Countdown with Keith Olbermann

SEASON 2 EPISODE 80: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Somebody finally told Dementia J. Trump that he’s been calling Biden “Obama” for the last few months. So he has fabricated a backstory that whenever he has MADE this cognitive gaffe, it has been “sarcastic," so he could “indicate” that “others” may actually be running things. And just to sell this excuse even harder, Trump has now begun to do the one thing that could most easily give back his poll numbers, particularly his improving numbers with minorities; the one thing that could most easily destroy Trump’s arguments about inflation under Biden; the one thing that would be the answer to the Biden Campaign Team’s Prayers. He has attacked ObamaCare. He has insisted he and the Republicans should never give up on TERMINATING it - just when almost everybody had forgotten he failed to do it despite 29 promises that he would, and that he lost at least two elections on it. It's not just a political millstone he's put around his own neck and the neck of every other Republican. It could also cost Trump his recent gains among minority voters. 80% of blacks and nearly 70% of Hispanics support ObamaCare and because of ObamaCare the rate of the uninsured among blacks and Hispanics has dropped roughly in HALF since 2010; just when Trump and Biden and events had tilted the entire profile of the election into things that favored Trump, Trump just brought back from the dead, what might be the LAST issue in which Democrats completely kick Republican ass. An NBC poll two months ago said Democrats are trusted by 2 to 1 over Republicans on Health Care. To sum it up, as an unnamed Biden adviser said: “It’s almost perfect that Trump would pick the ONE thing they haven’t really put front and center, which we know is incredibly unpopular, and say ‘Yeah, I’m gonna do this too!'" Thanks, Obama! Meanwhile, it is time for us to destroy Fox News. Twice in the last week its little oasis of presumed authenticity has proved to be just another venue for lying, journalistic terrorism, fraud, and partisanship that would embarrass Kimberly Guilfoyle. As late as Sunday, Fox was still intimidating that the horrible accident (never buy a car called a "Bentley Flying Spur") on the Rainbow Bridge at Niagara Falls was some form of terrorism, and as late as last night it was still insisting Biden "couldn't even avoid age questions while on vacation" then playing a tape of its own reporter shouting the only age question. It's beyond dishonesty, it's desperation and it needs to come crashing down. And there are ways we can make it happen. B-Block (33:20) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: Judge Chutkan rejects a Trump claim about imaginary January 6 evidence; Elise Stefanik somehow thinks she - a congresswoman - got the Trump Gag Order stayed; and now whenever you read Maggie Haberman or Jonathan Swan you'll remember they're holding back Trump news for their 2025 Trump book. (36:10) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Fox's Charlie "Butt" Hurt; Kevin McCarthy is dumber than we thought; and the Oxford Union chose HIM for their debate, instead of me. C-Block (42:30) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Like everybody else, I was once a Sports Illustrated writer. Hell, I was once in a sports media industry without AI-generated content (and as we just found out at SI: AI-generated writers!) and so competitive that when I was with UPI, my AP rival would not loan me a $1.50 piece of equipment to save my career at the Olympics when my own bosses had gotten me drunk! See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SEASON 2 EPISODE 79: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Ludicrous as it looks, insane as Musk seems, corrupt as the Texas Attorney General is, this “Indict Media Matters” story is the FUTURE. It is practice, and Musk is the stand-in for the role ultimately to be played by Dementia J. Trump. Not merely politicizing but fully privatizing criminal prosecution in this country. Media Matters catches Musk placing high-priced corporate ads next to antisemitic content, the corporations investigate, the corporations cancel the ads. Musk complains. Trump's Renfield, Stephen Miller, responds and lights the bat signal. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who has to do stuff like this or the billionaires will stop protecting him, promises to jail reporters for telling the truth. It's stochastic prosecution. The template is being sanded down and polished as we watch. This is practice for the bastards. Like January 6th was practice for the bastards. Just like the entirety of Trump’s time in the White House was practice for the bastards. Trump won't have to repeal the 1st Amendment to put Kristen Welker in jail. Or in theory, YOU, if you’ve ever tweeted or written anything online that he doesn’t like. Or in theory, ME. Hell: I could easily be FIRST. Trump doesn’t have to GET Congress to MAKE a law abridging the freedom of speech or of the press. He reads something he doesn't like in The Washington Post (or one of his benefactors reads something bad on somebody's website and calls Trump) and he just drops the prosecution down to a state and the next thing you know Texas or Florida or Missouri or Mississippi becomes a veritable journalistic speed-trap. The Trumpists are so confident that they are giving us previews of their plans for 2025. There is one way to beat them: Liberal money, matching them dime for dime to save democracy. That, or this Trumpian nightmare isn't the future - it's the present. B-Block (22:13) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: Mayor Adams' daily scandal is followed by a really weird sound bite. Senator Menendez needs to keep you from thinking about his gold bars so he hires a lawyer with the nickname "Gold Bars." (26:58) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Senator Kennedy does a racism and a sexism and a mispronunciationism; a Trumper messes up a meme; Nikki Haley just couldn't leave the nine-year old girl wearing the Haley hat alone. She had to ask her something. And Nikki got owned. C-Block (32:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: I'm just about the youngest person you know who actually remembers the assassination of President John F. Kennedy 60 years ago today. And now it's clear it was a turning point in another way: it was the beginning of Conspiracy Theory Nation. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SERIES 2 EPISODE 78: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: The democracy will certainly not survive Donald Trump but I am now wondering if it has any chance of surviving Sarah Wallace, Patricia Millett, Cornelia Pillard, and Brad Garcia and if you don’t know who they are, they are the latest people on the latest list of supposed liberals and supposed officers of the court who could get us all KILLED. Millett seems to be the most clueless of the three DC Appeals Court dilettantes who first STAYED the gag order issued against Trump in the Election Subversion case and then yesterday conducted the in-person hearing and all but announced that they WILL significantly limit the order because apparently when Trump starts ignoring laws he doesn’t like and jailing judges he doesn’t like, these idiots somehow think they will be immune because they were so fair to him back there in November 2023. Judge Millett seemed to base her nitwitted reaction to the two hours of oral arguments on the impact of the gag order on…presidential debates. “He has to speak ‘Miss Manners’ while everyone else is throwing targets at him? It would be really hard in a debate, when everyone else is going at you full bore. Your attorneys would have to have scripted little things you can say.” Miss Manners. Trump has to speak ‘Miss Manners.’ Do you get the same feeling I do that Judge Millette has no earthly clue WHO Dementia J. Trump is? Do you get the OTHER same feeling that I do that it has not occurred to, and will NEVER occur to, Judge Millette that so far there have been THREE presidential debates in the Republican primary and Trump hasn’t shown up to any of them and there is no reason to expect he’d have the guts to show up to one in the general election. And THEN there is Judge Sarah Wallace and I’m not sure she didn’t even harm the country MORE than Judge “Miss Manners” and Judge “I Would Assume” did. Judge Wallace heard the 14th Amendment disqualification case and at the same time that she ruled quote “that Trump incited an insurrection on January 6, 2021, and therefore ‘engaged’ in insurrection within the meaning of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment” she then superseded the Amendment itself in as remarkable an act of judicial cowardice as I’ve ever seen. “After considering the arguments on both sides,” wrote Judge Wallace, “the Court is persuaded that ‘officers of the United States’ did not include the PRESIDENT of the United States. It appears to the Court that for whatever reason the drafters of Section 3 did not intend to include a person who had only taken the Presidential Oath,” unquote. So she ordered him onto the Colorado primary ballot instead of saying “Yeah, I’m thinking they meant to include PRESIDENTS because otherwise having just survived the Civil War they decided to make sure Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee and Nathan Bedford Forrest could NOT run for anything EXCEPT President of the United States rather than showing some guts, Judge Wallace folded. The people who could DO something and they actually divide into two categories and two categories ONLY: Judges who are too effete to do anything and judges who are too scared to do anything. B-Block (22:20) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: How did Argentina elect as its new president Jason Bateman playing Wolverine? The late great Joss Ackland. And the newest housing requisite: Built-in Dog Showers? (26:15) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Just a Fox News typo, no doubt: "Osama Biden Laden"; Moms For Liberty's Philly chief is a registered sex offender; Senator Mike Lee launches the worst January 6th gaslighting ever. C-Block (32:20) EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: Milo in Tennessee (33:30) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: I anchored the telecast of the 1992 Baseball Expansion draft, 31 years ago this week. Star analyst Joe Morgan really didn't want to be there. REALLY didn't. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SEASON 2 EPISODE 77: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-BLOCK (1:44) BULLETIN: White House Deputy Press Secretary Andrew Bates issues searing condemnation of the antisemitism rampant on Twitter-X and specifically calls out Elon Musk's repetition of the antisemitic madness behind the 2018 "Tree Of Life" synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh. It is a dramatic and unyielding statement with language so strong it must have been approved by President Biden himself and signals his willingness to confront the antisemitism, and all religious and anti-minority hate, and Musk himself. It is a startling development. The remainder of this podcast is a repeat of Friday's regular 76th episode and if you've heard it you may skip it with my full blessing. But it does emphasize how a threat to ban Twitter-X and end all government contracts with him, could rescue it from Musk's prejudice and bullying (6:56) It is time for the government of the United States to ban “X” – the social media site still primarily known as Twitter - and to terminate all government contracts with its owner. Under Trump the government moved to ban TikTok as a security risk to the United States, so there is precedent for at least the attempt, because a process that has been accelerating for more than a year reached a climax Wednesday when owner Elon Musk answered a blatantly antisemitic tweet with the reply quote “you have said the actual truth.” Combined with surging anti-semitism throughout the website, and the use of Nazi hate speech and paraphrases of infamous Hitler quotes by the likely Republican candidate for president, the tinderbox of antisemitism has never been fuller or drier and Trump and Musk seem determined to light it ablaze – and with it, light ablaze the peace and security of this nation. Musk’s bizarre running of the Twitter-X platform had already destroyed more than half its value and even more of its advertising. Yesterday afternoon, IBM announced it was pulling its already-scheduled ads for the next three months – the New York Times says that was a million dollars’ worth. Rather remarkably, as of the close of business yesterday The New York Times had not yet cancelled Musk’s scheduled appearance twelve days from now at a Times event it calls its “DealBook Summit” which it describes as the gathering of quote “the most consequential leaders in business, politics, and culture,” unquote… and, I guess, the most consequential leaders in antisemitism. As the snowball rolling down the hill toward her reached speeds of about a thousand miles an hour, Musk’s hand-picked CEO Linda Yaccarino posted a comment at 3:45 PM Eastern that seemed crafted by the nation’s finest satirical comedians, or maybe Tim Robinson in the hot dog suit and the “We’re All Trying To Find The Guy Who Did This” meme. Quote: “X’s point of view has always been very clear that discrimination by everyone should STOP across the boad – I think that’s something we can and should all agree on. When it comes to this platform, X has also been extremely clear about our efforts to combat antisemitism and discrimination. There’s no place for it anywhere in the world – it’s ugly and wrong. Full stop.” If taken sincerely and literally, Yaccarino’s only possible next action would be… to suspend Elon Musk’s account. Musk has gone down a path from which he cannot backtrack. Twitter-X – at least HIS version of it – must be banned, and government contracts and other agreements – local, state, national - with his other firms: Space-X, Tesla, The Boring Company, Neuralink, and xAI must be terminated. Today. There is no other option. B-BLOCK (23:07) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: The George Santos ethics investigation is in. He doesn't have any. Remarkable research that suggests the Republicans haven't ONCE needed his vote. Paul Pelosi's attacker is found guilty, as is a J6 insurrectionist that MAGA has convinced itself was actually a Black Lives Matter Antifa George Soros plant.(28:20) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE...

SEASON 2 EPISODE 76: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:44) It is time for the government of the United States to ban “X” – the social media site still primarily known as Twitter - and to terminate all government contracts with its owner. Under Trump the government moved to ban TikTok as a security risk to the United States, so there is precedent for at least the attempt, because a process that has been accelerating for more than a year reached a climax Wednesday when owner Elon Musk answered a blatantly antisemitic tweet with the reply quote “you have said the actual truth.” Combined with surging anti-semitism throughout the website, and the use of Nazi hate speech and paraphrases of infamous Hitler quotes by the likely Republican candidate for president, the tinderbox of antisemitism has never been fuller or drier and Trump and Musk seem determined to light it ablaze – and with it, light ablaze the peace and security of this nation. Musk’s bizarre running of the Twitter-X platform had already destroyed more than half its value and even more of its advertising. Yesterday afternoon, IBM announced it was pulling its already-scheduled ads for the next three months – the New York Times says that was a million dollars’ worth. Rather remarkably, as of the close of business yesterday The New York Times had not yet cancelled Musk’s scheduled appearance twelve days from now at a Times event it calls its “DealBook Summit” which it describes as the gathering of quote “the most consequential leaders in business, politics, and culture,” unquote… and, I guess, the most consequential leaders in antisemitism. As the snowball rolling down the hill toward her reached speeds of about a thousand miles an hour, Musk’s hand-picked CEO Linda Yaccarino posted a comment at 3:45 PM Eastern that seemed crafted by the nation’s finest satirical comedians, or maybe Tim Robinson in the hot dog suit and the “We’re All Trying To Find The Guy Who Did This” meme. Quote: “X’s point of view has always been very clear that discrimination by everyone should STOP across the boad – I think that’s something we can and should all agree on. When it comes to this platform, X has also been extremely clear about our efforts to combat antisemitism and discrimination. There’s no place for it anywhere in the world – it’s ugly and wrong. Full stop.” If taken sincerely and literally, Yaccarino’s only possible next action would be… to suspend Elon Musk’s account. Musk has gone down a path from which he cannot backtrack. Twitter-X – at least HIS version of it – must be banned, and government contracts and other agreements – local, state, national - with his other firms: Space-X, Tesla, The Boring Company, Neuralink, and xAI must be terminated. Today. There is no other option. B-BLOCK (17:50) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: The George Santos ethics investigation is in. He doesn't have any. Remarkable research that suggests the Republicans haven't ONCE needed his vote. Paul Pelosi's attacker is found guilty, as is a J6 insurrectionist that MAGA has convinced itself was actually a Black Lives Matter Antifa George Soros plant.(22:50) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: It's an ugly word and Caitlyn Jenner just proved she doesn't know how to spell it. It's the word "Congresswoman" and Trump Junior just proved he doesn't know how to pronounce it. And it may be the last words Charissa Thompson ever says as a sportscaster. The former Fox Sports football sideline reporter volunteers the startling information that several times she DIDN'T interview the coach at halftime and simply lied and made up what she thought he would've said. Unless...she made THAT story up too. C-BLOCK (30:30) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: One James Thurber short story, above all others, is in the college textbooks and high school textbooks and middle school textbooks. And there's a reason for it: "The Night The Bed Fell." See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SEASON 2 EPISODE 75: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: B-Block (19:16) IN SPORTS: The president of the Cleveland Guardians admits what I've guessed at here: Many baseball teams are in financial trouble because of the collapse of cable sports television. And a Reddit post about the Brooklyn Nets "killing their own players" is either the best satire of sports fan idiocy, or the best example of sports fan idiocy. (25:05) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: There's a bunch: Elon Musk's antisemitism, Brianna Keilar platforming Joe Lieberman and the No Labels Trump Stalking Horses, "Democrat" Dean Phillips circulates an endorsement by Matt Gaetz, and poor FBI Director Wray subjected to the stupidity of Marjorie Taylor Greene and the "Ghost Buses" of Clay Higgins. Who ya gonna call? C-Block (33:30) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: With his three Ukrainian Hunter Biden Dirt sources suddenly accused of being Russian spies and under indictment for treason in Ukraine, it's time to tell you of the first time I knew Rudy Giuliani was nuts. Spoiler alert: it was in a previous century. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SEASON 2 EPISODE 74: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Ukraine indicts Rudy Giuliani's three contacts on the fabricated "Hunter Biden Burisma Investigation" as RUSSIAN SPIES. The charge is TREASON. The second part of Trump's multi-pronged association with Russia (and the primary reason for his first impeachment) roars back to life as the Ukrainian government indicts a sitting member of its parliament, a former member, and the former deputy prosecutor, for running a disinformation campaign alongside the GRU - Russian Military Intelligence. It is unlikely the scandal will actually see Giuliani prosecuted in Ukraine, but until these indictments it was also unlikely that the Ukrainian-Russian-Disinformation scandal would spring back to life. Two of the three men indicted for treason had previously been sanctioned by Trump's own State Department for helping Russian spies pump disinformation into this country through gullible and corrupt people (looking at you Rudy). And this now ties to James Comer because last spring when Comer asked a "whistleblower" about recordings of Joe Biden, one of them mysteriously produced exactly those recordings. Comer's investigation is now based in part on the work of a Russian Spy under indictment in Ukraine for treason. ALSO: Fani Willis expects her Trump trial to extend into next winter and very possibly into early 2025. Textbook reply by the Special Counsel to the stay of the Trump DC case gag order - except prosecutors compared his case to those of Tim McVeigh, a 9/11 plotter, and a Boston Marathon bomber. And as Senator Mullin threatens to throw hands with a Union Boss witness on the Senate floor, and Rep. Tim Burchett accuses Rep. Kevin McCarthy of elbowing him, we see that Trump's attempt to normalize political violence in this country is taking root. Mullin even goes on two channels to insist MORE such violence is a good thing, and makes a glowing reference to the 1856 nightmare when a Pro-Slavery Congressman nearly beat an Abolitionist Senator to death with a cane at his Senate desk. Mullin is either a historical ignoramus, or a sadist who just indicated support for those who used violence to try to protect slavery. B-BLOCK (33:25) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: The new manager of the New York Mets begins his tenure in the worst way possible: by invoking the New York Yankees. More accusations against Russell Brand. And billionaire CEO Jamie Dimon has decided who should be the next president. No, it's NOT "President Jamie Dimon" - because compared to who he has chosen, "President Jamie Dimon" would be a GOOD idea. C-BLOCK (39:05) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Speaking of the Mets, and of slamming one's head against a wall, I just told this story the other day so it's time to tell it here: the day I found out, courtesy New York City's Number 7 Subway, why Mom used to say "don't run for a train, there'll always be another." See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SERIES 2 EPISODE 73: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Trump IS our Hitler. I posited this as early as 2016 and stated it in this series in September, 2022. But some bridge was crossed over the weekend, something happened that was so bad that even The Washington Post sat up and took notice. And now, suddenly, the forces of Groupthink and Conventional Wisdom and The Run On The Bank and The Fear Of Coming In Last On The New Big Beat have all aligned - and for once, for good. Trump is Hitler. Not Hitler 1940, not Hitler 1938. But Hitler 1933? The last moment at which he could have been stopped before he unleashed the cataclysms of European destruction and the holocaust. That's where we are with Trump. And a bevy of his quotes FINALLY broke through: calling his enemies vermin and promising to root them out and echoing Hitler's "ein Volk" speech, while at the same time his evil psychotic henchmen let one too many detail leak about plans to vet every significant military leader so he could count on the army, and his plan to build concentration camps for migrants (and oh by the way anybody who would defend them) and his attempts to get Mo Brooks to demand a new election and his reinstallation as president LAST YEAR and some kind of an overthrow of the Biden regime - all came out simultaneously. To say nothing of the video proffers that got Jenna Ellis and Sidney Powell their Georgia plea deals, full of previously sourced stories that will now have witness testimony about seizing voting machines and "the boss is not going to leave" and suddenly a million light bulbs have gone off around the media: TRUMP REALLY MEANS TO TAKE POWER AND NEVER GIVE IT UP. It just might, just might not be too late. But we have to advance it, and the way you and I can do so directly is to use the words. Suspend Godwin's law and the Survivors' Law (there is only one Hitler - it's Hitler) by making sure there really IS only one Hitler. We must call Trump Hitler. We must call them Nazis. We must get President Biden to call them Nazis. We must make people realize that stopping Trump is essential to saving freedom and democracy in this nation. Because it is. And the first group - the media - just began to wake up to it. B-BLOCK (37:09) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Fox News fired a guy for reporting the truth about January 6; A Texas Trumpist is trying to get elected to congress by reenacting the Martin Luther King assassination; And the Supreme Court just instituted a Code of Ethics that a) isn't a code, and doesn't have anything to do with ethics. (43:03) IT IS NOW TWO YEARS since the death of my hospice pup Mishu and there is actually news about him. Even in death, he may have made it so that other dogs afflicted with the terrible heart malformation that claimed him, may survive. C-BLOCK (1:02:10) THE STORY OF MISHU, Part 2 See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SERIES 2 EPISODE 72: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Literally, Trumped-Up Charges: in Univision interview Dementia J. Trump has confirmed last Sunday's Washington Post story that if we do not stop him from again taking over The White House, he WILL openly politicize the Department of Justice and order it to create fictional indictments of his political rivals in order to prosecute them from campaigns or elections. He literally boasted that he would do what he has falsely accused the legal system of doing to him. And of course if Trump can fabricate charges against politicians, he can fabricate them against you. "If I happen to be president and I see somebody who’s doing well and beating me very badly, I say ‘Go down and indict them.’ They’d be out of business, they’d be out of the election.” He also blamed the Democrats for his own evil, and in the process exposed more of his Swiss-cheese brain: "What they’ve done is, they’ve released the genie out of the...box." It's BOTTLE, genius. The Jack Smith Mar-a-Lago shocker: Potential witnesses against Trump? The receptionist, the head of maintenance, the housekeeper who cleans his bedroom suite and a woodworker who installed the Crown Molding in the bedroom (I'm guessing the color was gold). Trump was reportedly "ballistic" about the housekeeper. Could we get more obscure heroes like Alex Butterfield and Frank Wills? If you don't know them, you will. Another judge muddies the 14th Amendment case. In Michigan, Judge James Robert Redford (seriously) asks the suing attorney if the clause means you can only disqualify somebody AFTER he’s been ELECTED? To which the lawyer aptly asks “That would require, what? The country to re-run an entire presidentical election?” And President Biden reminds us that his best re-election campaign ads would be ones in which he mocks Biden. Talking to auto workers yesterday he mocked him with instant success, and then doubled the laughter when he made the stations of the cross. B-Block (21:57) IN SPORTS: The Chicago White Sox suffer the greatest loss of free agency so far as play-by-play man Jason Benetti leaves for Detroit. The departure of Milwaukee manager Craig Counsell for the Cubs may not be the end of a retrenchment there. There might have been more of it around baseball at the General Mangers' Meeting - except it was cancelled a day early due to a raging virus that sent at least 10% of the executives to the restrooms. (25:44) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Nancy Mace is still getting skewered by Kevin McCarthy and by one remark she will never live down. New York rep Claudia Tenney is a veteran of making a fool of herself. She's done it again. And NewsNation - the Nick-At-Nite of TV News, hires yet another fired failure who doesn't have enough self-respect to find a different line of work. Megyn Kelly will moderate a GOP debate...free-lance? C-Block (32:05) FRIDAYS WITH JAMES THURBER: A selection of his shortest short stories: the fables, including his wonderful "The Unicorn In The Garden." See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SEASON 2 EPISODE 71: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: We are so goddamned afraid of OFFENDING somebody by DEFENDING democracy. The Minnesota State Supreme Court, whose Chief Justice is a pioneer and the daughter of a pioneer (the first African-American football coach at a predominantly white college in modern times) managed to find a way to NOT rule for OR against the bid to disqualify Trump from the ballot there via the 14th Amendment. The 14th Amendment IS self-executing. You ARE presumed guilty until you are proven innocent. It was designed by Americans who had survived the Civil War and didn't want us to have to go through that. If there are extenuating circumstances, there's an override mechanism: Congress can vote by 2/3 to waive application of the clause. Otherwise - you're out. Yet the Minnesota court has chosen the escape route, the way to shirk responsibility for fear of blowback or appeal or who knows what. Everybody placed in the position in which they can risk a little to defend freedom and the constitution rather than waiting until freedom and the constitution are DEAD and millions have to risk everything to restore them, seems to want to get out of it. Kristen Welker got out of it last night. That buffoon Vivek Ramaswamy, so loathsome that even Nikki Haley called him "scum" during the debate, pointed at Welker and demanded that she explain NBC's coverage of the Trump-Russia conspiracy. "Was that real or was that Hilary Clinton made-up misinformation." And instead of realizing he had just gifted her the chance to DO something for democracy - to speak to an audience consuming its first "mainstream media" in a decade and tell them the truth, whether they accepted it or not - she just smiled moronically at him. There’s an extraordinary French film, La Regle du Jeu, The Rules Of The Game. It premiered on July 7th, 1939…354 days before France fell to the Nazis. It was written and directed by Jean Renoir and in it he plays the hero’s buddy Octave and at one point Octave says something about the corruption and lack of morals and just plain lack of effort to stand up for what’s right, and it’s a quote that has come to symbolize the France that folded like a card table to the Hitler onslaught and the Vichy France full of more collaborators than the Germans believed possible. “You see, in this world, there is one awful thing,” Octave says, seemingly fighting back, and then gives up with a shrug, “and that is… that everyone has his REASONS.” We may be the 21st Century version of Pre-Hitler France. We all have our reasons to just shrug, or smile idiotically at hallucinating psychopaths who seem to believe more in (and are willing to fight more for) their delusions than we do about our reality. B-Block (24:42) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Lauren Boebert discovers that being in Congress means if it's a spending bill you have to talk about spending in the bill, courtesy Professor Steny Hoyer. I'm sure she'll eventually get a grip on it. For a day, Twitter's "NY Times Pitchbot" predicted it and finally Nate Cohn did it: the story explaining why Tuesday's Democratic ass-kicking of MAGA was bad news for Joe Biden. And remember Cygnal? The right wing pollster I praised here yesterday for reporting, though it defied their side's narrative, that Biden's "image" had jumped five points in just one month and voters ranking inflation as the key issue had dropped six points in just two months? They've responded by attacking me. For...quoting their press release hyping their own poll. When you are strangled by slavery to your own ideology... C-Block (34:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos is moving to Florida to be closer to his partner Lauren Sanchez. And as I've mentioned before, I used to work with her and she has now achieved her life goal. Just as I used to work with the guy who would eventually try to blackmail David Letterman and yeah, I think that might've been...

SEASON 2 EPISODE 70: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:44) ELECTION SCOREBOARD: Democrats and democracy kick MAGA’s ass: another Trump off-year disaster as Republicans not only don't flip the Virginia Senate, they've lost the Virginia House! Deep discounts on "PRESIDENT YOUNGKIN 2024" Red Vests! In Ohio, it's a landslide as Issue 1 wins by 57-43 and puts Abortion Rights INTO the Ohio Constitution. And Kentucky Democratic Governor Andy Beshear goes from winning by 4000 votes four years ago, to winning by five points last night. Plus there are expansions of Democratic control in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. It's another state-level disaster for Trump's GOP and what's the response of the CNN political director who whored himself out to get Trump live from that disastrous Kaitlan Collins Town Hall? David Chalian says "It's not the Democratic BRAND that's in trouble here, it's Joe Biden that's in trouble here." Actually that's not true either - and CNN should fire this idiot Chalian ASAP because it's CNN that's in trouble here. (9:43) SPECIAL COMMENT: Trump managed to combine stochastic terrorism and his Dementia J. Trump/Elmer J. Fudd split personality in one post, insisting someone “must stop” people who don’t realize he’s worth billions more even than he claims. America’s leading Parking Lot Legal Scholar Alina Habba insists they’ll be filing for a mistrial because they didn’t let Trump talk enough in court (oh, they let him talk enough in court). The good news is, Judge Chutkan shut them down on the latest delaying tactic. They wanted three more months for pre-trial motions; she told them she’ll give them two weeks and they’ll like it. And as more details emerge of Trump’s plan for a military dictatorship, Jeff Clark, the mediocre little man who might be the Attorney General who oversees the transition of the DOJ into the Ministry of Vengeance will finally have to face having his law license suspended. While most reporting stays focused on Sunday’s New York Times Biden poll crater, there’s a new CNN poll that’s a little better. And everybody ignores the work of a private, right-leaning pollster called Cygnal with eye-opening good news for President Biden. Not only has his net approval/disapproval improved a whopping five points in ONE MONTH but the issue seen as sinking Biden – inflation – is beginning to shrink its dominance. A year ago 42% said inflation was the key topic. Two months ago it was still 37%. Now it’s down to 31%. The less it is decisive, the more it points to Biden’s reelection. Still, Politico reports that after three months the Biden campaign has the results of its almost exclusively positive, issue-focused, non-Trump advertising: It’s failed. Completely. The campaign is being urged to re-focus on Trump but remains reluctant, still convinced that Trump will be torn down enough by his Republican challengers (if it doesn’t happen at tonight’s debate, it won’t). And more over, the question has to be raised: if you ARE selling Joe Biden’s Greatest Accomplishments, isn’t the first thing on that list, the fact that HE beat Trump? Wasn’t the most vivid, youthful, meaningful moment of his presidency his Defense-Of-Democracy speech in Philadelphia last year? Isn’t the greatest image of Biden, “Dark Brandon?” Joe? You beat him. You’re the only one who has. We need you to do it again. And we need you to TELL US THAT. Not only WHY he and the evil he personifies and spreads MUST be defeated, but, bluntly, that you did it before and you will do it again: that you are the man to… beat the ever-loving shit out of him. B-BLOCK (30:49) IN SPORTS: Now begins the blowback. Wisconsin says goodbye and good riddance to no-longer-beloved-son Craig Counsell. The President of Mexico knows who the next manager of the Padres should be. And that drying up of the nourishing milk of ever-increasing TV fees for baseball? It just spread to basketball and hockey, where right now 26 teams are making $0 for telecasts during...

SERIES 2 EPISODE 69: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: It is a damp drizzly November in our polls, but Dementia J. Trump not only inadvertently confessed to fraud at his New York trial but also managed to repeat - on the record - that he has no idea what year this in, nor when his presidency ended. The first will cost him $250,000,000 in cash and all his New York properties. The second could cost him his bid to seize power in 2025. And it had better. You saw Trump’s plan for a Special Prosecutor to attack anybody named Biden, and deliberately politicizing the Department of Justice, and this Project 2025 and Trump’s White House Budget Director Russ Vought going on the record to say that TO politicize the DOJ quote “You don’t need a statutory change at all, you need a mindset change. You need an attorney general and a White House Counsel’s Office that don’t view themselves as trying to protect the department from the president” which I think is even nastier sounding in the original Russian when Stalin devised it. Trump is convinced he made mistakes during his presidency and he won’t repeat them and the foremost of those mistakes was NOT to install a military dictatorship. Quoting The Washington Post, his team of evils is "drafting plans to potentially invoke the Insurrection Act on his first day in office to allow him to deploy the military against civil demonstrations.” And the creature at the center of that plot is Jeffrey Clark, indicted in Georgia, unindicted co-conspirator in Washington, would-be Attorney General, the environmental lawyer who wants to turn the world over to the least pro-environment person on the dying planet. Clark devised the last-minute January 2021 plot for the DOJ to seize voting machines and when told that if Trump stayed in office there would be riots in every major city he answered “Well, that’s why there’s an insurrection act.” Just remember that by August 1934 Hitler re-shaped the entire judiciary of Germany so that every judge and prosecutor had to swear an oath TO HIM and apparently the total number of resignations was one guy, a prosecutor in Wuppertal and his name was Martin Gauger and he wound up fleeing to the Netherlands and the Nazis caught him and sent him to Buchenwald and he was dead by 1941 and Trump has a four-year head start on Hitler. And then there are the polls. I'd love if they looked differently. On the other hand, no incumbent president hasn't been underwater to an opposition opponent - real or generic - at this point in the timeline in decades. And amid the calls to dump Biden, who's your choice? Who else are you willing to bet democracy on? B-Block (26:12) IN SPORTS: Cubs double the all-time salary for a baseball manager to hire Craig Counsell away from the Brewers (and outbid the Mets for him). Lovely guy. Has managed his team to six playoff series and lost five times. Mets go to Plan B, Cleveland gets one, All-time worst World Series TV ratings and don't dismiss them: baseball's business model DEPENDS on the game getting MORE money from TV each year, not less (31:18) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Sarah Huckabee does what the lectern tells her. Boris Johnson shows he REALLY doesn't know what a hair dryer is for. And Speaker Mike Johnson gets weirder and weirder: what do you mean you and your 17-year old son exchange updates on your porn usage? C-Block (32:34) THINGS I PROMISE NOT TO TELL: On busy baseball days like this one somebody always asks me why I don't work for that baseballl network. Wellllll... I was gonna, but one team got me fired before they had finished hiring me! See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SEASON 2 EPISODE 68: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:44) BULLETIN: The District of Columbia Court of Appeals Friday afternoon halted Judge Chutkan's gag order against Trump for at least the next 17 days. Rather than deal with it on an emergency basis, it scheduled the first in-person hearing for NOVEMBER 20. The members of the three-judge panel consisting of two judges appointed by Obama and one appointed by Biden should be impeached and disbarred because they actually fell for not just a pathetically weak 1st Amendment excuse but also for a series of arguments based on the delusions-of-grandeur, megalomaniacal premise that this madman Trump believes a 100,000,000 Americans are somehow being deprived of their right to hear him because a judge had ruled no, Trump was not allowed to threaten the judge and the court officials and the prosecutors and not allowed to try to convince his cultists to try to kill them. He had already been given – BY the Judge who issued the gag order – the right to continue to insanely claim that the prosecution of his attempt to overthrow the government and foment violent revolution in this country and install an authoritarian regime with him as its permanent dictator was actually a political vendetta personally ordered by the President of the United States. All she wanted to stop was the continued attempt by Trump to use the social media site he OWNS and the propaganda video networks that make their only money by platforming him and the fascist rallies he stages to say it in just the right way to get somebody to KILL special counsel Jack Smith and to KILL judge Tanya Chutkan and to call in bomb threats to the court room and to doxx the jurors, the way he got hundreds of his cultists to attack the Capitol on January 6 and the way he doxxed Obama and one of his cultists went to Obama’s neighborhood and hunted him, with the ultimate goal being obvious and evil: to institutionalize political violence and turn it into the determinative factor in how this country is not governered but RULED. Donald Trump is a terrorist. A. TERRORIST. And he has been using terrorism by proxy to destroy the laws and rules of this country, without interruption by the law or the courts for fully EIGHT years now. And when the justice system FINALLY stands up on its feet and the courts FINALLY stand up on their feet and recognize that after ALL of our other institutions have utterly failed and ALL of our leaders have failed to protect the nation against domestic terrorism in the form of Trump and his family and his enablers, when SOMEBODY finally BEGINS to do SOMETHING about it, this DC Appeals court say well, no, maybe the legal system of this country has been bending over backwards to protect the rights of this man who would destroy it and KILL anybody in it he doesn’t like, but we don’t see that in bending over backwards it has yet severed its own SPINE yet, so we’re going to grant an “administrative stay” until at least November 20th to prove that we’re great legal scholars and we’re giving Trump every opportunity to get Jack Smith or Merrick Garland killed and why, yes, if there HAD been some sort of legal case against Osama Bin Laden before us in the summer of 2001 we would have delayed the injunction against him for two weeks because it’s FAR more important to give people bent on destroying the United States every last ounce of their rights, than it is to protect the LAWS of this country or the JUDGES of this country or the REPRESENTATIVE FORM OF GOVERNMENT of this country itself. (17:48) The rest of this edition of the podcast is a repeat of Friday's 67th episode and if you've heard it there is no reason to listen again after this point. SPECIAL COMMENT: Dementia J. Trump’s lawyers last night filed a 35-page document to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, one or two paragraphs of which asks that court to BAR Judge Tanya Chutkan from reinstating the gag order on him. The rest of it is...

SEASON 2 EPISODE 67: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Dementia J. Trump’s lawyers last night filed a 35-page document to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, one or two paragraphs of which asks that court to BAR Judge Tanya Chutkan from reinstating the gag order on him. The rest of it is about how wonderful he is and how much he leads in the primary polls and it sounds like the dialogue they gave Rita Moreno in the last scene of the Jack Nicholson movie “Carnal Knowledge.” From the first (!) page: “President Trump’s uniquely powerful voice has been a fixtue of American political discourse for eight years, and central to the American fabric for decades.” Well, true, like car alarms. Or Herpes. From Item 4, on Page 11: "The Gag Order violates the rights of tens of millions of Americans to receive President Trump’s speech: A restriction on President Trump’s speech inflicts a reciprocal injury on the rights of over 100 million Americans who listen to him…" Listen to him bout how big and strong he is and how he is better, more beautiful, more powerful, more perfect, more strong, more masculine, more extraordinary, more virile, more domineering, more irresistible and more up in the air and I may have added a little something to the text there. More importantly, but less entertainingly, Judge Chutkan hits the gas, Judge Engoron hits the roof, Judge Cannon does NOT hit the pause button. Chutkan sent a not so subtle sign to the Trump Cult that the Subversion trial will start as planned 123 days from now, and Jack Smith let Cannon know that Trump was playing her like a two dollar banjo. Also, here in New York, the FBI searched the home of the Mayor's top campaign fundraiser and all of a sudden there is a money scandal involving her, him, a construction company, the nation of Turkey, donors who didn't donate, and don't blame me, I voted for the Garbage Commissioner Lady. And back in DC, Lauren Boeber and Marjorie Taylor Greene and Chip Roy in a three-way… war of words. It began with a post by Roy, explaining why he moved to stop the vote to censure Representative Tlaib. Then Barney Rubble sub-tweeted him: “You voted to kick me out of the freedom caucus, but keep CNN wannabe Ken Buck and vaping groping Lauren Boebert…” to which Roy replied “Tell her to go-chase so-called Jewish space lasers if she wants to spend time on that sort of thing.” And Greene responded “Oh shut up Colonel Sanders” and predicted that this would all end with him reciting “powdered wig soliloquies as Americans are marched to the firing squads”and no, I don’t get the reference either. Curiously silent through all this was Vaping Groping Lauren Boebert. Sources say she’s simply sitting there quietly, trying to get a grip on the situation. B-Block (26:03) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD (26:03) Dean Phillips, the Harlan Crow-funded "Democrat" challenging Biden, may have a bigger problem even than Crow. Fox is equally-opportunity hate: Jesse Watters gets suspended for threatening Arab Americans; Mark Levin lies about Wolf Blitzer's grandparents and denies they died in the holocaust. And after an ex-NHL player dies from taking a skate to his neck, how could an NHL team glorify one of their players nearly cutting another player with EACH of his skates? C-Block (35:05) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: There is boredom, there is paranoia, there is fantasy, there is detective fiction, there is self-satirization. Put them all together and you get Thurber's epic "The Lady on 142." See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SEASON 2 EPISODE 66: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Aileen Cannon, Trump's Personal Concierge Judge, is poised to delay his trial for stealing, stashing, stacking, and sharing secret documents and US war plans - at least until after the primaries and probably until after the election, possibly as early as today. Her excuse will be: he traitor so much that the court schedules are just too crowded with traitor trial stuff. She will first delay by giving him rights to see secret documents he does not have the right to see. She will then use the delay she's fabricated to say that NOW she has to delay everything because the Florida Documents trial schedule is colliding with the Washington Election Subversion trial schedule. That'll be her excuse. The reality is that three years ago a week from Monday, she was still just one of 6300 Assistant United States Attorneys and it was Trump who made her a judge for the first time. Happy Anniversary, Concierge Judge. THE DEMENTIA J. TRUMP SCHEDULE: More insomnia, more crazy threats against judges, and then one of the all-time lulus. On a video designed to inflame the cult, he tells them it's "Your chance to take a stand against tyrants that support the one and only movement the can save our country and Make America Great Again." In other words, for some reason, Trump is saying that you must FIGHT THE TYRANTS THAT SUPPORT MAGA. It's either a Freudian slip, or syphilis. AND THE MIKE JOHNSON MOTHER LODE continues to produce unbelievable and damaging gold. The new speaker a) doesn't understand deficits and offsets b) has claimed he has not had a bank account since at least 2016 and c) was once a major player in forced Conversion Therapy for gay teens. WHAT'S in his closet? My guess is, the first thing is, the doors to several MORE closets. B-Block (23:47) IN SPORTS: The Diamondbacks never led once, not one inning, in the last three games and Texas polished them off 5-0 to win their first World Series. The TV ratings are likely to be the worst ever, by 20% or more. The San Diego Padres had to borrow $50 million in September to make payroll. And Bobby Knight has died. I'll neither mourn nor mock him but I will tell you of the day 30 years ago he tried to get me fired from SportsCenter (36:05) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: A crazy bulletin from Fox News; How HBO used burner accounts to criticize the critics; the GOP Pennsylvania Senate candidate who thinks he could fight a bear - and win. C-Block (43:40) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: From The Desert To The Sea To All of California: the story of one of the most remarkable newscasters I ever worked in the same market with. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SEASON 2 EPISODE 65: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: The likeliest explanation is that she said it in order to fool the cultists to think that there is no chance Trump could actually go to JAIL in Washington, Florida, New York, or Atlanta (or to fool Trump himself) but Trump's noted parking lot attorney Alina Habba has gone on NewsMax and insisted that she tells anybody who panics about the prospect that Trump will be arrested that "He's protected by Secret Service. Period. He's protected by Secret Service, number one...Number two, he did nothing wrong...Secret Service will always protect President Trump. That's the truth. They have to. Wherever he is. But it's not even something we think about." The NewsMax host then literally dares a judge to try to jail him. Did they literally present a passive-aggressive threat? Or just carefully phrased one to reassure the idiots that Trump, who is at great risk in four different courtrooms, is not at risk at all? DEMENTIA J. TRUMP SCOREBOARD: He has gotten the day wrong again (and this time it's on videotape) AND gotten the year wrong - twice - while the time stamps of his posts indicate he's being plagued by insomnia. We can't ignore these little-for-Trump things. The bar has to be: if Biden did this, what would The Times, The Post, and the Networks say about him? Remember the polling: if both are thought too old, Biden wins in a landslide. AND YOUR JOHNSON MAY NOT LAST: The 5th-String Speaker continues to pile up L's and the creepy factor continues to mount. Not only did he try to tie aid to Israel to cutting IRS investigation of wealthy tax cheats, but it turns out that as late as seven years ago he demanded that every candidate for office be subjected to a religious purity test - exactly the opposite of what the constitution says. B-Block (25:03) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: Senator Josh Hawley humiliates himself while trying to brand Holocaust survivor DHS Secretary Mayorkas as an antisemite. Wait, there are POPULAR Senators and Governors? And woo hoo, Elon Musk proves that you are safe in his Cybertruck if you are attacked by a squadron of medieval French archery. (30:29) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: My ex Kyrsten Sinema, followed by my ex Laura Ingraham, followed by... Dean Phillips. Who I don't even know. But - Harlan Crow DOES know him. C-Block (36:40) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: It's nerve-wracking enough to be handed, at age 20, the home phone number of a very famous athlete and be told he's expecting your call and you have to interview him. When it gets interesting is when he picks up the phone and pretends to be a woman. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SERIES 2 EPISODE 64: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: The Biden Campaign slogan should literally be “MY OLD MAN CAN BEAT UP YOUR OLD MAN.” It is the most remarkable, unexpected, startling, counter-intuitive polling data I have ever seen: The future of democracy. The future of the prosecution of Trump. The future of the nation. The future of planetary climate. It may depend on convincing voters NOT that Joe Biden is somehow NOT TOO old but on convincing voters that he and Trump are BOTH TOO OLD. New polling shows 43 percent of Americans BELIEVE they’re BOTH too old and they plan to vote as follows: Biden 61% Trump 13% In Pennsylvania it’s Biden 66% Trump 11%! If they’re BOTH too old – Biden wins in a landslide. Just growing the percentage IN Pennsylvania who believe they’re both too old by FIVE percent would flip 110-thousand Trump votes TO BIDEN. And helpfully Trump is not only acting old, he’s acting demented. In the last 48 hours he hasn’t known WHERE he was, nor what YEAR it was, and even The New York Times is writing about it. Meanwhile, in a Washington courtroom, we had what one observer called a "proxy battle" for what might happen when Trump truly violates the newly-reinstated gag order. A J6 defendant freed while awaiting sentencing began to send violent, racist, homophobic, antisemitic texts to an FBI agent involved in his case, AND threatened to doxx him. The Judge had no problem cancelling his release and sending him directly to jail to await sentencing (the problem arose when he tried to resist the handcuffs and nearly took down four security officers). B-BLOCK (28:44) IN SPORTS: What if they gave a World Series and nobody watched? Texas survived the by-now traditional early departure of Max Scherzer to pull ahead of Arizona (on the road of course) in last night's 3rd Game. But the bad TV ratings and lack of national interest among baseball fans was far worse than even I had expected. In fact, they were record-setting worse. Plus the first star of the Texas franchise, Frank Howard, died yesterday. (31:50) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Boris Johnson goes into TV news, possibly for the free hairstyling. Tim Scott says it's Iowa or bust. And why are the Philadelphia Eagles advertisements appearing next to videos of lunatic Stew Peters spewing hate and giving voice to calls for violence against organizations like Catholic Charities? And why isn't the team or the NFL doing anything about it? C-BLOCK (37:50) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: October was the birthday month of one of my favorite humans of all-time. I met him only once but it was so memorable, so warm, so funny that a decade later when he died, I was stunned when I heard the news and broke into tears. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SEASON 2 EPISODE 63: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:44) BULLETIN: Details are sketchy because of an online systems failure (who names their system after the AMC Pacer?) but Sunday evening Judge Tanya Chutkan REINSTATED her Gag Order against Trump - presumably because of his threats to Mark Meadows and his misconduct in the New York gag order case - and Trump has acknowledged online that it has been reimposed. (8:47) The remainder of this bulletin is a repeat of Friday's Episode #62 and if you've heard it there's no reason to continue to listen. Although you'll have a damn good time if you do! SPECIAL COMMENT: Trump threatens the New York judge, while Jack Smith goes not for a stronger gag order but something closer to a Hannibal Lecter mask. “This is judicial misconduct, coupled with prosecutorial misconduct, and somebody from the state of New York must step in and stop this complete and total miscarriage of justice,” unquote. BECAUSE Trump had earlier suggested that New York’s GOVERNOR should “get involved” and because he capitalized the word “State” in State of New York, he kept one foot in that shadowy region in which he’s lived that life and his attorneys could argue that he was NOT asking “somebody from the state of New York” to “step in and stop this” by attacking somebody like the judge or the district attorney. The rest of the filing shows that Trump IGNORED the New York Gag Order, IGNORED it again, was called to the witness stand to explain what he said, LIED ABOUT IT – PERJURED HIMSELF – and has proven to be unrestrainable even with the Gag Order as presently constituted. Jack Smith isn’t telling the Judge that Trump has violated her GAG ORDER. He is telling her that Trump has violated the ORIGINAL CONDITIONS under which she did NOT jail him until the trial starts. To resume the quote. “Accordingly, the court should modify the defendant’s conditions of release by making compliance with the Order a CONDITION or by clarifying that the existing condition barring communication with witnesses about the facts of the case, INCLUDES indirect messages made publicly on social media or in speeches.” Plus, Trump's faint grip on sanity seems to be slipping and the tell on that is: he has reverted to the genuinely unfathomable dog analogies that he fell into during the most stressful times of 2015-2016. When Trump starts claiming dogs get fired, he's about to lose it. And Speaker Mike Johnson, Day 2: For a man who spent twenty years advocating for sending gay people to prison for having sex, advocating for sending doctors to prison for providing family planning, advocating for a national abortion ban, advocating for fewer laws against guns, advocating for more laws against divorce, advocating for gutting of the entire societal safety net, advocating for disenfranchising minorities and entire states, advocating for using the constitution to destroy the constitution, advocating for the forced conflation of church and state, advocating for a conservative group that makes employees swear an oath to Jesus, advocating against transgenderism, advocating against men wearing women’s clothes, advocating against women wearing MEN’S clothes, advocating restrictions against Muslims, advocating against federal disaster relief, advocating for more oil and gas and against science that has proved we are all going to be KILLED by more oil and gas, advocating for that idiot Amy Coney Barrett since he met her in 1988, advocating for a limit of three terms in the House and then running for this one – his FOURTH, and advocating for the overthrow of the duly-elected government of the United States throughout the end of 2020 and the beginning of 2021. For a guy who has done nothing but comment on everything, all the time, and always wrong… so far… he sure has been Speaker of The House Mr. No Comment. B-Block (31:08) IN SPORTS: Oh boy. The World Series. The 7th best regular season team versus the 12th best. I have never been less...

SEASON 2 EPISODE 62: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Trump threatens the New York judge, while Jack Smith goes not for a stronger gag order but something closer to a Hannibal Lecter mask. “This is judicial misconduct, coupled with prosecutorial misconduct, and somebody from the state of New York must step in and stop this complete and total miscarriage of justice,” unquote. BECAUSE Trump had earlier suggested that New York’s GOVERNOR should “get involved” and because he capitalized the word “State” in State of New York, he kept one foot in that shadowy region in which he’s lived that life and his attorneys could argue that he was NOT asking “somebody from the state of New York” to “step in and stop this” by attacking somebody like the judge or the district attorney. The rest of the filing shows that Trump IGNORED the New York Gag Order, IGNORED it again, was called to the witness stand to explain what he said, LIED ABOUT IT – PERJURED HIMSELF – and has proven to be unrestrainable even with the Gag Order as presently constituted. Jack Smith isn’t telling the Judge that Trump has violated her GAG ORDER. He is telling her that Trump has violated the ORIGINAL CONDITIONS under which she did NOT jail him until the trial starts. To resume the quote. “Accordingly, the court should modify the defendant’s conditions of release by making compliance with the Order a CONDITION or by clarifying that the existing condition barring communication with witnesses about the facts of the case, INCLUDES indirect messages made publicly on social media or in speeches.” Plus, Trump's faint grip on sanity seems to be slipping and the tell on that is: he has reverted to the genuinely unfathomable dog analogies that he fell into during the most stressful times of 2015-2016. When Trump starts claiming dogs get fired, he's about to lose it. And Speaker Mike Johnson, Day 2: For a man who spent twenty years advocating for sending gay people to prison for having sex, advocating for sending doctors to prison for providing family planning, advocating for a national abortion ban, advocating for fewer laws against guns, advocating for more laws against divorce, advocating for gutting of the entire societal safety net, advocating for disenfranchising minorities and entire states, advocating for using the constitution to destroy the constitution, advocating for the forced conflation of church and state, advocating for a conservative group that makes employees swear an oath to Jesus, advocating against transgenderism, advocating against men wearing women’s clothes, advocating against women wearing MEN’S clothes, advocating restrictions against Muslims, advocating against federal disaster relief, advocating for more oil and gas and against science that has proved we are all going to be KILLED by more oil and gas, advocating for that idiot Amy Coney Barrett since he met her in 1988, advocating for a limit of three terms in the House and then running for this one – his FOURTH, and advocating for the overthrow of the duly-elected government of the United States throughout the end of 2020 and the beginning of 2021. For a guy who has done nothing but comment on everything, all the time, and always wrong… so far… he sure has been Speaker of The House Mr. No Comment. B-Block (22:24) IN SPORTS: Oh boy. The World Series. The 7th best regular season team versus the 12th best. I have never been less interested. Here's a shock: after legal sports gambling websites become the primary sponsor of all North American sports league, a player is suspended for half a season for...using one. And the brilliant idea from England's Tottenham Hotspur: give each player in its team history their own "legacy number." (27:35) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: President Duda of Poland may be trying to Trump the last election. E-Bikers should be saving the planet; instead they're menacing New Yorkers. And I do not pretend this isn't a crass idea. I think we...

SEASON 2 EPISODE 61: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: House Republicans have fully embraced Dementia J. Trump's tiny, ugly, Johnson. And even as Speaker Mike Johnson checks all the denialist nihilist boxes - he's homophobic, he wants to put abortion providers in prison, he wants to make gay sex illegal, he wants to spend taxpayer money on religious projects, he is so obscure that Senators Barrasso and Collins had no idea who he was - are the seeds already in price for his eventual dethroning? On January 6th, during the insurrection, on Fox News, Mike Johnson CRITICIZED DONALD TRUMP. One can only assume that nobody has played the clip for Trump or said "Are you aware, sir, that he blamed you for not doing more to stop things, SIR?" In the short term there is new reporting that Johnson was far more involved in the insurrection than originally known. He was the point man in the House's Amicus Brief to the Texas lawsuit to throw out the electoral results from Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Washington (a brief so controversial that other Republicans said Trump should preemptively pardon all the Congressmen who signed it). But now it turns out he briefed other Congressmen on January 5th on how to rationalize blocking the certification of Biden's victory on bullshit "constitutional" grounds. Meanwhile: when will a judge in this country do the right thing and put Trump in jail the way he would put you or me in jail? During the lunch break at the civil fraud trial yesterday, Trump AGAIN attacked Judge Arthur Engoron's clerk. The judge merely assessed a $10,000 fine. If you're not going to have the balls to put him in prison, at least get his attention. The fine should be $1,500,000,000. See what he does about that. B-Block (19:43) IN SPORTS: Dusty Baker ends his baseball managerial career, while the only manager to commute with me on the New York Subway system shifts from San Diego to San Francisco. And Baseball's Hall of Fame announces ten nominees for its annual recognition of one great broadcaster and I've worked with three of them and four of them are good friends and good grief I'm old. (26:17) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Tommy Tuberville may have been thwarted by Senate Democrats. There's a Clarence Thomas money scandal (no, a DIFFERENT one), and here we go: Eric Adams says he was made mayor of New York City by God. Only this time it gets translated in real time into Spanish. C-Block (32:47) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: America lost something when the intricate, rehearsed, multi-person practical joke vanished. 41 years ago this month I was fortunate to play a minor role in the greatest practical joke I ever witnessed, when we at the NFL player strike negotiations convinced a reporter from The New York Times that he had just missed the biggest story of the year. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.