hearing - the day after Trump will be sentenced?

B-Block (25:20) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: A Twitter follower of mine puts Chris Cillizza and Nate Silver in the same tweet just to mess with me. Jonathan Martin, who has spent a year talking about nothing but Joe Biden's age, complains that nobody has talked about Joe Biden's age (and works Aaron Sorkin into it, somehow) and the Republican who wants to be Senator from Minnesota, Royce White, explains the campaign funds may have been spent AT the all-nude strip club but that doesn't mean they were spent on STRIPPERS since they serve FOOD at all-nude strip clubs.

C-Block (34:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: As I read of Stephen A. Smith demanding that ESPN pay him more than it pays Pat McAfee, I flashed back to the days when the studio-show audiences there were way more profitable than they are now and ESPN was make $60 million a year from SportsCenter and they were paying me $300,000 and I asked for $3,000,000. Oh the look on their faces delights me to this day. How I Quit SportsCenter...

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SERIES 2 EPISODE 191: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: The polls continue to underscore it. Trump's conviction, just twelve days ago, is already half as important in voters' decision-making process as where the candidates stand on immigration. 28% tell CBS the convictions are a "major factor" for them, yet this number is dismissed because it isn't by itself decisive. A separate Morning Consult poll says Trump's net favorability is now four points below that of Biden's - because of the trial. 

And yet the President, and his advisors, and the old men of the Democratic Party continue to contrive to keep Joe Biden from saying the truth in public. He says the impact of the convictions is for the public to decide. No! That’s for the public to decide? This isn’t an American Idol vote. This isn’t Coke versus Pepsi. This is democracy or dictatorship and most people don’t know and YOU, Mr. President, have to make the case. You don’t have to sink to Trump’s brain-damaged rhetorical level but “that’s for the public to decide?” HELP THEM DECIDE. TELL THEM THE TRUTH.

Part of the problem is: the campaign seems to be incapable of realizing it can do multiple attacks on Trump - from criminality to dictatorship to the price of orange juice. I'll give some examples of the variety of ads they could run.

MEANWHILE: KNOTTED BY WINDSOR. Justice Alito makes a fool of himself as my friend the investigative journalist Lauren Windsor records him agreeing that either the right or left will "win" - and he had a much better visit with her than did his wife. Martha-Ann Alito promises to get revenge against everybody, fly an anti-LGBTQ flag, and sue the bunch of them. It turns out everything we thought about them was comparatively positive.

AND JUST FOR LAUGHS: Jonathan Turley has declared Trump "elderly."

B-Block (34:44) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Alleged Democratic governor Hochul of New York, after freezing NYC congestion prices, apparently bails out on fundraiser hosted by auto dealers. Marge Barney Rubble Greene thinks electric cars run on gasoline. Politico with the typo of the year, about a fabulous "head of head."

C-Block (40:21) FROM THE SPORTS CENTRAL CENTER NEWSDESK TONIGHT: I moved this last in case you are NOT a baseball fan of 57 seasons' duration whom the game is losing. The Athletic publishes its survey of current players and guess what! Turns out they all invented the game, and anybody who played before about 2010 was incompetent and irrelevant. Worse yet, somebody grabs my personal third rail, insulting Babe Ruth. Which means I have to go through mediocre reliever Adam Ottavino's 2018 contention that he would strike Babe Ruth out every time he faced him. If you brought Babe Ruth into baseball 2024 and gave him its tiny ballparks and elaborate video scouting and training regimens, he would hit 255 homers.

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SERIES 2 EPISODE 190: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Timing is everything, and for once the timing was perfect. Steve Bannon has been ordered to go to prison. Ordered on June 6th. Ordered on the anniversary of D-Day, when we destroyed everything his predecessors stood for. He doesn’t get it yet. We will destroy HIM and what HE stands for. And all who stand with him. And Trump.

And as he stood outside court - jailed by a Trump-appointed judge who once clerked for Clarence Thomas - he was boasting to the vapid press that, no, he will destroy us and his fascism will subsume America, ashe insisted no jail would ever shut him up, a protestor behind him drowned him out with shouts of "Lock Him Up!" because when all you have is noise and threats, you tend to forget that there is always somebody else with more noise and bigger threats.

THERE IS ALSO NEW POLLING on what happens if Trump joins him in the slammer. The Reuters-Ipsos Poll says actual jail time could cost Trump 23% of his voters. That could be as much as 17,000,000 votes. Even as time and timidity wear that number down, it's a remarkable game-changer.

PLUS: Trump glitched again at a Word Salad Rally in Phoenix, while the Democratic National Committee is actually putting up billboards near his events emphasizing "CONVICTED FELON DONALD TRUMP." And there's more from The Supreme Court: a watchdog group says Clarence Thomas may have gotten as much as $4,000,000 in gifts in the last 20 years. And Brett Kavanaugh is writing a book! Hey! Is it a book about assault?

B-Block (24:00) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: There's a name-that-hockey-team contest in Salt Lake City and the six final choices are all nightmarishly bad. So, Marco Rubio, Tim Scott, J.D. Vance, Doug Burgum, Ben Carson, Byron Donalds, and Elise Stefanik. You're being vetted to run with Trump? When he encouraged them to HANG the last guy? And your daily reason to fire Merrick Garland: there may be videotape of Carlson, Hannity, Ingraham and others at Fox vivisecting Trump and saying his 2020 Election claims are crap, and you are working to RETURN THESE TAPES TO FOX?

C-Block (33:25) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: Any time the news is full of Trump-driven drivel and MAGA conspiracies, is a good time to remember Thurber's account of the day in 1913 that the dam outside his home of Columbus, Ohio, broke and everybody fled. Only it hadn't broken - and they were running in the wrong direction anyway. "The Day The Damn Broke."

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SERIES 2 EPISODE 189: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: The New York Times tried to minimize it but late yesterday it re-surveyed 2,000 voters its previously polled who had Trump up by three. It asked them their opinions after the convictions. The new number is Trump by just ONE.

That translates to a loss of SEVEN PERCENT OF TRUMP VOTERS, three percent of which says it will vote for Biden with the other four destined for him or somebody else who isn't Trump. And a quarter of Trump's support among disaffected Biden-2020 voters is gone. And a fifth of double-haters.

The convictions CONTINUE to have an impact. And so does calling him "Convicted Felon Donald Trump."

MEANWHILE: Has Convicted Felon Donald Trump completed a quid pro quo with Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal? Is he THAT low to trade the life of an American hostage for a big anti-Biden newspaper story? 

What would the editors of The Wall Street Journal do if Convicted Felon Donald Trump went to them and said I can get Putin to send home his American hostage, your reporter Evan Gershkovich?

What would the editors then do if Trump paused and added: "I would like you to do us a favor, though."

And what would the editors do if Trump then paused again and said ‘you need to help get me elected. i need you to join our Biden Age Plot. I need you to write a piece that restarts this Biden Age thing. I'm a convict. I need to change the topic immediately. I need you to publish this by Wednesday.’

At 9 PM Eastern Tuesday Night The Wall Street Journal's genuinely unbelievable attempt to reignite what even Politico termed "The Republicans' Biden-Age-Plot" - for whom editors on my high school newspaper would've been fired and probably expelled - dropped like excrement from Rupert Murdoch's soul. And WHAT had happened EARLIER Tuesday? WHAT had happened at 11:22 A-M Eastern, involving Trump and The Wall Street Journal? A video in which Trump, out of the blue, for the first time in two weeks, again promised that Putin would return the WSJ's Gershkovich to Trump - and Trump alone.

Is it possible it was a quid pro quo? You know, like the other time Trump offered to save somebody from Putin's evil, if they did his dirty work?

Well the writers quoted Kevin McCarthy while dismissing his quotes about Biden's sharpness as "tactical" lying, never thinking maybe he was tactically lying to them. They also interviewed at least three Democrats who said on-the-record that Biden is fine (Pelosi, Patty Murray, Jack Reed) and used not one quote from any of them. Why use quotes that bust your narrative? Or Trump's narrative.

Plus the careers of the writers makes the prospect of a Trump/WSJ deal realistic. One was the idiot who mocked Biden's 2021 trip to the cemetery in which his son, daughter, and wife are buried, and who put a front page piece on Hillary Clinton's "coldness" on the front page of The Boston Globe in 2016. The other? Assigned to get reaction to Obama's 2013 SOTU address, she interviewed Ted Nugent.

It's the worst thing I've ever even half-believed of any American news organization. But I think The Wall Street Journal may have really whored itself out for Trump.

B-BLOCK (32:29) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Mike Johnson misunderstands what "The House Intelligence Committee" means and names to it two of his least intelligent members. Speaking of members, Matt Schlapp with an all-time Freudian slip about Trump's slipping polls. And first Byron Daniels gets nostalgic for Jim Crow, and then he says Biden has taken away black men's... spears.

C-BLOCK (39:50) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Since I've attested to the corruption of all Rupert Murdoch news organizations, I might as well tell you of the day I was fired by Rupert - personally - for doing exactly what he told me to do.

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SERIES 2 EPISODE 188: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: The words weren’t out of my mouth before they came out of President Biden’s mouth. “A former president that is a convicted felon is now seeking the office of the presidency,” he said at a fundraiser 10 minutes from my HIGH SCHOOL. He added that after the 2020 election, “Something snapped in this guy for real, it’s literally driving him crazy.”

1) Call Crazy Donald Trump a convicted felon – mission accomplished.

2) Call Convicted Felon Donald Trump literally crazy – now do it on camera.

Because now there’s MORE evidence it works and it cannot be said too often and it cannot be said by too many different leaders and it needs to be said by the President of the United States loudly and confidently and repeatedly: he’s Convicted Felon Donald Trump and he is literally insane. I am not betting the democracy on one poll, it’s conducted by a Canadian firm called Leger, but it IS an indicator: one out of three Republicans wishes they had nominated somebody else. Among Republicans under age 35 its nearly HALF.

Say it. Keep saying it. ON CAMERA, Mr. President.

MEANWHILE: The Wisconsin Fake Electors Scheme draws felony indictments and the whole thing sideswipes Senator Ron Johnson. And if like me you constantly wonder WHY these people sell out the nation and reality and themselves for Trump, the Pulitzer-Prize winning journalistic non-profit Pro Publica may have an answer based on promotions, new jobs, and other emoluments eight pro-Trump witnesses have received: Cash.

B-Block (27:00) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: The Republicans literally could not tell the difference between Milwaukee and Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam. ESPN's Ticking Time Bomb Pat McAfee somehow makes his use of the "b-word" about a Women's Basketball star even more of a disaster. And why on earth would a baseball player get banned for life for gambling on baseball oh right half the ads on baseball broadcasts tell you to gamble on baseball

C-Block (38:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: I brought him up in the A-Block..Why not tell you ALL my Frank Luntz stories? From the one where he inadvertently got me the job anchoring Countdown on MSNBC to the one where he inadvertently got the president of CNN fired.

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SERIES 2 EPISODE 187: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: The light bulbs may have finally gone off over the heads of the Biden Campaign at 2:03 P-M Eastern yesterday. They had USED the phrase before and they had said the phrase before but it was at THAT moment that they sent it out into the world alone: a Twitter-X post reading simply “Convicted Felon” and under it the close-up, sweating, mottled-face, golf picture of Convicted Felon Donald Trump that looks it was the before shot in a before-and-after about your grandpa’s risk of having a stroke. Elections are not decided by social media posts and they are not decided by nicknames and they are not decided by bad photos but you can probably decide ONE PERCENTAGE POINT in an election with them. Or two. Or five. We may hate it, but we live in America where the name “Crooked Hillary” stuck, and the phrase “Lock Her Up” stuck, and the acronym “MAGA” – one of the stupidest and discordant acronyms of all time – stuck.

And here Joe Biden has an answer to every insult and every meme and every catchphrase used by Trump and his cult and it’s not only a GREAT answer but it has the added benefit of being entirely true and it has the even GREATER benefit of utterly deranging Trump’s whores. They have spent every day since the conviction screaming, shouting, whining, crying “don’t say that” like you did the day the kids gave you your first mean nickname in the 3rd or 4th Grade.

Now they have to make it show up in the polling. In the newest poll, CBS/You Gov, the number of Republicans saying he’s not fit to be president is up to 10 percent and the number of Independents saying he’s not fit to be president is FIFTY percent. Echelon Insights, run by the conservative Kristen Soltis Andersen, went back to 477 people it previously polled who had had it 47-47 and after the verdict asked them again and they came back 49-47 for Biden. 

So keep calling him “Convicted Felon Donald Trump.” Every time. Like he legally changed his name to it. And that means Joe Biden, personally. Say it. Put it in campaign ads. Can you imagine the political media freakout? It would be indelibly attached to Trump. 

MEANWHILE: The Supreme Court is coming apart at the seams: The civilian victim in the Alito Flag Scandal now says that both IN late 2020/early 2021 AND two weeks ago, a black S-U-V from the Alito security detail parked in front of her mother’s home in Alexandria Virginia. “I couldn’t say who was in the car because of the tinted glass,” Emily Baden told The Guardian, “and nobody ever said anything. I took it as a general threat. The message was, we could do terrible things to you, and nobody would be able to do anything about it. When it comes to justices at the supreme court, they make the laws, but the laws don’t apply to them.” But Congressman Jamie Raskin has a solution, if only Merrick Garland will get off the dime.

B-Block (27:20) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: The publishers and distributors of "2000 Mules" repudiated the film, apologized to one of the people they slandered, and blamed it all on Dinesh D'Souza (who would now be meat). Josh Hawley either made up a story about an illicit use of American troops abroad, or he revealed military secrets - prosecute him! And once again the right wingers explain how they'll show us, they'll avenge Trump by shooting everybody. Why does it never occur to them that they may have lots of guns but who has all the tanks and military bases again? Meet Carl Higbie of NewsMax. Carl's bonkers.

C-Block (35:06) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO COME: With the 80th Anniversary of D-Day looming I flashed back to the 60th Anniversary and the then-new MSNBC president who pulled out all the stops and went wall-to-wall live from Normandy and with all his big stars working a Saturday to impress his bosses...and then breaking news cancelled all of it!

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SERIES 2 EPISODE 186: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

There are early signs of a potential tidal wave of disastrous polling indicators for Convicted Felon Donald Trump after he was found guilty of all 34 felony charges Thursday here in New York; 10% of registered GOP voters say they are now less likely to vote for him. More startlingly; 8% of those identifying as Trump supporters and 15% of registered GOP voters say he should drop out of the presidential race

These are from separate polls, by Ipsos for Reuters, and by Morning Consult.

Remember - based on Trump's 2020 vote totals - each percentage point of voters who peel away from him, would cost Trump roughly 750,000 votes and two to three electoral college votes.

Just as importantly, the Biden Campaign seems to have switched strategies and is itself referring to Trump as "Convicted Felon Donald Trump."

(This is a Bonus Bite-Sized Bulletin edition of Countdown. It's a new briefer format - eight minutes - that will appear in addition to regular episodes - and because of that I'm going to ask you to do me a favor and FORWARD it to somebody who is unaware of it, or unfamiliar with the Podcast. Thanks)

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SERIES 2 EPISODE 185: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Do not be fooled by the dismissive attitude of the media of the impact on Trump voting support of the jury's finding of Guilty, Guilty, Guilty, Guilty, Guilty, Guilty, Guilty, Guilty, Guilty, Guilty, Guilty, Guilty, Guilty, Guilty, Guilty, Guilty, Guilty, Guilty, Guilty, Guilty, Guilty, Guilty, Guilty, Guilty, Guilty, Guilty, Guilty, Guilty, Guilty, Guilty, Guilty, Guilty, Guilty, and not NOT-Guilty.

If, as the most circumspect pre-verdict polling suggests, 2% of his voters would peel away, that (based on 2020) is 1,500,000 voters and at least 5 electoral votes, and (based on 2016) would have been enough to throw Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin to Clinton. 

It reminds us that we should stop looking for the game-ender for Trump and rely instead on the incrementals, because they - and the justice that invoke them - will defeat him.

Also, can the Trump cultists explain to me: are these 34 verdicts election interference that will stop Trump from winning, or are they a political gift that just gave him the election? Because you keep saying BOTH.

PLUS: If you missed it, John Roberts just told Dick Durbin and Sheldon Whitehouse to go F themselves. He's king for life and he won't even talk to them about the Alito Scandal, or the OTHER Alito Scandal, or the Roberts scandal. Fine. Subpoena him. And if he ignores that, arrest him. This country is changing and those who act will decide whether it changes for the good or the bad, and we are the good guys.

B-Block (32:40) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Clay Travis goes entirely racist on The View's Sonny Hostin (and even on the WNBA's Caitlin Clark). Minnesota GOP Senate likelihood Royce White (who played eight minutes and 55 seconds in the NBA and don't you forget it) is in trouble again. And the book sale numbers are in for Kristi Noem's Puppy Murder Diary book and I don't want to say they're not moving but the fall off from Week 1 to Week 3 is 9275%

C-Block (41:25) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: Only one story to tell on this day after: Thurber prophesying the life of Trump in something he wrote... in 1931!

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SERIES 2 EPISODE 184: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: I’m convinced Sam Alito is lying about who put the flags up. And I’m convinced I can prove it. And I’m convinced the proof is contained not in the Upside Down American Flag and not The Appeal To Heaven Flag; the proof is contained in the THIRD flag. “My wife is fond of flying flags. I am not. She was solely responsible for having flagpoles put up at our residence and our vacation home,” he wrote to 50 members of the House who have asked him to recuse from Trump and election cases before the Supreme Court, and refusing to do so. In the case of the Virginia distress flag, “She has flown other patriotic flags… college flags, flags supporting sports teams…” etc.

Sports...teams?

Like that flag "she" flew celebrating the 2022 Philadelphia Phillies? The second most star-crossed team in the history of that baseball franchise? SHE flew that flag? Sam Alito wanted to grow up to be Commissioner of Baseball. He went to a Phillies fantasy camp. He had baseball cards made of himself in a Phillies uniform. He jokingly refused to answer the question 'ever worn your Phillies uni under your judicial robes?' He's the crazy Phillies fan, but SHE put the flag over their house?

Nonsense.

PLUS: The jury gets the Trump Trial and within hours they're asking to hear the judge's legal instructions again, and David Pecker's testimony about the birth of Catch-and-Kill. Not a thing about Michael Cohen or lies or perjury or "The GLOAT." The jury is signaling that it is circling a conviction or conviction.

And then we have to ask: what is the Biden Campaign's plan to exploit a conviction or convictions? Do they immediately start calling him "Convicted Felon Donald Trump"? If not, why not? Does "Convicted Felon And Republican Nominee Donald Trump" work better? They are prepared to burn this into voters' retinas, right?

Riiiiiight?

B-Block (27:00) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: The key to re-electing Biden could be giving more money to right wing nut job Pat Sajak. There is a woman named Brenda Ramer who claims her ray has had an immaculate conception. And the latest Bothsidesist Pap from A.G. Sulzberger? Put an op-ed in The New York Times defending Trump - in the middle of a trial centering around him banging a porn star - written by the editor of a Catholic Church Magazine. Must be a different Catholic Church than they used to have when I was a kid.

C-Block (39:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Since we're talking Sajak and comedy-based late night talk shows (he had a failed one on CBS 35 years ago) and we're talking about crazy editors, let me tell you the saga of onetime CNN president Walter Isaacson. In 2001 he had both parts of an idea that would become a hit for MSNBC two years later, sitting in his office: the desire to do a CNN news hour with some humor in it, and me. He somehow did not put these two parts together.

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SERIES 2 EPISODE 183: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: It is becoming increasingly obvious that Trump and the authoritarians seeking to overthrow democracy in the United States and install him as dictator for life and then enact the equivalent of ethnic cleansing… have made the choice to let everybody KNOW… that they are seeking to overthrow the democracy in the United States and install him as dictator and then enact the equivalent of ethnic cleansing.

You may recall him summoning most of the fossil fuel industry of this country to Mar-a-Lago in April and essentially demanding they put one billion dollars into his campaign so he can eliminate virtually all the restrictions on their businesses as they try to destroy the planet faster. Now The Washington Post reports that early THIS month he summoned most of the big money donors to the Republicans and other fascists to the Pierre Hotel here in New York and was essentially demanding they increase THEIR donations by a factor of 25 or 50 so he can eliminate virtually all TAXES on their businesses and incomes…

A businessman, he told them, had offered a donation of a million dollars to his campaign, in exchange for lunch. The Post’s sources quote Trump as replying “I’m not having lunch. You’ve got to make it 25 million.” Then there was the donor who normally gave two to three million. “He told the donor that he wanted a 25 million dollar or 50 million dollar contribution or he would not be, quote ‘very happy’. It’s blackmail. Give me the money I want – 25 times as much as you planned – or else.

It's kinda Robert DeNiro, in "The Untouchables," playing Al Capone, carrying around a baseball bat. Which is funny because who showed up at the trial yesterday but DeNiro and suddenly the Trumpists are enraged that anybody would dare bring people TO the courthouse!

If this unvarnished, unrestrained, undeniable corruption were not obvious enough that Trump just doesn’t GIVE a shit any more – you’re not going to shame him, you’re not going to restrain him, you’re not going to prosecute him – he’s decided it’s us or him… there’s the SECOND part. Trump posted a video – another one of these fig leaf deniable videos: HE didn’t MAKE the video, he just POSSSSSSTED this video. And so the threats in the video, nominally directed at Joe Scarborough, that Trump will "get rid of all you offing liberals; you liberals are gone" aren't Trump's threats. 

Except, of course they are. Because Trump has called his opponents vermin and vowed to get rid of them. And expel all the immigrants. And put them in concentration camps. And use the army. And use the cops. And if you can do that, you can point at Joe Scarborough and say "YOU are now defined as an immigrant. Get in the camp."

And that... is ethnic cleansing.

B-Block (30:49) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: The Renfield-ification of Lindsey Graham is complete. Speaker Mike Johnson is stalling on the installation of a Capitol plaque honoring the police from January 6th. And Pastor Shane Vaughn has news for you: Jesus was a millionaire.

C-Block (41:30) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Since yesterday was the saga of the 45th anniversary of my college graduation, today must be the saga of the class I nearly failed because the professor was mad because the quarterback of his favorite football team fumbled away a victory in the final minute. 

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SERIES 2 EPISODE 182: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Today would be a good day to convict Donald J. Trump.

The jury in his Stormy Daniels Hush Money/Election Interference case may get the case as soon as this afternoon and then they could deliver the only verdict not materially interfered with by a judge – or JUDGES – that Trump himself appointed. The country, the world, keeps emphasizing in succession the unprecedented nature of Trump’s indictment, arrest, arraignment, mugshot, trial, artist sketch, jury selection, defense, witnesses, objections, fart-naps and today, closing statements… but for some reason they leave the other unprecedented reality OUT – that our court system IS rigged, that it IS rigged, BY Trump, FOR Trump, with three judges HE put on the Supreme Court until they die or resign delaying and subverting justice in THOSE cases, and an unqualified former Yoga Correspondent for the Miami Neuvo Herald he appointed to FEDERAL Court brazenly and openly stalling and trying to SABOTAGE the espionage case against him in THAT case.

THAT is what is unprecedented about the prosecution of Donald Trump. THAT his appointees are interfering with the attempts to bring him to justice and we may never know if he appointed them only on the assurance that they would do EXACTLY what they are doing now when and if it came to this… and what Trump means when he says the New York District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office and Justice Juan Merchan’s courtroom are rigged against him – what he MEANS is… they are NOT rigged for him.

I'll look at the legal stuff as the case moves inexorably towards the jury.

ALSO: We get comic relief from the Libertarian Party (Trump came close to - in an Aphasia haze - calling them The Libyan Party) and we find out that The Washington Post was good enough to sit on the Alito Flag story for just 1,222 days (the final nine AFTER The New York Times had already broken it) and wouldn't even run it even on the soft premise that it really WAS Martha-Ann Alito's dispute with the neighbors. 

I will sing about it.

B-Block (29:47) SPORTSCENTERCENTRAL: In memory of perhaps the most beloved man in sports: Bill Walton. Everyone has their Bill Walton story, I'll tell you mine. (36:07) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Rishi Sunak's campaign handlers clearly want him to lose reelection in the UK. Nick Fuentes complains J.D. Vance isn't white enough (never realizing that none of the Trumpist really think anybody named 'Fuentes' could be white). And Fred Trump praised Hitler? I heard it on C-SPAN!

C-Block (43:35) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: 45 long years ago today I shocked my professors and relieved my suspicious parents by graduating from Cornell University. And I've had the dream where I DON'T graduate an average of once a week every year since. It used to be a stress dream. Lately it's turned into an amazing revelation about how your mind really works (or at least: how mine does).

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SERIES 2 EPISODE 181: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: The would-be dictatorships are stacked up so thick they have to wait for permission to land.

We rightfully fear a Trump dictatorship. Right now, however, we are being RULED by a Samuel Alito dictatorship. And now we have to take measures to overthrow it. Caught flying one insurrectionist flag at his VIRGINIA home – while he was adjudicating cases that could have benefitted the Trump Coup Attempt – Alito simply lied about it, claiming he had no role in it, then contradicted himself by telling a backstory of petty personal recrimination involving neighbors – a backstory which had its OWN set of lies.

And now we know that THAT entire story was – at best – a lie of omission, because when Alito was caught improperly flying a disqualifying insurrectionist symbol in public at his primary home in 2021, he was continuing to hide the fact that through much or all of last summer he was flying a DIFFERENT disqualifying insurrectionist symbol in public at his vacation home in New Jersey.

It is, as you know, the Appeal to Heaven flag, stolen by groups of Christo-Fascists from its historical role in our founding revolution and re-purposed to rationalize a fundamentalist religious dictatorship replacing representative government. As the New York Times noted in reporting this story, quote, “the phrase ‘appeal to heaven’ comes from the 17th century philosopher John Locke, who wrote of a responsibility to rebel, even use violence, to overthrow unjust rule. ‘It’s a paraphrase for trial by arms,’ Anthony Grafton, a historian at Princeton University said in an interview,” unquote.

It's a paraphrase for trial by arms, and it’s been flying in public view from Samuel Alito’s home.

And now we have to figure out how to stop Alito from completing his plan to turn this country into a religious dictatorship - a kind of westernized Iran.

On the other hand: In a surprise announcement, Donald Trump has declared himself dead. “They were authorized to shoot me!,” begins his email to try to con more money out of his dumbest cult members. Quote: “I nearly escaped death!”Uhhhh…. So… you… DIDN’T… escape death? Metaphorically, Trump may be right. The words used by the President and those around him about Trump's "Unified Reich" video are a sea change. They are calling him an antisemite. Next they need to call him a Nazi.

B-Block (27:07) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Rishi Sunak, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, apparently cannot afford a weather app. It rained so hard on him he became Rishi Sunk. Larry Hogan, a Republican, insists he's always protected women's rights. Of course he's lying. And as we realize just how corrupted and unsalvageable the Supreme Court is, Jim Jordan provides some comic relief by saying something that provides an immediate opportunity to insult Clarence Thomas and Sam Alito.

C-Block (34:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: I ran into Al Roker the other day, so naturally I have to tell you all my Matt Lauer stories. These are the obnoxious, vanity ones, as opposed to the assault-y ones.

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SERIES 2 EPISODE 180: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: We may have had a breakthrough with the electorate.

Democratic AND Republican pollsters are finding a shocking number of undecideds or Republicans who will not vote for Trump because of his talk of trying to make himself eligible for a third term, or eliminating term limits entirely, or elections entirely. The fundamental lesson of January 6th - that he will never leave office voluntarily - has sunk in. And which ever way the cult is trying to position it, these voters are taking it seriously.

More over, these seem pollsters are finding a sudden surge in independent and even Republican backlash against The Supreme Court because the gutting of Roe-V-Wade has caused countless voters to reconsider what kind of havoc a corrupted Trump-owned Court would be willing to do to fraudulently bring about the America the fascists want.

It's stunning news and combined with additional polling showing Biden running far behind Democratic Senators in the swing state, it suggests not only that there are margins of victory to be added to his vote totals in those states, but that there is a straightforward way to get them: campaign AGAINST dictatorship, third terms, and a rogue Court.

PLUS: THE DEFENSE RESTS at the Trump Trial. Literally, in his case. All you need to know about what happened was that on Trump's Tuesday posse was comedian Joe Piscopo, who was very good on his last hit, Saturday Night Live, which he just left recently. Well, no, not recently - FORTY YEARS AGO THIS MONTH.

B-Block (30:47) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Marco Rubio doesn't know what the phrase "last name" means. Chris Cillizza has just discovered people have been diagnosing mental acuity of presidential candidates from afar (it started a decade ago, by Trump. Chris thinks it started earlier this week with Stuart Stevens). And having burned through CNN, MSNBC, PBS, and Fox News, Tucker Carlson premieres on Russia-24.

C-Block (37:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: At 5:40 AM he told me he was going to get my fired from our radio station, and kill me. At 6:40 AM he was promising me a multi-year contract as a new sportscaster on our radio station. It's more than four decades ago and it is still as scary an experience as I've had in my career. The Ted Brown Story.

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SERIES 2 EPISODE 179: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: The FIRST item, letter A, on Trump's gag order: "Defendant is directed to refrain from making or directing others to make, public statements about known or reasonably foreseeable witnesses."

After the last time – after the last TEN times, to be exact – Justice Juan Merchan was explicit that, next time, he’d have to consider jailing Trump. Well Trump talked about witness Robert Costello – the one whom the judge metaphorically kicked in the gonads as the court day came to a roaring end. AND he talked about witness Michael Cohen and as the judge had ALSO explicitly stated, it didn’t matter if he was reading or quoting somebody else’s words. If there is any remaining doubt in Merchan’s mind that the premise of the Trump defense is not some kind of refutation of the charges but instead an all-out attack on the rule of law, on the judge, on the court, on its authority to dare to thwart Trump – the man who wants to put the “dick” in dictator – he must erase that doubt. This is why the outburst from the witness Robert Costello – an attorney - where he complained about Merchan’s rulings in real time – could be the last straw that sends Trump to the big house. That was Trump’s witness, the prosecution fought Merchan to keep him out, Merchan sided with the defense, the witness metaphorically spit in Merchan’s face. 

MEANWHILE: Alito has NOT changed his story again and there is no Democratic politician with the guts to even conduct a hearing into his amazing corruption. But Brian Beutler has a suggestion that could at least illuminate reality and punish Alito and the fascists for his perfidy.

B-Block (33:23) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Politico is so corrupt that the boyfriend editor hyping the girlfriend's article doesn't even bother to put it third or fourth on its list. The guy who finished second to Larry Hogan in the GOP Maryland primary? Robin Ficker? Does that sound familiar? And RFK Jr, wrong about his residence and just three presidents of Iran behind the times.

C-Block (43:25) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: The event was a couple of days ago but there's always time to celebrate not just the birthday of the immortal of Willie Mays but the day he gave a 20-year old me a radio interview that began with him doing a voice out of all the bigoted cliched movies of the 1930's.

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SEASON 2 EPISODE 178: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:40) SPECIAL COMMENT: Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito has not only now CONFIRMED that the upside down American flag flown in front of his home three days before President Biden’s inauguration WAS meant to support the Trump “Stop The Steal” plot – but in blaming his wife and neighbors for it, he has blatantly and transparently LIED in his excuse.

“I spoke directly with Justice Alito about the flag story in the New York Times,” posts Shannon Bream, a host on Fox News. “In addition to what’s in the story, he told me a neighbor on their street had a quote ‘F Trump’ sign that was within 50 feet of where children await the school the bus in January ’21.”

 THAT’S the lie. Local schools – city of Alexandria AND Fairfax county - had resumed REMOTE learning a MONTH earlier. There were no school buses. There were no kids waiting at bus stops waiting for the school buses that never were. Alito seems to have forgotten that anybody could check this.

"According to Justice Alito, things escalated and the neighbor put up a sign personally addressing Mrs. Alito and blaming her for the January 6th attacks. Justice Alito says he and his wife were walking in the neighborhood and there were words between Mrs. Alito and a male at the home with the sign,” unquote. Again – this sign could not have been seen by kids at a bus stop. “Alito says the man engaged in vulgar language ‘including the c-word.’ Following that exchange Mrs. Alito was distraught and hung the flag upside down quote “for a short time.” Justice Alito says some neighbors on his street are ‘very political’ and acknowledges it was a very heated time in January 2021,” end quote.

Alito said he had had “no involvement whatsoever” in the flying of the flag when contacted by The Times on Wednesday or Thursday. By Friday he suddenly had an involved and intricate story of an increasingly bitter and intense series of confrontations with his neighbors, including his wife becoming quote “distraught” – and especially the vivid and enraging detail about the flag with the F-word being visible to neighborhood children the school bus stop.

He's lying. Again. In multiple ways.

The Democratic response? Resign? Hearings? More limp-flagged calls for recusal and SCOTUS ethic rules. What would the Republicans be doing if – to merge two current Supreme Court scandals - say, Justice Katanji Brown Jackson had hung an ANTIFA-related flag or sign from HER home and taken cash and gifts directly from George Soros? Chairman Durbin needs to think about that – or somebody needs to think about it for him – and then he should do THAT.

B-Block (16:28) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: Exactly what American journalism needed: Chris Cillizza has authored a "Mission Statement." It is even more hilariously self-unaware than any actual article he's ever written.

C-Block (38:30) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: A lot in this episode about the media, so let's hear from Thurber and how they tried to turn him into a radio star and instead turned him into a nervous wreck: "How To Relax While Broadcasting."

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SERIES 2 EPISODE 177: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: A lawyer yelling "you're a liar" at a witness does not make him a liar, despite what Anderson Cooper says. The storyline before the Trump Trial began was: If Michael Cohen keeps his cool when Todd Blanche screams at him, he'll prevail. He did it, and yet the networks rushed to ignore it. Prosecutors have already said they'll only need about an hour of re-direct of Cohen next Monday, meaning that's all the time they expect to require to polish him back up. They are still winning - plus there is still the wild card that in his perpetual over-confidence Trump may testify.

And yet that's not where I start because sometimes the most important story and the most interesting one are not the same thing. The primary sidebar takeaway from Cohen's testimony was based on a poorly worded tweet that the author, Ron Filipkowski, deleted. “Cohen testified that his main media contacts to get positive stories run about Trump were Maggie Haberman, Katy Tur, and Chris Cuomo." Except Cohen DIDN'T say that. He was asked if he had good relationships with reporters. Haberman? "Yes," he replied. Tur? "Yes." Cuomo? "Yes." I am thus in the position of defending - in part - the transactional Haberman, my appalling ex, and the ridiculous Cuomo. 

Having said that, they are all imperiled because of what Cohen DID say. 

Plus we have a really great punchline to the day in the courtroom in which a would-be Trump Insurrectionist learned that loyalty to him is a one-way street, even if the only thing you wanted was a wave.

B-Block (29:43) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: Exactly what American journalism needed: Chris Cillizza has authored a "Mission Statement." It is even more hilariously self-unaware than any actual article he's ever written.

C-Block (51:44) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: A lot in this episode about the media, so let's hear from Thurber and how they tried to turn him into a radio star and instead turned him into a nervous wreck: "How To Relax While Broadcasting."

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SERIES 2 EPISODE 176: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:45) SPECIAL COMMENT: DON'T BE FOOLED. TRUMP HAS SET THE TABLE SO HE CAN BAIL OUT ON THE DEBATES.

"Please let this TRUTH," Trump wrote after the CNN and ABC debates were announced (and "TRUTH" is just an ironic brand name, like everything else Trump calls his crap), "serve to represent that I hereby accept debating Biden on Fox News. The date will be Wednesday, October 2nd. The hosts will be Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum. Thank you.”

The Publishers' Clearing House style childish fake legalese ("Represent...hereby...thank you") is the tell. Trump has agreed to the two debates with Biden and simultaneously given himself a way out of going to either of them. Some time between now and the Atlanta debate next month he can simply insist Biden "recommit" to the imaginary third debate, and when Biden refuses, he can back out - claiming Biden backed out first.

A late statement from the Biden campaign yesterday showed I'm not the only one thinking this could be in the cards. It's Trump to a tee: What does he have to gain from a debate in which there is no audience, where microphones go off automatically when time expires, and in which Biden does not flail.

ALSO: HOW DID MSNBC LET THAT SCOOP GET AWAY? An in-court witness told them, live, Tuesday night, that he saw Trump reviewing the comments of his surrogates who insulted the judge and his family in Trump's place. It was evidence that there was a Trump conspiracy to evade the gag order and it was a huge story. And Alex Wagner changed the subject.

Regardless: Justice Merchan must conduct a hearing immediately. It was Trump who CALLED Mike Johnson and the other Republican prostitutes his "surrogates." Presumably there will be more of them today. They are a new and clever means of Trump violating the order by proxy and Merchan should send him to jail for it.

B-Block (31:28) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: "How MSNBC’s Leftward Tilt Delivers Ratings, and Complications," read the headline in The New York Times. Suddenly I was young again. This was obviously some sort of re-print from 2007. My hair was dark, I could still digest pizza. The sub headline made me happier still: "NBC’s leaders have been forced to grapple with how to square its cable news network’s embrace of progressive politics with the company’s straight-news operation.” Ah yes, thumbing through my scrapbooks from 2006 and 2007 and – that was in the New York Times YESTERDAY? SERIOUSLY? NBC executives are still exploiting The New York Times to whine about the "partisanship" of MSNBC? Holy crap!

C-Block (49:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Since we're on this subject, time to re-tell the saga from June 2009 when the "friction" The New York Times reported on yesterday as if it were new (or even just not impossibly old) was so bad that the Chairman of GE - the corporation that then owned us - had decided to take MSNBC off the air because the $200,000,000 a year we made him just wasn't enough to compensate him for having his conservative Mom call up and yell at him.

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SERIES 2 EPISODE 175: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44): Dumboesque Senator Tommy Tuberville has gone on the Newsmax propaganda channel and revealed the obvious: the Speaker, the Senators, Congressmen, (one) Governor and one political jock-sniffer (Ramaswamy) who've stunt-attended Trump's New York trial are there to help Trump evade Judge Merchan's Gag Order.

Merchan must bring them into court, put them under oath, and get their testimony as to what Trump demanded that Mike Johnson, Cory Mills, J.D. Vance, Tuberville, Doug Burgum, and Ramaswamy do to help him get around the Judge's order. Then find Trump in contempt because the gag order ALSO precludes him from telling others to attack witnesses or the judge's family for him.

Also, thanks for Ramaswamy for the funniest Freudian slip of the trial, in which he accidentally called Trump a "sham politician."

MEANWHILE: A day ago I asked The New York Times to give us a "Walter Cronkite" moment and instead it gave us a Judith Miller Moment. Introduced into evidence yesterday? Texts from Michael Cohen to Maggie Haberman from 2018 reading “Big boss just approved my responding to complaint and statement. Please start writing and I will call you soon." What she wrote presented Cohen's (and Trump's) lies about Stormy Daniels and the payoffs as facts. She wrote it the same day and came back and wrote it again the next day.

There is a difference between facts (Cohen texted me) and the truth (WHAT Cohen texted me isn't true and I didn't bother to try to find out or even caveat the lies - and Haberman and The Times have to go. As they fired Judith Miller for disseminating George W. Bush's "Saddam WMD" lies so they must fire Haberman - the same Haberman who two days ago dismissed Cohen's testimony as "hearsay" and who is still writing Times leads on this story TODAY.

B-BLOCK (40:47) WHY The Times needs to give us a Walter Cronkite Moment.

C-BLOCK (64:39) GOOD NIGHT AND GOOD LUCK.

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SERIES 2 EPISODE 174: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: We need a Walter Cronkite moment from The New York Times. The New York Times needs, one day – one day soon, one day now – to devote the entirety of the front page – to a headline, and an editorial, signed by the publisher Sulzberger and the editor Kahn and the key columnists and correspondents – headlined “TRUMP IMPERILS DEMOCRACY” and sub-headlined “YOUR LIFE AT STAKE.”

We need a Walter Cronkite moment from The New York Times and when Trump went to a Philadelphia area seaside resort called Wildwood, drew maybe 10,000 cultists, lied and had the Republican mayor lie and say it was 80,000, complained that immigrant students don’t speak English and immediately afterwards said something like “Borden-in-riv-iv,” said something else like “carry doubt-ite-by-rite,”claimed the president between Ford and Reagan was named Jimmy Connors, said the Chinese were preparing to invade Beijing (their own capital), insisted the entire country was grateful that he killed Roe-V-Wade, thanked – by name - the Supreme Court justices who gutted it, suddenly invoked the fictional cannibal character Hannibal Lecter, seemed to praise him, claimed the character was dead, and got the name of the movie wrong, and then insisted all immigrants are Hannibal Lecter – and all of that was after he was introduced by some immigrant who called him “President CHUMP"... the New York Times story, by a sixth-stringer named Michael Gold, mentioned… none of that. This was what Editor Joe Kahn’s writer told consumers of the most influential news organization in America, quote: “After a long and often tense week in his criminal trial in Manhattan… Trump… took part in a time-honored ritual enjoyed by countless New Yorkers in need of a break: He went to the shore.”

Oh ho ho, how clever.

The Times instead lets Maggie Haberman dismiss as “hearsay” Michael Cohen’s first-hand recounting of what Trump told him about ‘not being on the market for long’ if Melania dumped him and if Haberman doesn’t know the legal definition of “hearsay” get rid of her. And the Times made room for an op-ed bashing Joe Biden by Mark Penn, a dishonest right wing pollster who has been posing as a Democrat for at least 20 years.

In Court: “Michael Cohen calmly describes Trump’s hush money instructions,” reads the headline in The Washington Post. The SUB-headline quotes Trump: “Just do it.” That’s what the prosecution needed out of Cohen. And it needs it again out of him today. AND whenever the cross-examination begins. It needs him making more self-abnegating jokes about ‘angry, even for me.’ It needs him testifying as he did yesterday: that he was there in Trump Tower, days before Trump was sworn in as president, with Allan Weisselberg, reviewing a handwritten document plan to repay Cohen for the Stormy Daniels hush money and how they would hide it. And that Trump said “smart individuals” had told him, Trump, to pay the $130,000. And that Trump told him he knew if the Daniels story got out it would be a disaster for the CAMPAIGN. And it needs him producing one outstandingly sleazy quote from Trump per day on the stand, like when Cohen asked Trump about the impact on his wife MELANIA if the story got out and Trump said “don’t worry. How long do you think I’ll be on the market for? Not long.”

B-Block (22:54) EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: California Assembly Bill 2265 and what it can do to save dogs - and save shelters the horrible cost of killing them. (24:27) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: An update on the back story to the "This Is SportsCenter" commercial I did with soccer's Alexi Lalas, in which I reprised John Belushi's moment in "Animal House" in which he smashes the guitar against the wall. The update? The DVD with the outtakes literally fell off a shelf here yesterday. Enjoy.

C-Block (40:35) GOOD NIGHT AND GOOD LUCK.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SERIES 2 EPISODE 173: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: I don’t know much about the law but I do know the Trump Trial has confirmed one of the immutable truths of the field: Never hire an attorney with a rating of 3-1/2 stars.

Susan Necheles somehow managed to lose to Stormy Daniels during the second day of cross-examination in Trump-On-Trial yesterday; lose so badly and obviously that Trump’s team was forced to file for a desperation mistrial from the very thin ice of basically claiming Necklace forgot to object to something that Daniels said on TUESDAY.

All of a sudden the Trump defense was claiming – and leaking to every news organization, by the way – that Daniels had dog-whistled a subtext of rape or assault when she gave details about Trump standing in front of her, and not using a condom, and a bodyguard being out in the hallway – and we should just ignore that when she said all that, THREE DAYS AGO, Trump’s lawyer with the three-and-a-half stars rating Susan Necheles said… nothing. Not even the only thing you or I would remember to say if we woke up in some alternate universe where we were in that courtroom as Trump’s lawyer: “OBJECTION.”

And that might have been Necheles's best work.

Ms. Necheles: “You have experience in making up fake stories about sex?”

Ms. Daniels: “The sex is real. That’s why it’s not a B movie.”

Ms. Necheles: “NOW you have a story about having sex with President Trump, right?”

Ms. Daniels: “If that story was untrue, I would’ve written it to be a lot better.”

Ooops! There goes another half a star.

Ms. Necheles: “You had sex with a cameraman?”

Ms. Daniels: “I started dating him and he became my husband.”

A reminder: None of this needed to be heard by the jury. If Trump’s defense had stipulated, yeah, they had sex, she wouldn’t have been allowed to testify. Or they could have just asked her what she knew about Trump’s involvement in the non-disclosure agreement and the payoffs and she could have said “nothing” and Ms. Necheles could have said “nothing further, your honor.” This is a case – a relatively boring case with excruciating details about how routine company checks got sent to the White House for Trump to sign even as president and he never ignored a single detail that cost him more than 99 cents – a relatively boring case about falsified business records and the attempt to interfere with an election and Trump’s team turned it into wocka-wocka-wocka, and his credibility and their credibility against the credibility of a pornographic actress and guess what: the actress won.

ALSO: Oh by the way, last month Trump assembled around 20 of the nation's top oil and fossil fuel executives and offered them a deal. He'd sell them the world to destroy as quickly as they wanted - repeal all regulations and make Doug Burgum Secretary of Energy or VP or whatever - if they'd simply give him a billion dollars with which to get elected. So when you worry that democracy is on the ballot in November, just remember, no, it's worse than that: human EXISTENCE is on the ballot.

B-Block (23:10) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Mark Levin tries to get around calling Judge Juan Merchan "a pervert" because he was listening to Stormy Daniels' testimony. Failson Andrew Giuliani is "reporting" on the trial and puts me in an impossible position by blasting Lawrence O'Donnell. And Chuck Todd ISN'T gone after all. He has just written a masterpiece of nonsense: an Epic Poem of bothsidesism in which he concludes Biden and Trump both need to admit their mistakes. He spends one paragraph on Trump's mistakes and about a dozen on how Biden failed to bring the country together (while Trump was tearing it apart). 

C-Block (34:00) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: No gentle reminiscences here. No prophetic tales of heroes who were actually schmoes. Thurber goes for the jugular vein of the famous Avantgarde artist Salvador Dali in "The Secret Life Of James Thurber."

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SERIES 2 EPISODE 172: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Robert F. Kennedy Junior who may turn out to be the spoiler who throws the election to Trump says under oath that his cognitive problems and short term and longer term memory loss from a worm that ate his brain and then died.

On the other OTHER hand, too early to tell if it’s an outlier or the start of the new wave, but swing state poll: Wisconsin, Quinnipiac, Registered voters: Biden 50 Trump 44. Three-way: Biden 40 Trump 39 Kennedy and his Worm, 12.

Nevertheless. I’m not confident we can stave off fascism in this country because: worms in Kennedy’s brain. AND Trump’s trial in Florida has been delayed until the twelfth of never by an unqualified judge HE appointed and his trial in Georgia has been delayed indefinitely – probably into next year - because the appeals court says it WILL listen to Trump’s appeal of the ruling that the district attorney didn’t have a financial conflict of interest just because she hired her boyfriend to work on the case (because guess what: there IS a deep state and among its constituent parts are the legal system and partisan judges and the Supreme Court and an Attorney General who will go to his grave believing the people exist to serve laws rather than laws existing to serve the people. Also, because OBAMA’s most public adviser criticized all the sex talk in the Stormy Daniels testimony and, oh by the way, WORMS IN KENNEDY’S BRAIN.

Memory loss, quote: “caused by a worm that got into my brain and ate a portion of it and then died. I have cognitive problems, clearly. I have short-term memory loss, and I have longer-term memory loss that affects me.”RFK Junior, in a deposition during his divorce in 2012.

When Kennedy said I was his HERO - I KNEW something was wrong.

MEANWHILE the man who called out The New York Times for its vengeful coverage of Biden answers the Editor-in-Chief's strawman response that the paper won't become part of the Biden campaign. "In general, and this is a complaint I have had about the New York Times that is two decades old – I wish they would take good faith criticism from the left with as much seriousness as they take BAD faith criticism from the right," says Dan Pfeiffer.

B-Block (24:51) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Lobbyist Jim Courtovich (if you're going to make a threat by quoting 'The Godfather' you better make sure you get the quote right), Speaker Mike Johnson (you know "intuitively" that non-citizens are voting? Is that like I know "intuitively" that there must have been fraud in your election? No facts, just a Spidey Sense?), and Congressman Mike Collins (You think last week's racism-at-Ole-Miss tweet was disqualifying? Wait'll you see this week's joke about the JFK and RFK assassinations).

C-Block (32:10) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Trump mocked Lawrence O'Donnell after Tuesday's court session, so it's probably time for me to mock him. The day they finally incarcerate Joe Scarborough, O'Donnell will become the least sincere person on MSNBC. Ever seen the pilot of the old HBO show "The Newsroom"? Where the back-up tries to steal the show from the guy he's filling in for? Guess who that's actually about?

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SEASON 2 EPISODE 171: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:45) SPECIAL COMMENT: First of several underemphasized meta-headlines from Stormy Daniels' testimony: Trump’s lawyer Ms. Necklace seems to have made inroads in her effort to convince the jury that Ms. Daniels would say or do almost anything for money. Uh, she’s a pornographic actress. Whether you approve that profession, or abhor it, or like me you’re agnostic: one statement should not be among those you express in shock or dismay or surprise: “Oh no, she’s a pornographic actress, she will do or say almost anything for money.”

Which leads to the next meta headline. My GOD the media, especially the television networks, treated her testimony like they were cicadas and Stormy Daniels was the ring girl who stepped between the ropes to announce the start of year 13. My GOD they all awoke from somnambulance about bank records and cell phone extractions and the testimony of comptrollers and people named RONA and were able to say – at least to themselves – good grief, get a load of those rebuttals.

Which leads into the next meta headline: Stormy Daniels is not on trial here. She’s only incidental to the case. That is NOT what you would have thought if you watched coverage of this case. The sex isn’t illegal, the money isn’t illegal, Trump isn’t illegal, Daniels changing her story isn’t illegal. Buying her story to keep it from becoming public in the weeks before an election and then hiding the payoffs to prevent THEM from becoming public in the weeks before an election – THAT’S illegal and all those boring receipts and records and notations written by hand by a guy named Allan – with TWO L’S – THAT is the case. And denying it as Trump has – LYING about it, as Trump has – is why Stormy Daniels is there. To testify.

I have to admit I was a little surprised by the last headline. If the Monday juxtaposition of Trump Maybe Going To Jail Over The Gag Order and Kristi Noem Quintuples Down On The Idea That Shooting Puppies In The Face Is A Good Thing underscored how MAGA believes it has the right to kill, then YESTERDAY’S juxtaposition of Noem’s disastrous media tour – more on that shortly – and Trump On Trial underscored that these really deeply disturbed, borderline personalities, do NOT do well when confronted with reality from which they cannot run and they cannot hide.

And then there's Noem, who got beaten up on Fox by my old friend Stu Varney and, stunningly, on NewsMax. But it's all right, she still thinks she's killing it. Yeah, the way his presidential roll-out killed it for Greg Stillson.

B-Block (24:33) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL/SPORTS: Seen anything about this week being the 70th Anniversary of Roger Bannister "breaking the 4-Minute mile?" There's one problem.

C-Block (42:20) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL/SPORTS PART 2: That one problem? Roger Bannister WAS NOT the first man to run a mile in four minutes or less. It's a sad story with a lot of bias and even racism in it.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SERIES 2 EPISODE 170: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:45) SPECIAL COMMENT: The reaction to Justice Merchan’s stark warning to Trump that he may put him in jail the next time he violates the gag order, and the defense inside the Trump cult of Kristi Noem for murdering her dog and threatening Biden’s dog - these are actually the same story.

The point is: killing.

They are about one thing: at their core, Noem and Trump and MAGA and Trump’s Supreme Court Justices and his slaves inside the House and the Senate believe they have a right to kill. Today, they have a right to kill their dogs. Tomorrow? Your dog. Then the judge. The day after that immigrants. Finally, anything and anybody.

Do not mistake them, nor what this is about. Do not forget that even as chilling a phrase as “political violence” is itself just a euphemism. Political violence is: murder. Individual murder, mass murder, or if the rest of us are lucky, just attempted murder or threatened murder.

Every Trump attack on every witness, on every judge, on every prosecutor, on every opponent; every stochastic call to “end” this; every reference to “bedlam”; every meme of the President of the United States bound and gagged; every Tim Scott refusing to honor the outcome of an election; every reference to patriots and deep states and rigged elections and I am your retribution – they all have the unspoken second half: those who try to stop us will do what we say or we will kill them. One third of Trump supporters who’ve heard about Noem killing her dog told a YouGov poll that it WAS acceptable. 29 percent weren’t sure. So the total of Trump voters who would not criticize it was six out of ten.

AS THIS UNFOLDS, THE NEW YORK TIMES completely disconnects from reality.

“When you are Democrat you start off essentially at 40 percent (of the vote) because you have civil service, you have the unions and you have welfare. They get welfare to vote, and then they cheat on top of that. They cheat,” Trump said of Biden and the Democrats. “'These people are running a Gestapo administration’ Mr. Trump told donors who attended the event at Mar-a-Lago, his private club in Palm Beach, Florida, according to an audio recording obtained by The New York Times."

An audio recording. OBTAINED by The New York Times.

Where is this recording?

Why has this recording not been made public by The Times? Why is the paper suppressing it?

Incredibly, at the same time the paper's editor gave an interview to Semafor News that discredits everyone who works at The Times as he dismisses any awareness that his coverage has normalized Trump without a sufficient sense of crisis or threat. "To say that the threats of democracy are so great that the media is going to abandon its central role as a source of impartial information to help people vote – that’s essentially saying that the news media should become a propaganda arm for a single candidate, because we prefer that candidate’s agenda," said Joe Kahn. “It’s our job to cover the full range of issues that people have. At the moment, democracy is one of them. But it’s not the top one – immigration happens to be the top, and the economy and inflation is the second. Should we stop covering those things because they’re favorable to Trump?”

Nothing to see here. Just the editor-in-chief of The New York Times living in a world defined by Fox News talking points, and populated entirely by strawmen.

B-Block (38:15) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: The Tigers say their new uniforms are "going 0-60." Nancy Mace claims the victim of half the GOP Antisemitic tropes is behind all the pro-Palestinian protests too. And Obama's campaign manager has the new podcast every one has been clamoring: he co-hosts with Kellyanne Conjob. (47:20) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL/SPORTS: Seen anything about this week being the 70th Anniversary of Roger Bannister "breaking the 4-Minute mile?" There's one problem.

C-Block (1:04:51) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL/SPORTS PART 2: That one problem? Roger Bannister WAS NOT the first man to run a mile in four minutes or less. It's a sad story with a lot of bias and even racism in it.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SERIES 2 EPISODE 169: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Trump is full of shit.

Nothing about the gag order precludes him from testimony. What caused him to change his mind and suddenly announce no, he's not testifying after all, is sheer naked fear. He heard the Smoking Gun tape of himself and Michael Cohen mapping out how to pay hush money to his girlfriend before the election, and he crapped himself. 

I'll play the tape and you'll see. The last thing you do after THAT tape is played, is talk. In a fitting metaphor, on Trump’s pants are so on fire about why he's too scared to testify, that his post-court photo op was at a New York Fire Department Station. He also mocked reporting about how he's been falling asleep in court and then 90 minutes later, he fell asleep in court - again.

MEANWHILE: We are in such an unprecedented place in this country’s history that if Trump were now to pick Kristi Noem as his running mate and announce they were going to campaign on a platform of puppy killing, the cult would do it. He’s not likely to try it. But then did you really think that Noem’s response to her self-defenestration would be to double down and claim the dog she murdered was far more evil than she let on and was a threat to her children.

By next week she’ll be claiming Cricket had clamped her vicious jaws around her daughter’s neck. Or that she was holding Noem’s kids hostage.​ And by the way, she may have no other choice than to double down and claim she is the real victim here, because there is emerging evidence that the story of Kristi Noem luring the dog into a gravel pit and shooting it in the face because it was randomly attacking other animals and posed a threat of some kind​ that might be a COVER STORY.

As America’s hatred washed over her, she laid low – until Wednesday. That’s when she went on with Sean Hannity and resumed trying to get people to buy the book, and buy her story. But her story has now changed. Cricket was no puppy. She was a working dog – and 14 months old. That Cricket was untrained wasn’t HER fault. Quote: “It was a dog that was extremely dangerous. It had come to us from a family who found her way too aggressive. We were her second chance. The day she was put down was a day that she massacred livestock.​.. (Livestock? Chickens. But of course killing animals is just a first step – and then you’re Ted Bundy​)...“that were part of our neighbors. She attacked me. And it was a hard decision.” That was Wednesday night. By ​y​esterday afternoon on social media, Noem saw an out. “I had a choice between the safety of my children and an animal who had a history of attacking people and killing livestock. I chose my kids.”

So. She's already changed the story. Was the version in the book also changed? Was the murder worse? Was the timeline of who saw it different? Could Noem have shot the dog as her family watched?

B-Block (19:47) SPECIAL COMMENT: I am largely agnostic on the issues, and having taken part in student protests against Vietnam and racism in the 7th Grade in 19-freaking-70 I'm in favor of them at any time. But what's happening on campuses today is NOT 1970 revisited. It's not on the level of Black Lives Matter. The arrests aren't unprecedented, the right to protest isn't being destroyed, and the students might want to recognize that their decisions are simply increasing the chances that everything they want will NOT happen, culminating in a Trump presidency in which they or their successors will be detained by the Army or shot on sight or both.

C-Block (28:05) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: Thurber's mother was down with the whole occult stuff. Him? He barely delved. But this is another week where we need a pure silly story and he produced one when he went into the worlds of supernatural (and German dialects). "The Black Magic of Barney Haller."

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SERIES 2 EPISODE 168: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Enough excuses. In a speech in Wisconsin yesterday, Trump talked about, attacked, and attacked the accuracy of, Cassidy Hutchinson - a probable witness against him in the Election Subversion trial in Washington.

He has thus violated both the terms of his release on bail, and the gag order long ago imposed upon him.

Judge Tanya Chutkan must now jail him.

There is no evading this. Whileunder threat of imprisonment if he violates the gag order in the Hush Money Election Interference case in New York, he has violated the gag order in the Election Subversion case in Washington. Judge Chutkan has no excuse this time. Revoke his bail. Somebody, for once, for God’s sake, for America’s preservation – draw the line in the sand.

And just for added insolence, in attacking Hutchinson he confirmed the gist of her testimony, that he tried to talk his Secret Service detail into taking him to the Capitol on January 6th so he could watch his scum try to overthrow American democracy. He's been lying about this for three years.

In his speech Trump also insisted he was president three years ago (he wasn't), butchered the word "infrastructure," and of particular relevance to the moment, reminded the current protestors that he would prohibit refugees from Gaza and reinstitute his ban on Muslims.

PLUS a small slip in that extraordinary Time Magazine interview suggests that his extensive, inappropriate, and entirely corrupt shadow diplomacy with other nations may have included some kind of arrangement with Putin by which Russia continues to hold Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich hostage, until and unless Trump regains power.

B-BLOCK (18:20) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: The collapse of the regional sports cable television market not only felled last year's San Diego Padres but it's now taken an NHL playoff game off the air in the middle of the action. When The Gateway Pundit wonders if you might be an unreliable source - you might be an unreliable source. And given that it was a stunt bill with no more impact than the week full of Republican Make Appliances Pollute Again legislation, it's amazing that Marjorie Taylor Greene decided to explain why she voted against an Antisemitism measure - and her reasoning was that it might make it illegal to proclaim that the Jews killed Jesus.

C-BLOCK (27:40) GOOD NIGHT AND GOOD LUCK.

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SERIES 2 EPISODE 167: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Trump is officially in contempt of court and has been threatened with jail time if he again violates the gag order and testimony from the stand continues to bury him alive as he buried the Stormy Daniels scandal and none of that is CLOSE to being as important as his new and most virulent threat yet to destroy this country via political VIOLENCE. And it underscores why we – LOYAL Americans – must destroy his cult first.

Cover story, Time magazine, all the nightmares of Trump becoming dictator, but laid out with unusual clarity for someone as insane and demented as Trump. Quoting the interviewer (Eric Cortellessa) “Trump does not dismiss he possibility of political violence around the election.” Quoting Trump: “If we don’t win, you know, it depends. It always depends on the fairness of the election.” The author asks him about his social media post in which Trump claimed a stolen election “allows for the termination of all rules, regulations and articles, even those found in the constitution,” Trump then denies he said it. Quoting Trump: “I never said that at all. I never said that at all.”Within moments of this lie – no, not a lie, a distinction without a difference in that he never SAID it, he merely WROTE it, on Truth Social, on December 3, 2022 – within moments he declares the CURRENT government has “broken the constitution. They have gotten very far astray from our Constitution..."

What about his remarks about being a dictator only on day one? He says he was kidding. Doesn’t he realize it horrifies those who see dictatorship as the opposite of America? Quote: “I think a lot of people LIKE IT.”

So the police become militarized and the military becomes Trump’s personal gestapo and the states and cities that don’t promise fealty to him don’t get federal allotments and the federal government becomes his personal staff and if he doesn’t win the elections they’re UNFAIR elections and violence is fine and most people WANT a dictator anyway and he chooses who gets prosecuted and he chooses which budgeted money gets spent and where because he’ll give himself a line-item veto and he’ll put anybody here illegally into concentration camps… or anybody he SAYS is here illegally and if that’s YOU – who are you going to get to STOP him?

ALSO: "Jail may be a necessary punishment." Justice Merchan bemoans the low limits of the fines he could impose upon Trump for being in contempt of court after breaking the gag order nine times. So Imprisoned Don is on the clock.

B-Block (19:04) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: That embossed giant representation of The Queensboro/59th Street Bridge on the new batting helmet of the New York Mets is wonderful, until you realize it ALSO looks like something never ever associated with baseball. Kayleigh McEnany is the latest Trump pusher who can't add or subtract integers. And Jesse Watters invokes the Loch Ness monster to explain why he thinks the Trump Gag Order is unconstitutional.

C-Block (27:37) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Let's continue on the subject of Watters, whose stupidity is anything but an act, and whose cupidity was honed as Bill O'Reilly's henchman and stalker-by-proxy. Let's talk Jesse and revisit some of the best Billo moments.

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SERIES 2 EPISODE 166: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: We need a special counsel to investigate the six conservatives on the Supreme Court.

We know Harlan Crow spent thousands on Clarence Thomas – for what precise purpose We know somebody paid off Brett Kavanaugh’s debts – who? When? Why? We know Leonard Leo’s gang spent millions to put Gorsuch and the others in place – what did they get in return? We know the Trump appointees all lied to the Senate and said Roe-V-Wade was settled, then voted to overturn it – were they paid to? We know the conservatives looked at the 14th Amendment, which states when, why, and how to appeal disqualification from the ballot, and ignored the Constitution. To what end?

We know those conservatives have now signaled that they will countenance a coup, or presidentially-ordered domestic assassinations, or anything, so long as they can pretend they were official acts, and so long as they don’t have to rule until and unless Trump is president again. What inducement could make even conservatives – even conservative lawyers – prostitute themselves? And most of all we know, that if the polarity was reversed – if this was a Republican administration now and that was an utterly corrupt and criminal DEMOCRATIC president on trial – and a 6-3 LIBERAL Supreme Court impeding and slowing and obstructing justice – we KNOW that the Republican administration would do: There would be a Special Counsel investigating the Court.

There are lesser solutions. Joyce Vance suggests Jack Smith empty his January 6th evidence at a hearing to determine what might be subject to 'presidential immunity.' Brian Beutler suggests something stronger. The gist is: we – I mean all of us who have a faint hope that there’ll be representative government in this country a year from today – WE must stop assuming that being right about everything DECIDES everything any more (if it ever did). The Biden campaign is going to have to stop assuming that the president being right and good and Trump being the worst person in this country’s history is going to be enough. We need to go on OFFENSE and the goal has to be to metaphorically GUT the bastard – and to metaphorically GUT all the OTHER bastards in his gang. As said by the character of the prime minister in “House of Cards” – the good version – we need to put a bit of stick about.

ALSO: There's little new left to say about the psychopathic monster Kristi Noem. Yet I actually found something. It's not good. And it's from her alleged boyfriend.

B-Block (25:41) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: The lovely celebrity columnist Cindy Adams just turned 94. Somebody leaked her birthday party guest list and it's the twelve people you meet when you get to hell. The New York Times is so strung out over Politico's reveal that its publisher is altering the news to punish Biden for not doing an interview that it has issued a furious denial about journalism and principles and THE STATEMENT IS ANONYMOUS. And unfortunately not only did Nancy Pelosi call out my ex for being a Trump apologist but based on her reaction she has no idea that everybody agrees she's a Trump apologist.

C-Block (35:16) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Well it ain't Thursday but it IS Tur-Day. Since I'm already talking about my ex, face planting on MSNBC every afternoon, I might as well tell you the rest of the story. About her jumping the political shark. About her book. And about how she deceived me. And The New York Times. And The Washington Post. It's exhausting.

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SERIES 2 EPISODE 165: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Justice Samuel Alito should wake up tomorrow in Gitmo. Or in a hospital prison ward being examined for illness, mental or otherwise.

He and the other Conservative members of the Supreme Court are as dangerous to the future of this country and its citizens and its freedoms and its representative form of government, as any terrorists who have ever lived. If presidents knew they might be prosecuted for little things like trying to overturn a valid election and illegally staying in office, Alito told the lawyer representing Jack Smith, they would be way more likely to try to overturn a valid election and illegally stay in office. So, if you want to preserve democracy, you CAN’T prosecute a former president for trying to overturn a valid election and illegally staying in office.

THAT is the constitutional position of the leading justice on the Supreme Court, the ones Trump’s sheep follow, echoing almost word-for-word, things that the mad traitor Trump has posted on his social media feed about persecutions and retributions and retirements. This is Samuel Alito telling you that the way to insure peaceful transitions of power is: you can’t prosecute a lame duck president who partially – and nearly FULLY – disrupted the peaceful transition of power.

It sounds like something Joseph Heller CUT from his novel Catch-22 as too stupid to be useful as political satire.

And it just went downhill from there. They asked Trump's lawyer if assassination of the opposing presidential candidate or a military coup might be considered a president's "official acts" and he said yes. 

Ultimately, what the six conservatives on this destructive, fascist court hinted at yesterday, was how far they would go to prostitute themselves to rule FOR Trump in any case that comes before them. We’ve already seen them erase the clear mandate in the 14th Amendment because they felt it would deny American democracy the right to vote itself out of existence. We have now heard them try to cobble together any bullshit they had in their brains to immunize Trump for his countless crimes. But we have also been forewarned that if a case comes before THIS court relative to THIS election, they will figure out what is best for Trump and make up the reasons why.

They WILL.

After yesterday, you and I now KNOW this.

ALSO: The gag order Trump keeps violating in New York will require another hearing with Justice Merchan. But not until next Wednesday. Because we all know we have all the time in the world. On the other hand, Trump addressed all his many legal cases late yesterday and sounded terrible. Breathless. You know how old he sounded? 206!

B-Block (24:50) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: For the first time they all come from one newspaper, for misdeeds revealed in one article. They are New York Times Washington Bureau Chief Elizabeth Bumiller, writer Peter Baker, and publisher A.G. Sulzberger, and they are the vindictive little shits who could help cost us democracy. Because as Politico reports, Sulzberger has ordered the paper to fixate on Joe Biden's age as payback for Biden refusing to give The Times a one-on-one interview. Apparently Sulzberger thinks when Trump comes to round up the liberals, intellectuals, and reporters, everybody at The Times will be issued a pass.

C-Block (38:50) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: Deliberately chosen to have nothing to do with Trump or politics or The Times, his wonderful story of a loathed practical jokester: "Meet Birdey Dogged."

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SEASON 2 EPISODE 164: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: The 'Presidential Immunity' case beginning today at the Supreme Court?

Trump's already won.

Because while most of the coverage is binary (the Court will never invent something as anti-democracy as 'presidential immunity'/the Court will grant Trump presidential immunity) the real point here is that the delay already created by the Supreme Court's conspiracy to keep Trump from facing justice and to fix the election so he can seize power, has already guaranteed the jury can't possibly get the case before the election. The point from here on in is to extend that delay and the way to do that is to send the case BACK to Judge Chutkan with some lame ass "review" to see if there are parts of Jack Smith's indictments Trump might be immune from.

Trump's already won.

Plus: the Arizona Fake Elector Indictments are in. Trump is an unindicted co-conspirator and Giuliani and Christina Bobb are among EIGHTEEN just plain indicted. And as I always say, democracy survives not because of our efforts to preserve it, but by the stupidity of those who would destroy it. Fox nimrod Jesse Watters has found his analogy for Trump prevailing no matter how his enemies try to lay him low: Trump is King Kong. "And what happens with King Kong? You remember! So he's going to bust out of this cage eventually."

Jesse doesn't know that King Kong gets killed.

B-Block (24:09) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: The L.A. Dodgers get an entertainer who has sung the anthem at their games five different times ARRESTED for asking them to let her bring her purse into the stadium with her. Pastor Shane Vaughn thinks if you say 'I'm not calling Joy Reid...' followed by a really racist insult, it means you didn't call her that. And Cornel West thinks he's going to beat Trump and apparently does not know the people trying to get the signatures needed to get him on the ballot work...for Trump.

C-Block (35:48) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: If it's Supreme Court day, why don't I tell the story of the day I was invited on a first date by a woman who thought the ideal thing to go see was...Clarence Thomas's chair at the Supreme Court. Yes, it was Laura Ingraham.

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SERIES 2 EPISODE 163: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Trump faces a month in jail for contempt of court - or at minimum, he will be THREATENED with a month in jail for contempt of court.

Trump's lawyers, led by Todd (of Todd, Emil, Susan and Alina) beclowned themselves before Justice Juan Merchan during the Trump Gag Order Violation Hearing yesterday and the judge said he was "reserving his decision" which is almost always news so bad for the one side that has so infuriated the judge that he doesn't want to be in the room with them when he rules against them.

The prosecution demanded $10,000 in fines and the threat of a month in jail and as Merchan told the lawyers they were losing their credibility, another story broke. Whatever happens there have already been quiet conversations with the Secret Service over what you do when you finally do  put a former president in jail for an hour or a lifetime.

As to the trial and the only witness thus far David Pecker – as to what came out of the Pecker at the Trump Trial – nothing new, if you’ve been paying attention. He and Trump and Michael Cohen set up a machine by which they bought stories about Trump – true ones, false ones, something-in-between ones – like the child out of wedlock one and the Stormy Daniels one and the Karen McDougal one – and the critical testimony was about the love child story. The doorman selling it got $30,000 to start, then they checked the story, found it wasn’t true, Pecker of the National Enquirer was about to release the doorman from his Non-Disclosure Agreement when Michael Cohen said don’t do that until AFTER the 2016 election because it could damage the Trump campaign. 

That’s the conviction right there. They paid these people – Stormy Daniels included – not to protect Trump the person, not to save him from lies, not to save him from the truth - but to influence the outcome of 2016 election.

And it would be sad in another context, but 

the lede yesterday? That he wanted his mobs to at minimum SURROUND every courthouse in the country? Especially New York State Supreme Court, 100 Centre Street? I got a few scoffs at that. Turns out he REALLY expected. He REALLY believed it. And it didn’t happen. It REALLY didn’t happen: CNN’s Jim Sciutto with the sad truth. He wrote “Other than the first day of jury selection when I saw a pickup waving Trump flags and heard a handful of Trump supporters, their presence has dwindled. I don’t see any outside the courthouse today. If Trump was expecting a large and lasting public show of support here, it hasn’t materialized.”

Well of COURSE that’s what he was expecting. IN FACT he was expecting another January 6th. And I emphasize again that the ultimate importance of this trial may simply be exposing him to weeks of radiation-leak-levels of reality. Because after it DIDN’T happen he had to tell his people – and most importantly his EGO – that it DID: “Thousands of people were turned away from the courthouse in Lower Manhattan by steel stanchions and police, literally blocks from the tiny side door from where I enter and leave,” unquote. Utterly untrue. Nobody showed up. Not thousands, not hundreds, not dozens, not even family and friends. Like he has FRIENDS. That was his friend testifying against him. His friend – a Pecker.

PLUS: Tucker Carlson is dunked on by Mitch McConnell, Trump is dunked on by Mitt Romney, and the Republicans are dunked on by...Axios? Which reports they've... castrated themselves?

Video or it didn't happen!

B-Block (26:44) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: This surfeit of media-government interaction reminded me of the first time I ever encountered it, back when the Bushies were so naive they thought I was doing their bidding during the controversy over the made-up story of Saddam Hussein getting nukes from Niger. I was to interview Ambassador Joe Wilson - who debunked the W bull - and yet they thought I was going to slice him up, so they sent me all their talking points, and revealed the identities of all their "friends" at NBC.

C-Block (41:00) GOOD NIGHT AND GOOD LUCK

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SERIES 2 EPISODE 162: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Stochastic threat number one million. Trump returns to his propaganda channel to insist that his thugs should be, quoting his online post, “allowed to protest at the front steps of Courthouses, all over the country” rather than be “rudely and systematically shut down and ushered off to far away ‘holding areas’ essentially denying them their constitutional rights.” He tells them “Rally behind MAGA. Save our country. The only thing you have to fear is fear itself.”

When THAT stochastic call to lay siege to federal buildings didn’t work (why does that sound SO familiar?) Trump tried what he thinks is smooth and subtle. “The Palestinian Protests at Columbia University have closed the college down. But the area surrounding the Courthouse in Downtown Manhattan, is closed up like a drum, with New York City’s Finest (Police) all over the place. Why not send some to Columbia… Republicans want the right to protest in front of the courthouse like everyone else.”

Again. Seems oddly familiar. Reduce law enforcement around an area Trump wants to see sacked by gangs and militias and morons ready to spring him or hang a Vice President or, who knows, kill a judge. He forgot to note “will be wild.”

Justice Juan Merchan 

There is little for Justice Juan Merchan to DO about this latest threat other than to encourage the city and the state of New York to have tanks ready because frankly if Trump terrorist gangs again rise up against the government as he had them do on January 6th the only way the point is going to be made clear is if it ends with the New York Department of Sanitation having to clean them up with brooms and hoses and garbage trucks. But with Trump following yesterday's half-day in court ending with more violations of the gag order, Merchan can at least regain control of this mess by - if not jailing Trump at today's gag order hearing - at least saying: if you do it again I will revoke your jail and send you to Rikers Island. We have to grasp this nettle eventually, let's do it now.

In the long term, the ACTUAL Trump Legal headline may have come not from New York but Florida where witness exhibits in the Trump Espionage case reveal that the feds have a small coterie of witnesses close to Trump including an unidentified Person 16, clearly a senior Trump aide but not in the innermost circle, who revealed nothing less than the fact that Trump’s “people” told his valet and co-defendant Walt Nauta not to worry about the stolen documents case, that it’s not going anywhere, yet even if he were to, say, get charged with lying to the FBI, Trump will pardon him after he regains power.

B-Block (26:33) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: The man Nate Silver once thought was a top-five candidate to be the next Democratic presidential nominee, Eric Adams, is down to 16% support for re-election as mayor of New York. Kevin McCarthy is surprised to learn his claim Hillary Clinton never conceded is a lie. And ESPN's policy - no, you can't be a sportscaster on one station and an advocate for a presidential candidate on another - was right. I know: I helped to author it because the day when you (or I) could is long gone. So why is today's ESPN letting Stephen A. Smith do it? Why is he campaigning for Trump on Fox News? ESPN must silence him - or fire him.

C-Block (37:32) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: So I once had an agent named Art Kaminsky who at the same time he was negotiating to extend my deal at KCBS in Los Angeles was also sending his other clients in for the job. And he ordered his partner Lou Oppenheim to NOT tell me as he literally walked out of the meeting at which KCBS told him whether or not I was staying. This all ends with them serving me with papers hours before my first SportsCenter, 32 years ago this month!

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SEASON 2 EPISODE 161: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Justice Juan Merchan MUST put Trump's ass in jail for violating the gag order - even if it's only one hour at Rikers Island.

Trump is determined to break Merchan, break the New York Court, break the Criminal Justice System. He is a cornered and wounded animal and this is life-or-death for him. Think of a cockroach - only with thumbs. So it's him or us that gets broken, and Merchan has to make sure it isn't us.

Trump tried to finesse the gag order by quoting somebody else – this worm Watters from Fox – denigrating the jurors and the judge and adding to the pile of stochastic inducements to violence against anyone who thwarts Trump. And by morning one of the jurors – the silhouette of their name and the vague depiction of their home – was quitting out of fear. Because what Trump sought by denigrating the jury WORKS. Because Trump’s intimidation WORKS. Because Trump’s terrorism WORKS.

Prosecutors began Day 3 of the trial yesterday noting he had violated the gag order SEVEN times just since jury selection started and they actually UNDER-SOLD the most egregious of the violations, with Joshua Steinglass saying “the defendant reposted about liberals lying to try to get on the jury, a post by Jesse Watters.” That was NOT a re-post. Trump does dozens of re-posts a day. You hit a re-post icon, a couple of rounded arrows. Maybe you add a comment. Trump KNOWS what a re-post IS.

That is NOT what Trump – or someone in control of the social media account bearing his name – DID. What Trump did was to make a NEW post, QUOTING Watters. It redd – and still reads:“They are catching undercover Liberal Activists lying to the Judge in order to get on the Trump Jury - Jesse Watters.” It is in Trump’s own electronic hand. It is not a re-post. It is not ‘technically ok within the gag order’ because Trump ISN’T lying about the judge and the jurors and endangering them all, he’s just QUOTING Jesse Watters lying about the judge and the jurors and endangering them all.

RUNNING THE HEADLINES: Derrick Van Orden, a walking PTSD demonstration, calls Matt Gaetz "tubby" and Marjorie Taylor Greene demands anybody who votes for Ukraine aid be conscripting into its military as the House Republican caucus comes apart at the seems. Happily Jared Moskowitz is there with the big yucks and a Rick Perry protege has the best idea yet: four Republicans should resign from the House to own the liberals. FOUR? How about FIVE? FIFTY? Think big be big my friend!

And why on earth did Kari Lake devote a disturbingly large part of a campaign speech to repeatedly saying "strap-on?"

B-Block (31:18) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Clay Travis goes from being the knight in shining armor defending the sanctity of women's sports from destruction by trans athletes, to insisting that Caitlin Clark isn't actually popular and nobody CARES about women's sports. The Charlotte GOP still hasn't realized it insulted Trump online and he'll see it eventually. And Twain was wrong: history DOES sometimes repeat itself. In 2005 I watched on in astonishment as Bo Dietl began his new MSNBC show by calling a gay reporter a "fudge-packer" and get fired within two weeks. Now, he's been fired for ANOTHER homophobic rant directed at ANOTHER reporter. Did you know Dietl's specialty in the NYPD was to serve as the mugging decoy? So he was mugged 500 times? Does it show?

C-Block (48:00) EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: Snowie is fine - now - but her family could use a little help plowing through the bills for the medical wizardry that saved her life. (49:30) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: Appropriately enough, Thurber takes a dog who was alive when Teddy Roosevelt was president and makes him seem as new as the youngest pup. "The Dog That Bit People."

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SERIES 2 EPISODE 160: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Trump is an idiot. Trump is an idiot who employs other idiots. Trump is an idiot who employs other idiots and who thinks Jimmy Kimmel and Al Pacino are the same guy. And he'll probably come back later with some nonsensical and irrational explanation that he was joking or being metaphorical or to him they might as well be the same or that Kimmel is the palindrome of Pacino or it's like when he wittily called Nikki Haley "Nancy Pelosi."

He. Is. An. Idiot.

And more substantively, Trump publicly admitted that he believed his lawyers had "unlimited" jury strikes; that they could disqualify an infinite number of potential jurors in his trial for Election Interference in New York. Think about the implication here: it never occurred to Trump (or doesn't matter to him) that to have "unlimited" jury strikes would mean any defendant could literally stall the start of his trial FOREVER and no one would ever be tried for - let alone convicted OF - ANYTHING.

It just gets worse from there. We learn his Bodega stunt Tuesday was astroturfed because the New York Young Republicans who staged it couldn't resist taking a team picture at it, so they can be identified in the crowd.

Trump is an idiot who employs other idiots.

B-Block (24:24) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: I don't know what made me think of him but think of him I did. The mandarin of Los Angeles news was Jerry Dunphy and even he acknowledged it: On the air, he was simply a teleprompter-reading machine. More than once, it came with hilarious consequences.

C-Block (41:30) GOOD NIGHT AND GOOD LUCK.

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SERIES 2 EPISODE 159: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: There’s nothing better than a good NAP.

“Now: Trump’s head slowly dropped, his eyes closed. It jerked back upward. He adjusts himself. Then, his head droops again. He straightens up, leaning back. His head drops for a third time, he shakes his shoulders. Eyes closed still. His head drops. Finally, he pops his eyes open. My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains my sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk, or emptied some dull opiate to the drains."

Honestly: You’re Trump, on Monday they literally catch you napping. How do you possibly go in there yesterday and get caught napping… at least TWICE. One video, or one rapid-shutter sequence of still pictures of “Trump’s head slowly dropped, his eyes closed. It jerked back upward. He adjusts himself. Then, his head droops again” and we don’t have to WATCH the rest of the trial, he’d be DONE.

Looks like we'll get this started Monday. Seven jurors chosen. I had forgotten what I learned during two days in the NYC jury pool in 2013: it is surprisingly easy to find enough people who don’t know anything about anything to fill up a New York jury. Meanwhile Trump tried out his new defense: He knows nothing. Billionaire businessman, greatest mind of his or any other generation, but when it comes to paying off Stormy Daniels to bury her story and illegally keep bad facts about himself away from the eyes of the electorate weeks before the election, and then turning the thing into a clear crime by trying to write it off as a business expense? He knows nothing. He doesn’t know the accountant. He doesn’t know the lawyer. He didn’t know anything about the document. He didn’t know anything about the deduction. He just signed whatever they put in front of him. Because the billionaire businessman knows NOTHING about his own business!

ALSO: The picture is a rare one of Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene with her mouth shut. It's in The New Republic and above it the magazine's question is: “Russia is Buying Politicians in Europe. Is it Happening Here Too?” After Greene decided to try to fire another Speaker of the House to destabilize our government further, and her screw-up in the Mayorkas hearing, it's a question worth exploring.

B-Block (24:38) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Baseball's uniform scandal is back. The pitcher is wearing the batboy's pants. The Speaker of the House had his brain trust look at his new bill first: Libs of TikTok and DC Draino and a 1/6 defendant. And I used to think the Supreme Court Justices were merely not there to do justice or defend the constitution. Now I'm not sure they're from this country, nor have more of a legal education than I do (and I took one law class 37 years ago).

C-Block (33:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Just passed the quarter century anniversary of one of the most fun, most unexpected events of my career. How many people do you know who can say this: Tom Hanks, Ben Affleck and Matt Damon pulled me on to the Red Carpet at the Oscars - and they broke my cummerbund!

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SERIES 2 EPISODE 158: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Seriously?

Donald Trump fell asleep at his trial yesterday. First trial. First day. First session. Fell asleep. Upright. At the trial that could end with him going to prison. During the trial. But it’s Biden with the stamina problem. Biden, who’s too old. Trump fell asleep. At the defense table. But we should be worried about Biden. Trump fell asleep during discussion of his own tweets, his own threats, his own lawyers’ insistence that this is the greatest witchhunt and Abraham Lincoln got off easily compared to this and whatever else they said. “His mouth going slack and his head drooping onto his chest,” she added later in the paper. 

If this had happened to Biden – if this had happened to Biden at wherever HE might be that could be, what, one one-thousandth as serious as Trump’s trial involving PRISON TIME – if this had happened to Biden it would be the only thing on the news, the only thing on television, the only thing on the internet, the only thing in all forms of extra-sensory communication.

Don't worry the media will go back to telling voters that what they should be worried about is how sleepy President Biden is. And don't worry, Don Snore-leone wasn’t sleeping for HIMSELF – he was sleeping for the sake of the January 6th hostages.

The other true headline from the trial is that this is NOT a trial about Trump paying off a porn star to keep their sex secret from his wife or even from the public. This is a trial about Trump interfering with the 2016 election by illegally suppressing facts that the voters should’ve KNOWN and JUDGED for themselves. Voters in the General Election. Voters in the primary. Trump is NOT on trial for Hush Money. Trump is NOT on trial for banging a porn star. Trump is on trial for his favorite crime, the one he never stops talking about. TRUMP… IS ON TRIAL… FOR ELECTION INTERFERENCE.

This happened as Biden's poll streak (ahead in Politico, cuts Trump's NY Times lead from 5 to 1) is so dominant now even some reporters have noticed. I mean Jonathan Martin wrote:
"I’ll say it: there’s an elite tendency to assign Trump a better chance to win than he merits, to show THIS TIME you’re not out of touch."

Of course he didn't mean reporters. He meant foreign diplomats. Because you've seen them on TV: America's political reporters clearly don't own MIRRORS!

B-Block (25:49) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Five of them! Elon Musk continues to be Russia's streetwalker (and Marjorie Bitter Greene helps). CNN cancels its top news show (Charles Barkley and Gayle King). Another RFK Jr staffer beclowns him (and turns out to have been pardoned by Trump and seems to still be working for him). Comedian Rob Schneider was so beyond-the-pale that even Republican Senate staffers walked out of his set. And 48 hours later, Governor Sununu of New Hampshire continues to prove he is our Franz Von Papen, the cynical German politician who brokered the deal to launch the 3rd Reich because it was ONLY politics.

C-Block (36:37) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: The passing of Fritz Peterson is marked by many as the end to an extraordinary sports story of half a century ago where New York Yankees teammates "traded lives" (and, incidentally, wines). By others it's the loss of the statistically-best pitcher ever to call original Yankee Stadium home. To me, he was the man from whom I took away his bid for a no-hitter. Seriously.

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SERIES 2 EPISODE 157: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: In the SportsCenter computer I read something that made my blood run cold. It was one line in a preliminary script for the 6:30 PM SportsCenter for Monday, June 14, 1994. O.J. Simpson’s wife and a man with her had been murdered. The script noted “Simpson is NOT a suspect.” What made my blood run cold was not the news of the murders. It was that phrase. It might as well have been “of COURSE Simpson is not a suspect.”

The problem was, I knew Simpson was a suspect because I had not a doubt in my mind that Simpson had butchered them because I knew what all of us who worked – or had worked – in L.A. media knew – that the O.J. Simpson known to the public, to TV audiences, movie audiences, sports audiences, was an utter fabrication. I knew he had hit his wife. I knew the authorities in Los Angeles had done nothing about it. I knew the sportscasters in Los Angeles – including me – had done nothing about it, though I wondered then and have known since that there was almost nothing WE could have done about it, legally.

I called police source in L.A. and he was emphatic:: “whatever you do, DON’T say he’s a suspect. We’re terrified he’s going to run. This guy has make-for-the-border written all over him. Or off himself maybe. But yeah, maybe…” and he had had to stop himself from laughing… “maybe you want to drop that part about NOT a suspect. Jesus. Not a suspect? HE’S OUR ONLY SUSPECT."

I then had to explain it to executives - representative of the America of 1994 - who were still saying aloud "Poor O.J." There is no comparison to Simpson's fall in American history. And the system of the time was designed to protect him, the way the system of today protects similar scumbags.

ALSO: The Johnson-Trump conference today was Johnson's idea and Trump is not in favor of getting rid of the Speaker. And RFK Jr gets rid of the New York staffer who admitted the campaign is about getting Trump, not Kennedy, elected. But it turns out he's got at least one more saying essentially the same thing.

B-Block (26:30) IN SPORTS: It's amazing that Shohei Ohtani could have so relied on his interpreter Ippei Mizuhara that basically nobody else could talk to Ohtani, and Mizuhara could exploit that reality to secretly steal millions from him. But the FIGURES involved are twice as amazing: $16,000,000 embezzled? 19,000 bets on sporting events in three years? Gambling wins and losses totaling $325,000,000? Also America's hottest new team is the Indiana Fever, and no, there aren't more baseball pitchers being injured this year than the last ten years.

C-Block (41:05) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: A first-time story, which reads as if it was ripped from today's headlines. In his profile of his boss, discoverer, and the founder of The New Yorker Harold Ross, Thurber told of Ross's assisting, who took advantage of his boss's inattentiveness to money to embezzle the equivalent of one and a half million from him and bet most of it on sporting events. There are so many similarities it sounds as if Ohtani's interpreter used the story as an instruction manual: "The Secret Life Of Harold Winney."

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SERIES 2 EPISODE 156: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: For a time it looked like Trump had actually played three-dimensional chess with abortion; that absolutism in Arizona and elsewhere and the push for a federal ban would allow him to move the Overton Window and look like the moderate who would save the day.

Then the Arizona Republicans told Trump to go eff himself - that they want to KEEP the 1864 law that the Supreme Court dug up and revivified. Now Trump, and Kari Lake, and all the other national Arizona Republicans are absolutely screwed. The mine has caved in on Trumpy.

In the interim he can always turn to losing more attempts to stall his New York trial (and he has) and to antisemitism (now it's Jews who don't support him "should have their head examined"). And he could turn to his new spokesmodel, Karoline Leavitt, who thinks one word is pronounced "Hench MAN" and another "dammaning" and I swear she is the reincarnation of that Miss Teen contestant from 2007 ("I believe that our education like such as in South Africa and the Iraq everywhere like such as and I believe that they should our education over here in the US...")

B-Block (21:42) IN SPORTS: New York Times reports Ohtani's interpreter altered the settings on his account so he could embezzle at least $4,500,000 from the baseball star to pay off gambling debts; interpreter now negotiating guilty plea with feds. (24:52) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Joe Scarborough and MSNBC executives re-platform disgraced, banned, Mark Halperin; Maria Bartiromo promises to call the governor to get the Trump prosecutor fired; Biden's former Chief of Staff Ron Klain f-bombs Biden's campaign strategy and doesn't stop to think somebody might be recording it. He should leave the country until after the election, the idiot.

C-Block (35:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: First it was Lawrence O'Donnell seated on a curbside table in the restaurant in front of my home. Now, it's the impossible Harris Faulkner of Fox News. Can I get the city Board of Health to close this place down already?

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SERIES 2 EPISODE 155: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: It was a two-word post by Trump: "Biden Trials!!!" and it followed by a day a quote from a Trump campaign official outlining plans to prosecute Joe Biden next year: "Everything you have seen from the Biden DOJ, you can expect to see from the Trump DOJ.” 

Everything? Well, what does that mean?

It means: Everything.

And particularly the thing that matters most to Trump, upon which rests his ability to not feel himself a total failure: that he never loses and everybody else does. That he didn't lose the 2020 election. It was stolen from him.

When his staff says "Biden Trials" they might mean over classified documents or business or Commander the dog.

To Trump, it MUST mean: Prosecuting Biden in a dream trial in which a court rules Trump really won in 2020 and it really was stolen from him and Biden was the man who stole it.

Also: more of Trump's antisemitism is showing. American Jews who don't support him "should be spoken to." And he's already confirmed Monday's "Abortion Ban" video was a lie. And yet another poll shows a significant majority of Republicans believe HE should be allowed to rule without waiting for congress or the courts.

The good news? The polls are now breaking almost entirely in Biden's direction. 

B-Block (25:45) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: The German Soccer Federation learns never to use an "open" font for the number 44. Montana GOP Senate candidate Tim Sheehy is so tough he still carries a bullet from when he was shot in Afghanistan. Or, from when he dropped his gun in the parking lot and shot himself. Or... And like eight good minutes about Geraldo Rivera and how this little thing between the two of us in the wake of his hilarious self-own while criticizing Larry David, actually dates back to his anger that NBC was promoting my show and not his in 1997, and how he promised to "fight" me in 2007. I know I should fear him: he has a mustache.

C-Block (41:40) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: The greatest scoop of my sportscasting career came when I did nothing more than continually answer the phone as viewers called in to tell me the owner of the L.A. Kings had just told them he was trading for Wayne Gretzky. But the second greatest scoop of my sportscasting career came because I really wanted some pizza so I happened to be walking past the bar across the street from the pizza parlor at the exact moment the exact guy who had the exact info I needed, stepped out of the bar and started YELLING that info at the top of his lungs. It's the George Steinbrenner story.

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SERIES 2 EPISODE 154: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: You can never say a cockroach can't survive something, and after all he IS Donald J. Cockroach.

But he has now made a spectacular, amazing unforced error with this video in which he pretends to say that abortion bans should be (and would be) left to the states. He never says that, but the evangelicals who are the spine of his fanatical base don't know that. And for once the idiocy of the stenographic news media will work to hurt Trump because they repeated without examination the impression he successfully left that he was backing away from any federal abortion ban.

All that will do is piss off those evangelicals, so enraged that even Lindsey Graham felt compelled to repudiate what Trump said. It's obviously not going to convince any liberals and when the reality is made clear that he never said a damn thing about vetoing a federal abortion ban sent to him by a Republican house and senate, it wouldn't help him with that handful in the middle.

More important perhaps is what made Trump speak on the subject NOW, with the election still 211 days away. Unless he had some sudden compulsion to repudiate his life lived inside the fine print of scam contracts and confidence tricks, there is only one conclusion: the internal polling done on Trump's behalf shows he is getting DESTROYED on abortion in general, and an abortion ban specifically, and he had to run the risk of damaging religious nut job and handmaiden support in what is already - even now - a desperate last-minute attempt to put some space between him and how ever bad the damage the abortion issue is doing to him.

B-Block (25:27) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: It's the thought that counts, I guess: a news organization reports "eclipse glasses" being recalled 90 minutes before the eclipse. Fox's Harris Faulkner sounds perpetually confused; now it extends to believing that Steve Wynn, Woody Johnson and Wilbur Ross "are black." And Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson says he wants to avoid stoking "division" by repeating his endorsement of Joe Biden in 2020. You know what kind of division he's afraid of, right? The division between him and those millions standing up for his country and democracy would create - the bonehead.

C-Block (33:40) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: it’s another trip down memory lane; just a cassette tape from February 1977 that I found over the weekend. It contained and a sportscast I did on a radio station in Binghamton, New York I did in the middle of the night a mere 47 years ago. And oh by the way it also contained a reminder of the day 20 years later I saw a ghost and I knew who the ghost was and the ghost laughed at me and I've never told a damn soul about the ghost until now.

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SERIES 2 EPISODE 153: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: On January 15th the Biden Campaign let loose the results of its internal polling. They insisted, at what was for them the nadir of the campaign, that there would be an O.S.M.… an oh-spit-moment… only they didn’t say spit… at which point the undecideds who had convinced themselves that Trump would NOT be the Republican nominee and thus they would have a different alternative, would realize Trump HAD GOTTEN the Republican nomination and… oh spit. And all the undecideds would break to Biden. 

New Marquette Law School Poll, among likely voters: Biden 52 Trump 48. Likely Voters. The Marquette Law School Poll, February 15? Marquette Law School Poll: Likely Voters, TRUMP 52 Biden 48.

An eight point swing in 43 days. Oh spit!

B-Block (19:40) and C-Block ) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: 45 years ago at this moment, a week or so after I had met Bob Iger and got his advice on how to get started in television, the letter that would change my career and my life, was somewhere, in transit, between New York City and Ithaca, New York. The story of the man who sent it, and why what he wrote mattered so much: The Lou Adler Letter.

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SEASON 2 EPISODE 152: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: He lied about it. He stole the story of a young murdered Michigan woman, purposely altered it, made himself the hero, made up a story about her family, then exploited it as an excuse to turn local cops into his private paramilitary police force. He LIED about it.

OR: His dementia or aphasia or insanity or whatever it is that specifically doesn’t work right in his brain is so bad that he read about her in The New York Post and he could no longer tell the difference between what he had READ and what had actually happened - or both.

The New York Post, Monday. Ruby Garcia had a: “smile that illuminated the room or contagious laughter.”

Trump, Lying or Hallucinating, Tuesday: "she had just the most contagious laughter and when she walked into a room, she lit up that room, and I’ve heard that from so many people. I spoke to some of her family."

The family says he did not speak to any of her family. His campaign is hiding behind a claim that it never releases the details of such conversations without permission - which is itself ANOTHER lie because it released its CLAIM that it spoke to some of her family and implied those comments came from them.

There are scumbags in this world. And then there is Donald Trump.

MEANWHILE "The American Conservative" piece about repealing or ignoring Presidential term limits so Trump could run again in 2028 and thereafter had an additional tendril I didn't see. Lisa Needham at Public Notice did. "The American Conservative" is part of "Project 2025" - the plan to recast the government as an anti-women, anti-minority, anti-equality body that destroys "The Deep State" and replaces it with Trump slaves personally loyal to him who would institute a DEEPER - and far more deeply INCOMPETENT - state.

(21:00) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Charlie Kirk insults a certain category of women. The one headed by his wife. Mike Davis thinks Chuck Schumer threatened to punch Justices Kavanaugh and Gorsuch or something. And so, what? Are you telling me that from once a week now my ex-SportsCenter co-anchor Sage Steele is going to be on here? Now she has revealed her 2021 ESPN interview with President Biden was entirely scripted by ESPN management, no deviations allowed, without ever realizing that all of her SportsCenter interviews were scripted by ESPN management because she was a total idiot.

B-Block (29:20) and C-Block (43:47) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: 45 years ago at this moment, a week or so after I had met Bob Iger and got his advice on how to get started in television, the letter that would change my career and my life, was somewhere, in transit, between New York City and Ithaca, New York. The story of the man who sent it, and why what he wrote mattered so much: The Lou Adler Letter.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SERIES 2 EPISODE 151: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Trump has now  threatened to federalize state and local police. His persecution of minorities starting with Latinos and moving on to blacks and middle easterners and when he runs out, Jews, will be conducted at least in part, by cops. To make THAT possible, Trump will have to take over state and local police. He promised to do as much in a speech at Grand Rapids yesterday. 

And he again promised to immunize them against prosecution.  The cops – the cops in your town – on your street – will be answerable to no one but Trump. No governor, no mayor, no chief, no judge. By putting it in these terms, Trump has shown you the America he intends to sentence us to, next January 20th. There are no laws. There are no governors. There are no mayors. There are no local governments. There is only him.

He has the military, he will use it on the streets against protestors; he may declare a State of Insurrection during his inaugural address, thus the protestors could be anybody – you, me, a Democratic Speaker of the House, Joe Biden, a news reporter he doesn’t like, judges who try to stop him. He will usurp the federal government and replace it with those personally loyal to him. And the first show of force will be the purge of minorities and if you belong to any minority group and spoiler alert we ALL belong to SOME minority group – you may THINK you are here legally, but if your local cop – your local TRUMP Cop, federalized by Trump, indemnified by Trump, beholden by Trump – if your local cop says no, he thinks you’re here illegally – guess where you’re going? To Trump Camp. A JUDGE is going to stop you? A JUDGE Trump appointed? A JUDGE in a red state? A JUDGE Trump didn’t appoint who knows that if he crosses Trump HE will be the next to go Trump Camp and die there – fast, or slow?

And it all starts with the cops. This nation – especially its Republicans and MAGAs and fascists and racists – is riddled with snitches and fascists and sadists. And a lot of them just happen to be cops. And then there are lots of people who you would now bet your life on being there to defend you if they dragged you away and said “new rule: your grandmother can’t prove her immigration here was documented? That means YOU are no longer a citizen” – surprise. They will first worry about whether THEIR grandmother can prove it. Or if this cop knows THAT unfortunate fact about them, or their friend, or their cousin, or… or… or…

It all starts with the cops 700,000 of them in 18,000 state and city units. And Trump just said he would federalize the cops. They shoot somebody? They can’t be arrested. They can’t be sued. They can’t be stopped. And for this, they have only one man to thank. Promising death and destruction and making a stochastic assassination threat against President Biden is one kind of thing. This – this is pure dictatorship

B-Block (26:54) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Even The Daily Caller has retracted, killed, and apologized for this nonsense that Biden ordered religious markings removed from White House Easter eggs. Speaker Mike Johnson? He has NOT retracted nor apologized, because he's a theocratic fascist. Fox hires a Disinformation/Misinformation specialist (for or against) and Tulsi Gabbard says she turned down RFK Jr's overtures. No! To be his VP! (Well I did too. I mean, why not, if Gabbard can say this, then you and I can also claim this is true)

C-Block (36:20) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: How much would they have to pay you to fall off a cliff? A small one? What if it’s a small cliff and you don't get seriously hurt although you’ll be sore for a month? For me, the answer turned out to be like $250,000 up front. And later another $150,000. The saga of cliff diving in California. Unintentional cliff diving.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SERIES 2 EPISODE 150: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: It was a presidential kidnapping and assassination video.

It showed a pickup truck, Trump flags flapping in the wind, and on its tailgate, with an illustration of President Biden bound and gagged and thrown in the flatbed. Trump posted the video and he knew what he was doing: it is a stochastic attempt to GET Biden kidnapped or assassinated. 

It all makes me again ask a chilling question I first posed months ago. Had any of Trump’s various coup attempts succeeded in 2020 – if any of the coup attempts Trump is planning NOW for this election  – exactly what is Trump’s plan, or the plans of his thugs and gangs cultists and psychotics and death fetishists and militias and god-and-gun lunatics – for the ACTUAL president he usurps? Now Trump has given us the answer. Have the pick-up truck mob grab Biden and tie him up and throw him in the back of the truck.

And the listless, clueless, spineless media as personified as Kristen Welker of NBC, reduces it to: “It is yet another reminder that we are covering this election against the backdrop of a deeply divided nation.”

Yeah - like we were divided during the Civil War.

If the media had not failed us sufficiently in this case, wait'll you hear the Trump story that wasn't merely covered poorly - it wasn't covered at all. In a move I have long anticipated, Trump minions are begin to soften up potential opposition to repealing or ignoring the 22nd Amendment's presidential term limits and dare us to stop Trump running for re-election in 2028. They have produced nonsensical sophistry in "The American Conservative" that boils down to this: because Trump would not have served CONSECUTIVE terms, the 22nd Amendment wouldn't apply to him. 

Disagree? Sue him. Maybe you'll get lucky and find a different Supreme Court that will agree with you and actually defend the Constitution. If not: welcome to the Trump Dictatorship.

B-Block (38:30) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Such a pile there are EIGHT award winners. I had to expand the medal stand and hand out aluminum in addition to bronze, silver and gold. Your winners? The owner of the San Francisco Giants, the North Carolina GOP State Superintendent of Schools candidate who belongs to an organization that believes Obama is Hitler's grandson, Mayor Adams of New York, Trump's Media Company, Trump's $200 Burger Buy, Roseanne Barr, The Ohtani-deaf New York Yankees, and Representative Mike Turner.

C-Block (51:42) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: I outlasted five heads of MSNBC and three chiefs of NBC News (one of them twice) and it looks like I'm about to outlast a fourth. The Ronna McDaniel Scandal continues and the fingers and figurative knives are all pointed towards the Chairman of NBC News Cesar Condé. I have my own history with him, and with the predecessor he most reminds me for pure self-absorption: Andy Lack. Their stories in an all-new edition of Countdown.

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SERIES 2 EPISODE 149: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) We have a curious addition to the NBC/Ronna McDaniel timeline:

Trump and the RNC fire Ronna McDaniel. 2. NBC hires Ronna McDaniel. 3. NBC fires Ronna McDaniel. 4. Trump and the RNC make a martyr OUT of Ronna McDaniel. 5. RNC threatens NBC over Ronna McDaniel.

Per Politico the RNC is “weighing whether to restrict NBC’s access to this summer’s convention…’We are taking a hard look at what this means for NBC’s participation at the convention,” says a spokesperson.

OK how would limiting NBC’s access to the R-N-C bullshit festival HURT NBC News? What Republicans watch NBC News? They checked out 30 years ago! So why would NBC worry? Maybe because of something Judd Legum dug up at his marvelous site "Popular Information." Of all the major corporations that vowed after January 6 to never donate to election deniers again, you know which true broadcasting company has breached its promise and donated the MOST to election deniers?

Comcast/NBC. $787,500.

Coincidence - no doubt.

Could there be any connection between this and the fact that nobody has made headlines out of the amazing poll shift: Trump and Trump-Leaning Undecideds: 50. Biden and BIDEN-Leaning Undecideds: 50. And that's in a poll so skewed towards the Republicans (the Harvard-Harris poll) that a Harvard school paper columnist wrote about it: “Harvard Should Break Up With The Harris Poll” because the university is quote “lending its name to a methodologically flawed poll that often promotes a right-wing political agenda.”

The 8% undecided lean 61% Biden including 58% of independent undecideds and 41% of Republican undecideds and that is, after all, EXACTLY what the Biden internal metrics told the president’s campaign months ago. Once Trump actually became the GOP nominee the fence-sitters would have their "oh shit" moment and break to Biden. Plus, in the Bloomberg swing states poll that America erupted over when Trump led in seven states, Biden has moved ahead in one, tied in two others, and has improved in three more.

Funny that these poll results aren't as big deal as the pro-thump ones were.

B-Block (22:00) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: So when they call Baltimore's mayor "The DEI Mayor" what do you think THAT'S a euphemism for? And after Larry David eviscerates Trump so Charlie Kirk has to attack Larry David and say he's a "typical kind of New York Woody Allen-type" what do you think THAT'S a euphemism for? And when a Trump-endorsed Michigan state legislator sees people getting off a plane and onto a bus with a police escort, what do you think he assumes they are? "Illegal invaders," says the guy with no neck. The correct answer is: one of the college basketball teams competing in the NCAA Sweet 16. The hatred and racism and sense of impunity with which the bigots operate was unleashed by Trump, and to stop it we have to stop him.

C-Block (34:00) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: A break from this Week of Stupid to the simpler life of a century ago at Ohio State University, when a kid with one eye is asked to draw what he sees when he looks through a microscope. "University Days."

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SEASON 2 EPISODE 148: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: The head of the POLITICAL unit at NBC News is now reported to have been actively working with the former Chief of Staff of the Republican National Committee to try to stir up a social media groundswell to save Ronna McDaniel’s job at NBC. And she – and perhaps the CHAIRMAN of NBC News as well - were reportedly willing to throw MSNBC under the bus - specifically, willing to throw its ex-Biden-Press-Secretary, now budding star Jen Psaki, under the bus, and throw Chuck Todd under the bus, in hopes of saving Ronna McDaniel.

Puck News is reporting that after Ronna McDaniel debuted on “Meet The Press” on Sunday and after Kristen Welker told the audience she had no say in McDaniel’s hiring and after Chuck Todd attacked the hiring, NBC News Chairman Cesar Conde and Vice President Carrie Budoff Brown were unnerved, but both quote “seemed to anticipate the impending insurgency and frantically tried to pre-empt it. On Sunday, Budoff Brown reached out to McDaniel’s aide and former chief of staff at the RNC Richard Walters, to see if there were any friends or colleagues who could speak up on her BEHALF. The two sides also discussed having those folks call attention to what they saw as a double standard – after all this was the same network that was turning Psaki… into a Maddow-adjacent prime time star. Walters later assured Budoff Brown that they’d been able to advance conservative pushback on social media against (Chuck) Todd, specifically, and that this might give NBC News some cover, for which Budoff Brown thanked him,” unquote.

The report - and a similar story by The Hollywood Reporter - also highlights MSNBC President Rashida Jones's role in hiring McDaniel, and raises questions about Kristen Welker's on-air denial that she was at all involved in the hiring (it says she was AT a meeting at which Budoff Brown continued to pitch McDaniel).

It's a disaster, it's still unfolding, and there's no telling how many different NBC News executives will follow McDaniel out the door.

B-Block (28:19) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: First Maria Bartiromo blamed the Baltimore bridge collapse on "wide open borders." Now she wants to make sure no money is allocated to rebuild it. James Comer claims Merrick Garland and The Deep State are indoctrinating people into believing he has no evidence against Biden. And Sage Steele, with whom I once co-anchored SportsCenter, says the devil tried to keep her from speaking out against liberals by hitting her in the mouth with a golf ball.

C-Block (40:30) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Okay, the still-evolving Ronna McDaniel scandal is a doozy. But this is NOT NBC/MSNBC's worst crisis ever. Let me take you back to the thrilling day of Existential Challenge when the Chairman of GE was ready to shut the network down, pay everybody off, and fire all of us, because his Mommy had seen Bill O'Reilly criticize him on Fox, because of what I said about O'Reilly on MSNBC. 

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SEASON 2 EPISODE 147: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Those were Trump's marbles he just lost.

At 2:49 PM, Eastern Dementia Time: “I’m not running to terminate the ACA, as crooked Joe BUDEN… DIS-INFORMATES and MIS-INFORMATES all the time, I’m running to CLOSE THE BORDER..."

There is no such word as “Disinformate.”

There is also no such word as “MIS-informate.”

Also, unless I've been getting it wrong since 1973, "BUDEN" is not how the president spells his name. Trump's cheese has slid off his cracker.

It is impossible to say that he cannot possibly last like this,  what with the forces of aphasia and dementia and narcissism and head injury and whatever else there is, pulling him apart… but of course he’s lasted in approximately this same space for months now – and in spaces not really that much BETTER than this one for years and decades and if the early anecdotes are correct, a lifetime. Still: inventing your own words, is a sign of a dozen different PHYSICAL problems, to say nothing of psychological ones like bipolarity and environmental ones like huffing D-Con Roach Room Fogger.

HELP ME RONNA, HELP HELP ME RONNA: And now she belongs to the ages. Five days, one show. Not the shortest tenure in television history nor the fastest-cancelled program (still held by an ABC comedy show from 1969, cancelled just before the first commercial). But NBC's decision to ax Ronna McDaniel - no matter how tortured, self-serving, and late the protests from its stars might have been, does offer some small hope.

The point of all this – and perhaps the value of this internal rebellion – is that perhaps the somnambulant American political media, especially the American TELEVISION political media – has awakened from its naïve stupor. I have been saying here for eighteen months that EVERY news organization in this country has had the same meeting: what do we do if Trump regains power. Not “what do we do journalistically” but what do we do to protect our profits – and what do we do so when Trump starts jailing reporters and TV executives, he’ll leave us alone. Or, more realistically, he’ll let us become one of his propaganda channels.

Remember, in the minds of its executives, television news isn’t a kind of NEWS, it’s a kind of TELEVISION. It is designed to fill the places between the commercials. If it serves some kind of public purpose, hey, great, as long as that doesn’t mean we have to go TOO many hours cancelling all those advertisements just because some POPE died or something.

Putting Trump on and taking Mehdi Hasan off and hiring Ronna McDaniel was INOCULATION, nothing more, nothing less. It was proving to Trump and the MAGAs that while no, we aren’t shuttering MSNBC and we’re not in favor of this whole “end the peaceful transfer of power” and “fascism is the new democracy” stuff – hey, go on… we’re listening.

American TV news isn’t going to save us from creeping fascism. But maybe – MAYBE – the scattered, largely selfish, righteous-ehhh-kinda righteous indignation at NBC means American TV news will stop HELPING fascism creep faster. Guard rail? No. Scattering spike strips across democracy’s highways? Uhh, ok, maybe we’ll stop.

Also, I sing. I mean: "Help Me Ronna"? I was supposed to RESTRAIN myself from THAT?

B-Block (30:57) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Congressman Tim Burchett sued by the Kansas City man he claimed was a) a Super Bowl parade shooter and b) an "illegal alien." He was neither. Ari Fleischer actually slams Biden for supporting George W. Bush's war in Iraq that Ari helped sell to a gullible America. And Maria Bartiromo, Nancy Mace, David Sabatini, Matt Schlapp, Glenn Thrush and a random named Rose Graham share the honors for spreading conspiracy theories about the Baltimore bridge accident.

C-Block (42:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: I mentioned those tortured anti-Ronna comments from MSNBC. Lawrence O'Donnell was astonishingly wrong in his recap of how TV news in the old days didn't reward, say, Nixon's Watergate conspirators with gigs (other than Pat Buchanan, John Ehrlichmann, Robert Bork, Gordon Liddy, plus Ollie North from Iran-Contra and a series of ice cream commercials for Ehrlichmann). Since I've brought him up, I might as well tell you what a schmuck he is, 

Like when he guest hosted Countdown and while I was out a few weeks, he tried to get me fired so he could take over the show and when that didn’t work he just stole a couple of the producers and got his own show. Oh, by the way, I WAS away for a couple weeks because my Dad was dying.

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SERIES 2 EPISODE 146: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Sure, the split legal decisions in New York courtrooms matter. Trump got a brief reprieve in the business fraud case ($500 million bond reduced to $175 bond, he gets an extra 10 days grace; but his son said even a $15 million bond was almost impossible) but the Stormy Daniels election hush money case starts as scheduled April 15.

But in the span five hours, Trump posted a psalm he claimed to have "received" from somebody in which he was compared to Christ, and said that he would have to sell his "babies" due to Judge Engoron, and he announced to an uncomfortable crowd of reporters "You can’t have an election in the middle of a political season."

He's NUTS. Besides which, I always thought he'd decide he was not Jesus but Napoleon.

RFK JR'S NEVADA OOPSIE: He celebrated getting enough signatures to be a Trump stalking horse on the ballot there. Then somebody noticed that your petitions have to mention just not the presidential candidate but the VICE presidential candidate. And he's not announcing who that is until today. He has to refile all the signatures. Hopefully the likely Veep, the ex-wife of the founder of Google who wanted a divorce settlement of a billion, can front RFK Jr the cash.

THE CONTINUING RONNA McDANIEL DISASTER: No, Maddow didn't stop it last night. She could've stopped it last week, or last month if she'd stood up and threatened to quit when her bosses overruled her - live on the air - and reversed her dictum that MSNBC would not carry Trump speeches live.

And no, MSNBC's president did NOT say McDaniel won't appear on the network. And no, Chuck Todd didn't put himself at risk by speaking out. And no, don't even get me started about Joe Scarborough. 

In the old days we used to have a more direct way of stopping such subversions of journalism. I threatened to quit, on the spot, at least twice. Rachel did it at least once. Scarborough used threats on a regular basis. Brokaw did it. 

Ultimately the problem is: people paid big salaries to make essential decisions about the coverage of an election that will decide whether or not we still have a democracy next January, thought she was a GREAT HIRE. And nice as the protests from Todd and Welker and “Golly I hope they reconsider” Scarborough were, bluntly, the moment the hiring of Ronna Romney McDaniel was announced, MSNBC anchors and producers and writers, and NBC NEWS anchors and producers and writers, should have literally walked off the job. Gone on strike.

Because it comes down to this: the hiring of Ronna McDaniel didn’t represent some kind of political balance. It conceded – STIPULATED – that there can be some kind of balance, some kind of yes-but, some kind of bothsidesism, between the reality of the 2020 election, and election deniers and the Trumpist cult. She IS the flat earther, the climate change denier. She might as well be Q from Q-Anon. She is reality, trying to appease hallucination and mental illness in hopes of making… more… money. Her presence as an NBC News employee LEGITIMIZES the election deniers and the conspiracy theorists… and Trump. It is an act of journalistic self-defenestration and – for the future democracy in this country – an act of self-immolation.

B-Block (30:50) IN SPORTS: Shohei Ohtani makes it worse: nobody has explained the money transfer to the bookie. Now the NBA has a burgeoning scandal: the fringe player who everybody placed "prop bets" on (33:40) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: The sad post-mortem for Flaco the Central Park Owl, and farewell to Bill Jorgensen. (50:50) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Rece Davis isn't actually one of them but his dry sense of humor created another mini-sports wagering mess at my alma mater. Now we know what Jeff Yass bought Trump with. And Charlie Kirk wants to use machine guns and whips at the border.

C-Block (57:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Since I've asserted that the NBC News/MSNBC protest over Ronna McDaniel is tepid compared to the Him-Or-Me ones we had in the 2003-11 era, I'll tell you everything I know about them. It stars Tom Brokaw, John McCain, Scarborough, Michael Savage, Chris Hayes, Maddow, me, and a cast of thousands. Pull up a chair: it takes 27 minutes.

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SEASON 2 EPISODE 145: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: His Republican minions in the House thought releasing the previously unreported January 6 Committee transcript of an interview with a White House valet would help the desperate need to "prove" Trump tried to stop January 6th.

Instead it shows that he was told that Ashli Babbitt had been shot in the chest and he did and said nothing and now he uses her at his fascist rallies and his inhumanity and selfishness is more apparent than ever. The testimony also shows Trump thought to call General Mark Milley and then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi about the National Guard (the GOP will play that part up) and then... didn't (the GOP will ignore that part). And it details how he threatened Mike Pence that morning and even as the coup failed his only concern was himself, and how Pence "let me down."

It is an amazing self-own by Trump's congresswhores.

ALSO the NY Attorney General has begun the paperwork to seize at least one Trump property, the NYC DA says that 100,000 page document dump is virtually irrelevant to the case and trial should begin April 15. And Merrick Garland makes a jackass out of himself yet again.

(16:46) THE SHOHEI ME THE MONEY SCANDAL: Yesterday, I said they had to answer – as quickly as possible – the old Watergate cliché: What did Shohei Ohtani Know And When Did He Know It? Since then, the actions of Ohtani and his representatives and the Dodgers and Baseball (keeping Ohtani away from the press; insisting there's no MLB investigation) have QUINTUPLED the number of questions that must be satisfied as quickly and thoroughly as possible:

WHY have you issued two or maybe three different official versions of this story; HOW could Ohtani have acknowledged he sent the bookie four and a half million dollars then insist the money had been stolen from him AND then insist he knew nothing about any of this; HOW long did the TEAM know about this disaster; IS the interpreter just trying to take the fall for Ohtani; WHY did a Dodgers source remind ESPN that whatever happened, it happened when Ohtani was playing for the Angels (the answer is: the Dodgers are covering their asses if Ohtani goes down); and maybe most saliently: the fired translator Mizuhara told ESPN his annual salary was between 300-thousand and 500-thousand dollars. What kind of self-respecting bookie would let a guy with THAT level of income, run up four and a half million dollars in unpaid gambling losses?

B-Block (28:19) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: The Tampa Bay Rays spoil it. The pitcher for whom they just traded will NOT become Joe Rock of The Rockies. A Republican congressman retweets the GOP's favorite news source: Russian State TV. And Liz Harrington thinks Peter Navarro can appeal the Supreme Court's verdict to...Jesus. (Jesus!)

C-Block (36:00) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: It's the start of another baseball season (and maybe another baseball scandal of biblical proportions!) so let's celebrate with Thurber's epic mixture of Brooklyn Dodgers Play-by-Play and the jujitsu of the little man: The Catbird Seat.

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SERIES 2 EPISODE 144: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Trump’s lawyer in the case is refusing to deny that Trump is trying to get somebody from Russia or Saudi Arabia to pay off or guarantee or underwrite the $464 million he has to pay the state of New York by Monday, or begin to see the Attorney General seize his property in the state. Fox asked Alina Habba point-blank if they had sought it from foreign sources and she made up some crap about rules and regulations and strategy and then swerved to a word salad about election interference instead of the one and only correct answer: NO EFFING WAY!

Trump, still pre-trial on 33 charges of mishandling classified documents and American government secrets, and already charged with espionage, has just handed the Biden Administration an excuse to deny him the traditional candidate National Security Briefings. It would be safer for the government to give him the half billion dollars he needs, then to give him the secrets he could SELL for half a billion.

MEANWHILE the jig is up at the House Perpetual Unending Non-Impeachment Hearings. Lev Parnas accused literally everybody from Senator Ron Johnson to Sean Hannity to Putin of being behind the crap he gathered for Rudy Giuliani. The Republicans' only remaining witness who isn't in jail was good enough to be unable the simple question: What crime did you see Joe Biden commit.

THE CRIME IN LOS ANGELES IS ILLEGAL SPORTS GAMBLING: First Shohei Ohtani's friend and translator said he'd screwed up and Ohtani had covered his gambling debts. Then Ohtani's lawyers said, no, the translator had stolen the money ($4,500,000 by ESPN's account). The Dodgers fired the translator and authorities are investigating. But this isn't some low-level clown. He's been perhaps Ohtani's best friend in this country since 2017 and once quit his job rather than being denied the chance to work with Ohtani for a few weeks during a labor lockout.

Baseball certainly has an Ohtani-Adjacent Illicit Gambling Crisis. It might conceivably have an Ohtani Himself Illicit Gambling Crisis.

B-Block (28:30) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Lauren Boebert becomes the latest GOOPER to vote against a spending bill then claim credit for it (get a grip on yourself). Fox's Eric Shawn again shows he has something on his bosses, bless him. And Ohio Republican Derek Meyer screwed up and conceded early. Why are we mocking him? HE'S A REPUBLICAN WHO CONCEDED AND DIDN'T CLAIM RIGGING OR THAT HE WAS HACKED OR IT'S WOKE!

C-Block (37:25) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: By coincidence I was recently asked to help the grandchild of the guy who bought the radio network at which I had my second job. This not only means I'm REALLY old, it also means I have to tell you the great tales of the place including the time we desperately needed George Steinbrenner to be an anonymous source for a story, couldn't find him, and on my walk home, I turned a corner and there he was, literally shouting the exact information we needed from him!

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SEASON 2 EPISODE 143: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: First Trump accused the Democratic Party of hating Israel. Then he proclaimed "any Jewish person that votes for Democrats hates their religion. They hate everything about Israel" and said "Israel will be destroyed." If that wasn't enough antisemitism, late yesterday Trump doubled down on it, reminding us he has previously shown he assumes that the oldest trope is one he assumes to be true: that Jews are loyal first to Israel or their religion and anything else - like America - last.

It is that one central piece of Trump's personality from which prejudice and pogroms and holocausts can spring. 

We already know of his praise for Hitler, and his first wife saying he kept a book of Hitler's speeches in a bedside table. And before you drift off on this topic, Trump introduced NEW Hitler ploys as recently as this past weekend. The whole “January 6 Hostages” is just a replay of how a pre-empowered Hitler used to talk about Nazi party members who’d been jailed and his reverence for Ashli Babbitt is just a replay of Hitler’s constant invocation of Horst Wessel (shot by the Communists) and the idea of having a second National Anthem is just the co-anthem of Germany until 1945: The Horst Wessel Song.

ALSO: Trump's "Presidential Immunity" argument to the Supreme Court? It's now been filed, and it boils down to one idea: you can't prosecute an ex-president because no ex-president has ever been prosecuted. By that logic, you can't elect a Republican president to non-consecutive terms because we've never done that.

AND: Trump has now dismissed Mike Pence's announcement that he would not endorse him. We shouldn't, largely because of Rule 6, The Stalin Rule, in the "Seven Rules for Dealing With Autocrats and their Enablers" by the international democracy advocate and trainer Trygve Olson.

AND BAD POLL, OR FIRST WAVE? Six weeks ago Florida Atlantic University's survey had it Trump 45 Biden 41. Now? Biden 47 Trump 45. Because, as the Biden campaigners insisted would happen, a lot of independents and undecideds just realized Trump really IS the Republican nominee.

B-Block (22:16) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: He looks like he hasn't slept in 25 years but sometimes Mark Levin is the funniest man alive: his Trump questions that he doesn't realize he's answering by asking them. CNN has the latest programming innovation: Bill Maher Friday re-runs in Saturday primetime! And Nick Kristof thinks The New York Times needs more conservative columnists and conservative Letters to the Editor because nobody told him conservatives want to arrest him and the rest of the liberals there and oh by the way "Letters to the Editor" were last a thing in 1999.

C-Block (39:10) THINGS I NEED TO REMIND YOU OF: This Saturday is the anniversary of Trump's most recent binge of stochastic terrorism. It began with Alvin Bragg, rang through the lives of Jack Smith and Arthur Engoron and now, me. This is Trump's doing, and I'll say it yet again: he needs to be charged with domestic terrorism, convicted, and jailed for the rest of his life.

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SERIES 2 EPISODE 142: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:42) SPECIAL COMMENT: He said “it’s going to be a blood bath for the country” – and we’re arguing about it.

NOT “a blood bath for our auto industry.”

NOT “a blood bath for the imported car market.” 

NOT “a blood bath for Toyota-Thon 2024."

“A blood bath for the country” – with no retraction or repudiation by Trump of, say, bloodbaths - and we – the people trying to STOP him – WE are ARGUING about it. Amongst ourselves.

AND Trump is broke; he tells the court THIRTY insurance underwriters wouldn’t cover his 464 million dollar bond in the New York Fraud case and we’re still supposed to believe he’s a billionaire. AND suddenly he’s a billionaire pleading poverty and, boom, who just reappeared out of nowhere? Paul Manafort, the international money spigot and Russian operative.

AND I’m still more concerned about THIS: Where is Jack Smith, demanding that Judge Tonya Chutkan revoke Trump’s bail and incarcerate him after he violated the gag order in the Election Subversion case and maligned, threatened, and encouraged OTHERS to malign and threaten Cassidy Hutchinson – and not just OTHERS, but federal officers – federal officers who carry guns: “Our great Secret Service has totally CRUSHED Cassidy Hutchinson’s (who I barely knew) made up (FAKE!) stories about me roughing up Secret Service Agents from the back seat of the Beast (Limo). Has she now changed her testimony? Will she be prosecuted for what she did and said?” 

Trump didn’t just violate the gag order – pared down in appeal but still preventing Trump and his counsel quote “from making or directing others to make public statements about known or reasonably foreseeable witnesses concerning their potential participation in the investigation or in this criminal proceeding,” unquote – pared down but clearly barring Trump from even SPECULATING that a likely witness such as Hutchinson fabricated evidence or might be PROSECUTED, AND clearly barring Trump from congratulating the Secret Service for having quote “totally crushed” her, AND barring Trump from trying to coerce her with questions like “has she now changed her testimony?, AND FOR THAT MATTER barring Trump from making public statements about OTHER possible witnesses – like members of the Secret Service.

This isn’t legal nuance. This isn’t novel lawyerly theory. This isn’t Trump’s first violation, either.

I want his bail revoked TODAY.

I want his ass in jail TODAY.

I want his lawyers to have to try to find a Supreme Court judge willing to spring him TODAY.

B-Block (25:16) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: MAGA will now start snorting asbestos. The RNC chair says nobody was better off four years ago under Trump. So proud of our NYC Mayor. Tommy Tuberville holds the Constitution upside down. ANOTHER Republican calls her "Lincoln Riley." John Avlon misspells his own name. And a Lauren Boebert Bible Blooper. (32:04) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: The SF Giants fire their beloved PA announcer legend Renel Brooks-Moon and claim it was a "mutual decision." Kristi Noem is THIS close to selling lingerie. And the Republican National Committee sees a guy walking next to President Biden and calls him Biden's "handler." Actually he's the Republican Speaker of the House.

C-Block (38:10) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: The first rule of Fox and The New York Post and other Murdoch "news" outlets: When your baby Hitler is in trouble because he threatened a bloodbath, find a false equivalence somewhere. Take something somebody said – or that somebody didn’t say – and hold them up and call make them the equivalent of Trump and call it. Call it a “Blue Bloodbath” - and guess who they found? Guess who they are equating with Trump? ME. I’M the blue bloodbath. They claimed I hinted at his assassination when in fact I hinted at him dying in prison. They've been doing this since 1996 and intensely after I outsmarted Rupert Murdoch for $800,000 in 2001 and if you think $800,000 means nothing to Rupert Murdoch, you ain't met him.

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SEASON 2 EPISODE 141: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Jesus H. Christ, will SOMEBODY finally bring this man to Justice?

Trump stalled a document dump about Michael Cohen for a year, New York D-A Bragg just got 104 thousand pages from the U-S Attorney’s Office this month, 31-thousand of them this month – and what does Bragg do? To ensure TRUMP has enough time to REVIEW the documents he stalled, Bragg is willing to DELAY the Stormy Daniels hush money trial for ANOTHER 30 days. Out of an abundance of caution. For Trump’s sake.

We. Do Not Have. Another 30 Days.

Trump’s Concierge judge Aileen Cannon did NOT have the gall to dismiss the 32 Espionage Act charges against him in Florida yesterday but she also didn’t say a WORD about getting THAT trial started on time, or two months WITHIN BEING on time, or FOUR months WITHIN BEING on time, or before the election, or before Trump dies of his dementia. NOT saying you’re going to delay it, IS IN FACT just another form OF delaying it..

This is the greatest criminal in the history of this country and his incarceration is perhaps our only chance to re-build this nation before it splits into two UNIVERSES occupying the same spot at the top of the same pin – the SANE people and the people who believe in QAnon and support racism and think Trump is being persecuted, and he is RUNNING FOR DICTATOR AND HE HAS GIVEN UP PRETENDING HE’S NOTRUNNING FOR DICTATOR and he is running out the clock so he can regain power and effectively immunize himself and we… are giving him an extra 30 days. Out of an abundance of caution. Because we wouldn’t want to rush this thing.

And it’s not like the NEW crimes aren’t still piling up! The guy who lied to the FBI and Comer and Jordan about Hunter Biden and Joe Biden and Burisma turns out to have gotten $600 thousand dollars from a Trump-linked company four years ago.

But, sure, give Trump another 30 days to game the system a little longer because, I dunno, maybe he can get some nukes and hold a blue state hostage.

(10:30) SPECIAL COMMENT II: RFK Jr VP fave Aaron Rodgers issues a non-denial denial of CNN's report that he insisted to one of their reporters that Sandy Hook was a false flag and the murdered children never existed. His statement does not contest the quotes, refers only to "events" there, and comes on the same day a Sports Announcing site unearths dozens of other conspiracy theories Rodgers has endorsed in just the past few weeks. It raises anew the question of what we can do to separate these people who have lost touch with reality so that the society might avoid self-destruction at the most critical time in its history.

B-Block (24:52) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Speaker Mike Johnson isn't JUST creepy and ineffectual. Turns out he is the worst kind of friend: the one who will tell you everything is fine, when it won't be. Ask Katie Britt! Marjorie Taylor Greene unconvincingly insists she's not a robot. And the purity tests have begun inside MAGA-world and Lauren Boebert just failed hers.

C-Block (33:30) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: Amazingly, his most prophetic story - of a loutish, greedy oaf who becomes America's idol before the system corrects for his venality via a well-placed window, was printed in an edition of The New Yorkermagazine that hit newsstands exactly 34,000 days ago! Please enjoy "The Greatest Man In The World."

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SERIES 2 EPISODE 140: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: The story that Robert F. Kennedy Junior wants football quarterback Aaron Rodgers to be his Vice President has now mutated from the ludicrous real life realms of the proverbial idiocracy, to shameful and disgusting and disqualifying and it is now SO bad that he will be lucky, WHEN this is over – IF it is ever over – if he still has a football career. It is THAT bad.

CNN's Pamela Brown now reveals that nearly ELEVEN years ago – she was introduced to Aaron Rodgers at a post-Kentucky Derby party and, quoting Brown’s story: “Hearing that she was a journalist with CNN, Rodgers immediately began attacking the news media for covering up important stories. Rodgers brought up the tragic killing of 20 children and 6 adults by a gunman at Sandy Hook Elementary School, claiming it was actually a government inside job and the media was intentionally ignoring it.”

The WORST conspiracy theory of them all. THE worst. The Alex Jones stuff. The unforgivable, Rorshach test for insanity, inhumanity, depravity. And Aaron Rodgers not only failed it, he failed it nearly eleven years ago, and he failed it, and he failed it VOLUNTARILY – he was the one who brought it up, TO a reporter, TO a reporter who has somehow restrained herself from reporting it for nearly eleven years.

And the nightmare-within-a-nightmare is: Aaron Rodgers is (or at best was) a Sandy Hook denier. And frankly I don’t know if, in RFK Junior’s eyes, that fact ELIMINATES Rodgers as a potential running mate, or… it clinches the spot for him.

Also: The GOP has a new Biden Impeachment Plan: DON'T Impeach Biden. Don Lemon! You effed up! You trusted Musk! The Trump Mafia is celebrating the Georgia judge throwing out a handful of charges, but of course if he were going to throw out the whole case over Fani Willis on Friday, why would he bother to cull a few indictments now? And Alina Habba Dabba Do has the nerve to joke about Fani's name.

B-Block (21:08) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: After Marjorie Taylor Greene may have baited President Biden into misidentifying murder victim Laken Riley as "Lincoln" (or at best she made exactly the same mistake the president did), Trump has autographed a photo of the poor woman in which he has written her name - and MISSPELLED IT. NBC's Ken Dilanian gets further and further into the right wing talking points on the disastrous Hur hearing. And Nancy Mace, who shamed fellow rape victims and herself by endorsing Trump after the E. Jean Carroll verdicts, is still demanding George Stephanopoulos apologize for what... SHE did.

C-Block (30:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: In a brand new edition, this sounds like a terrifying and tragic story about another one of my dogs - my goofy boy Ted - until you get to the end where it turns out I'm just a lucky idiot and Ted's fine.

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SERIES 2 EPISODE 139: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Trump 3rd Party stalking horse and QAnon Party would-be spoiler RFK Junior has confirmed his top two choices for Vice President are: New York Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers, and wrestling, government, and TV washout Jesse Ventura. 

But how could you be New York Jets Quarterback Aaron Rodgers AND Vice President Aaron Rodgers at the same time? That's the easy part! Based on 2023 being an NFL quarterback would only take about three and a half minutes out of his Vice Presidential year: "Now they're going to swear in the Vice Presi... OHHHH HE'S TORN HIS ACHILLES WHILE TRYING TO STAND UP."

Back-up Ventura is still insisting he was fired by MSNBC in November 2003 because he opposed the war in Iraq. Yeah, I started on MSNBC in February 2003 and I outlasted George W. Bush. I'll tell you the real story of why MSNBC fired him (Jesse may not even know it).

(7:02) SPECIAL COMMENT II: Robert K. Hur, the Biden "Special Counsel" and Trump operative named to the job by the impossibly inadequate Merrick Garland, was already DOA at yesterday's House "Biden Age Plot" Committee Hearing before it started. Republicans are enraged because the transcript of Hur's interview with President Biden they subpoenaed was also released to the taxpayers who paid for it. To the surprise (and more importantly the rage) of every Democrat, nearly every reporter, and even some Democrats, it showed that Hur COMPLETELY FABRICATED THE ENTIRE "BIDEN COULDN'T REMEMBER WHEN HIS SON DIED" saga. The transcript proved Hur a liar in that case, and time after time. Honestly, he should've told the car service driver to go right past the Rayburn Building and just take him to Dulles Airport for a trip anywhere else in the world.

Hey, maybe he can be RFK Jr's Vice President. Or get a sub host job at NewsMax!

B-Block (27:00) We didn't win, it's all rigged (28:32) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: North Carolina Republicans have nominated as the State Superintendent of Schools, a woman named Michele Morrow who believes the QAnon delusion that Jim Carrey keeps himself looking young by drinking the blood of children (wait - Jim Carrey looks YOUNG?). They've topped that in Arizona where both houses of the legislature have approved a bill that lets university students appeal their grades if they're conservative but the professor is liberal. And best of all, South Dakota governor Kristi Noem is now doing infomercials for a Cosmetic Dentist in Texas. Her last advertising idea, you may recall, was SD's anti-meth program: "Meth - We're On It!"

C-Block (38:51) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Well, no, the Political Podcast of the Year award we didn't win wasn't rigged. But 35 years ago the local NBC station figured out how to game the local news Emmy awards - part of the reason I'm 0-forever in Emmys. So it's a good time to tell you that saga.

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SERIES 2 EPISODE 138: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: I would've expected Trump to mispronounce "Melania" as "Melanoma" before he garbled Putin's name. Whether Putin is his blackmailer, his benefactor or just his idol, if he called him "Poten," Donald Trump is a desperately sick man. I mean, Jesus H. Christ in a Hatbox. The evidence continues to mount for either the thesis that he has Fluent Aphasia or what veteran Trump health analyst Dr. John Gartner has identified as Phonemic Paraphasias (an Alzheimer's symptom in what regular words are replaced by nonsense that rhymes with them). 

This could also explain Trump, a day after posting his latest bond for the latest money he owes E. Jean Carroll after her latest lawsuit, insisting again that he never met her, and two days after that going live on national television and insisting - as if he has never mentioned before - that he never met her. If his brain is dissolving, he might really have no idea that he met her or raped her or anything else.

The bond in the Carroll case (one of them, I forget the number) brings us back to the other question. It was a bond posted by Chubb insurance (irony unbound) and neither Trump nor Chubb will confirm or deny the 91 million was co-signed by anybody else. Chubb has outlets in Russia, Turkey, UAE, Brasil. Trump met with right-winger Jeff Yass (who owns part of TikTok and now Trump DOESN'T want to ban TikTok) and Elon Musk. Did either of them buy Trump?

And: today's House Judiciary Committee comedy show with Special Counsel Robert Hur hits differently now that Biden put a dagger in the heart of the MAGA Biden Age Plot during The State of the Union, and that Hur has "left" the Justice Department and is testifying as just a corrupt citizen Trump Stooge (which he was all along). If the Democrats begin to set him on fire, the GOP will turn on him on a dime.

B-BLOCK (23:13) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: England's Kate is bad at photoshop and worse at apologizing. Pope Francis just echoed the wartime popes who appeased Hitler, and Marjorie Taylor Greene appears to have given away her plot to sabotage Biden into calling the murder victim "Laken Riley." (28:06) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Funny that Politico, The Washington Post, CNN, the broadcast networks, the AP, New York Times and everybody rushed to the Katie Britt disaster story but almost none of them gave any credit to the independent reporter Jonathan Katz who beat them to it by two days. WaPo actually pretended their guy broke it, and Politico amplified that. It's shameful, and another symptom of broken media. Speaking of broken, there's Mitt Romney, and Bill Maher. We have an explanation for why he turned into an idiot: he reads only the most idiotic political columnists (George Will? Really? I mean other than for baseball?)

C-BLOCK (36:35) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: After the audience for our SOTU special was exceeded by only eight television news operations (each of which has, you know, a news operation) a prominent non-news TV executive asked me why I wasn't back on MSNBC. So I had to tell the Maddow story again. Including the part about the $437 with which I hired her for the network out of my own pocket.

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SERIES 2 EPISODE 137: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: For everybody who doubted the Biden Campaign vision of last night's State of the Union as some sort of seminal re-set moment (like me): we were wrong. Biden's first seven minutes were not only the best public seven minutes of his life but they comprised one of the greatest openings to a SOTU in the nation's history.

He not only dispelled any notion that he is no longer up to the challenge in any way, shape, or form, but he kicked Trump's teeth down his throat (and the teeth of MAGA and the GOP with them). Speaking forcefully, rapidly, confidently, and just this side of angrily, he hit them before they realized the fight had started: on Ukraine, on Putin, on January 6, on J6 Denial, and on every major issue.

If it had been a fight it would've been stopped at seven minutes with Biden's hand raised by the ref. But he went on for a total of 68 minutes and continued to score on every issue. Before the speech only 45% in a CNN poll thought Biden's policies would move the country in the right direction. After it the number hadn't just blown up it had gone nuclear: 62%

I devote this entire episode of the podcast to analyzing the speech and its impact and the impacts still to come, summarized by plagiarizing that line from "When Harry Met Sally." I WILL have what he's having.

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SERIES 2 EPISODE 136: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: What President Biden should say in The State of the Union tonight is, to declare, simply and directly, that of all the threats to the United States of America the greatest of these is Donald John Trump and thus tonight I am declaring The Biden Doctrine. And in sum, my fellow Americans, the Biden Doctrine is this: we must save our country from madness and vengeance and hate and racism and dictatorship, and to save our country from these evils, we must metaphorically kick the ever-loving shit out of Donald Trump.

Instead, the White House expects Biden to deliver a traditional speech that will re-set the campaign. The problem is, it'll be designed for a major event in the life of the nation called The State of the Union that… doesn’t exist any more. 53 million people watched Bill Clinton’s tension-filled post-Lewinsky State of the Union in 1998. That was 20 percent of the population. Last year? Biden had 27 million viewers and not a whole lot of streamers. 

The other problem is, 538 researched Presidential Approval before and after each SOTU since 1978 and the average change in approval is a microscopic 1.9%. The all-time highest was Clinton's 10% gain after he stared down the Republicans post-Lewinsky. If you really do think this is your last chance to fundamentally re-set the race, then gimme The Biden Doctrine. What IS the Biden Doctrine about? The Biden Doctrine is about the greatest threat facing this nation. And what IS the greatest threat to the nation? It’s Trump. It’s Trump’s Cult. It’s Trump’s madness. It’s Trump’s racism. It’s Trump’s desire to be a dictator. It’s Trump’s next coup.

Do it. If they build statues to President Joseph Robinette Biden Junior it will be for saving this nation from Donald Trump. Twice. There is no reason to back away from the easiest to understand accomplishment. There is no reason to hide from what even HE says is the reason he IS running again: to stop Trump and save representative government. Pound the son of a bitch in the ground, like you did at Independence Hall in September ’22. You'll get ten percent approval growth just for THAT.

And don't forget to join me live on YouTube and Twitch right after the speech for the Countdown With Keith Olbermann State of the Union Post-Game Show. Biden starts about 9 ET, I should start around 10. Be there. Aloha.

B-Block (22:59) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Bill Hemmer says because they cut away from Trump's "victory" speeches CNN and MSNBC should drop "news" from their names. Hilariously, last month Fox News... cut away from Trump's "victory" speeches. Politico and 60,000 other news organizations devoted space to a Democratic presidential candidate who got exactly 51 votes on Tuesday. And Elon Musk a) lied about Biden bringing in foreigners to vote b) lied when he called it "treason" c) probably lied about not helping Trump with financing and d) on the other hand, a candidate he opposed this week won by 2 to 1.

C-Block (33:13) THURSDAYS WITH THURBER: They're all brilliantly written. But "The Car We Had To Push" is brilliantly written to be read aloud. One I've never read you before, from his classic book about his childhood in Columbus, Ohio: "My Life And Hard Times."

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SERIES 2 EPISODE 135: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

Haley was winning Vermont, Uncommitted was doing ok but Biden’s worst margin was about 60 points, and once again Super Tuesday is just a brand name.

But the HEADLINE is: the Supreme Court actually HAS left the door open to disqualify Trump from becoming president again. Seriously.

Turns out that many Constitutional Scholars and even some sitting members of the House, think that in its haste to make sure their pimp Trump got on to the ballot yesterday in Colorado, the Court ALSO left the door open to Democrats and disaffected Republicans challenging the validity of a Trump election if god forbid it plays out like that. There is now a debate over the consequences of the court ruling that the Constitution gives ENFORCEMENT of the 14th Amendment “to Congress.”

Practically speaking: Trump wins the electoral college, the Democrats hold the Senate (slightly unlikely) and take the House (very likely), and they are suddenly going to pass new legislation saying Trump is ineligible because he engaged in insurrection in 2021? Well they don’t HAVE to pass new legislation. They already did that, according to this reading, in 2022. It was “The Electoral Count Reform And Presidential Transition Act” designed to clarify the 1887 legislation through whose loopholes Trump tried to run his coup.

The 2022 clarification closed nearly all of those loopholes, limiting what kinds of challenges lawmakers could make to electoral slates already certified by the states. But they left two grounds for objections challenges and one of them reads “the vote of one or more electors has not been regularly given.” THAT phrase was in the 19th Century legislation and it means, any suspicion that an elector was BRIBED to vote, or was like kidnapped and the guy casting the vote wasn’t the REAL elector, or voted on the wrong day, or… the elector voted for somebody who wasn’t eligible.

Oops. Voted… for somebody who wasn’t elllllligggggggible, you say?

It’s not just a can of worms. It’s a FAMILY SIZED can of worms. Thank you Sam Alito!

ALSO: Trump just publicly contradicted his court filing in New York that he didn’t have the $465 million he owes. Asked about coming up with it on Fox, he answered: “I have a lot of money. I can do what I want to do…I don’t worry about money.”

MEANWHILE: It’s mortifying but it may be a quick fix. A Democratic pollster has analyzed the field of potential Biden voters in three swing states and figured out that only 31% of them had even heard Trump’s top ten worst statements about vermin and deportation and dictatorship, because voters are not immersed in politics and people do move on with their lives. The good news is that the moment they HEAR all of them, Trump’s unfavorable score jumps by five points and individual deficits grow from five to nine points. Solution? More ads reminding people Trump is an anti-dictatorial son of a bitch. Like, you know, one in every commercial break on every television channel and streamer every day until the election.

Oh – and emphasizing it in tomorrow’s State of the Union wouldn’t hurt. Did I mention I’ll be on, live, after it, for our Countdown post-game show, on YouTube and Twitch?

B-Block (23:14) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Roger Stone thinks Facebook conspired to stop his astroturf. Axios still hasn’t fixed its LOLworthy story about Trump pivoting. And the appointment of a Hong Kong native here legally on a pre-citizenship visa to the San Francisco Election Commission to help with translating voting materials into other languages has deranged a bunch of fascists who are treating this as if Mao Tse Dong was just named to the Supreme Court. Maria Bartiromo thinks the San Francisco Election Commission is also the Federal Election Commission. And Michigan House candidate Anthony Hudson says we must have laws saying if you don’t speak English you can’t vote. Which’ll be a problem for Anthony because he can barely SPELL English.

C-Block (33:10) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: We had a president of MSNBC, he had been the president of CNN, and among other things he didn’t have cable in his home and apparently hadn’t watched any night-time show on MSNBC for at least a year. He also lied about his height, and he was – legitimately – 6’4”. Who the hell DOES that?

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SEASON 2 EPISODE 134: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) Trump appears to be suffering from a condition called "Fluent Aphasia."

Victims can verbalize intricate long sentences, and appear to be answering questions or making coherent observations. But frequently all they have is the structure and the cadence of coherence; the rhythm of speech. They do not fully understand what they are hearing, cannot convey what they are trying to through speech, and are almost invariably the victims of strokes or head injuries. All attempts to explain "Fluent Aphasia" (or by its formal name, "Wernicke's Aphasia,") use the phrase "Word Salad."

And after a three-day series of speeches in which, on literally dozens of occasions, he said things that SOUNDED like sentences but were not, the evidence is mounting and the problem is accelerating: the Trump word salad is "Fluent Aphasia" and on top of all of Trump's other mental and ethical problems, it is disqualifying.

He cannot be president. His brain literally does not work correctly,

MEANWHILE: “Course I’m respectable,” says John Huston as Noah Cross in Chinatown to Jack Nicholson as Jake Gittes in Chinatown. “I’m OLD. Politicians, ugly buildings and whores all get respectable, if they LAST long enough.” And then there’s what happens when you’re all three of those things - as the Supreme Court and its justices are all three of those things: Politicians pretending to be justices, working in an ugly building, and as Trump relied upon and was proved correct – they’re all whores.

“Because the Constitution makes Congress rather than the states responsible for enforcing Section 3 against federal office holders and candidates, we reverse,” reads the Court's decision to not enforce the 14th Amendment denying insurrectionists the right to become president or hold other offices. 9-nothing. Except it DOESN’T do that. Section 3, as conservative scholar after conservative scholar has repeatedly stated, is SELF-enforcing. It is automatic. If you engaged in insurrection, you’re out. If you think you’re being ill-treated, Section 3 provides you an override mechanism: you can get the House AND the Senate to each CLEAR you, each by a two-thirds vote. Period. The constitution says NOTHING about an enforcement responsibility.

The Court betrayed democracy yesterday – again: this time by going faster to help Trump. On presidential immunity, it’s going SLOWER to help Trump. Its members, including Jackson and Kagan and Sotomayor, who before folding, stood up just long enough to wave BYE BYE to representative government, overruled one of the easiest parts of the constitution to understand for the benefit of one corrupt politician. Individually and as an entity they have proved themselves inept at basic reading comprehension. They have proved themselves to be corrupt and illegitimate. Its usefulness and relevance is at an end, and whatever replaces it, the immediate need is obvious: The Supreme Court must be dissolved.

The funny part, of course, is that these idiots have inadvertently given the current sitting president (a Mr. Biden, I believe) a kind of qualified, specific immunity from prosecution in case HE wants to illegally overturn an election.

B-Block (25:50) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: Another reporter claims Trump is about to pivot and Trump promptly makes her look like an idiot. Trump's new vaccine promise: I'm here to kill your kids. Trump shortens his National Abortion Ban plan. Jack Smith says no, the DOJ 60-Day Secret Unwritten Rule does NOT apply to cases already filed against Trump. And farewell to my old friend Chris Mortensen go ESPN. (33:50) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Jesse Watters says Biden "licking ice cream" is unmanly and implies he has Alzheimer's. That's before they found the post from five years ago of Watters... licking ice cream. The would-be Republican nominee for governor of Missouri is suing because, he claims, he was only an HONORARY member of the KKK, and Kristin Welker allegedly wins after allegedly graduating from Harvard and allegedly being a White House correspondent and saying Trump "allegedly" tried to overturn the election.

C-Block (41:30) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: My oldest enemy - the one I thought was killed off in the '80s - turns out to be alive and well. My half century battle against "The Auto Train" and its stopped-up toilets of 1972.

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SERIES 2 EPISODE 133: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: What happens if the Supreme Court – I’m sorry – Trump’s newest Super-PAC, John Roberts, Treasurer – takes the next step and not only listens to his shroom-high concept of “presidential immunity” late next month in order to stall his trials – but actually CREATES “presidential immunity.” What ACTUALLY happens TO this country, AT that exact moment?

I still do think the STALL is the POINT; not granting all presidents immunity from all prosecutions for all time. But again, the stall itself raises the question: exactly what the hell do I know? But let me present  this grim silver lining in the form of a rhetorical question. You think about it, I’ll think about it. I’ll address it at length at the start of the new week: What happens to the nature of this country – what happens to the nature of our government – what happens to the nature of the presidency, if the Supreme Court actually rules no president can be prosecuted for official acts? What happens THAT instant? And combine that with not a rhetorical question but a simple factual one. The day the Supreme Court effectively turns the President of the United States into a King… WHO will BE president of the United States?

And could Jack Smith's response to the SCOTUS prosecutorial and electoral interference actually be to indict Ginni Thomas and present John Roberts with an insoluble crisis inside his whorehouse? Plus I don't entirely trust the source, but there is startling polling suggesting the Democrats can turn immigration and border security from their biggest liability to a plus-seven in polling by simply making a big deal out of all the immigration and border security compromises they already agreed to - and acting on whatever they can.

B-Block (16:32) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: A good time to bring you his brilliant array of political commentary disguised as fables with birds and bears in them. And a Peacelike Mongoose.

C-Block (31:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: To conclude Baseball Spring Training Week, I am still startled that the game was once so important that a rival guy went on a rival Los Angeles newscast and insisted that though they had just lost the National League Championship Series, the Dodgers were obligated to...go to a judge and get a court order to play in the World Series anyway!

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SERIES 2 EPISODE 132: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:30) RICHARD, IN MEMORIAM: The day I met Richard Lewis, at a Los Angeles Lakers game in 1989 or 1990, we parted calling each other 'Brother.' It has been like that ever since. I want to tell you about my adopted brother, who despite his on-camera persona of dysfunction and self-absorption was in fact the most loving human being I have ever known. His support, his empathy, his caring, was endless. The total number of brothers and sisters he "adopted" was nearly so. I cannot imagine a world without him.

B-Block (26:48) SPECIAL COMMENT: Of course the Supreme Court stepped in to delay Trump's trial for trying to overthrow the government and erase a valid election. It is comprised by five of Trump's judicial whores. It is yet another reason we must defeat Trump everywhere, including at the polls, so that a re-elected Joe Biden can appoint enough additional justices to the court to make Roberts, Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett into living waxworks wailing impotently until they die.

The good news about Trump is, simply, that he had to confess in writing that he is not the billionaire he claims to be but for all intents and purposes insolvent and incapable of paying the $465 million fine (with interest) he owes the state of New York. He offered 22% of his debt; the judge rejected it; the full appeals court almost certainly will, and if it actually leads to practical bankruptcy, that will kill Trump.

And there was a hidden germ of good news inside Trump's underperformance in Michigan on Tuesday night. The former executive director of the state GOP there says ONE county result convinces him Trump - no matter what happens to Biden and protests and anything else - CANNOT win Michigan in November.

Of course you didn't read that in The New York Times or the WaPo or see it on CNN or anywhere else because if there were any remaining doubts, they're gone now. There is a difference between "facts" and "truth." Telling the truth means blowback and controversy and having to stay late in the office. So our legacy media, as we saw again in Michigan, will hide behind meaningless "facts" and perfect its cowardice.

C-BLOCK (49:30) With Richard Lewis at The 92nd Street Y in New York in April 2008, and on Countdown on MSNBC a few days later.

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SERIES 2 EPISODE 131: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Trump under-performs AGAIN, falling short of polling by at least 17 points in the Michigan Republican. And Biden OVER-performs AGAIN, and so does the “Uncommitted” protest votes against his Israel-Gaza policy, in what is looking like a gentle rebuke in the Michigan Democratic Primary.

PLUS: LEGACY NEWS MEDIA BREAKTHROUGH: After Trump did a hatful of racisms at “The Black Conservative Federation Gala” (the one that had almost no blacks in attendance) the president of ABC News Kim Godwin emailed people on her staff that “these remarks are as racist as they come…mind blowing. Shocking.” Of course they were NOT shocking and Godwin’s response might as well have been “wait – Trump was PRESIDENT?” and that only underscores the media disconnect from the reality of the evil of Trump.

But the headline is: SHE TOOK A STAND and did so in writing, knowing it would get out. She may have had ulterior motives (she’s been dreadful and loathed on the job; she just got another boss appointed above her; she may be trying to stave off dismissal) and they don’t matter. She SAID something – more than her network or any network actually has. It may have moved the needle a bit.

COMER DOUBLES DOWN: You wouldn’t, I wouldn’t. But he and Jim Jordan – with a new jailed witness replacing the first jailed witness as the primary asset in their President Biden Impeachment/Hunter Biden Smear – have doubled down. They’ve subpoenaed Merrick Garland for all of corrupt Special Counsel Robert Hur’s transcripts, videos, etc. If Garland were smart, he’d fight the subpoena and say that of course while it’s being ajudicated, Hur can’t say anything, especially to the House Committee.

Because it would be useful if Democrats began to ask themselves: What dirty trick would a Republican play in this situation. And apply it not just to a subpoena from some whores in Congress, but to the dilemma in Michigan and, for that matter, at the border. Which leads me to a modest proposal: Biden should steal the issue, control the process, and neuter Trump all in one fell swoop. HE should declare HE is building a wall and destroy the feeble minds of 60 million Trumpists.

A wall can be anything more than six inches long.

B-BLOCK (30:08) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Axios slams Biden for having note cards at fundraisers. Then, a Democratic county chairman finds pictures of the Axios reporter and the Axios co-founder reading questions off note cards. A NewsMax host thinks the DHS Secretary can be impeached for breaking not laws, but laws NewsMax would like to see. And besides the foolishness of the GoFundMe to pay the now $466 Million Trump owes the state of New York, there’s a hidden reveal inside the boilerplate at the website that suggests the right may have another “Moms For THAT Kind of Liberty Wocka-Wocka” scandal in its bed.

C-BLOCK (38:38) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Well we started on baseball spring training yesterday. Let’s continue. Let me tell you the tale of day I paid cash to suppress a story that would have rocked the World Series – the most famous pitcher in the game had gotten within inches of a fight, with a fan of his own team, and I made sure… nobody saw the video.

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SERIES 2 EPISODE 130: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Bob Costas has been my friend for 40 years. He has been one of my closest professional friends for a quarter century.

And now, bluntly, Bob Costas needs to shut the EFF up about Joe Biden.

He has launched this extraordinary campaign - first on HBO with Bill Maher, now on CNN with that toad Michael Smerconish - demanding that Biden and his "hubris" be "shown the door" off the presidential ticket. Bob not only has no idea that such a thing is impossible and even if it were justifiable or smart or legal, it would result in a different candidate who would lose to Trump by ten points.

Bob will hear none of this. I tried, behind the scenes, for two weeks. I failed. And I failed to make it clear to Bob that Trump is ALSO trying to get Biden off the ticket and so that all Bob is accomplishing is - he's doing Trump's work for him.

It's heartbreaking, I'll lose his friendship, but Bob Costas needs to shut the EFF up about Joe Biden (and that goes for Jon Stewart, Ezra Klein, and all the others who like Bob don't realize that we have lots of historical evidence of what happens when the Democrats try to do a Julius Caesar on a sitting president. There are two results: you LBJ him and you get Richard Nixon; or you DON'T completely LBJ him and you only wound him - and you get Ronald Reagan).

Bob. Shut the eff up.

B-Block (29:42) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: Oh, nothing, just Joe Biden and his hubris about to get a Gaza Cease Fire while eating ice cream; James Comer's favorite Russian plant will stay in jail so it's "Smirnov on Ice." Kenny The Cheese didn't tell the truth about his plot to overthrow democracy in Michigan; Trump underperformed the polling by EIGHT POINTS in South Carolina (36:52) IN SPORTS: A new explanation for baseball's uniform fiasco; Peter King retires; one of the unheralded heroes of baseball - Jim Hannan - passes away. (42:07) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: It took FIVE NBC reporters to claim Trump is about to "pivot?" Van Jones speaks at CPAC; There's a price on Tucker Carlson's head and bluntly it's humiliatingly low.

C-Block (49:10) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: From the vault, it's my Spring Training Preview - for the year 1978!

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SERIES 2 EPISODE 129: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN:

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: The disgraced Special Hunter Biden Counsel is so terrified about what could happen next to the Russian Plant/FBI "Informant" Alexander Smirnov that he had him RE-arrested yesterday, in a different state, in a second and very unusual bid to deny Smirnov bail.

A senior Republican congressman is so terrified (and enraged) about what could happen next to Smirnov that HE has broken ranks and confirmed that Jim Jordan and James Comer knew from the start that Smirnov's "Form 1023" stank and hadn't been corroborated and Smirnov had more red flags than a May Day Parade - and lied to the public anyway and nearly fulfilled Vladimir Putin's desire to see a president impeached eight months before the American election, and his son imprisoned.

But the Attorney General Merrick Garland - who was so lazy and incompetent that when they brought Smirnov's fabrications to him he fell for them and appointed the Special Counsel anyway - is HE terrified or enraged about what could happen next to Smirnov?

Nope.

He's done nothing. While another Russian-Republican plot to alter the outcome of the election has played out almost entirely in public view. This is largely Merrick Garland's fault. If he doesn't suspend the Biden Counsel, David Weiss, and if he doesn't appoint a new one immediately to grill Comer and Jordan and Weiss and all the others, President Biden must fire him. We're under attack here. It's another coup attempt. It seems to link to Trump or at least Russia's desire to return Trump to power. And Garland is trying to clean his glasses.

And it is absolutely true that this is the most important political story of the moment, and it needs to be framed as Brian Beutler framed it: What did the Republicans know, and when did they know it?

B-Block (22:00) IN SPORTS: Meet Auston Matthews, the Mike Trout of Hockey. It's 44 years since the US beat Russia at the Lake Placid Olympics (I'll report from 1980) and the extraordinary revelation by my friend Jack Edwards, play-by-play man of the Boston Bruins. (30:17) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: C-PAC is back so the Nazi loonies are loonier than ever: Charlie Kirk, Jack Posobiec, General Flynn, Matt Schlapp say stuff like "this is where we end Democracy," and "I'd like to see television killings of Trump's opponents" and "Trump is still president."

C-Block (38:00) EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: You guys! I have now MET Smiles the Bernese! (38:35) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: a collection of his very political, still very relevant Political Fables: “The Mouse Who Went To The Country,” “The Very Proper Gander,” “The Moth And The Star,” “The Owl Who Was God,” “The Birds And The Foxes,” “The Peacelike Mongoose.”

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SERIES 2 EPISODE 128: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: I think this fraudulent FBI 'whistleblower' who was arrested after confessing to making up the Hunter Biden story - Alexander Smirnov - the one who admitted the story was being spread by people connected to Russian intelligence? 

I think he's flipping.

I think there is one thin reed of evidence supporting what I admit is a hunch. Maybe a second one.

More importantly, maybe, I think this man David Weiss who was - until Smirnov's story collapsed - the Special Counsel PROSECUTING Hunter Biden, has also flipped, and now intends to prosecute everybody who turned him into a Russian stooge, two steps removed. And I think he and Smirnov are going to take down at least the scum on the lower levels of the Russian Ring in this country (more likely the Russian operatives themselves, maybe James Comer, but just possibly running up the ladder to Jordan and Sean Hannity and, please God, Trump).

But we're going to need a new Special Prosecutor to round all of the big names up. And a Senate Judiciary investigation on how this sack of crap was turned into the prosecution of the president's son, and the attempted impeachment of the sitting president. In an election year. At the direction of Vladimir Putin.

We've been invaded again. And the Russians didn't need to shoot or bomb their way in here. Because all the Comers and Greenes and Jordans and Grassleys and Hannitys and Trumps just opened the doors for them. And may they burn in hell for doing so.

Because I think Smirnov is flipping.

B-Block (26:25) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: The Republicans select a California banker as their Wisconsin Senate candidate who's so non-Wisconsinian that in his introductory commercial he never SAYS which state he's running in. Jon Stewart is going to bothsides us into prison camps - and how DARE he attack Mary Trump. And how dare a Biden National Security Council spokesperson blame the betrayal of Ukraine on CONGRESS. It is the REPUBLICANS who did this. You are paid to say the truth - do your damn job.

C-Block (33:25) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: I've played this before. I needed the laugh again. It's the most joyous soccer story of all time: the ESPN Soccer Breakdown Tape.

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SERIES 2 EPISODE 127: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: I have argued for NINE YEARS that it is essential for the media to actually CALL the crazy shit Trump says “crazy shit” all the time. I have argued for FIVE YEARS that Joe Biden should CALL the crazy shit Trump says “crazy shit.” And it’s like I’ve been talking to the wind.

And then, yesterday afternoon, from the White House lawn, CNN’s senior correspondent there quoted sources saying the President has directed his senior campaign staff to focus on Trump’s inflammatory comments, especially “THE CRAZY SHIT TRUMP SAYS IN PUBLIC.” No bleeping, no euphemisms, she said it – deliberately.

Suddenly I feel like I’m not alone!

This is the easiest way to beat Trump is to quote Trump and the easiest way to break through the numb-to-it-all white noise permitting Trump to survive as a public figure is to get angry about it, angry enough for… the CNN White House correspondent to say “the crazy shit that Trump says.” Live. From the White House lawn. At mid-day.

Today, “The crazy shit that Trump says.” Tomorrow… the F-word!

I want CNN to talk like that, I want Biden surrogates to talk like that, I want the presidentto go and talk like that. I want to hear the phrase “the crazy shit that Trump says” said by Joe Biden in the State of the Union, right after “Thank you Mr. Speaker.” I want it to have to be broadcast 100 times that night on 100 different channels and I want to see the right wing pundits stage phony strokes and umbrage at his locker room talk because he says it and I want it played again and again and again because IT’S… THE… TRUTH!

Meanwhile, in what should shock no one: The supposed FBI whistleblower in the Hunter Biden case – the man who is at the center of the James Comer/Jim Jordan/Chuck Grassley/Donald Trump smear job against him and the president? – the one they ARRESTED last week for lying TO the FBI? Alexander Smirnov? He has now told investigators Quote: “that officials associated with Russian intelligence were involved in passing” the fabrications about Hunter Biden.

Dramatic, yes. Two caveats: a) he WAS arrested for lying and b) that phrase “officials associated with Russian intelligence” now applies to about 90 percent of the Republican party.

B-Block (17:29) IN SPORTS: Congratulations, Nashville and Salt Lake City. You’re getting major league baseball expansion teams. Unfortunately you won’t be getting them any earlier than 2032, according to ESPN. And the actor who played one of the legendary figures in the legendary Paul Newman hockey film “Slap Shot” has died. I’ll say goodbye to Paul D’Amico, so fierce-looking as “Captain Hook” that they modeled the comic book character Wolverine after him. (22:52) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: A Republican Florida state legislator has introduced a bill that experts believe will put Florida right-wing media out of business (thank God these people are that stupid); Senator Mike Lee’s petition to get them to actually have an impeachment trial of Secretary Mayorkas earns only thirteen signatures; and Elon Musk’s crapshack website bans and then suddenly unbans Alexei Navalny’s widow. Well, Elmo’s name does constitute half of the word “Muscovite,” doesn’t it?

C-Block (28:35) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Before Black History Month ends, let’s take the opportunity to tell the true story of the man who broke the color line in major league baseball. He was NOT Jackie Robinson. He was not even Fleet Walker. His name was William Edward White, he played in the National League in 1879, and for whether he couldn’t acknowledge his accomplishment or simply chose not to, he never did.

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SERIES 2 EPISODE 126: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: How many times would YOU be permitted to threaten mass violence if you didn’t get your way before Homeland Security came and dragged your ass, off somewhere? I think Trump is now in triple digits. It’s time to drag him off. “All political prosecutions of your favorite president, me, must stop immediately… this is election interference and must be immediately stopped… Our country will not stand for it.”

This is the by-now standard Trump stochastic threat: if the government does not bend to my will my supporters will kill you all. It’s megalomania and as often as he does it and as dulled as we become to it, it’s unspeakably dangerous. It is not just shouting fire in a crowded theater, it’s shouting fire in a crowded theater full of gun-crazed nutjobs. And I’ll go back to my first point here: how often would YOU get away with it? 

Oh by the way, I think he also has to stop with this nauseating “your favorite president – me” schtick. If you hadn’t heard – in the new Presidents’ Day poll of 154 historians, Trump was again ranked the worst president ever, with only half the marks of the next-worst, James Buchanan.

PLUS: The Biden Campaign "re-set?" Knock it out of the park at The State of the Union. Good - but how about a million ads simply stating Trump WILL INSTITUTE A NATIONAL ABORTION BAN?

And the story of the day: I don’t know how the hell you could’ve missed this but  a 22-page report on the trial of a Union civilian employee during the Civil War who defended himself with a pocket-knife, produces the astonishing fact that in 1864 Abraham Lincoln PARDONED Joe Biden’s great great grandfather. The best part? "In imploring Lincoln to pardon him, the friends of Moses J. Robinette, described him as “ardent and influential… in opposing traitors and their schemes to destroy the government.”

Talk about destiny!

B-BLOCK (22:30) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: No, I don't know how a woman I lived with for three years wound up telling the audience for her MSNBC show how a man who tried to get the crowds at his rallies to kill her, wound up an "icon" in her eyes, and why she asked if it were "fair" to prosecute him - but I have a theory. The Self-Destruction of Katy Tur. (32:53) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Two guys having sex atop a moving New York subway train gives me the chance to quote the subway spokesman who preceded me as sports director of WVBR radio at Cornell, Tim Minton. Brian Kilmeade does a stupid, and spells it wrong. And the perfect joke about the Trump Sneakers.

C-BLOCK (39:17) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: 40 years ago this month I was beginning the shortest, weirdest job I ever had. And by coincidence I had to re-tell the story over the weekend. The Short Unhappy Boston Career of Keith Olbermann.

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BULLETIN: SEASON 2 EPISODE 125: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:40) BULLETIN: Russia's most vital and most vociferous opponent of Vladimir Putin and his dictatorship and international terrorism, Alexei Navalny, has died at a prison near the Arctic Circle.

Putin killed him.

Trump helped.

The Republican Party helped.

By coincidence, Navalny's wife - now his widow - was speaking at the Munich Security Conference this morning, as was Vice President Kamala Harris. Both of them spoke. The Vice President stated bluntly "Russia did this." Mrs. Navalny said she believed the day would come sooner than Putin would be punished for what he did, and urged world leaders to hasten that day.

Putin invaded Ukraine - again - a year and one week ago, next Saturday. His useful idiots in this country, from Trump to Marjorie Greene to Tucker Carlson, must be held responsible. And the President must fulfill his 2021 warning to Putin that if Navalny died, the consequences to Russia would be terrible.

They must start with the transfer of the $300,000,000,000 in Russian assets seized after the attack on Ukraine, to the Ukrainian government. We must spend Putin's money to destroy him.

(The rest of this bulletin is a repeat of Friday's regular edition of Countdown) 

(14:00) SPECIAL COMMENT: The Stormy Daniels Trump Trial will start as scheduled on March 25. The attempt to derail the Georgia 11,780 Votes Trial is bloodied but unbowed when the witness claiming the DA is lying about her relationship can't remember when she found out or who told her, and is a disgruntled ex-employee. The fine in the Trump Financial Fraud Trial should come today.

And that ISN'T the Trump legal headline. The meticulous Trump really screwed up last night and posed for a series of photos that defied the first thing all lawyers tell all clients: Whatever you do, DON'T LOOK GUILTY. He not only looks guilty in these shots, he looks like he's already imprisoned.

Plus the Comer/Grassley/Hannity "case" against the Bidens hits a slight bump (the "whistleblower" was just indicted for lying to the FBI - he made it all up) and Robert Hur's "Biden Age Plot" has two new conspirators, and shockingly enough they're both - just like Hur - Trump appointees.

B-Block (38:47) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: What could bring the ever-warring world of baseball together in one quest? Nike. Fans, players, writers, jersey wonks, all agree: new uniforms it's made for 2024 suck. So, of course, does Marjorie Taylor Greene and after that hearing yesterday nobody knows that better than she does. And the mild, modest Associated Press produces the worst Bothsidesist headline of the month.

C-block (45:00) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: Back to the beginnings. Back to the story I heard William Windom recite in 1977 and hoped someday I could emulate him. Thurber's impeccable story of madness just beneath the surface: "A Box To Hide In."

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SERIES 2 EPISODE 124: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) The Stormy Daniels Trump Trial will start as scheduled on March 25. The attempt to derail the Georgia 11,780 Votes Trial is bloodied but unbowed when the witness claiming the DA is lying about her relationship can't remember when she found out or who told her, and is a disgruntled ex-employee. The fine in the Trump Financial Fraud Trial should come today.

And that ISN'T the Trump legal headline. The meticulous Trump really screwed up last night and posed for a series of photos that defied the first thing all lawyers tell all clients: Whatever you do, DON'T LOOK GUILTY. He not only looks guilty in these shots, he looks like he's already imprisoned.

Plus the Comer/Grassley/Hannity "case" against the Bidens hits a slight bump (the "whistleblower" was just indicted for lying to the FBI - he made it all up) and Robert Hur's "Biden Age Plot" has two new conspirators, and shockingly enough they're both - just like Hur - Trump appointees.

B-Block (27:05) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: What could bring the ever-warring world of baseball together in one quest? Nike. Fans, players, writers, jersey wonks, all agree: new uniforms it's made for 2024 suck. So, of course, does Marjorie Taylor Greene and after that hearing yesterday nobody knows that better than she does. And the mild, modest Associated Press produces the worst Bothsidesist headline of the month.

C-block (33:30) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: Back to the beginnings. Back to the story I heard William Windom recite in 1977 and hoped someday I could emulate him. Thurber's impeccable story of madness just beneath the surface: "A Box To Hide In."

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SEASON 2 EPISODE 123: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: The Kansas City Super Bowl Parade shooting took place on the sixth anniversary of the Parkland shooting. And it took place on the sixteenth anniversary of the Northern Illinois University shooting. And two days ago was the anniversary of the Michigan State shooting. And next Monday will be twelve years since Alabama-Huntsville and two years since Portland and seventeen since Bethel Alaska and and and...

We are here because mass shootings - and the bullshit about "Good Guys With Guns" and "equip the police better" - are the backbone of the gun industry and the politicians and judges and states it owns. And so we will have to financially break the backs of that industry and those politicians and judges and states. Because now it's them or us.

B-Block (23:05) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: A match made in TV Old Age Heaven: NewsNation hires Geraldo. Rep. Greg Murphy implies Vice President Harris is stupid - and mispronounces her name. And if the latest January 6 arrested suspect is named Method, the joke is inevitable.

C-Block (29:15) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: I offered Netflix ownership of the news industry. Its leaders worried only about the subtitles, and what would happen if one day the shows didn't upload. Seriously.

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SERIES 2 EPISODE 122: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) BREAKING: The Democrats have flipped the Kitara Ravache Memorial Special Congressional Election in the New York 3rd. It's not a bellwether. It won't even be the same district a year from now. But Tom Suozzi not only took back the seat lost to "George Santos," he completely overshadowed the WhoreHouse Republicans' performance art impeachment last night of Secretary Mayorkas.

(3:47) SPECIAL COMMENT: For once Politico aptly describes it: "The Biden Age Plot." Disgraced Special Counsel Robert Hur and House Republicans aren't just looking to have Hur testify on a topic about which he has no expertise, but they intend to have "Biden's Age" be the 2024 version of Benghazi: hearings, controversy, press conferences, witnesses, transcripts, subpoenas for weeks or even months. 

It's enraging but it reveals the GOP's terror: it is willing to risk bringing up Trump's age, Trump's bad mental health, and especially Trump's stolen documents - the actually stolen ones for which he will stand trial eventually. There are two possible Democratic responses. The first is for Attorney General Garland to squelch testimony and leave the Republicans with only one note rather than a hatful of phony storylines. The second is for the Democrats to hoist the GOP on its own petard, and to conduct a Senate investigation to whether Hur and the House Republicans conspired for him to write his editorialization about Biden before he submitted his report.

There is a sidebar to the entire "Biden's Age" crap. When you hear 77-year old Chris Wallace or 72-year old Maureen Dowd or even 61-year old Jon Stewart say "he's too old" there is a second half to that sentence that they never say aloud. "HE'S too old, and that proves I'M not." The personal fear and memento mori are a huge component. 

And there IS a response and, happily, the Biden Campaign seems to have just figured it out this week.

B-BLOCK (22:11) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Sean Hannity averaged 1.25 Hunter Biden stories per show last year and now the House has dropped the Hunter Biden performance art. A New York Times reporter explains the internal rationalization for bothsidesism: Biden Hasn't Done A Q&A With Us Recently. And gone but not forgotten: Chris Cillizza and the RFK Jr Super Bowl Commercial.

C-BLOCK (29:20) EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: My friend Andrew Blauner needs your help to get his 2-1/2 year old Bernese Mountain Dog Smiles treatment for lymphoma. (31:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: It's 44 years ago TODAY when my nascent broadcasting career nearly ended atop a mountain at the 1980 Winter Olympics, all because my bosses had decided to teach me the night before how to drink.

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SERIES 2 EPISODE 121: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) Apparently having not done enough of the bidding of the creature who appointed him, Trump stooge and corrupt Special Counsel Robert Hur is negotiating with two House Committees to testify and/or provide transcripts of his interview with the president before the end of the month. If Merrick Garland will not invoke DOJ rules to prevent this, Biden must fire Garland and replace him with an Attorney General with an actual spine.

And NBC and ABC need to fire everybody involved in the scandals at Meet The Press and This Week, in which the conclusion so obvious even Hur had to report it - that there was no evidence Biden willfully retained or shared classified documents - was reversed and both Kristen Welker and Jon Karl reported that Hur HAD found such evidence. It was the same as taking the verdict "NOT GUILTY" and reporting it as "...GUILTY" Welker and Karl and the producers and executives above them must be fired.

And having had the editorializing door cracked open for them by Hur's willingness to assess Biden's memory even though he's not only not a neurologist, he's barely a lawyer, the media is running with the idea that, as Politico put it, Hur may have forced the Democrats' hand to switch to a "Plan B" instead of Biden. 

"Plan B" assumes a lot of things: like Trump won't seize upon it, like Biden would agree to it, like there IS a perfect alternative, like everybody else who isn't the chosen perfect alternative is going to NOT try to take the nomination anyway, like there has been any evidence of Biden failing at any actual task or presidential function - and most importantly like there's any other candidate who would actually BE a better candidate than Joe Biden - no matter his real, imagined, or As-Seen-On-ABC-and-NBC flaws.

I'll War-Game the possible outcomes. They're ALL worse than leaving things as is.

B-Block (32:45) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: Trump beats the SCOTUS deadline and is still beating the "Presidential Immunity" dead horse. It is increasingly clear the DOJ will have to move to take the Florida documents case away from Judge Cannon. And the plan is out of the bag: Trump will again service Putin - his plan is to cut off Ukraine funding on January 20 of next year.

C-Block (38:10) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Part of the Plan B disaster creeped into my consciousness when a friend of four decades' duration went on the Bill Maher SleazeWeasel Show and declared that if Biden won't stand aside he must be pushed. This is all too much for me. Twice I had my chance to push Maher and I blew it.

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