Countdown with Keith Olbermann

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.

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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."

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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.

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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.

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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."

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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?

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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."

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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. 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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."

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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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SERIES 2 EPISODE 120: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: OK which atrocity do you want to get enraged about first?

The fact that yesterday I began by saying “today we begin to find out if we still have a Constitution” and turns out, sorry, I guess we don’t – and the three liberal justices are complicit in that?

Or, the fact that a partisan hack appointed by Trump managed to turn his nothing-burger investigation of Biden and the returned documents into Christmas-For-The-Fascists by inserting unwarranted, unjustifiable, indefensible opinions about the president’s memory into it and THAT’S the headline and oh by the way where is the goddamned Attorney General on this?

William Rehnquist's former clerk, Rod Rosenstein's former deputy, and a contributor to The Federalist has enough nerve finding nothing to prosecute but throwing into his report what sounds like a medical opinion about the President's memory but which is really just another Conservative law-breaker whipping out his schlong and putting it on the political scale. But how does the Attorney General let that document leave his department without demanding that irrelevant, unprofessional, indefensible section not be removed?

Fire Merrick Garland. Now. Between this and his negligence in waiting two years to appoint a special prosecutor of Trump, he will bear the second most blame if Trump again seizes power.

Meanwhile at the Supreme Court, disaster as Elena Kagan posits that enforcing the 14th Amendment gives one state the right to decide who the president will be, and Ketanji Brown Jackson falls for the "President is not really an OFFICER" fabrication. The analyst Elie Mystal thinks the vote could be 9-0 for Trump, in which case Kagan, Brown, and Sonia Sotomayor need to resign from the court.

B-Block (23:17) IN SPORTS: Ex-coach Tommy Tuberville blasts Biden's memory and says he needs cues from reporters and 30 seconds later he can't remember the names of the teams and players in Sunday's Super Bowl and needs cues from a reporter. And the Oakland/Las Vegas A's saga worsens, while invoking the Oakland/Denver A's saga of 1977-80. (27:20) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Sarah Palin is back! And can now see Russian propaganda from her house. If every GOP accusation is actually a confession, Charlie Kirk and Marjorie Taylor Greene's theory of anti-impeachment GOP'ers being blackmailed with pedophilia is SOME confession. And of all the idiotic takes on the Robert Hur investigation of Biden, THE dumbest is by Mr. Astead W. Herndon of The New York Bothsidesist Times and CN-Bothesidesist-N.

C-Block (34:32) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: Since this podcast is one of five nominees for the best politics podcast at the upcoming iHeart Podcast Awards, it's fitting to read Thurber's great story of what happened when a rookie went on radio: 
"How To Relax While Broadcasting."

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SERIES 2 EPISODE 119: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Today we begin to find out if we still have a Constitution.

Because the Constitution, in the third clause of the fourteenth amendment, says no person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector, or hold any office, civil or military… who having previously taken an oath as a member of Congress or as an officer of the United States to support the Constitution shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.

It does NOT say that that person has to be CONVICTED of insurrection or rebellion.

It does NOT say that that person has to be disqualified from the ballot by a judge or a legislature or a plebiscite.

It does NOT say that the president is NOT an officer of the United States or that a President is exempt.

It does NOT say that the disqualification of an insurrectionist from being president is any different than is the disqualification of a foreign citizen, nor any different than is the disqualification of a 14-year old, that all of them are self-executing.

It does NOT say that this clause of the constitution can only be enforced if all the voters agree.

It does NOT say that this clause of the constitution can only be enforced AFTER somebody ineligible is elected.

It does NOT say that this clause of the constitution can only be enforced if the insurrectionist’s cult and gangs and militias and stochastic terrorists promise not to threaten civil war. 

It does NOT say that this clause of the constitution can only be enforced if a majority of justices of the Supreme Court can’t make up a bullshit excuse for NOT enforcing it.

It DOES say that this clause of the constitution CAN be overridden if Congress removes the disqualification of an individual by a vote of two-thirds of the House and two-thirds of the Senate.

PERIOD.

I will quote extensively from the two Federalist Society constitutional scholars whose extraordinary research into the 14th Amendment really mainstreamed it: Professors William Baude and Michael Pearson. And I'll quote a third Professor they quote, at the crux of the real argument here: if the Justices should find an excuse to make up some rule to NOT enforce our Constitution out of fear of Trump and violence. From Daniel Epps of Washington University: "The Supreme Court shouldn't rule that Trump is ineligible for the presidency for engaging in insurrection, because if they do Trump will definitely stage an insurrection."

B-BLOCK (20:18) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: If at first you don't impeach, try try again. Next Tuesday, in fact. And meet Valentina Gomez, trying to win the GOP nomination for Secretary of State of Missouri. She too is fed up with book banning. Her platform moves directly to book BURNING. (25:41) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Trump calls Grammy ratings "anemic" even though they exceed his last four hour-long network specials COMBINED. UK's Prime Minister shames himself. As do Tucker Carlson and the very gullible rightwing nut job Juanita Broadddrick.

C-BLOCK (33:30) EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: Can you help out Guidry's Guardian Foundation? (34:45) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Somebody mentioned he went to a baseball event and got applause and support. So let me tell you about the baseball event at which I found out Rudy Giuliani was nuts. We are approaching its 30th anniversary!

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SERIES 2 EPISODE 118: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: His whores in the House of Representatives led by Matt Gaetz, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Elise Stefanik have inadvertently admitted that Trump HAS been DISQUALIFIED from being president under the language of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. They have introduced a bill in the House declaring that Trump did not engage in insurrection and J.D. Vance did the same in the Senate and why does that sound SO FAMILIAR?

Oh, right! The final sentence of the 14th Amendment!

"Congress may, by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.” 

No they’re not CALLING it that; they may not even understand that THAT is what it IS, but they have just introduced measures in the House and the Senate to legally or symbolically enact the Congressional override OF The Disqualification Clause of the 14th Amendment AS PROVIDED IN the The Disqualification Clause of the 14th Amendment. 

And to DO that you are admitting, explicitly or tacitly, that the 14thAmendment APPLIES TO TRUMP. Why declare him “not an insurrectionist” if it doesn’t matter whether anybody CALLS him an insurrectionist?

And the only reason you would actually INTRODUCE such a bill is if you A) were just told that the Supreme Court may very well agree that the Constitution is clear and Colorado is right and Trump is ALREADY disqualified and you had damn well better at least TRY to legislate him OUT of disqualification… OR – more likely - B) if you had just become convinced that all the other phony-baloney arguments saving Trump from disqualification like “he’s not an OFFICER” were falling apart and that this battle – in the Supreme Court, or in the legislature of every state of the union – is going to revert back to, is going to BOIL DOWN to, whether or not Disloyalty J. Trump “engaged in insurrection or rebellion or given aid or comfort to the enemies” and you need to give your master something – anything – a fig leaf, a cheeseburger, with which to cover himself for the battle to come.

Maybe a diaper.

ALSO: The DC District Court not only voted unanimously against Trump's hallucination that there is "presidential immunity" but took 57 pages to tell him, thus leaving the Supreme Court almost no way to overrule them. The trial now could start as early as June 1 and should be done no later than October 20. 

House Republicans aren't just schmucks they're fail-schmucks. When they couldn't impeach DHS Secretary Mayorkas Greene blamed the Democrats for "hiding" their votes because of course nobody knows how many Democrats there are in the House. And President Biden did exactly what I suggested, pointed to the border deal, said the Republicans blew it up merely to serve Trump. And then, Nikki Haley agreed with him. 

B-Block (26:25) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Laura Ingraham and Speaker Mike Johnson openly laugh at the idea of paying the members of the Border Patrol more. What WAS Marjorie Taylor Greene doing in the House Men's Room? Tucker Carlson is interviewing Putin because he thinks no other American reporters bothered to. Does this asshole know who Evan Gershkovich is?

C-Block (30:18) MUSICAL PREMIERE: Brian Ray and John Philip Shenale bring you the world premiere of our new Trump Trials Theme "91 Trombones"

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SERIES 2 EPISODE 117: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: When Trump says “there is now a 100% chance that there will be major terror attacks in the USA” he is right and after the weekend and yesterday, now we KNOW WHY he is right and what he means: He means terror attacks BY the Republican Party.

Trump for once is right: terrorism is here, and the terrorists are the Republicans.

The GOP under Trump is now the party of blackmail and extortion and destruction and terrorism: vote for us or we’ll destroy whatever we can get our hands on. Joe Biden agrees to a draconian overreaction to the migration issue that is more than the most xenophobic, most dogmatic Republican Fascist could ever DREAM of living long enough to see actually enacted, and instead of passing it before lunch just in case Biden changes his mind, they have lied about it, and attacked it, and killed it, and exacerbated the EXACT problem they claim to be fighting, and if they are correct IN THE SLIGHTEST about the gravity of the border and immigration situations, they – the Republican Party – THEY will kill Americans. THEY, the Republicans, will be ushering the criminals they claim are seeking a home here. THEY, the Republicans, will be carrying in and distributing the fentanyl they claim the immigrants are all carrying. THEY, the Republicans, will be killing Americans. And then they’ll run on the crisis THEY have caused.

If a foreign country, or a jihadist group, or a re-born Al-Qaeda, or a pack of wild communists managed to interrupt America’s control of her own border, and successfully interfered with America’s financial and military aid to its own allies around the world, and blocked our humanitarian aid to civilian war victims, and infiltrated and radicalized and made into THEIR agents some of our political leaders who then made public promises to derail, and disrupt, and SABOTAGE our Senate and our House and our Government… this nation under the leadership of either political party or a combination of them would immediately use the means provided by our laws of national self-defense… to STOP them. To STOP the terrorists.

Plus: Trump now thinks he's...Elvis?

B-Block (20:15) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: It's all TV News news: CNN blows up the morning again as the new boss damages his staff more than even Licht did. Tucker Carlson is in Moscow because you CAN fool all of the Tucker all of the time. And I think this qualifies as a national security crisis AND a brain drain AND a journalism crisis: reportedly, President Biden has come to rely on the advice of Joe Scarborough, who 30 years ago was loyal to Newt Gingrich and 8 years ago was trying to mainstream Trump and get his Vice Presidential slot and would say anything to anybody if it got him power. Plus, he's turned MSNBC's morning show into the equivalent of Sean Hannity advising Trump. It, and he, stinks.

C-Block (43:00) OOOH A TEASE: Brian Ray and John Philip Shenale are about to debut new music for the show!

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SERIES 2 EPISODE 117: BULLETIN - COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:35) BULLETIN: What was unofficial is now OFFICIAL. Judge Tanya Chutkan has confirmed in court that the start of the Trump Election Subversion/January 6th trial - scheduled for Monday March 4, and the trial thought most likely to bring a conviction against Trump before the election - has been "vacated" - postponed indefinitely pending a resolution of Trump's extra-constitutional bullshit stall, the "Presidential Immunity" fantasy.

Given that 46% of Trump supporters in the swing states say they would be very unwilling to vote for him if he has been convicted, this is more than just a scheduling issue.

What happens next - and when could it happen?

(5:00) SPECIAL COMMENT: TRUMP DC ELECTION SUBVERSION TRIAL POSTPONED. Still officially scheduled for a month from Sunday, it has in fact "fallen off" the Washington Federal Court Calendar and no new date has been set. Even as the District of Columbia and the federal government think of ways to protect the Prettyman Courthouse with metal fencing and street closures (just like right after Trump's January 6 coup), The Washington Post speculates the trial will allow for Trump's trial in New York on the Stormy Daniels Payoff Business Fraud to start next month instead. Either way, Trump's stall has worked. The DC District Appeals Court has yet to rule on his "Presidential Immunity" bullshit and fingers are pointed at the member of the three-judge panel who was appointed by George W. Bush.

ALSO: MARJORIE TAYLOR GREENE is the worst person ever to serve in the United States House of Representatives. Her inability to pronounce "indictable" correctly is everything that's wrong with this country today, particularly our refusal to help the chronically stupid to heal themselves. More maddening, Greene has previously claimed a) that dyslexia runs in her family AND b) that her political opponents are "retards."

B-Block (30:34) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Steve Garvey assailed by three kids in an L.A. Times profile (the other 197 love him though). Moms For Liberty actually manages to outdo itself in what we used to call Bluenosing. And the pollster who has defined which group of voters can put Trump over the top: African-American Men With Three Arms.

C-Block (40:32) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: His most famous, most imagination-stimulating work: "The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty."

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SERIES 2 EPISODE 116: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: TRUMP DC ELECTION SUBVERSION TRIAL POSTPONED. Still officially scheduled for a month from Sunday, it has in fact "fallen off" the Washington Federal Court Calendar and no new date has been set. Even as the District of Columbia and the federal government think of ways to protect the Prettyman Courthouse with metal fencing and street closures (just like right after Trump's January 6 coup), The Washington Post speculates the trial will allow for Trump's trial in New York on the Stormy Daniels Payoff Business Fraud to start next month instead. Either way, Trump's stall has worked. The DC District Appeals Court has yet to rule on his "Presidential Immunity" bullshit and fingers are pointed at the member of the three-judge panel who was appointed by George W. Bush.

ALSO: MARJORIE TAYLOR GREENE is the worst person ever to serve in the United States House of Representatives. Her inability to pronounce "indictable" correctly is everything that's wrong with this country today, particularly our refusal to help the chronically stupid to heal themselves. More maddening, Greene has previously claimed a) that dyslexia runs in her family AND b) that her political opponents are "retards."

B-Block (22:48) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Steve Garvey assailed by three kids in an L.A. Times profile (the other 197 love him though). Moms For Liberty actually manages to outdo itself in what we used to call Bluenosing. And the pollster who has defined which group of voters can put Trump over the top: African-American Men With Three Arms.

C-Block (34:32) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: His most famous, most imagination-stimulating work: "The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty."

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SERIES 2 EPISODE 115: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Election polls are bullshit.

In the morning came the polls showing Trump ahead by 8 in every swing state. Except the margin of error plus the undecided number is 16.

In the afternoon came the polls showing Biden ahead by 6 in nationally. And Trump beating Haley. But Haley beating Biden. Except the margin of error plus the undecided number is 9. 

I'll explain the "Keith Number" we should always attach to polling, and why polling was once considered unacceptable for inclusion in American TV newscasts, and how I sat there as an MSNBC executive once ordered Frank Luntz to take two polls or do two focus groups to confirm the predetermined outcome he wanted.

Though there WAS one useful "interior number" in that Swing States poll that could augur a Biden landslide.

PLUS: Judge Engoron hasn't revealed the figure, Alina Habba hasn't been fired but what Trump's done to her is much, much, worse. There was performative theater in the Senate social media hearing yesterday but ONE truth was emitted by Senator Tillis. And a bell rang somewhere and three of the most racist things ever said by Republicans were said without hesitation, by a Wisconsin state legislator ("Race Hustlers"), Senator Tom Cotton ('Are you sure you ain't Chinese?') and Nikki Haley, who, asked why she said she got shivers down her spine about the prospect of President Kamala Harris, immediately answered about how President Obama made everything about race.

Pure cracker racism from Nikki Haley.

B-Block (27:47) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Jesse Watters claims brainwashing, which is impossible if you don't have a brain. More racism from Congressman Troy Nehls. And Congressman Derrick Van Orden is so dumb, he's dumber than he was last year.

C-Block (36:08) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: With news of Netflix possibly dropping Harry and Meghan Markle, I have a Netflix story to tell. I offered them the whole of the video news industry and they demanded Italian Subtitles.

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SERIES 2 EPISODE 114: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Because this is the way to overcome a record stock market high, universal employment, and the suspicion that he's an insane treasonous rapist in some kind of mental health crisis who'll be in jail before Inauguration Day, Trump has now declared "Holy War" against... Taylor Swift.

It's SWIFT BOAT '24!

Fear that she will again endorse Biden (to say nothing of a string of self-negating conspiracy theories about fixed Super Bowls and long-term psy-ops) has provoked the fascists to plan to smear the megastar the way Trump has smeared E. Jean Carroll, Hillary Clinton, Judge Chutkan, and every other woman who has ever stood in the way of something he thought life owed him. That the list of women he's treated as not quite human should range from Hillary to Taylor to E. Jean is not a stretch. There are many things desperately mentally wrong with Dementia J. Trump but his virulent antipathy towards women - and the misogynistic cancer he has spread within his cult - is as bad as anything else.

The far right is ready for battle, though. Trump reportedly is confident he's more popular and has more fans and deserved "Person Of The Year" honors more than Swift did. His functional idiot Jack Posobiec has gotten up in front of people and said no, the Trump Death Cult may not have Taylor Swift, but it has Kid Rock and Ted Nugent! And then he ran out of names and somebody shouted "and Jon Voight!" and clearly like me, he was surprised to discover that Jon Voight is still with us.

B-Block (22:15) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: More details from the latest "Moms For Liberty" scandal: the head Moms For Liberty plied her "favorite" underaged boy with liquor than sat on his lap - at her daughter's birthday party, prosecutors allege. (27:31) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: The New York Times and The Athletic just hired away a dishonest Sports TV/Business reporter. Maria Bartiromo thinks DEI killed the servicemen in Jordan (or was she thinking about DUI) and Elon Musk does nothing as a clown named Shawn McBreairty doxxes a Secretary of State ON Twitter-X.

C-Block (30:44) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Speaking of misogyny, did I ever tell you about the future president of MSNBC insisting to me that they'd never hire Rachel Maddow because the audience would never accept a WOMAN doing the POLITICAL NEWS!

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SERIES 2 EPISODE 114: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SURPRISE! A decade ago, conservative icon Justice Antonin Scalia issued a Supreme Court opinion in which he declared - and reiterated to two stunned conservative attorneys - that the President of the United States IS an OFFICER OF THE UNITED STATES. Thus the man who Trump called one of "the greatest Americans to ever live" has already destroyed Trump's only argument that he cannot be disqualified for the presidency under the 14th Amendment because the president is NOT an officer of the United States.

Unearthed by Roger Parloff of Lawfire - how, as the cliche goes, is this not the lead story everywhere in the nation? The Scalia ruling and letter (which may itself have been agreed with by Chief Justice Roberts, Justice Alito, and Justice Thomas) destroys Trump's only argument for why the 14th Amendment Disqualification Clause does NOT apply to him and can't be used to kick him off the ballot. Trump insists the president is NOT an "officer." Yet four years ago Trump proposed a garden dedicated to the 30 greatest Americans who ever lived - and Scalia was one of them!

Historians have also found a Senate argument confirming that body agreed that the disqualification clause applied to Presidents, and that it was self-enforcing, and that it was acknowledged as such by everybody from Jefferson Davis to President Andrew Johnson. Also, the Illinois Election Board was to meet today to address the bid there to enforce the 14th.

Also: Trump has now enabled Biden to run on the Bipartisan Border Enforcement and Great Economy platform, while his House lackeys have made DHS Secretary Mayorkas look like the border hardliner of the bunch. On Day 15 of his mental health crisis Trump's mind continues to corrode, and damn but Nikki Haley isn't letting up, and more importantly seems to be having a gas calling Trump unhinged and in decline EVERY SINGLE DAY.

B-Block (22:32) IN SPORTS: The Clay Travis Taylor Swift/Travis Kelce/Super Bowl/Joe Biden conspiracy theory has now been disproved. It has been replaced by the Vivek Ramaswamy Taylor Swift/Travis Kelce/Super Bowl/Joe Biden conspiracy theory. And why Bill Belichick going to do TV football could be the greatest move since John Madden did it. (29:36) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Charlie Kirk defames one of the Central Park Five while trying to dig himself out from having already defamed him; Elise Stefanik scrubs her website; South Dakota Governor (former South Dakota Snow Queen) Kristi Noem thinks the Constitution is a treaty signed between the 13 Colonies and Texas.

C-Block (36:51) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: In memory of the late Red Sox, Astros, and Blue Jays' manager Jimy Williams, the saga of the day I was thrown off the field at Fenway Park and directed to sit next to Yankee owner George Steinbrenner who promptly joined me on the Fox game broadcast and accused Williams of trying to instigate a riot during the game.

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SEASON 2 EPISODE 113: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Since Nikki Haley refused to enslave herself after he defeated her in New Hampshire Tuesday, Trump has lost what little remained of his damned mind. He is now running on a novel platform: "Trump 2024: EFF AMERICA!" He wants to crash the economy, leave the borders open so (he says) terrorists can pour in. Yesterday a resolution was floated to the RNC to effectively cancel the remaining 48 Republican primaries and declare Trump the nominee NOW. Even though the GOP rules require 1,215 delegates for nomination and he has exactly 32.

Moreover, one of the underappreciated ratfinks of the fascist push in America for a quarter century, David Bossie of the Clinton Hunt and Citizens United, is the Committeeman who has actually introduced a resolution subverting what passes for democracy within the GOP, to the Republican National Committee.

Last night Trump made a big deal of saying he doesn't want this, that he wants "to do it the old fashioned way" and guess what? I think he's lying. He wants it - he just doesn't want to be seen as being BEHIND it.

So if it happens, does Nikki Haley then sue? She certainly hasn't shrunk away from challenging Trump. He threatened to blacklist her donors? She tweeted the news and attached a link TO donate to her campaign! She's clearly aware that unlike almost any other Republican since 2016, she has destabilized him, and threatened him back.

How far will she go? Especially since Trump's desire to blow-up the border deal may have created an anti-Trump bloc among Republican Senators who might serve as a Haley base of support.

B-Block (22:36) IN SPORTS: A college athlete illegally betting on his own school's games at a legal betting site? How'd EVER have expected that? And why it doesn't matter whether he bet for or against his own team. Plus Jim Harbaugh's new job lets me tell the story of the filming of the ESPN commercial Dan Patrick and I did with him (28:00) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Surprise! The January 6th Sprinter, Josh Hawley, is suddenly Senator Socialism! Rep. Ralph Norman, unrepentant insurrectionist and Kaitlin Collins who didn't call him on it. And led by the last GOP nominee for governor of New York, and resident Fox stooges Typhoid and Greg Guttersnipe, decide it's ok to now use the "R-word" on TV, never realize they'd be the first three guys you'd use it to describe.

C-Block (34:35) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: I was talking about my Dad again yesterday and almost immediately I was reminded of HIS favorite Thurber story. So I offer it to you today: "I Went To Sullivant."

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SEASON 2 EPISODE 112: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Yes. I think that's the lead story. And I don't even LIKE Jon Stewart. But it's time to recognize that we are at war. It is, for now at least, a war being conducted almost entirely inside the media world, and here's a prayer that it stays contained within those walls. But if it is, the forces of democracy need all the fighters we can find. And Stewart - who has been mad at me since 2003 and once accused me of "stealing his act" - going back to host The Daily Show at least once a week and be the Executive Producer all the other days, at least through the election, is welcomed news. For that matter, I hope it inspires Maddow - who has been mad at me since 2011 - to be on the air more often at MSNBC.

Meanwhile, I have had absolutely enough of "5 Takeaways From The New Hampshire Primary." Not only is the premise hackneyed, but The New York Times, The Washington Post, NPR, CNN, The Hill, and Agence France Presse all used EXACTLY THAT TITLE for their versions. And all of them left out the real takeaways: Trump needed to pretend to be a human being and instead lashed out in a rage against Nikki Haley that is now continuing into a third day and last night extended to Trump threatening to "ban" from MAGA anybody who contributes to her campaign (sure - he won't take somebody else's money; his least convincing lie yet). His fuse is completely gone. He also has now claimed he defeated the sitting governor of Iowa, I guess in the primary there, and near as I can find no sitting governor of Iowa has sought the Republican presidential nomination since 1912 so maybe whatever he has, has just moved into the tertiary stage.

Plus: CNN's shame. Its 10 PM the anchor - the one it preempts once a week to instead run Charles Barkley - condescendingly parroted the right wing talking point that nobody in America wants Joe Biden. She should be fired, but given her ratings, they can do something worse to her: force her to continue doing her show.

B-Block (25:04) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Frank Farian, the evil genius behind "Milli Vanilli," is dead. Until I read his obituary, I had NO idea that the scam came apart when a record skipped... in BRISTOL, CONNECTICUT. NewsNation is not satisfied with you not watching it on TV. Now it wants you to also not listen to it on radio. And the Maryland State Senate - led by Democrats - is trying to explain how the new member of the State Board of Elections just got arrested as a January 6th Insurrectionist.

C-Block (32:11) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: With the Abby Phillip Right Wing Talking Point and CNN's continuing lurch rightwards - even under new post-Lichtian management - I think it's time to remind you that ALL the cable news networks have already had THE meeting and tried THE lurch to the right. At MSNBC it was 20 years ago and it was highlighted by the attempt to mainstream a homophobic racist named Michael Savage, and how the President of NBC was enraged when Savage crossed the line and had to be fired.

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SERIES 2 EPISODE 111: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Trump has never been truer to himself than after his solid but unspectacular victory over Nikki Haley in New Hampshire last night. His toadies like Marjorie Taylor Greene were whining within 10 minutes of the closing of the polls that the tally had been rigged against him. And he overshadowed his own victory by getting up and sweating through an angry, petty, vindictive "victory" speech in which he once again resorted to stochastic threats against Haley, this time promising he could reveal enough about her to get her investigated by "them."

President Biden, meanwhile, won a non-primary primary in which he wasn't even on the Beauty Pageant Ballot, and he still got about 67% of the votes. And new polling in Pennsylvania - showing him up +8 over Trump there - was probably yesterday's REAL biggest presidential race story.

Meanwhile it's Day 9 of Trump's Dementia Crisis. Not only are other Republicans noticing he's making less sense and seeming less present every day, but Trump is now blithering his way through teleprompter speeches and making sound effects on camera - all of which can be neatly folded into Biden Campaign Commercials.

And while Jamie Combover's impeachment theater may be coming to the end of its run, there's a sudden revival of the Matt Gaetz Ethics Investigation in Congress. Plus why the President needs to federalize the Texas National Guard and arrest Governor Greg Abbott - today.

B-Block (21:00) IN SPORTS: Baseball's Hall of Fame elects new members - one too few, or two too many? Beltre was a lock but I have deep doubts about Helton and Mauer. And look out, another MLB team will be forced to wear those horrific City Connect Uniforms. (25:57) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: How do the Oscars folks do this every year? You nominate Ken but not Barbie? You nominate Barbie for best picture but not its director? This is a tradition that dates back to "How Green Was My Valley" winning best picture in 1941 instead of say, Citizen Kane or The Maltese Falcon. One weird trick that connects Lenin and Benny Hill. And farewell to the greatest radio newscaster of all-time, Charles Osgood. (35:15) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Eric Adams plays Musical Chairs with actual chairs. Oklahoma's immoral School Superintendent gives a job to the immoral LibsOfTikTok witch. And Tiffany Cross finally breaks her silence on who knifed her in the back at MSNBC. The answer? Joey Scars himself. Joe Scarborough.

C-BLOCK (43:40) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Since we're already in Trash-MSNBC-Mode, let me tell you again of the story of how Lawrence O'Donnell, kindly filling in for me in 2010 while my Dad was dying, used the opportunity to try to get me fired, or try to get all my producers to leave with him for his new show. Scarborough is always the worst - but O'Donnell is close.

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SEASON 2, EPISODE 110: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: THIS IS TUESDAY JANUARY 23rd, THE EIGHTH DAY OF TRUMP'S DEMENTIA CRISIS: While Trump and his defenders quadruple-down on the Orwellian lie that he MEANT to conflate Nikki Haley and Nancy Pelosi and January 6th, Trump adds a new reason for serious concern about his mental stability. In an interview in New Hampshire for the primary, Trump is asked about Haley's insistence he is not competent and in one answer invokes Dr. Ronny Jackson, can't remember his name, recalls it, moves to a different topic, and then brings up Ronny Jackson again - as if for the first time.

There's a reason Ron DeSantis did NOT end his campaign, but, like Ramaswamy, only suspended it. Like Haley, they both know that something above-and-beyond all previous problems has hit Trump and they will stay quietly and obediently in the background until it - or something else - comes and gets him.

There is little to report from New Hampshire, though the networks and newspapers will report it anyway. They will also tell you that Trump did better in Iowa than he will in the Granite State even though the reverse is true - because math may be hard but bucking the conventional wisdom is harder. Trump got 51% of the voters (and 7% of all Republicans) in Iowa. He may get 57% in N.H. That would be MORE.

B-Block (20:23) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: It's time for The New York Times to stop publishing the same column Maureen Dowd has rewritten every week since 1997; how NOT to suppress the news in Colorado (28:25) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: The DeSantis War Room loses the battle of South CAROLINIA. When not to sue because the ladies trashed you on Facebook. And when they invite you to sing at Dolly Parton's birthday and you start swearing and The Grand Old Opry has to apologize for - your career is over.

C-Block (33:05) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: A friend gave me some winter clothing bearing her company's logo and I flashed back to this time in 1980 when United Press International gave me my official Lake Placid Winter Olympics parka and...the lining wasn't fur or down or foam but CONSTRUCTION PAPER.

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SERIES 2 EPISODE 109: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Acting on his behalf, Trump's attorneys enlarged on his threat of ten days ago and told the Supreme Court that if it did not do what he wants it to do, "chaos and bedlam" would ensue throughout the country.

It's stochastic terrorism. Again. Always.

Enough. Right or wrong, more than twenty years ago the government of this country utilized a process to detain those who made terroristic plans or threats against the nation. It involved an off-mainland site called Gitmo. And there were additional "black sites" around the world for use for when there were the added complications of American citizenship involved.

It's time to send Trump there.

I'd rather deal with the consequences of Trump at Gitmo than with him continuing to threaten this nation, or, worse yet, seizing power and ending all representative government here.

Ironically this newest threat occurred less than a day after Trump made two unexpected (and, probably, unknowing) admissions. While he wants there to BE "presidential immunity" (that's what the terror threat against the Supreme Court was about) he acknowledged it doesn't currently exist. He also confessed that he had made "mistakes" as president and compared himself to a "rogue cop."

B-BLOCK (21:00) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: Nikki Haley blows off "No Labels." And she might still be alive in the Trump ticket VP race. (25:05) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Since when does "fist" work in the weather forecast? Larry Elder says The Deep State is suppressing his Twitter follower count. And Tucker Carlson accuses the Trump Government of planting the January 5/6 pipe bombs and I'm just guessing but I don't think he meant to.

C-BLOCK (31:30) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: Even in 1937 America was dumbing down. Thurber's bitterly hilarious story of a woman who hated the Shakespeare she had to read because it didn't conform to the rules of paperback fiction: "The MacBeth Murder Mystery."

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SERIES 2 EPISODE 108: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: ONE of these days ONE of these judges will have to take the bullshit by the horns and jail Trump overnight for contempt of court. He made a mockery of all the laws of the nation again yesterday in New York and must be punished. Clearly somebody or something has punished him for something. Three or four red marks have suddenly sprouted on his right hand. James Carville thinks they're evidence of the secondary stage of syphilis. I think they're more consistent with an old man slipping on ice and grabbing something to try to stop himself from face-planting. But I'm sure Trump will claim they're stigmata.

America's constipated political pundits have finally figured out that the interior numbers from Iowa confirm he didn't crush ANYTHING there; in fact only 8% of Iowa's Republicans voted for him! Oh and Nikki Haley is up to 38% in New Hampshire. Trump might not be the only one disqualified under the 14th Amendment. Representative Dan Goldman has moved to censure Representative Elise "Hostages" Stefanik

B-Block (21:15) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: The fascists are going to get another win out of the Supreme Court. Marjorie Taylor Greene sets herself up for another dick-pic joke. (25:23) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Argentina's New President - the guy in the Wolverine costume - blames the world's ills on feminism. The Babylon Bee's best bit of satire is its belief that it's funny. Ben Carson says why not concentration camps? The migrants have to have a place to stay!

C-Block (30:35) EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: Beaten puppy Sweet Cheeks needs our help in North Carolina. (32:05) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Trump's rage against MSNBC for not worshiping him enough is actually not something new. The Republicans think they can get away with bullying MSNBC because they succeeded at it as long ago as 2008 - with me - and with the help of Tom Brokaw.

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SERIES 2 EPISODE 107: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Trump did NOT crush DeSantis and Haley in Iowa. The "takeaway" is not that he crushed DeSantis and Haley in Iowa. The "takeaway" is he beat the field by only 2,222 votes. And the reality is Trump got a total of 56,260 votes and that’s about half the size of this podcast’s daily audience. And Trump only got 51 percent OF the votes in Iowa and if President Biden only got 51 percent in a primary they would cancel everything on television for the next 26 days and cover nothing BUT Biden only getting 51 percent in a primary, right up until kickoff on Super Bowl Sunday 26 days from now. “Biden Crisis Day 26. We pause now for football. Here’s the anthem. Join Wolf Blitzer, Tucker Carlson, David Axelrod, and Usher at halftime for a preview of Biden Crisis Day 27.”

It's madness. Political media in this country has been in freefall since the 1990’s – hell, I succeeded in it, no experience necessary – but it is hard to believe it has ever been worse, even more a victim of band-wagoning, even more a john overflowing unto eternity, each reporter abandoning reality and objectivity to prove that THEIR take was right or that their NEXT take is FIRST or that THEY can stuff more undeserved accolades into a sentence than anybody else. It’s not that they are obsessed with the horserace – the horserace coverage is FINE. But when it’s a pack of miniature ponies struggling to make it around a ten-foot track, SAY THAT, don’t call them Secretariat and Man’o’War.

Other REAL "takeaways" include Trump rolling out the new 2024 Con: his God Con, and Nikki Haley being utterly full of crap. And DeSantis realizing only too late that his path to victory was to turn on Trump and beat him senseless. Oh and Trump is deteriorating faster than ever before. If you mistake Biden for Obama, that's one thing. If you think the thing you rode down before you launched your campaign is an ESCALADE instead of an ESCALATOR... consult your physician!

B-Block (21:26) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: Gosh, where will Margie Green get her porn? House GOP may have dropped the Hunter Biden contempt plan. Knicks-Rangers owner James Dolan sued, accused of trafficking a woman to Harvey Weinstein. (23:46) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Russia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs is so used to lying to its own morons it forgets the rest of the world needs to be slightly convinced. "Dudesy" steals George Carlin's jokes and calls it "A.I." Nate Cohn of The New York Times with a hiccup over "Hick-Up."

C-Block (30:05) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Our 701-day snowless streak in Fun City is over and it got cold and clammy and as always I flashed back to the day my great doctor Ed Ceccolini gave me meds I wasn't ready for and the next thing I knew my face was stuck to the window of a commuter train in Grand Central because my drool had frozen onto it!

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SERIES 2 EPISODE 106: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: The obvious headline from Iowa last night: Trump romped, around 50%, with the reminder that if it were Biden only getting 50% in the first primary the Democrats would be considered dead in the water. The real headline from Iowa: Trump mused, in that skillfully ambitious way of his, about being in charge for "four years and beyond" and he can deny he meant refusing to leave office in 2029 but of course all he's TALKED about since 2017 was how he deserved more than two terms or more than eight years or more than the constitution allows. And the NEXT headline out of Iowa is the missing ingredient in the implausibly tight race between a psychotic dictator with dementia and a gifted dedicated president: the report that internal Biden research and polling says three out of four undecided voters really DON'T believe Trump will be the nominee and will have an "oh shit" moment.

Plus: Marjorie Barney Rubble Greene thinks President Biden can communicate with the dead by phone.

B-Block (26:08) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: Rep. Barry "Your Tour Guide" Loudermilk makes a huge mistake. He wants to investigate Cassidy Hutchinson. And the Baltimore Sun is sold to a fascist and a one-time columnist who took a quarter of million in bribes from the Bush Administration. (30:50) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: When the NFL playoff game in Buffalo was postponed by snow, the Outkick The Coverage idiot whined that they didn't postpone D-Day because of bad weather - except of course they did. Plus Billo is back in the list. And Laura Loomer underscores the fundamental stupidity of the right. They don't believe in man-made climate change but they DO believe that Biden has a machine to manipulate the weather.

C-Block (37:05) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: A silly story about ESPN fudging nomination lists for the Emmy Awards (Erin Andrews became "Erik Andrews," etc., to allow ineligible talent to get trophies) ignores the real problem: the hosts of Emmy winning shows were ineligible to GET Emmys because the producers who ran the Emmys thought the talent had enough good stuff as it was. It flashed me back to a memorable conversation with Gil Stratton, an actor and sportscaster who insisted that every producer and executive he ever met was a bigger prima donna than an old colleague of his named Judy Garland.

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SERIES 2 EPISODE 105: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) It is hard to believe that a year after he vanished like a bad dream, ex-Congressman/Hitler Fanboy/Weirdo Madison Cawthorn might emerge not just as a truth-teller but as THE truth-teller. He was the one who insisted Washington was a den of drug-fueled orgies and war-on-drug leaders doing bumps of coke in front of him.

Did you WATCH the Hunter Biden hearing? Did you WATCH the Trump Town Hall on Fox? Did anything any Republican say make sense to you? Because not only is the answer "no" but the more frightening reality is that everything Trump said, and everything James Comer said, and Nancy Mace, and Marjorie Taylor Greene, and all the other Republicans, made perfect sense to THEM.

And what kind of thing causes you to mistakenly believe that your hallucinations seem perfectly normal to everybody else?

And just to add in Cawthorn's other charge - it wasn't just drugs it was atypical sex. Greene showing more pornographic pictures of Hunter Biden? Nancy Mace referring to his balls?

Is THIS the explanation of the behavior of... ALL REPUBLICANS?

GOOD GOD WE NEED TO HEAR MORE FROM MADISON CAWTHORN.

B-Block (15:20) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: No more itinerant laborers because of the animus towards migrants? This Indiana state rep has the solution: let kids quit school to go work in the fields at 14. And to help them not miss it, this Florida county has banned the dictionary. And to show you what you can become when you stop learning after the 8th Grade, there's Aaron Rodgers, who actually got himself fired by ESPN yesterday.

C-Block (23:00) Giving Credit Where Credit Is Due and an explanation for today's comparative brevity. 

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SERIES 2 EPISODE 104: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) Trump made another threat of political violence and terrorism and once again escaped being treated like any other terrorist or criminal trying to blackmail the nation by promising mass death and destruction if he doesn't get his way. After attending the appeals court hearing on his "presidential immunity" nonsense, Trump said if the prosecution of him continued "It'll be bedlam in the country."

But he hasn't engaged in insurrection.

Not since Noon Eastern yesterday.

Meanwhile his attorney, Judge Luttig's former law clerk, insisted that no, if he hadn't been impeached and removed from office, Trump could not be prosecuted for ordering Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival. 

But he's not saying HE would CAUSE the bedlam.

Besides the background drumbeat of Trumpist political violence, the point of the "presidential immunity" action is to stall. And the Just Security website has game-planned when this Jack Smith prosecution is likely to end. Two of the answers end within plenty of time, the third begins to brush up against an old favorite: the DOJ tradition of not acting within 60 days of an election.

And speaking of oldies but goodies, Trump reverts to birtherism. This time his victim is Nikki Haley. And his own mother. 

And just for laughs, it was in an 1814 book of witticisms that our ancestors first read "Every man who is his own lawyer, has a fool for a client." So guess who intends to deliver some of the closing arguments in his Business Fraud Trial case in New York tomorrow? Our resident Fool.

B-Block (17:48) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: I knew there was a reason not to say anything about the "disappearance" of Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin: his "minor medical procedure" was surgery for prostate cancer. And the ESPN/Big Sleeveless Pat/Aaron Rodgers/Jimmy Kimmel disaster escalates: Rodgers denies he implied anything about Kimmel, uses ESPN as a platform to spread vaccine disinformation, and attacks an ESPN VP who had been protecting his buddy's show. Like ESPN's Rush Limbaugh disaster 20 years ago, this will end in tears. (25:15) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORD: political and journalistic accounts mysteriously disappear on Ketamine Musk's site. Judge Judy makes a presidential endorsement. And Lou Dobbs, Tulsi Gabbard, Don Lemon and Jim Rome are too desperate to just stand in front of a mirror and do their new shows to an audience that cares.

C-Block (31:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Since it's ESPN time, why not tell again the events of 32 years ago this month when I met the wonderful actress Elizabeth Montgomery on a flight, we became great friends, and she... helped me to launch the ESPN Radio Network?

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SERIES 2 EPISODE 103: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44): In the course of two speeches and four days President Joe Biden has found the word that not only perfectly describes Trump, that not only can be hung around him like a giant gold-outlined neon sign, that not only can humiliate him and stick to him forever, but that the rest of us have been waiting for SOMEBODY to say: "He's a loser."

Loser = Trump

Trump = Loser

Loser J. Trump!

The long weekend in which the prospects for retaining both Biden and democracy turned on a dime and Biden found his voice. He's the average American fed up with Trump's psychosis and violence and lies and racism and juvenile haircut and narcissism and stupidity and malevolence. And the anger is pitch-perfect.

PLUS: Yesterday Trump overtly implied that if he regains power he will indict a former president of the United States. Today he was to attend the D-C Federal Appeals Court hearing at which he and his lawyers were to argue that you CANNOT indict a former president of the United States.

Of all the legal updates the most interesting perhaps is the possibility that Trump digital guru Dan Scavino is cooperating with Jack Smith. Plus, no, Kristen Welker didn't fail to do her job with the Eva Braun of upstate New York. Her inertia when Stefanik called the January 6 insurrectionists "hostages" was what NBC was paying her to do.

B-Block (24:44) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: Wall Street Journal blockbuster about Elon Musk and drugs; Mehdi Hasan completely out at MSNBC, stars still silent (30:15) IN SPORTS: Latest on ESPN/Rodgers/McAfee/Kimmel/Williamson. In memory of Franz Beckenbauer (35:10) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Nikki Haley had a black friend, Kristina Karamo ousted in Michigan; Lauren Boebert can't keep a grip on herself in public despute with ex-hubby

C-Block (40:10) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Since the ESPN Pat McAfee/Jimmy Kimmel story includes accusations that ESPN leaked ratings to make McAfee look bad, I've got a story about MSNBC doing that to me at Current-TV - except the ratings were wrong.They were HIGHER than the ones we HAD at Current-TV!

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SERIES 2 EPISODE 102: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN BULLETIN JANUARY 6th WEEKEND EDITION

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: You already know that MY default position when it comes to President Biden is deep respect, deep affection, and love. And having said that, even Iwas stunned by the virtuosity of his pitch-perfect speech about Trump and the threat to democracy he represents, which the President gave near Valley Forge on the eve of the third anniversary of Trump’s Insurrection, in which he hit every note ranging from whispered warning to raging righteousness; in which his emotional ebb and flow went from the astonishment of the moment to anger on behalf of every past president and every dead soldier; in which he roared from clear and unvarnished statement of the danger of Trump and the dictatorship with which he would KILL America, and the still CLEARER and MORE unvarnished delineation of the path by which to defeat it, and Trump, and these fascists, for all time. It was breathtaking. It was honest to God JFK-FDR level oratory. Here are the highlights.

Also, here is Trump's response: to claim that migrants who don't speak "our language" should not be allowed to vote, and to post a video claiming God sent him to rule America. If the cadence of this accompaniment to Dementia J. Trump turning into Deified J. Trump sounds familiar, it should. It was stolen from a 2013 Super Bowl Ad, and itself stolen from a 1978 speech by one of my old bosses.

B-Block (25:00) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: Biden's speech was so good, so sweeping, that I think you should listen to all of it. Carve out half an hour and do so - here it is,

C-Block (59:10) UPDATE: While we're here, there's news on this sports story I mentioned during the week in which Aaron Rodgers, on the Pat McAfee Show, a program for which ESPN just paid its namesake host 85 million dollars to run on its platforms, Rodgers implied that when the Jeffrey Epstein lists were published, Jimmy Kimmel would be mentioned. Rodgers said when that happened, he’d pop open a bottle of something.Kimmel, who like McAfee, and Rodgers – who is under contract TO McAfee to appear on his shows – is employed by Disney. And within hours of the Aaron Rodgers statement, Kimmel tweeted that if Rodgers did not stop, he would sue Rodgers.

The next day McAfee pleaded ignorance. It didn’t take much effort; he’s pretty ignorant. He said he believed there was no cause for any problem because Rodgers was just quote “talking shit.” In fact that’s not really a defense many courts will accept in a defamation suit. A defamation suit by one Disney employee against two other Disney employees in McAfee and Rodgers. Rodgers has not again appeared on the show, nor did McAfee issue a retraction.

What McAfee DID do Friday, though, was to declare war ON ESPN. He accused executives of the company of leaking inaccurate ratings about the program.Actually, what it is, is – professionally – suicidal. Because McAfee named names, and he named the one ESPN executive who has outlasted everybody who has ever worked there, including me, including me the second time, including me the third time when HE personally got me rehired, including me as he supervised the unlikeliest of outcomes to my ESPN career in which of all people I wound up… RETIRING FROM ESPN. I got everything but the gold watch.

The executive’s name is Norby Williamson. And in trashing him, McAfee gave ESPN a way to fire him - for cause - and owe him none of the money in his contract. Or pay him off and silence him, just like Fox did with Tucker Carlson. Because if 32 years with Norby has taught me one thing: he survives - the other guy doesn't.

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SERIES 2 EPISODE 101: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: For the second time in as many days and the fourth time in one week, Trump has gotten the message out to the Justices of the Supreme Court - and especially the three he appointed - that they’d better rule in favor of Trump in the 14th Amendment and Presidential Immunity cases because he put them there.

Attorney Alina Habba did it again, again on Fox. Wednesday it was in the afternoon; last night it was in prime time. The message is loud and clear, and God knows with the utter corruption of the conservatives on THIS court you could never convict anybody of doing anything, but this is either an illegal threat AGAINST Justice Brett Kavanaugh and others, or it is the back half of an illegal quid pro quo. Habba said she "had faith" in "people like Kavanaugh, who the president fought for, who the president went through hell to get into place. He'll step up."

A week ago today Maggie Haberman went on CNN and said Trump feared SCOTUS might rule against him because it was trying to look balanced. On Tuesday, his first simpleton attorney Christina Bobb said that any ruling - even one declaring that Trump was guilty of insurrection - would be irrelevant if the people wanted Trump as their ruler. Wednesday, Habba insisted that "Republicans" (she meant Supreme Court Justices) "unfortunately  sometimes shy away from being pro-Trump because they feel that even if the law’s on our side they might be swayed much like the Democratic side would be, right? So they’re trying so hard to look neutral that sometimes they make the wrong call."

The political pressure is astonishing, even for Trump. And in the light of his stochastic terrorism against Justices Engoron and Chutkan, it is intolerable, and it portends true threats against any justice Trump feels hasn't been "loyal" to him. 

THERE MIGHT be good news out of New Hampshire: one poll shows Trump leading Nikki Haley by just four points with two weeks until the primary. There was also a good opening advertising salvo by the Biden campaign against the threat Trump is manifesting. And the same Alina Habba went on another streaming show and insisted that given the choice between being smart or pretty she'd choose pretty because "I can fake being smart."

Well, no, sorry. You clearly can't.

B-Block (32:20) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Like every other rich fascist before him, Elon Musk wants to destroy the National Labor Relations Board. Politico has a good joke at his expense. RFK Jr's Super Pac apparently made it up about Dionne Warwick AND Martin Sheen. And the Associated Press article that actually headlines Bothsidesism on tomorrow's 3rd Anniversary of Trump's January 6th Coup: “One Attack, Two Interpretations: Biden And Trump Both Make The January 6 Riot A Political Rallying Cry.”

C-Block (40:30) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: In 1913 just as in 2024, people are likeliest to believe the dumbest, the most outrageous, the least believable thing. James Thurber commemorates "The Day The Dam Burst" in Columbus, Ohio, the most noteworthy feature of which was, the DAM DID NOT BURST.

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EPISODE 2 SERIES 100: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) I misunderstood the first salvo. I completely missed the second. But when the third one exploded yesterday, it finally dawned on me. Trump - using milquetoast seemingly benign surrogates, has already begun to threaten the Supreme Court and especially his three appointees that they had better find in his favor in the "presidential immunity" and 14th Amendment Disqualification cases - or else.

Alina Habba delivered a message on Fox yesterday clearly designed for Justices Barrett, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh, warning them not to try "so hard to look neutral (and) make the wrong call" and that the only "American" verdicts would be those in Trump's favor. This echoed what Maggie Haberman reported last week (and Habba was nice enough to reveal she and Haberman are friends). And it puts in a new light Christina Bobb's boast Tuesday that it doesn't matter even if Trump IS guilty of insurrection: the people will decide who's president. It is muted, but it is a threat of violence and MORE insurrection, being delivered against the Supreme Court.

B-Block (16:48) IN SPORTS: ESPN and ABC and Disney have quite the conundrum. Its new supposed savior of the sports network, Pat McAfee, failed to retract, or even apologize for, a statement by football's Aaron Rodgers implying that Jimmy Kimmel was on the Jeffrey Epstein "list." Kimmel already threatened to sue - and that was before the fake screenshots started, and before McAfee said that since Rodgers was only "talking shit" it's not like what he said mattered. Me? I think Kimmel should sue but even better, he should do what Chick Hearn did when he was fed up with his rookie sidekick Al Michaels on the broadcasts of the 1967-68 Los Angeles Lakers. I'll explain. (23:55) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Oh good, we have a SECOND extramarital sex scandal inside the "Moms For Liberty" pro-fascist group. Congressman Troy Nehls reveals the Republicans don't give a damn about whether or not there are a million migrants crossing the border, or none. It's a stunt. And are we sure C-SPAN meant to promote its coverage of the "End of Fist Session" of Congress?

C-Block (29:30) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: It is now nearly 17 years since a veteran Senator from Delaware asked me to lunch to pick my brain on how when I spoke angrily I seemed righteously indignant, but when he spoke angrily he seemed...angry. I think he's mastered it now - and we need him to be righteously indignant AND angry in the 300 days ahead.

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SEASON 2 EPISODE 99: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: The Trump Attorney’s genuinely shocking admission: Trump MIGHT be guilty of insurrection.

Christina Bobb, last night: “It should be the entire nation who determines who they want for president – whether they’re guilty of insurrection or not.”

It’s a new defense. It’s an original defense. It’s the “HE’S GUILTY” defense. It’s also the clearest indication yet that Trump and his cult don’t give a damn about the laws or the constitution AND it’s an admission that the OTHER Trump lawyers KNOW they are just stalling for time or working to enable him to get away with anything.

It’s also another direct quote that Joe Biden HAS to turn into a campaign commercial immediately. Because whether she meant it as a confession or not, that’s EXACTLY what it sounds like: A confession, compounded by a bonus dose of screw-you, America: Trump is guilty, and he doesn’t give a crap, and he's counting on America not to give a crap, either

It would not surprise me in the least to SEE that Biden ad. And soon. CNN is reporting that the worm is about to turn and “as some of the younger aides on Biden’s reelection campaign have been grimly joking, it’s about WHEN to go ‘full Hitler’ – when the leading Republican candidate’s speeches and actions go so far that the Biden team goes all the way to a direct comparison to the Nazi leader rather than couching their attacks by saying Trump quote ‘parroted’ him.”

Plus the unexpected report that Trump is afraid the Supreme Court justices he appointed will rule against him on Disqualification, just to prove they aren't in his pocket. Just because he appointed six people to lifetime jobs, in which they are beholden to nobody? Not even him? Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're NOT out to get you.

B-Block (20:08) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: The OTHER thing Ted Cruz is bad at: The Ted Cruz Texas Sports Curse. Vivek Ramaswamy didn't want to be on your smelly CNN Republican debate anyway! And Jason Whitlock really believes ESPN has somebody putting porn ads on websites he visits. It couldn't possibly be the result of algorithms registering all the porn sites he went to.

C-Block (33:40) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Jack Kerouac had his own fantasy baseball league, and when I was a kid my Dad asked me to lie to the sports know-it-all at the office and convince him of the existence of a non-existent pitcher from the 1939 Yankees.

B-Block (20:08) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: The OTHER thing Ted Cruz is bad at: The Ted Cruz Texas Sports Curse. Vivek Ramaswamy didn't want to be on your smelly CNN Republican debate anyway! And Jason Whitlock really believes ESPN has somebody putting porn ads on websites he visits. It couldn't possibly be the result of algorithms registering all the porn sites he went to.

C-Block (33:40) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Jack Kerouac had his own fantasy baseball league, and when I was a kid my Dad asked me to lie to the sports know-it-all at the office and convince him of the existence of a non-existent pitcher from the 1939 Yankees.

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SEASON 2 EPISODE 98: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: You and I have 305 days until the election and the GOOD news is: if the Supreme Court rules Trump is immune from prosecution for anything he did while president OR if the Supreme Court rules the 14th Amendment DOESN’T disqualify him from the ballot OR if the Supreme Court rules both… Joe Biden can declare himself president for life, he can arrest the Supreme Court, and he can detain Trump without charges or trial and the Supreme Court has just ruled there’s not a goddamned thing anybody can do about it, including them. Well thank god THAT’S settled. Happy New Year!

I am mystified by the sanctimonious criticisms of Maine striking Trump from the ballot from its Senator Angus King and "Democratic" Congressman Jared Golden. They have decided the Constitution wasn’t enough and decided on their own that we needed HIGHER BARRIERS before as a nation we could defend ourselves against a psychotic dictator-in-waiting who wants to turn the government into a personal revenge factory and oh by the way the only thing he’s going to remember about YOU Angus King, is that you voted to impeach him.

“Under the established Constitutional process," said Senator King from atop his high horse, "absent a final judicial determination of a violation of the 14th Amendment’s disqualification clause, I believe the decision as to whether or not Trump should rest with the people as expressed in free and fair elections. This is the ultimate check within our Constitutional system,” This isn’t a matter of interpretation for the courts, or for you, Senator King. It’s what the 14thAmendment SAYS as opposed to what a fragment of your voters want you to tell them it says. What it SAYS is, your Senate AND the House have a right to REMOVE the disqualification of Donald Trump by a two-thirds vote. It exists. It exists right now. It only STOPS existing if you OVERRIDE IT. By 75 to 25, thank you. That’s what it says. THAT is the ultimate check within our Constitutional System.

I hope you can hear me up there floating on that cloud above it all.

Speaking of, congratulations to The New York Times, which addresses disqualification by quoting Judge Michael Luttig, and balancing him with someone who wrote commercial scripts for Dunkin' Donuts and an L.A. democrat who went on Fox to say he's mad at Joe Biden. And congratulations to The Washington Post for buying out the only one of its reporters who got it - Greg Sargent.

But genuine thinks to Green Day, which did what the rest of us can almost never do - pierce the MAGA/Trump Cult/Fascist bubble and show its cultists, to their shock, that they are not a majority and not at all liked. It's shocking that such penetrations come during Dick Clark's Rockin' New Year's Eve - but it's worth singing about!

B-Block (27:45) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: She allegedly liquored up underaged teenagers at her daughter's 17th birthday party. Is she A) a drag queen B) a trans-gendered swimmer C) a librarian or D) the founder of the “Keeping Kids In School PAC” and former Republican candidate for Lieutenant Governor?; The right-wing pundit who boasts of how The Statue of Liberty is better than any European art; The passing of Tom Foty. (35:25) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Fox kills the wrong Frank Thomas. Aaron Rodgers has now descended into using antisemitic tropes. And Michael Flynn Jr. sticks his father with a new name: "General Flynn-Bitch."

C-Block (41:55) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: We're now in the 25th anniversary year of the night - before Game 1 of the World Series which I was covering for Fox - where an Atlanta hotel gave me a room next to a choir that spent the entire night practicing for a competition the next day. It then tried to make it up to me by offering me, instead...THE PRESIDENTIAL SUITE.

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SERIES 2 EPISODE 97: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: For all those wringing their hands about disqualifying Trump from the ballot via the 14th Amendment without a conviction: What would Donald Trump have done with Joe Biden if January 6th had somehow worked?

Or TO him?

It's January 20, 2021 and the 46th President-Elect of the United States is prevented by whatever means from assuming office as demanded by the Constitution and Trump remains in power extra-legally, extra-judicially, extra-constitutionally. And we are supposed to believe that Biden would have been left free to speak in public, on television, on social media, to the press, in the courts, to the Speaker Pelosi or Majority Leader Schumer, to the Democratic governors with their authority over the National Guard?

Trump would have found a pretext to detain him. Or he HAD a pretext to detain him; a plan we just haven’t found out about. Having once crossed the ultimate threshold – ENDING 237 years of American democracy – having retained power as a dictator by some other name, what would Trump have then NOT been willing to do? And most importantly, what Trump would have done with a man he would’ve wanted the world to believe was an extra, illegitimate American president who had somehow plotted against Trump?

He would have had Joe Biden killed.

Or if somebody had stopped him from that, he would have had him seized somehow, by someone, by some official sounding but ultimately fabricated and illegal and anti-American quote “authority” unquote, and held. Incommunicado. With Kamala Harris and Pelosi and Schumer and uncooperative Senators and Congressmen of both parties and hundreds of reporters and editors and you and me and god knows how many others, on the pretext of god knows WHAT kind of imaginary plot to… enforce the Constitution?

THAT is why the Colorado Supreme Court was right. Because THAT second plan is the TRUE comparison to the Civil War traitors on whom the 14th Amendment was first applied. Because the Confederacy’s plans involved killing the President and the Vice President and half the cabinet and burning down New York City and seizing Northern ports. And just because the Confederacy did not win the Civil War those plans did not miraculously disappear from the minds of the traitors. Just as Trump’s plans for what to do with one president too many did not miraculously disappear from HIS diseased and monomaniacal and traitorous mind. The 14th Amendment is Iabout what ELSE he was willing to do, and what horrors he is willing to precipitate today, and in 2024, and, god forbid, in January of 2029.

ALSO: Trump's not an insurrectionist! He was so concerned about it he posted 11 whole words denying it. And as his lapdogs race to defend his paraphrases of Hitler, Trump undercut them again last night by repeating the "blood poisoning" line. He's also in even more insurrection trouble: turns out there's a RECORDING of his phone conversation pressuring Michigan Republicans to not certify Biden's win there in November, 2020. And Ronna McDaniel could go to jail - she's on the tape too, offering to pay for their lawyers. That is a bribe.

And for comic relief, Rudy Giuliani has gone from Moral Bankruptcy to Actual Bankruptcy. He's filed for Chapter 11. And while he's unlikely to get it granted, he has revealed who he owes money to it and the list somehow includes Hunter Biden! It's so bad it has inspired yet more "singing" on the part of your deluded tone deaf host.

B-Block (28:15) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Rep. Tim Burchett thinks there are Republicans in the House being blackmailed with honey pots. He describes in stark detail (as if he were in the room when it happened!) what that would've been like. Kiss The Washington Post goodbye; its new publisher was a Murdoch editor. And John Schneider threatens Biden again. John Schneider. The actor. The guy from 'Dukes Of Hazzard.' The actor you thought was DEAD.

C-Block (34:40) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: Only one way to close out 2023: with James Thurber's amazingly prescient saga of a man everyone thinks is a hero but is in fact a nightmare who must be stopped: "The Greatest Man In The World." And no, he wrote this 15 years before Trump was born.

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SEASON 2 EPISODE 96: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: 

There are still some around him who want him to stay above the fray on Trump and to stay above the fray on Trump morphing into Baby Hitler and especially to stay above the NEW fray on Trump and the 14th Amendment and your newest Hallmark Movie: A Trumpy Christmas At The Supreme Court.

But frankly, President Biden is at his best, his BEST, when HE is the spokesman for a nation dedicated to using all legal means to save this nation from Trump. He is not merely the President; he has a natural, perfect touch - blending matter-of-factness and the collective anger of 200 million Americans. Yesterday, tarmac at Milwaukee, Air Force One roaring in the background:

Reporter: "Is Trump an insurrectionist?"

Biden: "Certain things are self-evident. You saw it all. Now, whether the 14th Amendment applies, I’ll let the court make that decision. But he certainly supported an insurrection. No question about it. None. Zero. And he seems to be doubling down on - about everything."

No one can REMIND you of the obviousness of an answer more efficiently yet without any sense of condescension or correction than Joe Biden. No one. Now - do it every day.

ALSO: This is a good moment to review the scholarly study of the 14th Amendment that really touched all this off. It was co-authored by the former clerk to Chief Justice John Roberts, and a conservative constitutional law professor so revered that his resume is 35 pages long.

It's also a good moment to take a second look at Dementia J. Trump's bizarre flex about echoing Hitler. "I've never read 'Mein Kampf'" was followed by something even stranger - acknowledging that sure he and Hitler are saying the same things, just in different ways. 

It's another instant Biden ad, at the echelon of LBJ's "Daisy" Commercial from 1964. So I made one.

B-BLOCK (30:15) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Kellyanne Conway is back with something stupid. Next question: does she really exist or is she a dedicated comedian devoted to a bit, like the guy who portrayed Dame Edna? Charlie Kirk turns a rule about keeping highway rest stops open on Sunday into a battle of The Democrats Versus The Jesus. And Kari Lake is about to get Rudied. Sued by a Republican Arizona election official she slandered, she moved to dismiss and assumed it would be. It isn’t. She’s going to trial for defamation.

C-BLOCK (36:15) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: The leadership of ESPN’s famed P.R. department just switched from my friend Chris LaPlaca to my friend Josh Krulewitz. And that made me think of the time nearly 27 years ago when I left ESPN forever (well, only to return in 2005. And again in 2013. And again again in 2018).

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SEASON 2 EPISODE 95: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: It's historic, it's epic, it's unprecedented, it's just the start of a landslide of events in which the will of the nation to take every precaution against giving Trump the chance to turn us into his totalitarian, Hitlerian state will crash against a Supreme Court torn between serving its money-paying fascist masters, and enraging the public just enough to threaten its continued existence.

Plus, we've kinda buried the lede: the clock is already clicking on the Colorado State Supreme Court's verdict that the Disqualification Clause of the 14th Amendment does TOO preclude Trump from appearing on the state's presidential ballot (or its Republican primary ballot). Circumstances and printing deadlines give the United States Supreme Court just SEVENTEEN DAYS to overrule, or at least agree to hear an attempt TO overrule (and six of those days are Saturdays, Sundays, and/or Holidays).

Also the verdict? It came on an unlikely anniversary. It'll be wild.

JUST TO EMPHASIZE THE POINT HERE: Trump quadrupled down on his "destroying the blood" HItler rhetoric last night in Iowa, condemning immigrants. And he artfully denied he had ever read Mein Kampf (he's right; the book he kept by his beside in the '80s according to his first wife was "My New Order" - Hitler's favorite speeches). 

And thank you, Senator Tommy Tuberville. He's criticized Trump for NOT USING STRONG ENOUGH LANGUAGE against immigrants. Tommy lost too many games without a helmet.

B-BLOCK (28:50) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Fox Baseball commentator says he's not afraid to say Shohei Ohtani is the "most important signing" in Dodgers history. Huh. Woulda thought that Jackie Robinson guy was still more important. Lawyers dump a Trump co-defendant. Glenn Beck flunky Jason Whitlock pushes for ending votes for women.

C-BLOCK (35:35) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Since we’re talking about the Colorado Supreme Court and the 14th Amendment and the Conservatives and how they have had their way with this country for a quarter century, especially at the Supreme Court, maybe it’s time to mention the time I dated a conservative pundit who A) confirmed the vast right wing conspiracy postulated by Hillary Clinton, denying only that it was “vast” and B) was herself a former clerk to a Supreme Court Justice and C) who took me on our first date – of TWO – TO the Supreme Court where she arranged for me to sit… in Clarence Thomas’s chair.

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SERIES 2 EPISODE 94: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) BULLETIN: In a historic decision validating the obvious intent of the Disqualification Clause of the 14th Amendment, Colorado's State Supreme Court has ruled Trump is NOT eligible to appear on the state's ballot as a candidate for president next year because he participated in an insurrection against the United States of America.

The decision is likely to spawn a wave of copycat cases (and remember previous rulings in Arizona, Michigan and Minnesota did NOT rule the other way; they pertained only to knocking Trump off the Republican PRIMARY ballot) and will of course go to the federal Supreme Court.

Where the justices won't have much to decide. Only the future of the nation and the prospect of civil unrest.

The rest of this bulletin is a repeat of Tuesday's full 93rd episode of Countdown.(11:51) SPECIAL COMMENT: In his three-day orgy of insults, expanding his list of those who are "poisoning our nation's blood" from Hispanics to Africans and Asians, praising dictators and echoing Hitler, it's understandable that most of us missed it. But Trump also explained the one rug that will really tie his totalitarian room together: he's going to indemnify the police.

Translation: under Trump, the cops can kill George Floyd and be certain they will face no legal liability. They can kill YOU and be certain they will face no legal liability. It is literally a license to kill, a license granted to the 700,000 police officers at all state and city levels in this nation. Who already have weapons. Who already have tanks. Who already have affinity to Trump and the fascism and white supremacism he's selling. 

And now they will be freed of all restraint. And they'll owe that freedom to Trump.

They will become Trump's stormtroopers and his little SS. And if invoking the Insurrection Act to use the National Guard against unarmed civilians is too sharp-edged for some of his under-Fuhrers, Trump can simply dispatch local cops to shoot up a Black Lives Matter protest. Or an anti-Cop City protest. Or just an anti-Trump protest.

It may be his most totalitarian revelation since.

And naturally, the New York Times follows it with an op-ed titled "The Secret of Trump’s Appeal Isn’t Authoritarianism” and Axios begins the last full business week of the year with 1,000 words on Trump and not one of them mentions his plan to take over the cops or his quoting Hitler or his praising Xi and Kim. Jim Vandehei and Mike Allen have shown that they - and so many other institutions we think would recoil from authoritarianism - are in fact ready to serve them, just as long as they can continue to make profits. Axios has 1,000 words on Trump and they are all positive and normalizing and praising him fo having "much greater power than in his first term and fewer restraints on carrying out his political agenda.”

His political agenda is Totalitarianism, you useless slobs.

B-Block (32:29) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: Ruby Goodman and Shaye Moss are awarded $148 million from Giuliani. Giuliani re-slanders them. They sue again. He re-re-slanders them against last night. Clarence Thomas wasn't being bought; he was prostituting himself. Congressmen ask him to recuse. Mayor Eric Adams says NYC is the greatest because any day could be 9/11. (38:17 THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Wreaths Across America, Laura Loomer and the Senate staffer who was just, uh, receiving testimony. And the new allegation: that wasn't the first staffer CPAC's Matt Schlapp allegedly groped.

C-Block (45:17 THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Tells you something that a week ago somebody who didn't know asked me about the legendary sportscaster for whom I interned in 1978. That means he's been famous for 80 years, the last 10 of them after he passed away. The story of The Amazin' Bill Mazer.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: In his three-day orgy of insults, expanding his list of those who are "poisoning our nation's blood" from Hispanics to Africans and Asians, praising dictators and echoing Hitler, it's understandable that most of us missed it. But Trump also explained the one rug that will really tie his totalitarian room together: he's going to indemnify the police.

Translation: under Trump, the cops can kill George Floyd and be certain they will face no legal liability. They can kill YOU and be certain they will face no legal liability. It is literally a license to kill, a license granted to the 700,000 police officers at all state and city levels in this nation. Who already have weapons. Who already have tanks. Who already have affinity to Trump and the fascism and white supremacism he's selling. 

And now they will be freed of all restraint. And they'll owe that freedom to Trump.

They will become Trump's stormtroopers and his little SS. And if invoking the Insurrection Act to use the National Guard against unarmed civilians is too sharp-edged for some of his under-Fuhrers, Trump can simply dispatch local cops to shoot up a Black Lives Matter protest. Or an anti-Cop City protest. Or just an anti-Trump protest.

It may be his most totalitarian revelation since.

And naturally, the New York Times follows it with an op-ed titled "The Secret of Trump’s Appeal Isn’t Authoritarianism” and Axios begins the last full business week of the year with 1,000 words on Trump and not one of them mentions his plan to take over the cops or his quoting Hitler or his praising Xi and Kim. Jim Vandehei and Mike Allen have shown that they - and so many other institutions we think would recoil from authoritarianism - are in fact ready to serve them, just as long as they can continue to make profits. Axios has 1,000 words on Trump and they are all positive and normalizing and praising him fo having "much greater power than in his first term and fewer restraints on carrying out his political agenda.”

His political agenda is Totalitarianism, you useless slobs.

B-Block (22:22) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: Ruby Goodman and Shaye Moss are awarded $148 million from Giuliani. Giuliani re-slanders them. They sue again. He re-re-slanders them against last night. Clarence Thomas wasn't being bought; he was prostituting himself. Congressmen ask him to recuse. Mayor Eric Adams says NYC is the greatest because any day could be 9/11. (28:10) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Wreaths Across America, Laura Loomer and the Senate staffer who was just, uh, receiving testimony. And the new allegation: that wasn't the first staffer CPAC's Matt Schlapp allegedly groped.

C-Block (35:10) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Tells you something that a week ago somebody who didn't know asked me about the legendary sportscaster for whom I interned in 1978. That means he's been famous for 80 years, the last 10 of them after he passed away. The story of The Amazin' Bill Mazer.

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SERIES 2 EPISODE 92: BULLETIN EDITION/COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

BULLETIN: (1:40) In literally his last 24 hours in office, Donald Trump ordered a 10-inch thick binder of raw, ultra-secret intelligence about Russia interference, spying, and disinformation in this country - and American means of uncovering it - brought to the White House. He began to declassify it over the objection of every intelligence chief. His chief of staff Mark Meadows summoned disgraced ex-journalist John Solomon to the White House and handed him countless pages of the vital classified intelligence and a Solomon staffer "was even allowed to leave the White House with the declassified records in a paper bag.”

The original unredacted binder, containing thousands of pages, has never been recovered in the nearly three years since it was last seen in Trump's hands.

This comes from a new report this morning from CNN - startling even in the context of Trump's previously revealed treachery, treason, and intelligence theft. The implications of the report are obvious: Trump may still have the binder. Or he may have given it to someone else (the report implicates his former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows). Or he may have given it to a foreign country. Or sold it.

And perhaps more importantly: WHAT did Trump hope to achieve by giving its contents to John Solomon the night before Joe Biden's 2021 inauguration? Solomon was literally stopped as he scanned the documents, presumably for publication, by White House lawyers who demanded he return what Trump had given him. Was Trump hoping that the small percentage of documents that pertained to "Operation Crossfire Hurricane" would serve as a pretext for him to act to STOP the Biden Inauguration by using the Insurrection Act, or by other pretext, and with the military's help?

Is this nightmare of Trump stealing thousands of pages of intelligence about Russia's perfidy in our country - its violation of our national borders - its virtual invasion of our country, simply the preface for a darker plot in which Trump would have used the material as an excuse to illegally remain in power?

Does he still have the binder? Does he still have the plan?

(14:35) SPECIAL COMMENT: After spending their lives as bullies, Donald John Trump and Rudolph William Louis Giuliani will go out as cowards. Guess who did NOT testify yesterday as testimony ended in the Ruby Freeman/Shay Moss/Rudy Giuliani case? Yes, the defendant, who had promised after court Monday and Tuesday that he would testify, prove that he was telling the truth about them, and that they were lying about him.

Instead, his lawyer was reduced to painting Giuliani as a pathetic "flat-earther" who could never process reality. Giuliani said nothing as the case concluded and the jury deliberated for three hours what he should make out the check for - and they didn't reach a conclusion. When it takes jurors more than one day to decide how much money you owe the people you lied about, guess what: you’re going to owe the people you lied about… eleventy billion dollars.

It has been quite the week for Trumpian cowardice, led by Trump himself, because if the whole Giuliani "I'll prove I'm right" posturing sounds familiar, Trump did the SAME THING this week. He vowed to tell the truth – under oath - about the New York Business Fraud judge and the clerk and the attorney general and then suddenly, he vanished.

Cowardice was on sale at popular prices in Trump-land this week. In ATLANTA yesterday the letters of apology required for the plea deals for Trump 19 confessed conspirators Sidney Powell and Kenneth Chesbro were obtained through a Public Records Act motion and combined they stretched to just 26 words.

The importance of Giuliani and Trump wimping out is that it underscores that when the spit hits the fan, the bullies ARE the first to run. The lesson in this is simple: hit them. Hit them every day. Hit them with every lawsuit, every indictment, every protest, every public mockery, every embarrassment. Hit them with everything you have, every day, for the rest of their lives. Because what Trump proved by NOT being in a New York courtroom Monday, and what Giuliani proved by squirming at the defense table yesterday, is that you CAN break them. Both of them. Maybe not all at once, maybe not permanently. But they cannot bullshit their way out of EVERYTHING.

ALSO: You'll never believe how bad Vivek Ramaswamy's CNN ratings were. Or Charles Barkley's. And guess what else is back? Cajun Congressman Clay Higgins' "Ghost Buses" delusion. Except now they're MISSING! Complete with an interview by delusional ex-reporter Lara Logan. And her show literally opens with video of Logan playing in traffic.

B-Block (36:53) IN SPORTS: Gene Carr, "The New Kid In Town," and Ken MacKenzie of the 1962 Mets, in memoriam (42:24) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Elon Musk says an anti-fraud law is a violation of the 1st Amendment. Kevin McCarthy puts the artificial in Artificial Intelligence. And what kind of act could the New York GOP find to follow George Santos? How about a registered Democrat whose name is spelled Nazi - only with an "M."

C-Block (48:05) EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: An extraordinary Minnesota rescue is in danger of losing everything: 9 dogs and 130 more animals from Emus to Silky Chickens. (49:10) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: Man versus machine, reduced to Man versus Medicine Cabinet: "Nine Needles." And man versus transportation, reduced to mice: "The Mouse Who Went To The Country."

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SEASON 2 EPISODE 91: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: After spending their lives as bullies, Donald John Trump and Rudolph William Louis Giuliani will go out as cowards. Guess who did NOT testify yesterday as testimony ended in the Ruby Freeman/Shay Moss/Rudy Giuliani case? Yes, the defendant, who had promised after court Monday and Tuesday that he would testify, prove that he was telling the truth about them, and that they were lying about him.

Instead, his lawyer was reduced to painting Giuliani as a pathetic "flat-earther" who could never process reality. Giuliani said nothing as the case concluded and the jury deliberated for three hours what he should make out the check for - and they didn't reach a conclusion. When it takes jurors more than one day to decide how much money you owe the people you lied about, guess what: you’re going to owe the people you lied about… eleventy billion dollars.

It has been quite the week for Trumpian cowardice, led by Trump himself, because if the whole Giuliani "I'll prove I'm right" posturing sounds familiar, Trump did the SAME THING this week. He vowed to tell the truth – under oath - about the New York Business Fraud judge and the clerk and the attorney general and then suddenly, he vanished.

Cowardice was on sale at popular prices in Trump-land this week. In ATLANTA yesterday the letters of apology required for the plea deals for Trump 19 confessed conspirators Sidney Powell and Kenneth Chesbro were obtained through a Public Records Act motion and combined they stretched to just 26 words.

The importance of Giuliani and Trump wimping out is that it underscores that when the spit hits the fan, the bullies ARE the first to run. The lesson in this is simple: hit them. Hit them every day. Hit them with every lawsuit, every indictment, every protest, every public mockery, every embarrassment. Hit them with everything you have, every day, for the rest of their lives. Because what Trump proved by NOT being in a New York courtroom Monday, and what Giuliani proved by squirming at the defense table yesterday, is that you CAN break them. Both of them. Maybe not all at once, maybe not permanently. But they cannot bullshit their way out of EVERYTHING.

ALSO: You'll never believe how bad Vivek Ramaswamy's CNN ratings were. Or Charles Barkley's. And guess what else is back? Cajun Congressman Clay Higgins' "Ghost Buses" delusion. Except now they're MISSING! Complete with an interview by delusional ex-reporter Lara Logan. And her show literally opens with video of Logan playing in traffic.

B-Block (23:48) IN SPORTS: Gene Carr, "The New Kid In Town," and Ken MacKenzie of the 1962 Mets, in memoriam (29:19) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Elon Musk says an anti-fraud law is a violation of the 1st Amendment. Kevin McCarthy puts the artificial in Artificial Intelligence. And what kind of act could the New York GOP find to follow George Santos? How about a registered Democrat whose name is spelled Nazi - only with an "M."

C-Block (35:00) EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: An extraordinary Minnesota rescue is in danger of losing everything: 9 dogs and 130 more animals from Emus to Silky Chickens. (36:05) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: Man versus machine, reduced to Man versus Medicine Cabinet: "Nine Needles." And man versus transportation, reduced to mice: "The Mouse Who Went To The Country."

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SEASON 2 EPISODE 90: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Dementia J. Trump has really lived up to the name. Or - DOWN to it.

In a jaw-dropping development, even for him, even for his declining acuity, even in the vast Fog of Trump, he has just endorsed TWO rival candidates in the same congressional Republican primary. Saturday, at the Young Republicans banquet, Trump endorses Bo Hines, hoping to be chosen as the Republican running for North Carolina’s 6th Congressional District. Then yesterday, Trump writes “Addison McDowell just announced he is running for North Carolina’s 6th Congressional District… has my Complete and Total endorsement."

There are SIX Republicans in the primary. Plenty of time for Trump to endorse all six of them. The primary isn’t until the 5th of March. This should stop being a surprise.  The man is mentally impaired, declining fast, doesn’t know which number World War the NEXT World War would be, continually confuses Obama for Biden, doesn’t know what city he’s in, thinks Hungary’s Viktor Orban is the dictator of Turkey, and this is after he STARTED with any one (or more) of a dozen psychological and maybe physiological problems that could be summarized under the heading “his brain doesn’t work right.” It is not just a question of what Trump would do that he wanted to do but thought he couldn’t get away with the first time. It is also a question of what Trump would do that he would never know he was doing – out of sheer mental incapacitation.

Like endorsing two candidates in the same race. Within 89 hours.

Just to put a cherry on top of this cake of crazy, as I was recording the podcast Trump was speaking in Iowa. He was supposed to boast about the "U.S. Economy." But he didn't say that. He said the "Eunice Economy." Eunice. So good economic news for anybody named Eunice.

Also: Hunter Biden humiliates Jim Comer and Jim Jordan, and the Republicans address the danger that Joe Biden is to America by launching a formal inquiry into impeaching him and then immediately going on vacation for the rest of the year. The show trial impeachment of Joe Biden is SO fraudulent that it has even by noticed by Chuck Todd, who has written 1,947 of the dumbest words imaginable on the topic, including the idea - as if he had dreamt it up - that the concept of impeachment has now been diluted.

What Chuck did not mention but I will, is the role NBC News played on the day impeachment - and our original form of government - died. September 21, 1998, the day NBC and all the other networks prostituted themselves to the GOP and ran, unseen and unedited and without any context, Bill Clinton's Grand Jury testimony that had been illegally given to the Republican-run House Judiciary Committee and then illegally broadcast on all the networks while not one of tv's "journalists" made one complaint. It was before Chuck's time at NBC. It was NOT before mine.

B-Block (27:21) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Running the gamut from Twitter-X to Tesla to putting his thumb on the finger for Republican politicians, Elon Musk wins all three medals.

C-Block (34:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Any one, in any profession, can have a similar experience. But only in broadcasting does it signal the death of your youth. "Hey," your new colleague says. "I used to listen to you when I was a KID." I've been on both sides of the equation and I'll tell you those stories.

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SEASON 2 EPISODE 89: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: 

The Republican Party, a wholly owned subsidiary of Vladimir Putin and the government of Russia, faced - to paraphrase Churchill - the bleak choice between war and shame. It has chosen shame. And it will get war thrown in, a little later. This, simply, is true: THE UNITED STATES is not helping UKRAINE… UKRAINE is helping the United States. It is fighting OUR war: at the cost of ITS lives, at the cost of ITS territory, at the cost of the existence through which its people must suffer. To protect US from Russia. And the Republicans are sending him home to, in all probability, watch his nation and his people die, because the Republicans are no longer connected, in any way, to reality. ALL issues are political machinations. ALL crises are opportunities. ALL good causes are to be held hostage so that fascism in America can take away a little more freedom and even more morality from the nation the Republican Party has raped.

Once again, to re-purpose the infamous George W. Bush phrase – fighting them over there, so we don’t have to fight them over HERE. THEY are the Russians and THEIR fascist madman’s dreams are as non-secret as ours is. He wants to reestablish the size and composition of the Soviet Union. That’s all of Ukraine. Estonia. Georgia. Belarus, Latvia, half a dozen more. That’s control-by-proxy of what is now Czechia and Slovakia, Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, Albania, Poland, and half of Germany.

Putin’s response? The Russians have already carpet-bombed Kiev this morning.

And the Republican Party held THE DOOR OPEN FOR THEM, just as it tried to hold the door open for Adolf Hitler to subsume Europe 85 years ago. It will let him in and blame the Democrats about the Mexican border because the Republicans and the Republicans alone see a connection between a foreign dictator trying to absorb our allies and re-start the full-scale cold war, and immigration which the Republicans don’t actually want to SOLVE anyway because the point of the quote “border crisis” is to make sure there always IS a border crisis so the Republicans can scare their voters with it. And yet when Joe Biden says fine, we can couple these unrelated issues, let’s resolve everything, the Republicans say no. And we’re going on vacation. And Mike Johnson will need to see a detailed play script on exactly how Volodomir Zelensky is going to win and you think, man would I like to see Mike Johnson at the Ukrainian front and get to watch him break all land speed records while running away.

PLUS: A Democratic Congressman finally nails down what the Republicans want to impeach Biden FOR. "High crimes and misdemeanors." But what EVENT? "That's why we're having an inquiry." But which ACT? "I don't have time to go into details." They're going to charge him with being WOKE. Or with illegally fathering Hunter Biden. Hell, that idiot Giuliani worked Hunter Biden into his latest paranoid theory about his trial for slandering the two Georgia Election Workers.

B-Block (22:45) IN SPORTS: It's the greatest bad clip of sports play-by-play ever. The punch line is, we don't know the NAME of the hockey announcer, just that he describes a goal with "Look at that, look at this look at that." Speaking of bad, Tony Romo called Taylor Swift WHAT? (26:50) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: The climate change conference that doesn't call for an end to fossil fuels; Morning Joe confuses everybody (how is this news?) and your own piece of the suit Trump was wearing when they arrested him - for only $4653. As the joke goes, good news for Trump's finances. There's a lot of fabric when you wear an XXXXXL

C-Block (42:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: We are hovering near the 27th anniversary of the day I fell off a cliff shooting a Boston Market TV commercial. "Eat something," I said. And then - I did.

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SEASON 2 EPISODE 88: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Jack Smith dares our corrupt Supreme Court to answer the decisive question right here, right now: If Dementia J. Trump is right and he didn't just make up this "Presidential Immunity" bullshit out of whole cloth, why did Ford pardon Nixon? Why did Nixon negotiate a pardon with Ford before he resigned? Why did Trump say just three months ago he was advised to pardon himself, and that if elected again he would consider a self-pardon? 

Smith's bold move to get the Supreme Court to decide this ultimate question will, if nothing else, cut Trump's endless stalls off at the pass. But with Samuel Alito just yesterday issuing a dissent in another case that might as well have been pulled off one of Trump's insane ALL CAPS SOCIAL MEDIA WORDGASMS, might Alito lead SCOTUS into a disaster just horrific enough to destroy itself and the nation by siding with Trump's ahistorical, unconstitutional crap?

ALSO: On Day One of their trial, Giuliani's lawyer assures us he knows he did wrong and shouldn't be punished for slandering the two Georgia poll workers. Then Rudy goes out and slanders them again. Trump's mental deterioration is so obvious it was noticed even by Megyn Kelly (who looks like she could star in a re-make of "Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS"). And his "dictator" remarks are so obviously dangerous that even Peter Baker and The New York Times noticed - and the Trump campaign is trying to get him to ix-nay the ictatorship-day.

B-Block (20:00) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: Their political grandfathers wanted to appease Hitler and give him England and the Jews. Today's GOP is meeting with representatives of Hungarian strongman Orban to try to appease Putin and give him Ukraine and NATO. (24:37) IN SPORTS: Shohei Ohtani is both selfless and selfish. He will defer $68 million a year of his $70 million salary, giving his new Dodger employers a huge break in the baseball "luxury tax" - and himself on the real California state tax. And what happened to that Ohtani-To-Toronto story? My bet, from having seen it occur to another brilliant sports reporter, is that Jon Paul Morosi didn't screw up; his source did - or lied to him. I'll tell you the Jim Lampley/Larry Brown story. And I'll SING ABOUT MOROSI AND OHTANI. (34:31) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Vivek Ramaswamy's most cogent statement ever: leaves the mike on during a bathroom break. Climate deniers will get to watch another previously unconsidered disaster unfold. And Nancy Mace and her fiancé broke up? A class dame like her what talks about morning sex at a prayer breakfast?

c-Block (39:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: You are welcome to skip this, but I found a cassette over the weekend. It is a bunch of sportscasts recorded the week of my 18th birthday. The voice is high, the predictions are startlingly good. As are the cameos.

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SERIES 2 EPISODE 87: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Dictator-On-Day-One Trump continues to measure the windows for the new curtains in his White House, and I don’t know if that has been PROCESSED on the fascist side or if we have properly done so on the, you know, Non-Dictatorship Side but it is increasingly obvious that Trump is increasingly confident that he will seize power next year.

That is the ONLY possible explanation for what he has now done: leaking, to the gullible and willing stenographers from Axios Mike Allen and Jim Vandehei for publication yesterday, a set of choices for his administration that would make Jair Bolsonaro blush: Vice President Tucker Carlson, Chief of Staff Steve Bannon, CIA Director Kash Patel, Attorney General Stephen Miller, or Attorney General Mike Davis, or Attorney General J.D. Vance, Secretary of Defense Tom Cotton, Secretary of Denial Kari Lake, Secretaries-of-to-be-announced Kristi Noem, Byron Donalds, Johnny McEntee, and of course Secretary of Lecterns Sarah Huckabee. 

We will never fully now, not even after the autopsy, what PRECISELY is wrong with Trump’s brain but it seems clear that whatever it is one of its symptoms is that he must convince himself that he IS winning, WILL win, will ALWAYS win. Jack Smith is right and he IS a serial election denier but it’s deeper than that: at his advanced age and with his advanced diseases, if he ever believed he was defeated, he would die – figuratively or maybe literally. So the greatest relief he could possibly have would be to believe, 334 days before it happens, that he has already won the 2024 election and that is how he is behaving and I’m not sure WHAT to do with that but it HAS to make him sloppy and vulnerable and better minds than ours can problem figure out which soft spot on his head to PUSH.

What VALUE is there in saying “here’s Tucker Carlson: psychopathic white supremacist whose career stability makes Keith Olbermann’s look like that of Bob Cratchit – I’m going to put him in government. Along with Kari Lake, whose highest elected office was weekend weather-girl in Rock Island.” It’s the kind of things you do NOT to rally your base and NOT to scare your opponents but because you really can’t STOP yourself from doing them, and suddenly you are more convinced than ever than you can get away with them.

And if that isn’t a motto for the entire Trump Nazi Party I don’t know what is.

PLUS: Matt Gaetz is about to get Robespierred, J.D. Vance wants to get a head start on prosecutor writers. And competing January 6 Truthers fight it out over whose bullshit is true.

(17:35) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: MAGA Congresswoman McClain makes a fool of herself but not as much as would-be MAGA Congressman Philip Sean Grillo does. The NFL coach who really doesn't have to "hand it to" the 9/11 plotters. Poor Nick Fuentes and Vivek Ramaswamy pushing white supremacy without realizing that if the Trumpers run out of brown immigrants, the next people they'll purge will be... Fuentes and Ramaswamy.

B-Block (33:31) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: Mr. Preble Gets Rid Of His Wife

C-Block (43:32) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: A Box To Hide In

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SEASON 2 EPISODE 86: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: The seven justices of the Supreme Court have given no indication HOW they will rule on Trump’s disqualification under the 14th Amendment and they have given no indication WHEN they will rule but here’s a bigger issue: They have no RIGHT to rule. The 14th Amendment clearly, unquestionably, inarguably, and ETERNALLY states that an insurrectionist can’t serve in an elected federal or state office, or a lot of other offices, and it doesn’t allow anybody to overrule the Constitution because the 14th Amendment already HAS a means for disqualified traitors to appeal – the drafters OF the 14thAmendment BUILT THAT REMEDY IN - and they have already designated two bodies to overrule disqualification under special circumstances, and those bodies are the United States House of Representatives and the United States Senate and if they each vote by two-thirds to let Trump back on the ballot, he’s back on the ballot. That is, for all practical purposes, IN the Constitution! And if they DON’T, he's not. That is also, for all practical purposes, in the Constitution!

And we KNOW this because it was written, principally, by Congressman John Bingham, a Radical Republican who not only was one of the House Managers for the IMPEACHMENT of President Johnson, but earlier Bingham had been the Assistant Judge Advocate General during the trial of the accomplices of the man who murdered Lincoln, John Wilkes Booth. And if John Bingham’s attitude towards insurrectionists wasn’t clear enough from the 14thAmendment and the completely justified slow roasting of President Andrew Johnson – just a reminder: the eight co-conspirators charged in the Lincoln Assassination that the co-author of the 14th Amendment PROSECUTED included Mrs. Mary Surratt who ran the boarding house where the conspirators met, and the stagehand at Ford’s Theater who did nothing more than hold Booth’s horse while he went in and murdered the president. They HANGED half of the defendants – including the woman who ran the boarding house. Three of the other four were given life sentences. The guy who held the horse got six years at hard labor. They DID make a concession to Mrs. Surratt. While they were preparing to hang her and the others they let her sit in a chair.

The authors of the 14th Amendment weren’t EFFING AROUND.

Plus: I've GOT it. I've GOT President Biden's version of the famous only-ran-once only-needed-to-run once Lyndon Johnson 1964 "Daisy" commercial. YOU'RE WELCOME.

B-Block (24:46) IN SPORTS: After just 5-1/2 years of rumors: Juan Soto to the Yankees? The White Sox to Nashville? And why, yes, I did sell a 1914 Babe Ruth Baltimore Orioles rookie card for seven figures - why do you ask? (33:56) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: NYC Mayor Adams (appointed, he says, by God) has an approval rating of 28%. RFK Jr confesses to flying on Jeffrey Epstein's jet. Musk lets Carlson re-platform Jones on Twitter.

C-Block (38:45) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: The fanciness of the British accent trips me up on my way to interviewing Mickey Mantle. Also the guy WITH the woman with the fancy British accent was wearing a CAPE.

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SEASON 2 EPISODE 85: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Jack Smith's Shocker: He will prosecute Trump on the premise that the January 6th Coup Attempt started in 2012. A new filing with the Judge indicates Smith will argue he tried to push this country over the edge and into violent revolution and dictatorship in November and December of 2020 and January 2021, Donald Trump was NOT RESPONDING to what he falsely believed was a stolen election. And he was NOT RESPONDING to faulty legal advice. And he was not RESPONDING to changing partial vote counts. And he was not RESPONDING to unexpected outcomes in swing states. It was all a plan. An EIGHT YEAR OLD plan. A well-rehearsed plan.

The “Rigged Election” lie of 2020 began in 2012… when Trump tweeted after Obama’s re-election, quote: “He lost the popular vote by a lot; We should have a revolution in this country…" “We should march on Washington and stop this…” “The election is a sham and a travesty…” And - most familiarly - “Let’s fight like hell.”

Plus, Smith introduces an unidentified co-conspirator, a Trump staffer who tried to start a riot to derail the counting of ballots in Detroit on November 4, 2020, and was the go-between from the campaign to the actual rioters in the arena.

Plus: the same day I suggest using the insurrection act against Trump, Steve Bannon and Kash Patel promise to jail journalists and Democrats and destroy government, and the Speaker of the House says he will release all remaining January 6 video but blur the faces of people on it so they cannot be prosecuted. It's literally lawless obstruction of justice.

We are, AGAIN, at the political equivalent of the moment in the movie Rosemary’s Baby when Mia Farrow shakes off the drugs and the anesthetics and the gaslighting and shouts “This is no dream! This is really happening!”

Use the tools we have, no matter how blunt they are, rather than leave them to be used against us.

B-Block (27:05) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: Johnson signs off on impeachment, Nehls admits it's being done just to give Trump "ammo," Gomer Comer stumbles over his explanation, Mitt Romney, grandson of a political refugee from Mexico, wants a sealed border, Nancy Mace loses another reason to get out of bed in the morning. (31:30) IN SPORTS: I'm going to assume Ohtani is NOT going anywhere that's been in the news. And taxpayer dollars to get a football team into a playoff? (37:41) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Julie Kelly doesn't understand laws, Thomas Massie does an antisemitism, and Ronna McDaniel is the latest to not know who was president in 2020.

C-Block (41:52) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Tales of Ted Turner and me and the unlikely guy who wrote me a fan letter about a previous story I did on Ted.

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SERIES 2 EPISODE 84: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Here's an idea. What if - instead of waiting for Trump to manipulate our system and get elected again and use The Insurrection Act against AMERICA, we just used it against him - today?

It's not like he's not guilty of... you know... INSURRECTION.

B-Block (28:03) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: Deadline nears on Ukraine $: How could the GOP be anti-gun? Witness tampering in the Georgia Trump case (with singing). The online Mehdi Hasan petition exceeds 15,000. Trump calls Jimmy Carter "The First Lady" and never even notices. (33:13) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: COP28 actually put a UAE Oil Sultan in charge and they're all shocked he denied fossil fuels are killing the planet. Trump Diapers now on sale. And Christian Ziegler is not only in huge legal trouble, but the other woman was only really interested in his Missus.

C-Block (38:36) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: I guess because I'm suggesting using The Insurrection Act to SAVE America rather than leaving it for Trump to use to DESTROY America, I want to tell the saga of "A Christmas Story" and how Little Ralphie finally figured out how to defeat the bully, Scut Farkas (by invoking the insurrection act!)

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SERIES 2 EPISODE 83: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: 

I’d like to apologize for what MSNBC has become.

Again.

I'd like to apologize AGAIN for what MSNBC has become.

They fired Mehdi Hasan yesterday. He hosted one hour a week on Sunday nights and it might have been the best hour on the network because while I don’t know that I agreed with even MOST of what he said, he wasn’t doctrinaire and he didn’t simply repeat what Maddow says and he didn’t pretend to be a moderate because being a Trump propagandist didn’t work out for him like Scarborough does and he didn’t struggle to read a prompter full of Democratic Party talking points like Joy Reid does and to my knowledge he never fell asleep on the air like Andrea Mitchell does nor cause the viewer to fall asleep like Hayes and O’Donnell do.

I do NOT know for certain why they fired him, I do NOT know if he said something about the Middle East they did not like, I do not know if the timing was coincidental. Let’s put it this way: they either fired him for his Middle East opinions DURING conflict in the Middle East OR they fired him for something else DURING conflict in the Middle East and thus made themselves look guilty of firing him for his Middle East opinions anyway.

Just as important as the continuing asinine and ignorant conduct of the management of MSNBC and NBC and NBC News is the issue of personal integrity of the people at what is god help us the closest thing to a liberal news network in this country. MORE important than the FIRING of Mehdi Hasan, is the response from MSNBC’s stars about the firing of Mehdi Hasan. Want to read what Maddow and O’Donnell and Hayes and Wagner and Reid and everybody else said about this:

Wanna read it again?

The POINT of HAVING the money IS that you SHOULD say "F YOU" to somebody at least once in your life. Not like Musk did; saying it to people who for some reason don’t want their ads next to antisemitic and Pizzagate posts. But in DEFENSE of something. FOR something. If there are three people at NBC – hell, three people in NEWS – three people in TELEVISION – who can at least get away with a loud pointed protest – hell, can get away with saying “If Mehdi Hasan goes or if Tiffany Cross goes or if we keep diluting our product down to badly rewritten Democratic Party press releases, we’re on strike” – if there are THREE people in media – besides like Taylor Swift - who can say “We are standing on our principles” and will LIVE TO TELL ABOUT IT, it’s Chris Hayes and Lawrence O’Donnell. Of course – you’ve gotta HAVE principles.

ALSO the Judge Engoron Trump gag order is back in place and Trump is still endangering the judge, his wife, and now his son. And Politico says the editorial that provoked Trump to revive the self-own "I will kill ObamaCare" not only revivified the ISSUE; it revivified Biden’s campaign. Emails went out within hours. Nancy Pelosi got on a press call Tuesday. Biden hit Trump on video Wednesday. Commercials are already running on the state level. And then the Wall Street Journal ran another editorial on ObamaCare… attacking… TRUMP. For his failure to repeal AND his failed response to their first editorial. Whereupon Trump replied by attacking… the Wall Street Journal by calling the paper quote “Globalist” and the Editorial Page a “mess.” The Editorial Page whose editorial about ObamaCare got him so excited that he again vowed to replace ObamaCare and thus revitalized the Biden campaign and I haven’t fully diagrammed this bizarre confluence of events but I think the gist of it is: if Biden is re-elected we can thank… The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board?

B-Block (31:46) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: House Judiciary subpoenas Harlan Crow and Leonard Leo and enrages GOP. Good. Wanna guess how many copies Marjorie Greene's book sold in its first week? You need only three digits. And Henry Kissinger is dead. Are we certain? (37:35) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Even The Daily Caller has fired Tucker Carlson. Lanah Burkhardt and book banning for fun and profit. And Three's Company: Florida GOP Chief accused of sexual battery by a woman who says she and he and his wife - who is the co-founder of Moms For Liberty - had a long-standing menage-a-trois polygamy thing going on. Oh so it's THAT kind of liberty! Moms for three-ways!

C-Block (44:32) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: The first time I've ever read aloud Thurber's death-by-a-thousand-cuts critique of Salvador Dali's autobiography. "The Secret Life Of James Thurber."

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SEASON 2 EPISODE 82: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Trump has made a stochastic threat against the President of the United States: “Joe Biden should stop his Election Interfering Thugs before it is too late for him and the rest of the Country,” That is a threat and if you wrote it somewhere in public – depending on your rap sheet and past mental health – Secret Service might stop by for a visit. And Trump’s rap sheet includes manifest and growing clinical insanity. Oh and an attempt to violently overthrow the government of the United States. In the same post: “He’s got the Justice Department and others suing me… it opens up a very big and dangerous pandora’s box” which is yet another stochastic call for somebody to attack the Justice Department or its leaders or Jack Smith or all of the above, to say nothing of what – if he keeps saying it this loudly this often, voters might actually notice – is the hundredth repetition of his promise that he will actually do what he’s falsely claiming is being done to him – what he already DID do on a small scale – use the DOJ as a personal tool for revenge and suppression of any opposition.

Trump also attacked Judge Engoron’s clerk and his wife: “Judge Engoron’s Trump Hating wife, together with his very disturbed and angry law clerk, have taken over control of the New York State Witch Hunt Trial aimed at me…” Again, this is the clerk he has doxxed, and now threatened; and added to this is Engoron’s wife. Five times in just four minutes yesterday Trump posted screenshots sent to him by the lunatic Laura Loomr of posts a Twitter-X account with various anti-Trump memes, over which Trump wrote “This is the judge’s wife saying this” and “Another from Judge Engoron’s Wife” and “Yet another from Judge Engoron’s wife” and “Judge Engoron’s Wife” and finally he ran out and just repeated “Judge Engoron’s Wife.”Spoiler alert: it’s NOT Judge Engoron’s Wife. 22 days ago she told Newsweek quote “I do not have a Twitter account. This is not me. I have not posted any anti-Trump messages.”

Even if Mrs. Engoron IS somehow lying, boldly and on-the-record and with no wiggle room of course as we know, what a judge’s wife does in her life or on social media is immediate grounds for the judge’s impeachment. Right Ginni Thomas?

And if he wasn’t self-destructing when he endorsed the Anti-semitic Great Replacement theory last week, or if he wasn’t self-destructing when he endorsed Pizzagate on Tuesday, he WAS self-destructing at the New York Times Dealbook Summit yesterday, daring advertisers not to advertise, implying no one could blackmail him with mere money. And congrats to interviewer Andrew Ross Sorkin for not getting any of it on him when Musk turned into a human debris field.

A lesson, kids: never let them inject the Ozempic into your brain.

B-Block (23:40) IN SPORTS: Aaron Rodgers plays a little football and doesn't rip anything. And could the biggest baseball import from Japan make his decision based on what uniform number a team is willing to give him? (29:09) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: The cognitive decline of Sean Hannity, Ron DeSantis "literally" standing in front of a freight train, and I'm back on Twitter-X thanks to the firm hand of Lauren Boebert.

C-Block (34:30) EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: Myra - and her unborn puppies - in Devore, Ca. (35:30) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Every year at this time I am reminded that a Major League Baseball team once managed to get me fired from a job I hadn't started at. Which means that since 2000 they have done that, as often as they've won the World Series.

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SERIES 2 EPISODE 81: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Trump is actually trying to keep his ass out of prison for subverting the 2020 election, by insisting that Russia interfered in the 2016 election. "Russia Russia Russia. And THAT, your honor, is the case for the defense of Dementia J. Trump"

Trump is demanding that Judge Tonya Chutkan give his lawyers access to the FULL classified intelligence report proving the 2016 Russian interference, and so what if he’s spent seven uninterrupted years honking and bleating about “The Russia Hoax” and denigrating the intelligence community’s conclusion that Russia interfered in the 2016 election, while insisting there was no Russian interference and making it an article of faith within the Republican Cult that he was cleared of any Russian collusion and election subversion and so what if he WASN’T cleared of Russian collusion and election subversion because there WAS no Russian collusion and election subversion except now his defense is: there was TOO Russian collusion and election subversion.

“Whereas the Special Counsel’s Office falsely alleges that President Trump ‘eroded public faith in the administration of the election,’” write his lawyers in a light night filing demanding more documents for their defense against Jack Smith’s Washington case, “the 2016 Election Intelligence Community Assessment uses strikingly similar language to attribute the origins of that erosion to foreign influence – that is, foreign efforts to ‘undermine public faith in the U-S democratic process,”

Plus: Some of Mike Pence's interview with Jack Smith and his Grand Jury testimony has leaked and Trump could go to jail over the placement of a comma. In his book, Pence recounted that he spoke to Trump on Christmas Day of 2020 when the Pence-Can-Block-The-Certification Plot was already well underway. In the book Pence quotes himself as telling Trump – and the punctuation is essential: “You know, I don’t think I have the authority to change the outcome." But Pence told the investigators that the comma shouldn’t have been there at all and what he said was, quote, “You KNOW I don’t think I have the authority to change the outcome,” which suggests that Trump had begun to pressure – to threaten – Pence to violate the constitution at least 13 days before the January 6th coup attempt. And that is DAMNING. Not the colloquial “y’know” but “You KNOW I can’t do that.”

And some of Liz Cheney's book is out and the shock of all shocks: Donald Trump has actually spent some of his adult life not eating: “She recounts the moment she first found out that McCarthy, fearing he had lost his ability to fundraise, secretly went to visit Trump at Mar-a-Lago just three weeks after the Jan. 6 attack. At first, Cheney thought the photo of the two men smiling and shaking hands was fake. But she was incredulous at McCarthy’s defense of his visit. He claimed Trump’s staff summoned him. “Mar-a-Lago? What the hell, Kevin?” Cheney asked. “They’re really worried,” McCarthy said. “Trump’s not eating, so they asked me to come see him.” “What? You went to Mar-a-Lago because Trump’s not eating?” Cheney responded. “Yeah, he’s really depressed,” McCarthy said.

Oh have I got a couple jokes for YOU.

B-Block (21:19) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: Elon Musk insists on Twitter that Pizzagate is real and the only person who proved it wasn't has gone to jail for child porn. So I'm leaving Twitter. (27:30) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: BBC Washington anchor covers Rosalynn Carter memorial, mispronounces her first name THREE TIMES; Ron DeSantis may have helped kill a guy; Senator John Kennedy gets blown out of the water by a mild-mannered gun violence expert.

C-Block (34:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: My friend who wrote all the original "This Is SportsCenter" commercials, Hank Perlman, visited yesterday. So it's time to review our greatest work, especially the famous Alexi Lalas Guitar Smash episode.

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