Countdown with Keith Olbermann

SEASON 3 EPISODE 80: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Trump’s chief thug wants to put Rachel Maddow in prison. Steve Bannon: “I need investigations, trials and then incarceration… Andrew Weissmann on MSNBC and Rachel Maddow and all of them." Oh and just so we are clear on this: YOU are next. Or close to it. Trump is this close to suing YOU for writing mean tweets about him. Or for not voting for him. Or, if your name is Anne Selzer, for putting out a Des Moines Register election poll that didn’t favor him. Emboldened by such pathetic self-prostituting excuses for American leadership as Jeff Bezos, Patrick Soon-Shiong, Joe Scarborough -- and Bob Iger and all the snatch-defeat-from-the-jaws-of-victory cowards at Disney and ABC News -- Trump has now lost any remaining sense that anybody is even going to try to stop him. It is hard to point at a crazy man and say he’s now lost it, but… he’s now lost it. You are next. Well, you’re probably behind me, and we’re both behind Maddow, and she’s behind Anne Selzer, but you know what I mean. So Bannon wants to lock up Maddow and others at MSNBC and their co-workers Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski scuttled to Mar-a-Lago to save their own worthless asses. Ten days ago the entertainment news site Variety asked me to write a piece for their year-in-review on what MSNBC should do now. The TL;dr was: double down because all the other progressive and neutral news organizations have fled in fear and left you the same kind of opportunity for monopoly that we had there in 2005. The audience will be back with you directly. Stay the course. Of course you have to fire Mr. and Mrs. Scarborough or you let them turn you into MSN-Vichy. I'll give you a longer version of what I did for the magazine.  B-Block (32:07) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Trump's Tariffs Plan. It apparently never dawned on him it would draw retribution. Ontario's premier threatens to cut off the Canadian electricity that directly services 1.5 million Americans. A Democratic pollster says the campaign should've been food costs not democracy and never once gets near the actual answer: both. And the most recent GOP candidate for Governor of Pennsylvania can't tell the difference between a "downed drone" and a "toy movie prop headed for the next Comicon." C-Block (41:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: At 86, Ted Turner is in-and-out. At 43, when I worked for him, none of us would have bet on him still being in, at all. He was a crazy man and a danger to himself, and thank goodness he steered out of the skid. But the crazy version left me countless stories, like the time he nearly fired me over the cameraman's choice of hats, and I nearly responded by socking him.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SERIES 3 EPISODE 79: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: It is now revealed that at a Thanksgiving-eve dinner on a patio at the Mar-a-Lago Crapshack, Trump had his minions play a recording of the national anthem sung by the January 6th Terrorists. Some of them at Trump’s table put their hands over their hearts as the people who stormed our capitol intending to take over our government sang words, the actual meaning of which they cannot possibly understand. Per The Wall Street Journal, one of those who put his hand over his heart during this travesty was… Mark Zuckerberg. Zuckerberg leads the parade of pathetic billionaires also including Jeff Bezos and Sam Altman, who just happen to be donating a million dollars to Trump's inauguration committee. Except for ABC News, which is donating FIFTEEN million to Trump's presidential museum (which may be in an empty warehouse or a sinkhole somewhere) to settle his frivolous and easily winnable defamation case against George Stephanopoulos. On March 22nd, 1979, I was ushered into the small office of a Vice President at the ABC television series “The Wide World of Sports.” His wife had been an assignment editor at the local New York TV station I had interned at the previous summer – though we were not there simultaneously. He and the Mrs. and my friends from the local station all warned me this gentleman would not have a job for me nor even any job leads, just advice. His name was Robert Iger. “Call me Bob,” he insisted. Within fifteen years he was president of ABC and thus the boss of all my bosses at ESPN and he was my boss there three times and for two further years at ABC and he gave me brilliant advice I've repeated a thousand times: if you want to be on the air, don't take an off-air job. It has truly changed lives. And now, after 45-and-a-half years I’d like to repay Bob Iger and give him MY advice: Sell ABC News to somebody who actually cares about the future of news and the future of journalism and the future of this country because you guys at Disney ain’t it any more. What do you think you bought for yourself here, Bob? Trump’s gratitude? Him somehow remembering you fondly the NEXT time ABC News does something he doesn’t like, like, say, accurately report how many people show up to his inauguration, or how many insurrectionists he pardons, or how many people die during the migrant round-ups into the migrant concentration camps? Even if Trump CAN still remember do you think he WILL remember? Or all the mini-Trumps? What you have done is merely become part of the process by which freedom of the press, and freedom in the nation, dissolve. My advice, offered again in gratitude for YOUR advice in 1979: sell ABC News to somebody who cares. B-Block (27:00) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Did Trump demand the end of Daylight Savings Time but think he was demanding the end of STANDARD Time? Van Jones plus Chris Cillizza equals Extra Large Stupid. And the New York radio station that is quite literally running a bulletin "sound" for "DRONE WATCH 2024." (39:27) SPORTSBALLCENTER: I have actually solved baseball's playoff crisis, the one in which in three of the last four years the team with the best record has been eliminated in its first playoff round and 14 of the 24 division winners have, too. It's actually a really really good idea. C-Block (52:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Offended by this CNN crapfest every night where Abby Phillip lets this jackass Scott Jennings insult everyone and everything good about America, in front of an ever-shrinking audience? We tried this at MSNBC long ago only the clown was Michael Savage. It didn't end well for us and it ain't gonna end well for CNN.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SERIES 3 EPISODE 78: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: How did this not generate more headlines? It's just a proposed maneuver out of the legal morass Judge Juan Merchan has helped Trump create. But New York District Attorney Alvin Bragg has suggested that one way to solve this sentencing/but he's president/but we can't dismiss the conviction is to treat Trump - in a legal sense - the way you treat a convicted defendant who DIES before he appeals or is sentence. In short: just pretend Trump is dead. SPEAKING OF A BROKEN LEGAL SYSTEM: I'm not advocating for that, nor for guys assassinating CEO's five blocks from my home. But our legal system is broken and it would behoove commentators, columnists, writers, those who suck up to the moneyed class, and conservatives to stop being so surprised at the idea that maybe a majority of Americans is not as outraged as the wealthy are at the actions of Luigi McDreamy. Maybe you need to wonder more about why they perceive the legal system to be broken and the corporations to be legal excuses for nobody being responsible for innocent people dying and being injured. CHRIS WRAY OBEYS IN ADVANCE: He'll quit as FBI director before the inauguration. Maybe he can make a comeback as Trump's second pick for DNI because Tulsi Gabbard is being attacked from the left, the middle, and now from The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board. Also Hegseth's been caught in another lie, about something he had said in public 48 hours earlier.  B-Block (23:46) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: The World Cup goes to Saudi Arabia because everything is for sale. And an announcement of a candidacy for New York City Council suddenly made me realize that Bill DeBlasio and Eric Adams both became mayor here in part because between us one of my exes and I screwed around with the 2013 campaign. OOPS. (30:22) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Yes she sneaked a gold-plated gun into Australia but how else was she supposed to protect herself at clown school? Speaking of: Newsweek beats the L.A. Times to a "Fairness Meter" for its articles. And Elon Musk insists there's no homelessness because now is exactly the right time for a CEO to assert that. C-Block (39:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: My favorite Holiday story. The day, on my way to interview Mickey Mantle, I ran into somebody I mistook for just another fan - albeit a well-dressed man. Oops. Turned out he was one of the stars of the greatest movie ever made.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SEASON 3 EPISODE 77: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Trump's return to the world of TV interviews is important (and crazy) but the shooting of the head of United Health Care just blocks from my home actually seems to be one of the watershed moments of 21st Century American Politics. We have often descended into the slough of despond that all political parties, voting, law, government, the entirety of the power structure mean nothing and that the only way to change things is violence. I think we're entering such a stage. If so: fasten your seat belts, it's going to be a bumpy night. AS TO TRUMP apart from his latest threat to imprison opponents (everybody on the January 6 House Committee should go to jail) did anybody notice his insistence that we are "subsidizing" Mexico and Canada by $100 Billion a year and at those rates they should become states. Wait. What? Mr. Numb Nuts Psycho President? If Mexico is a STATE in the United States – you know, where you are right now – the people LIVING there become CITIZENS of the United States, so not only can’t you deport people from the US State of Mexico… but you can’t put up a wall between Texas and the state of Mexico and in fact you can’t inhibit movement BETWEEN Mexico and any state of the union. I hope somebody told MAGA about Trump’s new Mexico solution: make it a state. That’d be two senators from Mexico and if New York has 20 million people, 26 congressmen, Mexico with130 million people at 13 congressmen per 10 million residents would get 169 Congressional seats. Trump proposes giving Mexico 169 seats in the US Congress. Also a GOP Senate operative uses the A-word on Tulsi Gabbard, and a Trump operative is ready to blackmail Republican Senators to get Pete Hegseth confirmed anyway. B-Block (25:00) THE OTHER WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: "Democratic" Governor Polis again sides with Sideshow Bob Kennedy. Laura Loomer isn't just hateful, she's stupid. And Marshal Petain would be proud: Jeff Bezos, Joe Scarborough, and Mika Brzezinski all double down on collaborating with the Trump Regime. C-Block (35:55) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: My Lunch With Elie. How a delightful afternoon getting to meet Elie Mystal meant I did NOT meet Martin Scorsese. That, in turns, evokes the story of Francis Ford Coppola unintentionally paying a former colleague of mine something like a million dollars to be in the background of one scene in Godfather II.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SEASON 3 EPISODE 76: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: I'd like to thank the one person doing the most to undermine and derail the Trump transition, and dissipate any momentum he might have. Trump himself. He learned nothing from Matt Gaetz and so Pete Hegseth spends another day "twisting slowly, slowly in the wind." We are now reduced to Hegseth's mother pleading directly on Fox to Trump - staring in the camera as she does so - to continue supporting her idiot child for Secretary of Defense. But when asked if she'll testify on his behalf to the Senate confirmation hearings she refused to commit to it. Amazeballs. What's relevant here is that among the big names mentioned as Plan B is yet another Republican congressman. If he gets the job rather than Hegseth or DeSantis or Ernst, the GOP will have a House margin of one (1) vote - which isn't a margin at all. ALSO: I TOLD YOU SO. Sunday night I suggested not only should Biden pardon Hunter but that he should pardon everybody else he thinks of. Last night Politico reported they're talking about it, but that only the names Adam Schiff, Tony Fauci, and Liz Cheney came up. And in case like me you thought Chris Cillizza and Chuck Todd were the same person, have I got a shock for you. B-Block (33:43) SPECIAL COMMENT NO. 2 - I have been pondering when we started on the road to Trump - or at least when we discovered that what should be the final guardrail to protect American democracy, the President himself, wasn't a guardrail at all. I've settled on January 19, 2009 and read you what I wrote and said that night and even what sounds awfully like a prediction of the advent of Trump Brand Stupid Fascism. C-Block (52:00) IN SPORTS: Have you heard about it? The worst sports idea of all-time? "The Golden At Bat" as proposed by Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred. It is a gimmick as stupid as if you stopped the 7th Game of the NBA Finals and had the title decided by a free-throw shooting contest. And it's supposed to "attract young people to the game" which is a euphemism for "we expect you fans to be intensely concerned with how much money we owners make."See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SEASON 3 EPISODE 75: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN Special Edition (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Some time over Thanksgiving in Nantucket the light bulb went off over Joe Biden’s head and he finally realized that no, the norms and traditions and institutions to which he and most of the rest of us have dedicated our lives did NOT miraculously re-grow, did NOT suddenly spring, fully restored and intact, from the ground. He saw that not only was his son about to go to prison because of his own foolish decision to not interfere with an enfeebled Department of Justice, and because of the dictator it let get away, who would now aim his DOJ at Hunter Biden - and Joe Biden - and anybody else - for personal revenge. The President figured this out and pulled his son out of harm’s way. And much of he left attacked him for it. They are Morons. I don’t care about Hunter Biden, particularly. I care about the fact that we are 48 days away from a nascent military dictatorship taking over this government, supported by an unknown percentage of the population that wants to see Hunter and Joe Biden hanging from construction cranes parading through the streets, and wants to see Trump in power for life. A We JUST got one more guy out of their sights and we JUST shoved one more plotline up Trump, and up Kash Patel and Pete Hegseth and Stephen Miller and whichever other lunatics Trump wants to take over the asylum. And countless liberals – and anti-Trumpers – think this will actually provide cover for Trump pardoning the January 6thinsurrectionists because apparently for the last ten years they have been hallucinating and thinking Trump has ever bothered to seek cover for anything. Or they think we should be "better" than them. The Trumpists are planning to put us in camps. I don’t care if we are better than them or worse than them or monstrous to them. If somebody’s going to go to camps, it ain’t going to be us, it’s got to be them. End of debate. In addition to explaining why this was not just the right decision but should be a template of thousands of further pardons, permit me to excoriate a bunch of the clowns who cannot see the forest for the trees. Or the fact that the forest is on fire. And then for giggles we have the moronic comments of Nate Silver and Dinesh D'Souza, complaining about pardons when he himself got an undeserved pardon. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SEASON 3 EPISODE 74: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:44) BULLETIN: Biden pardons his son. Terrific. Fully support. Now, do the rest of us. Literally offer a pardon to anybody Trump might go after for prosecuting him, criticizing him, covering him, or looking at him funny. I want a 1-800-PARDONME hotline. I want 10 million pardons. SPECIAL COMMENT (2:44): And the pardons should be a jumping off point for how Biden can protect the citizens of this country. What does THIS mean, exactly? “I do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.” Joseph Robinette Biden Junior has taken that exact oath NINE times – seven, as Senator, two as Vice President. He has sworn to defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and nothing I have found, and no Constitutional scholar I have consulted, indicates that once taken, those oaths expire.  And the obligation to defend the United States becomes more profound still now that presidents have been immunized by the Supreme Court from prosecution for.. effectively anything. The incoming President, the one who wants an unqualified toady like Kash Patel to head the FBI and desperately wanted a lawless menace like Matt Gaetz to head the DOJ but will instead settle for a cheap lawyer who LED the “lock her up” chanting against Hillary Clinton at the Republican convention, that president-to-be will be immune and thus unstoppable. The CURRENT  president IS immune and thus unstoppable. And already in power and in command and… under oath. So. This raises this theoretical constitutional question: Do the TEN oaths Joe Biden took as Senator, as Vice President, and as President, even PERMIT him to NOT act against enemies, BOTH foreign and domestic – and defend the Constitution of the United States? So help him god? When the Supreme Court has immunized him from prosecution for doing… anything? Anything at all? As long as it’s official? B-Block (24:52) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: You do realize that Trump's lies about his phone call with the president of Mexico means we will, soon or late, invade Mexico, right? The quote from the Trump Transition Team member to Rolling Stone is "How MUCH do we invade Mexico?" Trump has now nominated both his daughters' fathers-in-law as envoys to the Middle East - including the one who set up his brother-in-law with a taped sex sting and sent the tape to his own sister. And why did JD Vance post a meme of himself in a dress? C-Block (36:00) THE OTHER WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Vivek Ramaswamy self-owns over unelected bureaucracy. We've found George Carlin's Worst Doctor In The World and he owns The Los Angeles Times. And Sideshow Bob (RFK Junior) is seen, uh, hanging out, in his wife's new supplements commercial.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SEASON 3 EPISODE 73: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Is Elon Musk going to buy MSNBC and turn it into pro-Trump propaganda channel? And, if not Musk – could somebody else? I may be asking the question backwards. Is there anybody to STOP someone, Musk or not, from buying MSNBC and turning it into pro-Trump propaganda? Well – who stopped Musk from doing that to Twitter? Who stopped Warner BROS Discovery from buying CNN and doing that incompletely but sufficiently enough to render CNN irrelevant in television news? We don’t know for certain that MSNBC is for sale. Companies like Comcast take assets like MSNBC – which by itself has made a profit of something around five or six billion dollars since I made it into “the liberal news channel” in 2006 – and spin them off into another separate company they also own, and throw in CNBC and Oxygen and The Golf Channel and USA Network and half a dozen other assets and do it so hastily they don’t even have a name for the new company and they’re just calling it “SpinCo” – companies like Comcast do that all the time and never sell the new separate company oh no I'm being informed they never do that. Musk and Trump Junior have now had a "joking" exchange about it online but it underscores that this is exactly what Musk did to twitter and there's nobody and nothing to stop him from doing it here. This comes as The Wall Street Journal reports how corporations are seeing Musk as the new portal to Trump - and so is China. And as a purported old friend of his is insisting Musk has lost control of himself. This did not begin with the Joe Scarborough Trump disaster last week (though his audience in the "advertiser demo" is down to 51,000 people). It didn't even start with Trump. It pre-dates even my arrival there in 1997. MSNBC and NBC News and NBC and NBC's corporate owners have been at loggerheads continuously since long before the first newscast in 1996. To understand what's happening now, you have to understand what's happened already. B-BLOCK (31:35) SPECIAL COMMENT 2: This is not MSNBC's first existential crisis. The pre-Comcast corporate ownership at GE was ready to not merely sell the then-newly profitable network in June 2009, it was ready to shut it off and shut it down, just because the mother of the chairman of GE was a Fox fan and Bill O'Reilly was insulting her son. What happened then, and what happened with my departure in 2011, again forms a straight line with the sudden spin-off and the Musk "joke." C-BLOCK (48:00) THE OTHER WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: The Philadelphia police department thinks a burned body may be "suspicious" (no; it happened naturally). Pete Hegseth once insisted it couldn't be rape if she was too drunk to refuse consent. And Nancy Mace and her chest are attacked by her former Communications Director. It's all part of life's rich pageant.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SERIES 3 EPISODE 72: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN: A-Block (1:45) SPECIAL COMMENT: Hours after the Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee ask the FBI for its report on the Attorney General Matt Gaetz Underage Sex Scandal, an extraordinary Gaetz Sex Diagram leaks. It's the Venmo records of the Venmo payments by Gaetz and others to the women in question, and there are more crossing lines and different routes than the map of the London Subway system. And it underscores anew why the Democrats must never compromise nor collaborate with Trump or Republicans who defend him. To hell with Jared Polis, who decided to suck up to Sideshow Bob Kennedy about vaccines, or Hakeem Jeffries, who declared the nomination of these gangsters like Gaetz and Hegseth as "distractions." Throw punches. Eat faces. Metaphorically drive the metaphorical Trump Train off the metaphorical track as often as possible. And most of all, never become Joe Quisling Scarborough or his wife, Marshal Petain Brzezinski. I can state with some assurance that this time, finally, he has ended his career. Morning shows the world over always see their ratings grow as it gets later (more people are awake). The average growth from 6 AM to 7 AM is around 20% On Monday, Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski saw their 7 AM ratings DROP by 17 percent compared to their 6 AM ratings.  On Tuesday, ratings for the WHOLE show were down ANOTHER eleven percent from Monday. Scarborough is now on the path we at MSNBC used to call “A Rita Cosby.” On Monday, the debut Rita Cosby Live and Direct has the highest ratings on the network. On Tuesday, it’s down a typical 10 percent from the debut. By Wednesday HALF the audience is gone. On Thursday, it’s a re-broadcast of “Rita Cosby Live and Direct.” On Friday it’s “What was the name of that show we used to have that Rita Cosby was on?” Joe and Mika are done, and they are going to hit every stair on the way down. And for those of us for the whom the headline is "You somehow BELIEVED Scarborough was being sincere?" we are going to enjoy every thud. B-Block (23:45) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Matt Gaetz gets dunked on about 18-year old laws, JD Vance directs his misogyny against Steve Bannon's woman CFO and has to eat it, and Marjorie Taylor Greene has actually invited a transgendered woman somewhere to meet her - Greene - in the bathroom and beat the crap out of her (Greene). C-Block (34:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Because my schadenfreude diet hasn't started yet let me tell you the whole Joe Scarborough story. This scumbag finally ran out of other people to try to sabotage and instead destroyed himself. In my days before I escaped MSNBC it amazed me he ever got on the air: he spent 90% of his time and 99% of his energy on trying to sabotage Maddow and me and others. And so he goes from "Joey Scars" to "Joe Scared-Bro."    See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SERIES 3 EPISODE 71: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:45) SPECIAL COMMENT: Trump has started down the path to purges of the military, political prosecutions and show trials. His fascists have actually leaked plans to court-martial and even seek treason charges against army leadership and even retired generals. NBC News reports: "“The Trump transition team is compiling a list of senior current and former U.S. military officers who were directly involved in the withdrawal from Afghanistan and exploring whether they could be court-martialed for their involvement, according to a U.S. official and a person familiar with the plan. Officials working on the transition are considering creating a commission to investigate the 2021 withdrawal… and whether the military leaders could be eligible for charges as serious as treason… “They’re taking it very seriously,” the person with knowledge of the plan said." Thus, President Biden has to proactively pardon ALL of them. In point of fact, President Biden must now assemble a list of thousands of people to pardon – in the military – in the Democratic party – in state and local governments – in election supervision - in the media – in the protest movements – in the climate movement – people in any of the fields this psychopath Trump thinks wronged him and against which he is not only plotting retribution but now actively PLANNING it. Hegseth, already facing an unlikely confirmation due to, you know, Crusader Tats, has now been revealed to have paid off a woman after a sexual assault allegation in 2017. Trump may throw him under a bus but he's reportedly doubled down on Matt Gaetz at DOJ: “Trump wants Gaetz confirmed ‘100%’ a source told CNN. ‘He is not going to back off. He’s all in’” This figures to turn on whether or not Trump and the majority of Republican Senators who will not vote for Gaetz meet in the middle - and the middle is a Recess Appointment (and a dictatorship). So, back to my earlier point about Pardons. B-Block (23:30) SPECIAL COMMENT 2: There IS much to do, no matter how January 20th and the days thereafter play out. You want some practical advice? A little spiritual inspiration? St. Hubbins Day if not St. Crispin's Day? Got half an hour? Cause I have half an hour of advice. C-Block (56:0) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Haven't done these in awhile but somebody was asking about our election night and special political coverage at MSNBC in 2004-06-08-10 and I flashed back to the continuing adventure that was Chris Matthews - particularly how he began ogling a prominent woman in the church at a presidential funeral and I was assigned to get him to stop.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SERIES 3 EPISODE 70: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN BONUS EDITION: We are missing the POINT of the nominations of Sideshow Bobby Kennedy and Beavis and Botox Gaetz. This, simply, is Trump finding out how MUCH of a dictatorship his Republican House and Senate slaves will let him have. It's hard to believe that the literally worm-eaten brain of RFK Jr and the Madison Cawthorn wannabe that is Matt Gaetz could decide whether the Republicans will stop him here (or anywhere) but this is where we are. Because Trump is explaining his plan: I decide, I tell you what to do, and you do it or else. We are already HERE: THIS is the fork in the fascist road: deliberately choose people with no morals, no qualifications, and no qualities except absolute fealty to the dictator, then insist everybody else salute them. Same for Noem. Same for Gabbard. Same for Hegseth. Same for Patel. THE NEXT TEST will be openly demanding that he be permitted to run again in 2028, if he isn't dead by then. A lot of people asked me why I devoted so much time to the topic yesterday since it's a settled issue. Congressman Dan Goldman was concerned enough by Trump's third term "joke" to introduce a resolution affirming that the 22nd Amendment precludes it. Except, since early this year, the far right has been insisting that you're wrong, that's not what the 22nd Amendment says. The headline in a recent edition of the magazine The American Conservative: “TRUMP 2028.” Sub-head: “The 22nd Amendment is an arbitrary restraint on presidents who serve non-consecutive terms – and on democracy itself.” The American Conservative, by the way, is a "partner" of Project 2025.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SERIES 3 EPISODE 69: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Forget for a moment "Attorney General" Matt Gaetz and the bottom falling out of the market for prosecuting men who have sex with underaged girls. Forget for a moment associating Tulsi Gabbard with the word "Intelligence." Forget the prospect of Press Secretary Sage Steele. Even forget Trump's plan to adjourn both houses of Congress so he can appoint an entire cabinet without a single hearing and the Republicans rushing to bark like seals as the Lame Duck Dictator starts rolling out the Third Reich. The lead story was a different 'third.' “I suspect I won’t be running again,” Trump said to his newly elected Republican House slaves, “unless you say ‘he’s good, we got to figure something else” and every news organization reported he was joking and kidding and trolling and - spoiler alert - he’s NOT. He’s NOT kidding. He’s intending to stay in office and if we’re nice to him he’ll let us elect him again. They've been working on this for more than a year: it's a re-interpretation of the 22nd Amendment and the two-term limit, claiming it means three CONSECUTIVE terms, or going around it and getting him by any one of four different backdoors.  That Trump is emboldened enough to go public with his "kidding" tells you how badly he has misread the shock this would create. Oh yes, everyone reported, he's a kidder. He's kidding. Ask Mike Pence how much of a kidder he is. MEANWHILE: Lincoln had his "Team of Rivals." Trump is building his "Team of Trifles." And the key appointment isn't Gaetz or Gabbard or Huckabee or any of these other empty vessels. It's Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense because when the protests against Trump starts and he wants the protestors to face U.S. Army tanks and be shot with your taxpayer bullets, the guy who is just crazy enough to order it is this lunatic Hegseth. B-Block (27:54): POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: Jack Smith will get out, and get out a report. Putin continues to turn the screws on Trump. At Mar-a-Lago, Elon Musk is "getting a little big for his britches" (Ozempic time!). Musk is also at war with Steve Bannon. Melania won't live at the White House. And one third of network news viewers voted for Trump so all the limp ABC/CBS/NBC coverage mattered more than we thought. C-Block (40:00): THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Olivia Nuzzi has suddenly backed off all her stalking claims against Ryan Lizza. Wait I'll get my dumpster-sized bag of popcorn. Tim Pool, Pine Cone. And the Idaho Republican who tells a Democrat to go back to where she comes from. You won't believe which minority group she belongs.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SERIES 3 EPISODE 68: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (2:00) SPECIAL COMMENT: If you're wondering who's the boss here it ain't Trump. Putin refused to call him first and instead had Russian State Television "celebrate" his becoming the 21st Century Grover Cleveland by showing nude photos of Melania. Russian TV - which has figured out Trump is a lame duck - also reported Nikki Haley and Mike Pompeo would not be in the new administration long before Trump announced it. Putin also seems to have soured on RFK Jr, leaving Sideshow Bobby to aspire only to becoming Secretary of Masturbation. MEANWHILE, NO, THE ELECTION WAS NOT STOLEN - not in the sense you're thinking. It WAS stolen in the sense that the fascists and the anti-democracy billionaires have been running a series of illicit, hidden, disguised pro-Republican advertisements 24/7/365, for at least thirty years. They have been bombarding the underachievers of this nation, the incels, the morons, the idiots, the bros, and now the social media addicts of America, with a series of easy-to-digest, sweet-tasting conspiracy theories on a thousand streaming networks and podcasts and the Democrats have...MSNBC. The Left not only doesn't compete in the new Marketplace of Ideas it doesn't know where the shops are. It has to change this or you can forget '26 and '28 as well. On the other hand, this circular firing squad? Utterly ludicrous. It looks like Kamala Harris will have ultimately lost by 1.5% which would make Trump's the fifth SMALLEST popular vote win all time. You do not burn it all down after that. You rebuild. B-BLOCK (32:15) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: Corey Lewandowski and Chris LaCivita show us what winning means: you get to try to kill your rival on the winning team. Finally we figure out what's really behind the deportation scam: the companies that will make billions building the private prisons to turn into concentration camps for deportees. Nevermind the future of NATO. Will its members ever trust us with intel again? And the Dallas Cowboys honor founding coach Tom Landry on Veterans' Day by...misspelling his name. But it'll all come out in the wash. C-BLOCK (40:00) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: With only 7% of the city believing he didn't commit a crime, New York Mayor Eric Adams has reached out to...Trump. The Massachusetts congressman has the New Democratic rallying cry: Transphobia! And the White House "correspondent" so stupid she publicly accused the Democrats of trying to fix the Kari Lake/Ruben Gallego race so they can "steal" Congress. Except Lake and Gallego were running for the Senate!  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SERIES 3 EPISODE 67: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: "No one in this world, so far as I know—and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help me—has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby. The mistake that is made always runs the other way. Because the plain people are able to speak and understand, and even, in many cases, to read and write, it is assumed that they have ideas in their heads, and an appetite for more. This assumption is a folly." H.L. Mencken (1926). Nice of Hispanic males to vote for the guy who will deport all their relatives and friends and namesakes and when they run out, deport them. Also: the anti-Trump conservative who's trying to be optimistic: at least now Trump won't try another coup! And Jeff Bezos congratulates Trump because if they're still blackmailing Bezos on Trump's behalf, this is what it would look like! And details on the future of this podcast (yes, it has one). B-Block (20:51) SPECIAL COMMENT TWO: My theory of The Lifeboat and how it explains who voted for Trump and why. C-Block (34:00) GOOD NIGHT AND GOOD LUCK.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SERIES 3 EPISODE 66: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN Russia has committed an act of war against this nation and our government. We were attacked last night, as certainly as if they came across the borders or BOMBED polling stations - 40 or more - 32 Russian bomb threats just in Fulton county Georgia alone. And what are you going to do about it, President Biden? What are you going to do about it Merrick Garland? There is real-time evidence of Russian interference in our elections. Russians deciding who becomes president, who goes to the Senate, the house. 32 bomb threats – many already identifying as coming from Russian email sources – in the most Democratic part of Georgia. A quarter of the state’s black population subjected to a terror attack – in Fulton and DeKalb Counties. And in Pennsylvania – one that closed a county elections offense for an hour, at least 10 others. AND in Wisconsin. AND in Michigan. AND in Arizona – at least 10 in Arizona. AND when Georgia extended voting, the Republican National Committee went to court to stop it. Regardless of the outcome of the election, this is an act of war. Russian interference means Trump – Trump already admitted at the debate he talked to Putin AFTER he left office - and now Trump means Elon Musk and we know Musk has been in contact with Putin frequently since 2022, and turned Twitter into a whorehouse for pro-Russian and pro-Trump indoctrination. The Russians just shot our democracy in the heart and those who are there solely to protect it – and its citizens – have responded by establishing… a toll-free FBI tip line.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SERIES 3 EPISODE 65: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Well what do you THINK this episode is about? There are plenty of polls, interior numbers, and tea leaves to read (see "Marist Poll," see Univision polls of Hispanics in Pennsylvania, see Harris outperforming Biden and Hillary in key demos). But if you want to know how this campaign is wrapping up it's way simpler. The Trump-Vance closing argument: misogyny and violence against women. Trump says Mike Tyson should step into the ring against her. And after a week of trying to deny their comedian's "garbage" remarks had anything to do with their campaign, then trying to turn "garbage" into a bloody shirt attack on their own supporters, the night before the election, the world's most smug sexist J.D. Vance undid all of that by calling her "trash." The public polls all look very good for Kamala Harris. The private polls the Trump people see? They must've decided their only chance is to get every last hateful white guy to vote for him - because nobody else is. B-Block (26:54) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Politico's "Who Won The Day?" is a new high in low. Kari Lake explains her polling is better because she mixes in A.I., and Herschel Walker endorsed Trump. Or did he? C-Block (33:45) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Solely because at times of stress it always gives me great joy to re-tell the story of how I met my friend the late actress Elizabeth Montgomery, and how she promptly pranked my parents.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SERIES 3 EPISODE 64: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Yeah, I heard it too. I heard him he "shouldn't have left" the White House when his term ended. And I heard him say AT his rally that he wouldn’t mind people shooting at the reporters COVERING his rally. And I guess it’s shocking. Except he’s been saying these things (a little more coded) since 2015, and he said the shooting thing about Liz Cheney last Thursday night. And after all he is going through what the shrinks call “disinhibition” AT the rallies where he loses all sense of what he should say in private not public. But that’s not what got me. I heard something I have never heard before. WHEN he said he wouldn’t mind people shooting the "fake news," he said he wouldn’t mind them shooting THROUGH "the fake news" - THROUGH it - AT him. Doesn’t that sound kind of… what’s the word? Suicidal? Plus: I understand that we are inside the 48 hour bubble before the election and the pressure is like 887 Atmospheric Units and our rage against this creature and his cult that wants to burn this country to the ground – burn this world to the ground – and our amazement that there is ANYBODY voting for him – that RAGE is at unbearable levels – but… didn’t he sound kinda dead yesterday? At one point he was inaudible. At another, in North Carolina, he thought he was in Pennsylvania. Throughout, he sounded exactly like Hal the Computer in the movie “2001” when they unplugged him. PRACTICALLY SPEAKING on the eve of the election, the polls continue to support a Harris victory (size TBD) and this shocking poll where she's up by 3 in Iowa hides an even more shocking number (she's ahead by 20 among women in the whitest part of the midwest). And the reaction to the pollster who published this 21 point swing from June tells you all you need to know about polling. They have previously insisted Ann Selser was an immortal. Now they're saying she's making the rest of them look bad by not tailoring her poll to fit their narrative. B-Block (30:33) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: A Trumpist has vowed to "castrate himself on camera" if Harris wins Iowa (if you're a Trumpist, haven't you already castrated yourself?). Chris Cillizza 2024 mocks everybody who didn't buy the conventional wisdom about the vice presidency (evidently including Chris Cillizza 2020, who had disproved it), and courtesy Tim Alberta in The Atlantic, we find a new reason to hate Trump. This is the real reason he's so mad Biden dropped out. Trump thought he had the perfect nickname for the President - and it's appalling. C-Block (37:48) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: I call it The Annual Day I Get Trapped Inside My Home Day. You know it - and may have seen it on TV yesterday - as "The New York City Marathon."  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

BULLETIN SERIES 3 EPISODE 63: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:44) In a late night appearance in Arizona, Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump said of former Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney "Let's put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her. Let's see how she feels about it, you know, when the guns are trained on her face." At publication time, no Republican had repudiated Trump for his implicit threat, nor had any even repudiated him upon realizing that the next time he expresses such a desire to have a critic killed by a firing squad, it could be them. What follows is the Friday Countdown podcast as originally produced. (3:52) TRUMP INTERNAL POLLS MUST BE TERRIBLE: HE IS ALREADY FOMENTING INSURECTION II: There can no longer be any doubt that the Trump camp knows that he is losing and losing by enough that however close the popular vote may turn out to be, he will lose handily in The Electoral College and his only chance is to foment another insurrection, whether by violence or by Speaker of the House Mike Johnson. Axios has printed a Trump press release (and describes it as a "scoop") that Trump's pollster has told him tells The Garbage Man "he's in a radically better position than he was right before the 2020 election...(it) draws on Real Clear Politics polling averages to argue that Trump's "position nationally and in every single Battleground State is SIGNIFICANTLY better today than it was 4 years ago." This is like relying on stuff Rudy Giuliani heard from the voices in his head. The Trump campaign is furiously stoking up racial hatred, white supremacism, anti-woman rhetoric - and the insistence that he's already being robbed in Pennsylvania. He'd only be doing that if he's being told he's LOSING in Pennsylvania and needs to try to steal the election. Speaking of Rudy: he has now came this close to dropping a milder version of the N-word. B-BLOCK (31:55) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Russia fines Google more money than there is in the world. Elon Musk goes full antisemite. Tucker Carlson insists he was mauled while asleep by demons.  C-BLOCK (46:40) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: There's only one story for the weekend before the election. Thurber's Nostramadus moment: his prophecy of Trump, written in...1931?See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SERIES 3 EPISODE 62: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-BLOCK (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: There can no longer be any doubt that the Trump camp knows that he is losing and losing by enough that however close the popular vote may turn out to be, he will lose handily in The Electoral College and his only chance is to foment another insurrection, whether by violence or by Speaker of the House Mike Johnson. Axios has printed a Trump press release (and describes it as a "scoop") that Trump's pollster has told him tells The Garbage Man "he's in a radically better position than he was right before the 2020 election...(it) draws on Real Clear Politics polling averages to argue that Trump's "position nationally and in every single Battleground State is SIGNIFICANTLY better today than it was 4 years ago." This is like relying on stuff Rudy Giuliani heard from the voices in his head. The Trump campaign is furiously stoking up racial hatred, white supremacism, anti-woman rhetoric - and the insistence that he's already being robbed in Pennsylvania. He'd only be doing that if he's being told he's LOSING in Pennsylvania and needs to try to steal the election. Speaking of Rudy: he has now came this close to dropping a milder version of the N-word. B-BLOCK (29:53) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Russia fines Google more money than there is in the world. Elon Musk goes full antisemite. Tucker Carlson insists he was mauled while asleep by demons.  C-BLOCK (44:30) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: There's only one story for the weekend before the election. Thurber's Nostramadus moment: his prophecy of Trump, written in...1931?See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SERIES 3 EPISODE 61: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: The Kamala Harris closing argument: "The fact that someone does not agree with us does not make them the enemy within…I will always put country above PARTY and above SELF." The Donald Trump closing argument: "I'm not Hitler!" Well, I'M sold! THAT'S the way to make sure you aren't associated with Nazis and Hitler. Bring them up! And the way to avoid the continuing reverberations from Tony Hinchcliffe's Puerto Rican "garbage" insult is to dress up in a garbageman's orange reflective suit and give interviews from the cab of a garbage truck with the TRUMP CAMPAIGN LOGO ON THE SIDE. And Jeff Bezos has already learned the wages of sin: Trump is touting The Washington Post's "decision" to not endorse anybody as a repudiation of Harris and an endorsement of him. It's time to boycott Amazon, Whole Foods, The Washington Post. GOOD POLLS NEWS: CNN polling, Harris by 5 in Michigan, 6 in Wisconsin, tied in Pennsylvania - but she leads by 3 in Pennsylvania among "extremely motivated voters." The interior numbers continue to go entirely in Harris's direction. AND AN ANNOUNCEMENT about the short-term future of this podcast. B-BLOCK (32:37) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Ohio's Republican Senate candidate doesn't realize the VICE President can't issue Executive Orders. Any remaining thin veneer of journalism falls away at Fox. And Politico's Rachel Bade and Ex-CNN Now Just Stopping Passersby Chris Cillizza humiliate themselves over Biden's quoting of Hinchcliffe's "garbage" remarks. C-BLOCK (41:00) GOOD NIGHT AND GOOD LUCK.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.