Countdown with Keith Olbermann

SERIES 2 EPISODE 173: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: I don’t know much about the law but I do know the Trump Trial has confirmed one of the immutable truths of the field: Never hire an attorney with a rating of 3-1/2 stars. Susan Necheles somehow managed to lose to Stormy Daniels during the second day of cross-examination in Trump-On-Trial yesterday; lose so badly and obviously that Trump’s team was forced to file for a desperation mistrial from the very thin ice of basically claiming Necklace forgot to object to something that Daniels said on TUESDAY. All of a sudden the Trump defense was claiming – and leaking to every news organization, by the way – that Daniels had dog-whistled a subtext of rape or assault when she gave details about Trump standing in front of her, and not using a condom, and a bodyguard being out in the hallway – and we should just ignore that when she said all that, THREE DAYS AGO, Trump’s lawyer with the three-and-a-half stars rating Susan Necheles said… nothing. Not even the only thing you or I would remember to say if we woke up in some alternate universe where we were in that courtroom as Trump’s lawyer: “OBJECTION.” And that might have been Necheles's best work. Ms. Necheles: “You have experience in making up fake stories about sex?” Ms. Daniels: “The sex is real. That’s why it’s not a B movie.” Ms. Necheles: “NOW you have a story about having sex with President Trump, right?” Ms. Daniels: “If that story was untrue, I would’ve written it to be a lot better.” Ooops! There goes another half a star. Ms. Necheles: “You had sex with a cameraman?” Ms. Daniels: “I started dating him and he became my husband.” A reminder: None of this needed to be heard by the jury. If Trump’s defense had stipulated, yeah, they had sex, she wouldn’t have been allowed to testify. Or they could have just asked her what she knew about Trump’s involvement in the non-disclosure agreement and the payoffs and she could have said “nothing” and Ms. Necheles could have said “nothing further, your honor.” This is a case – a relatively boring case with excruciating details about how routine company checks got sent to the White House for Trump to sign even as president and he never ignored a single detail that cost him more than 99 cents – a relatively boring case about falsified business records and the attempt to interfere with an election and Trump’s team turned it into wocka-wocka-wocka, and his credibility and their credibility against the credibility of a pornographic actress and guess what: the actress won. ALSO: Oh by the way, last month Trump assembled around 20 of the nation's top oil and fossil fuel executives and offered them a deal. He'd sell them the world to destroy as quickly as they wanted - repeal all regulations and make Doug Burgum Secretary of Energy or VP or whatever - if they'd simply give him a billion dollars with which to get elected. So when you worry that democracy is on the ballot in November, just remember, no, it's worse than that: human EXISTENCE is on the ballot. B-Block (23:10) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Mark Levin tries to get around calling Judge Juan Merchan "a pervert" because he was listening to Stormy Daniels' testimony. Failson Andrew Giuliani is "reporting" on the trial and puts me in an impossible position by blasting Lawrence O'Donnell. And Chuck Todd ISN'T gone after all. He has just written a masterpiece of nonsense: an Epic Poem of bothsidesism in which he concludes Biden and Trump both need to admit their mistakes. He spends one paragraph on Trump's mistakes and about a dozen on how Biden failed to bring the country together (while Trump was tearing it apart).  C-Block (34:00) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: No gentle reminiscences here. No prophetic tales of heroes who were actually schmoes. Thurber goes for the jugular vein of the famous Avantgarde artist Salvador Dali in "The Secret Life Of James Thurber."See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SERIES 2 EPISODE 172: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Robert F. Kennedy Junior who may turn out to be the spoiler who throws the election to Trump says under oath that his cognitive problems and short term and longer term memory loss from a worm that ate his brain and then died. On the other OTHER hand, too early to tell if it’s an outlier or the start of the new wave, but swing state poll: Wisconsin, Quinnipiac, Registered voters: Biden 50 Trump 44. Three-way: Biden 40 Trump 39 Kennedy and his Worm, 12. Nevertheless. I’m not confident we can stave off fascism in this country because: worms in Kennedy’s brain. AND Trump’s trial in Florida has been delayed until the twelfth of never by an unqualified judge HE appointed and his trial in Georgia has been delayed indefinitely – probably into next year - because the appeals court says it WILL listen to Trump’s appeal of the ruling that the district attorney didn’t have a financial conflict of interest just because she hired her boyfriend to work on the case (because guess what: there IS a deep state and among its constituent parts are the legal system and partisan judges and the Supreme Court and an Attorney General who will go to his grave believing the people exist to serve laws rather than laws existing to serve the people. Also, because OBAMA’s most public adviser criticized all the sex talk in the Stormy Daniels testimony and, oh by the way, WORMS IN KENNEDY’S BRAIN. Memory loss, quote: “caused by a worm that got into my brain and ate a portion of it and then died. I have cognitive problems, clearly. I have short-term memory loss, and I have longer-term memory loss that affects me.”RFK Junior, in a deposition during his divorce in 2012. When Kennedy said I was his HERO - I KNEW something was wrong. MEANWHILE the man who called out The New York Times for its vengeful coverage of Biden answers the Editor-in-Chief's strawman response that the paper won't become part of the Biden campaign. "In general, and this is a complaint I have had about the New York Times that is two decades old – I wish they would take good faith criticism from the left with as much seriousness as they take BAD faith criticism from the right," says Dan Pfeiffer. B-Block (24:51) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Lobbyist Jim Courtovich (if you're going to make a threat by quoting 'The Godfather' you better make sure you get the quote right), Speaker Mike Johnson (you know "intuitively" that non-citizens are voting? Is that like I know "intuitively" that there must have been fraud in your election? No facts, just a Spidey Sense?), and Congressman Mike Collins (You think last week's racism-at-Ole-Miss tweet was disqualifying? Wait'll you see this week's joke about the JFK and RFK assassinations). C-Block (32:10) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Trump mocked Lawrence O'Donnell after Tuesday's court session, so it's probably time for me to mock him. The day they finally incarcerate Joe Scarborough, O'Donnell will become the least sincere person on MSNBC. Ever seen the pilot of the old HBO show "The Newsroom"? Where the back-up tries to steal the show from the guy he's filling in for? Guess who that's actually about?    See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SEASON 2 EPISODE 171: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:45) SPECIAL COMMENT: First of several underemphasized meta-headlines from Stormy Daniels' testimony: Trump’s lawyer Ms. Necklace seems to have made inroads in her effort to convince the jury that Ms. Daniels would say or do almost anything for money. Uh, she’s a pornographic actress. Whether you approve that profession, or abhor it, or like me you’re agnostic: one statement should not be among those you express in shock or dismay or surprise: “Oh no, she’s a pornographic actress, she will do or say almost anything for money.” Which leads to the next meta headline. My GOD the media, especially the television networks, treated her testimony like they were cicadas and Stormy Daniels was the ring girl who stepped between the ropes to announce the start of year 13. My GOD they all awoke from somnambulance about bank records and cell phone extractions and the testimony of comptrollers and people named RONA and were able to say – at least to themselves – good grief, get a load of those rebuttals. Which leads into the next meta headline: Stormy Daniels is not on trial here. She’s only incidental to the case. That is NOT what you would have thought if you watched coverage of this case. The sex isn’t illegal, the money isn’t illegal, Trump isn’t illegal, Daniels changing her story isn’t illegal. Buying her story to keep it from becoming public in the weeks before an election and then hiding the payoffs to prevent THEM from becoming public in the weeks before an election – THAT’S illegal and all those boring receipts and records and notations written by hand by a guy named Allan – with TWO L’S – THAT is the case. And denying it as Trump has – LYING about it, as Trump has – is why Stormy Daniels is there. To testify. I have to admit I was a little surprised by the last headline. If the Monday juxtaposition of Trump Maybe Going To Jail Over The Gag Order and Kristi Noem Quintuples Down On The Idea That Shooting Puppies In The Face Is A Good Thing underscored how MAGA believes it has the right to kill, then YESTERDAY’S juxtaposition of Noem’s disastrous media tour – more on that shortly – and Trump On Trial underscored that these really deeply disturbed, borderline personalities, do NOT do well when confronted with reality from which they cannot run and they cannot hide. And then there's Noem, who got beaten up on Fox by my old friend Stu Varney and, stunningly, on NewsMax. But it's all right, she still thinks she's killing it. Yeah, the way his presidential roll-out killed it for Greg Stillson. B-Block (24:33) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL/SPORTS: Seen anything about this week being the 70th Anniversary of Roger Bannister "breaking the 4-Minute mile?" There's one problem. C-Block (42:20) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL/SPORTS PART 2: That one problem? Roger Bannister WAS NOT the first man to run a mile in four minutes or less. It's a sad story with a lot of bias and even racism in it.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SERIES 2 EPISODE 170: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:45) SPECIAL COMMENT: The reaction to Justice Merchan’s stark warning to Trump that he may put him in jail the next time he violates the gag order, and the defense inside the Trump cult of Kristi Noem for murdering her dog and threatening Biden’s dog - these are actually the same story. The point is: killing. They are about one thing: at their core, Noem and Trump and MAGA and Trump’s Supreme Court Justices and his slaves inside the House and the Senate believe they have a right to kill. Today, they have a right to kill their dogs. Tomorrow? Your dog. Then the judge. The day after that immigrants. Finally, anything and anybody. Do not mistake them, nor what this is about. Do not forget that even as chilling a phrase as “political violence” is itself just a euphemism. Political violence is: murder. Individual murder, mass murder, or if the rest of us are lucky, just attempted murder or threatened murder. Every Trump attack on every witness, on every judge, on every prosecutor, on every opponent; every stochastic call to “end” this; every reference to “bedlam”; every meme of the President of the United States bound and gagged; every Tim Scott refusing to honor the outcome of an election; every reference to patriots and deep states and rigged elections and I am your retribution – they all have the unspoken second half: those who try to stop us will do what we say or we will kill them. One third of Trump supporters who’ve heard about Noem killing her dog told a YouGov poll that it WAS acceptable. 29 percent weren’t sure. So the total of Trump voters who would not criticize it was six out of ten. AS THIS UNFOLDS, THE NEW YORK TIMES completely disconnects from reality. “When you are Democrat you start off essentially at 40 percent (of the vote) because you have civil service, you have the unions and you have welfare. They get welfare to vote, and then they cheat on top of that. They cheat,” Trump said of Biden and the Democrats. “'These people are running a Gestapo administration’ Mr. Trump told donors who attended the event at Mar-a-Lago, his private club in Palm Beach, Florida, according to an audio recording obtained by The New York Times." An audio recording. OBTAINED by The New York Times. Where is this recording? Why has this recording not been made public by The Times? Why is the paper suppressing it? Incredibly, at the same time the paper's editor gave an interview to Semafor News that discredits everyone who works at The Times as he dismisses any awareness that his coverage has normalized Trump without a sufficient sense of crisis or threat. "To say that the threats of democracy are so great that the media is going to abandon its central role as a source of impartial information to help people vote – that’s essentially saying that the news media should become a propaganda arm for a single candidate, because we prefer that candidate’s agenda," said Joe Kahn. “It’s our job to cover the full range of issues that people have. At the moment, democracy is one of them. But it’s not the top one – immigration happens to be the top, and the economy and inflation is the second. Should we stop covering those things because they’re favorable to Trump?” Nothing to see here. Just the editor-in-chief of The New York Times living in a world defined by Fox News talking points, and populated entirely by strawmen. B-Block (38:15) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: The Tigers say their new uniforms are "going 0-60." Nancy Mace claims the victim of half the GOP Antisemitic tropes is behind all the pro-Palestinian protests too. And Obama's campaign manager has the new podcast every one has been clamoring: he co-hosts with Kellyanne Conjob. (47:20) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL/SPORTS: Seen anything about this week being the 70th Anniversary of Roger Bannister "breaking the 4-Minute mile?" There's one problem. C-Block (1:04:51) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL/SPORTS PART 2: That one problem? Roger Bannister WAS NOT the first man to run a mile in four minutes or less. It's a sad story with a lot of bias and even racism in it.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SERIES 2 EPISODE 169: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Trump is full of shit. Nothing about the gag order precludes him from testimony. What caused him to change his mind and suddenly announce no, he's not testifying after all, is sheer naked fear. He heard the Smoking Gun tape of himself and Michael Cohen mapping out how to pay hush money to his girlfriend before the election, and he crapped himself.  I'll play the tape and you'll see. The last thing you do after THAT tape is played, is talk. In a fitting metaphor, on Trump’s pants are so on fire about why he's too scared to testify, that his post-court photo op was at a New York Fire Department Station. He also mocked reporting about how he's been falling asleep in court and then 90 minutes later, he fell asleep in court - again. MEANWHILE: We are in such an unprecedented place in this country’s history that if Trump were now to pick Kristi Noem as his running mate and announce they were going to campaign on a platform of puppy killing, the cult would do it. He’s not likely to try it. But then did you really think that Noem’s response to her self-defenestration would be to double down and claim the dog she murdered was far more evil than she let on and was a threat to her children. By next week she’ll be claiming Cricket had clamped her vicious jaws around her daughter’s neck. Or that she was holding Noem’s kids hostage.​ And by the way, she may have no other choice than to double down and claim she is the real victim here, because there is emerging evidence that the story of Kristi Noem luring the dog into a gravel pit and shooting it in the face because it was randomly attacking other animals and posed a threat of some kind​ that might be a COVER STORY. As America’s hatred washed over her, she laid low – until Wednesday. That’s when she went on with Sean Hannity and resumed trying to get people to buy the book, and buy her story. But her story has now changed. Cricket was no puppy. She was a working dog – and 14 months old. That Cricket was untrained wasn’t HER fault. Quote: “It was a dog that was extremely dangerous. It had come to us from a family who found her way too aggressive. We were her second chance. The day she was put down was a day that she massacred livestock.​.. (Livestock? Chickens. But of course killing animals is just a first step – and then you’re Ted Bundy​)...“that were part of our neighbors. She attacked me. And it was a hard decision.” That was Wednesday night. By ​y​esterday afternoon on social media, Noem saw an out. “I had a choice between the safety of my children and an animal who had a history of attacking people and killing livestock. I chose my kids.” So. She's already changed the story. Was the version in the book also changed? Was the murder worse? Was the timeline of who saw it different? Could Noem have shot the dog as her family watched? B-Block (19:47) SPECIAL COMMENT: I am largely agnostic on the issues, and having taken part in student protests against Vietnam and racism in the 7th Grade in 19-freaking-70 I'm in favor of them at any time. But what's happening on campuses today is NOT 1970 revisited. It's not on the level of Black Lives Matter. The arrests aren't unprecedented, the right to protest isn't being destroyed, and the students might want to recognize that their decisions are simply increasing the chances that everything they want will NOT happen, culminating in a Trump presidency in which they or their successors will be detained by the Army or shot on sight or both. C-Block (28:05) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: Thurber's mother was down with the whole occult stuff. Him? He barely delved. But this is another week where we need a pure silly story and he produced one when he went into the worlds of supernatural (and German dialects). "The Black Magic of Barney Haller."See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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. While under 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.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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.    See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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."See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SERIES 2 EPISODE 163: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANNA-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 LUCKSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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."See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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.