Countdown with Keith Olbermann

SERIES 2 EPISODE 8: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Trump made his lawyers file a 29-page document complaining about Joe Biden’s coffee mug. Trump really hates this coffee mug. Trump is really aggrieved by this coffee mug. Trump’s fractured emotional and intellectual depth perception is triggered by this coffee mug. Trump’s last thought before he dies might just be about this coffee mug. He made his lawyers put a picture of this coffee mug IN the response to the government’s motion to keep him from taking the evidence produced in discovery and using it to try to get somebody to kill the witnesses or the prosecutors or the judges or the Attorney General or you or me or whoever. He believes this coffee mug gives him permission to take just about anything the prosecution has and write another hundred self-pitying posts about it or give another interminable TWO hundred speeches about it.

It's SOME coffee mug.

I wonder if Judge Tanya Chutkan has stopped laughing yet. Jack Smith quickly responded claiming Trump is seeking help trying the case in the media not in the courtroom and Judge Chutkan has already scheduled a hearing sometime before Friday. 

Plus the Atlanta indictments are expected this week or next but no earlier than Thursday. His genius lawyers are now 0-4 versus E. Jean Carroll and Trump tries to attack DEVON Archer but instead attacks KEVIN Archer, co-founder of the group "Dexy's Midnight Runners" and you know what their one hit was, right? C'mon Aileen Cannon.

B-Block (19:16) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: In what might be the longest 'Worsts' in this series, Piers Morgan's hatred of America and Kayleigh McEnany's complete fabrication about seeing "The Devon Archer hearing" cannot compete with Baltimore Orioles' CEO John Angelos who suspended his terrific young announcer Kevin Brown for complimenting the team on how much more success it's had this year than in previous seasons. Seriously. The guy wants the audience to believe the Orioles have never lost a game. I've been the victim of some BS suspensions, but nothing to compare to this BS. (25:54) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Just 16,194 days ago I got a letter that so profoundly changed my life that I know exactly where it is at this minute and I bet I haven't gone a full week without thinking of it.

C-Block (39:49) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL (Part 2): The letter was from Lou Adler, News Director of WCBS Radio in New York. And the trip to get back to my apartment to GET the letter ALSO nearly changed my life.

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SEASON 2 EPISODE 7: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: If she won't revoke his pre-trial release, Judge Upadhyaya must at least bring Donald Trump into court and issue a gag order against him on social media and in public and warn him that if he threatens the judges again, or the prosecutors again, or witnesses again, or the court again, or the department of justice again, or the president again - or as he has done in the three days after she warned him to do none of those things, threaten ALL of them - she will incarcerate him. Nothing else will make the point to him, and whatever the results are, that's fine. Scott Adams hinting at civil war and sharpening 50,000 sketch pencils is fine. These blood-lusting fascists forget who owns all the tanks at the moment. Also: of COURSE Trump has hired another idiot as a lawyer. His defense for the January 6th indictments is that he was idiotically following the idiot advice of an idiot lawyer in John Eastman. Naturally he's going to bring in a new guy who said something so stupid yesterday he invoked Jeffrey Tambor in "Arrested Development" saying he might have committed some light treason.

B-Block (20:48) IN SPORTS: USA-hating conservatives exult in Soccer team's loss in World Cup because...they are lost souls. For the first time all year the words "Tim Anderson" and "Hit" are used in the same sentence. And Robin Ventura is now the happiest man in sports. And the Mets are going to run the table, aren't they? O-57, right? (28:44) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: New York Times continues to think it can gain conservative readers by pandering; Vivek Ramaswamy was for Juneteenth before he was against it, and you'll never believe who didn't show up for the House Committee's interview with Hunter Biden's old biz partner.

C-Block (35:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: ESPN Radio will now by run by non-ESPN people, which flashes me back to the day we launched it in 1992 and THAT flashes me back to WHY I happened to meet the wonderful actress Elizabeth Montgomery. 

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BULLETIN: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:43) BULLETIN: Trump posts "If you go after me, I'm coming after you!" almost exactly 24 hours after Judge Moxila A. Upadhyaya warned him: "Mr. Trump. I ask you to listen carefully to the conditions. Your most important condition of release is that you not commit a state, federal or local offense. If so, your release may be revoked. I want to remind you it is a crime to intimidate a witness, or retaliate against anyone for providing information about your case to the prosecution.” She warned him it was also a crime "to influence a juror or threaten or attempt to bribe a witness or any other person who may have information about your case, or to otherwise obstruct the administration of justice. Do you understand these warnings, sir?”

He has violated her warnings four times in nine words and the judge has no choice but to revoke his terms of release and detain him until trial. 

And that he did NOT mention specific names makes it worse, because in this message he is intimidating ALL witnesses, ALL judges, ALL prosecutors, ALL prosecutors' bosses, and ALL of us.

Trump is a remorseless, irredeemable terrorist - the worst this country has ever faced. And this can stop now - and it must stop now.

Lock. Him. Up.

B-Block (13:58) SPECIAL COMMENT: In a tradition as old as the nation itself, Trump has been indicted. The true headline is the accelerated timeline the Judge imposes. There can be no question they intend to begin this trial not just before the election but WELL before the election.

B-Block (31:44) IN SPORTS: The shut-up-and-dribble crowd forgets to shut up. The DeVos-owned NBA Orlando Magic donates $50,000 to a campaign arm of the racist, homophobic Ron DeSantis and the team players and ALL the NBA players rightfully go nuts. And Tiger Woods joins the PGA Board: will he save us from the Saudi takeover of golf, or collaborate with those who want to see The Prince Mohammed Bin Salman Masters? (33:45) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Trump whore Mark Levin with an embarrassing flub, Tampa discovers "Dumpster Fire" is not always just a metaphor, and General Michael Flynn was trying to tweet something AGAINST child trafficking but wound up tweeting something that sounds like it's FOR child trafficking. We think that's what it is.

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SEASON 2 EPISODE 5: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:43) SPECIAL COMMENT: In a tradition as old as the nation itself, Trump has been indicted. The true headline is the accelerated timeline the Judge imposes. There can be no question they intend to begin this trial not just before the election but WELL before the election.

B-Block (19:29) IN SPORTS: The shut-up-and-dribble crowd forgets to shut up. The DeVos-owned NBA Orlando Magic donates $50,000 to a campaign arm of the racist, homophobic Ron DeSantis and the team players and ALL the NBA players rightfully go nuts. And Tiger Woods joins the PGA Board: will he save us from the Saudi takeover of golf, or collaborate with those who want to see The Prince Mohammed Bin Salman Masters? (23:43) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Trump whore Mark Levin with an embarrassing flub, Tampa discovers "Dumpster Fire" is not always just a metaphor, and General Michael Flynn was trying to tweet something AGAINST child trafficking but wound up tweeting something that sounds like it's FOR child trafficking. We think that's what it is.

C-Block (29:10) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: If it's another indictment day I can only read you one of the master's works: he wrote it in 1931 when Donald wasn't even a gleam in Fred Trump's eye at an invigorating KKK rally. Yet it is the story: "The Greatest Man In The World."

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SEASON 2 EPISODE 4: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:43) SPECIAL COMMENT: The "it was just free speech, you're criminalizing the 1st Amendment" defense has been replaced. Trump's lawyers, Fox News puppets, and even opponents are all rolling out a new one:

John Eastman did it!

Of course they are phrasing it differently. They are blaming it on Trump relying on "the advice of counsel." It's an ingenious strategy - you were too stupid to know your lawyer was an idiot. But it really only damages Obstruction charges, and it would require Trump to testify. Still, it does indicate Trump will keep throwing different things at the wall to see what might stick.

Plus, the media line for spaces at today's arraignment of Trump in DC began to form before sunset last night. Trump is almost certain to be there, even though cameras won't be. Trump's January 6th Insurrection turns out to have helped destroy America's credit rating. The debate over the identity of Unidentified Co-Conspirator 6 continues to raise with Maggie Haberman and the Times insisting it's Boris Epshteyn - but there's an important flaw in the description that they have ignored.

And you don't want to be Unidentified Co-Conspirator 1. The Rudy Giuliani tape transcripts are out from the rape and sexual abuse lawsuit against him and they actually ARE filled with slurs against Jews and gays and constant gross misogyny. I will give a dramatic reading.

B-Block (22:15) IN SPORTS: 37 days ago he was throwing a perfect game. Today, he's in in-patient alcohol rehab. And is Max Scherzer lying about the Mets? Or are the Mets lying to their fan base? Or did the Mets lie to Scherzer? (26:40) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Moms For Liberty - still fighting mental health. Warner Bros apologizes after they suddenly realize that "Barbenheimer" and "Ken's Atomic Bomb Hairstyle" might be a little offensive - in Japan. In August. And Uncle Fester steps in it: Joe Rogan smears Ray Epps, who was not a provocateur on 1/6 but IS extremely litigious.

C-Block (33:00) EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: Theo, in Queens, needs a forever family! (34:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Off by a day, but 44 years and a day ago, as a 20-year old rookie sportscaster and editor on a 1,000-station national radio network, I was literally walking into the booth for my first sportscast of the night when the news suddenly broke: the captain of the New York Yankees had died in a plane crash. That day will always be with me.

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POST-INDICTMENT TRUMP SPECIAL: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:43) SMITH MANAGES TO CHARGE TRUMP WITH A COUP, STOCHASTIC TERRORISM, SEDITION, AND ATTEMPTING TO FOMENT A CIVIL WAR - without ever using any of these weighted and difficult-to-prove phrases and charges. It is the genius of the charging document and indeed the case. It looks and reads like a set of Obstruction, Fraud, and Civil Rights charges. In fact it will go into history as the fiercest damnation of the worst criminal in American history 

B-Block (21:51) YOU ARE NUMBER SIX: It can't all be gloom and doom. We have been unintentionally given a Wordle-like game to play. Let's call it "Trumple." There are six unidentified, unindicted co-conspirators in the case. Four are easily recognized: Rudy, John Eastman, Jeffrey Clark, and Sidney Powell. The fifth is a little tougher: Kenneth Cheseboro. But who is number six? Experts, sources and crowd-votes disagree. But I think I've found him. LET'S PLAY TRUMPLE.

C-Block (32:30) TRUMP'S DEFENSE? THIS WAS JUST FREE SPEECH. He's got a problem here. The judge assigned the case has heard countless January 6 trials and has already dismissed the 1st Amendment as a defense, and has mocked the loyalty of the seditionists to Trump. But, we get to hear Rudy cry about Trump. And you get to hear me guarantee you that eventually, Rudy will give him up.

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A-Block (1:44) BULLETIN: Trump indicted and the lone true surprise is the six unindicted co-conspirators and for once Donald Trump is not alone on the stage of infamy. And it may yet prove that the Trump Six are as important to this case as anything else because they can only BE unindicted because the Special Prosecutor is holding out hope he can make them into witnesses by deferring indicting them, and implicitly threatening to do so. Plus we all think we can figure out with virtual certainty who at least five of them are.

As for Trump, he is in the worst position he has been on any of his indictment days because flatly, the narrative presented by Jack Smith in the 45-page four-count indictment really offers him only one defense: Abject Stupidity.

“Despite having lost,” it begins, “the defendant was determined to remain in power. So for more than two months following election day on November 3, 2020, the defendant spread lies that there had been outcome-determinative fraud in the election and that he had actually won. These claims, and the Defendant knew that they were false. But the defendant repeated and widely disseminated them anyway – to make his knowingly false claims appear legitimate, create an intense national atmosphere of mistrust and anger, and erode public faith in the administration of the election.”

Smith has indicted Trump not merely for trying to overthrow the 2020 election and stop the peaceful transfer of power and savage American democracy, but of doing it while he knew, every moment of every day, that he was lying as he did so. Again and again prosecutors quote Trump advisers, lawyers, counselors as telling him he lost. And at least once Smith quotes Trump acknowledging it. Acknowledging he lost. Acknowledging on January 3rd that Joe Biden would be president on January 20th. And then immediately going back to trying to stop it from happening, and lying about it. Paragraph 83: “On the evening of January 3, the Defendant met for a briefing on an overseas national security issue with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and other senior national security advisors. The Chairman briefed the Defendant on the issue-which had previously arisen in December- as well as possible ways the Defendant could handle it. When the Chairman and another advisor recommended that the Defendant take no action because Inauguration Day was only seventeen days away and any course of action could trigger something unhelpful, the Defendant calmly agreed, stating, "Yeah, you're right, it's too late for us. We're going to give that to the next guy."

Yet he did NOT give it to the next guy. Paragraph 84: “The Defendant moved immediately from this national security briefing to the meeting that the Acting Attorney General had requested earlier that day…The Defendant expressed frustration with the Acting Attorney General for failing to do anything to overturn the election results, and the group discussed Co-Conspirator 4's plans to investigate purported election fraud and to send his proposed letter to state officials-a copy of which was provided to the Defendant during the meeting.”

There are only two explanations anyone could offer for that kind of behavior: to acknowledge you have lost the election and are leaving office, and then conduct a meeting over how to stay in office. Either you are stupid to the point of mental incompetence, or you are engaged in a conspiracy to knowingly defraud the people of the United States of America by any and all means available.

And in this country when you are arraigned you must plead Guilty or Not Guilty. You may not plead "STUPID."

THE REMAINDER OF THIS PODCAST IS FROM TUESDAY'S ORIGINAL EDITION

B-Block (16:02) SPECIAL COMMENT: Indictment foreshadowing. “This is really bad news for Biden,” Trump wrote last night, though – not really, no, “which means I will probably be indicted again, soon.” Do you like THAT foreshadowing? Or how about this one? Fani Willis sends an e-mail to county commissioners asking them to make sure they keep themselves and their staff safe. And orange security barriers have gone up around the Fulton County Courthouse. And yesterday was the first of ten days before August 18th when she ordered 70 percent of her staff to work remotely. Willis also gave a TV interview: “The work is accomplished. We’ve been working for two and a half years. We’re ready to go,” unquote.

Meanwhile back at the DC Ranch: there is still that January 6th Target Letter from Jack Smith hanging like the sword of Damacles over Trump’s head and the fact that if Smith sticks to a timeline that matches the document case, he’s indicting today or Thursday at the latest and the fact that his Trump January 6th Grand Jury was expected to convene today and while Trump’s latest self-pitying post – that would be number Three Million, 447 thousand 237, collect the whole set – is not necessarily time-sensitive it sure is funny if he already knew from his attorneys that the indictments are coming this week and instead of just revealing it like he did last time, he’s milking it this way, in order to feed the fascists’ story line that the entire prosecution of Trump is being made up as they go along, and in a matter of hours, for one reason only. Namely – as Trump also posted last night – “in order to kill the news cycle!!!"

Also: why does Trump treat his cultists like idiots? Because they're idiots. New polling: 91 percent of Republicans who trust Fox News don't believe he has committed any real crime and 85 percent of them say Republicans have to support him regardless. And there is a guess or a theory or a thesis beginning to form that Trump is cash-poor, has been drained by the failure of Trump Social, and his ability to pay for those lawyers AND this campaign may be severely constrained - and it's all because of Elon Musk!

C-Block (33:30) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: Whatever actually happened with Congressman Ronny Jackson and the 15-year old girl and the cops at the rodeo, his office felt compelled to issue a press release insisting he WASN'T drinking. The X-sign is gone. Tommy Tuberville is all ears after he loses Space Command for Alabama. RFK Jr's PAC is literally half-funded by an 81-year old Republican. (36:30) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Musk. Again. Threatening to sue to prevent free speech and protect hate speech. DeSantis fanboy Pedro Gonzalez and MORE antisemitic texts including one against Nancy Pelosi whom he doesn't know isn't Jewish. And the U.S. Congressman who believes that a soldier is buried under the floor of the Capitol rotunda.

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IT'S THE COUNTDOWN 1ST ANNIVERSARY PODCAST

A-Block (1:43) SPECIAL COMMENT: Indictment foreshadowing. “This is really bad news for Biden,” Trump wrote last night, though – not really, no, “which means I will probably be indicted again, soon.” Do you like THAT foreshadowing? Or how about this one? Fani Willis sends an e-mail to county commissioners asking them to make sure they keep themselves and their staff safe. And orange security barriers have gone up around the Fulton County Courthouse. And yesterday was the first of ten days before August 18th when she ordered 70 percent of her staff to work remotely. Willis also gave a TV interview: “The work is accomplished. We’ve been working for two and a half years. We’re ready to go,” unquote.

Meanwhile back at the DC Ranch: there is still that January 6th Target Letter from Jack Smith hanging like the sword of Damacles over Trump’s head and the fact that if Smith sticks to a timeline that matches the document case, he’s indicting today or Thursday at the latest and the fact that his Trump January 6th Grand Jury was expected to convene today and while Trump’s latest self-pitying post – that would be number Three Million, 447 thousand 237, collect the whole set – is not necessarily time-sensitive it sure is funny if he already knew from his attorneys that the indictments are coming this week and instead of just revealing it like he did last time, he’s milking it this way, in order to feed the fascists’ story line that the entire prosecution of Trump is being made up as they go along, and in a matter of hours, for one reason only. Namely – as Trump also posted last night – “in order to kill the news cycle!!!"

Also: why does Trump treat his cultists like idiots? Because they're idiots. New polling: 91 percent of Republicans who trust Fox News don't believe he has committed any real crime and 85 percent of them say Republicans have to support him regardless. And there is a guess or a theory or a thesis beginning to form that Trump is cash-poor, has been drained by the failure of Trump Social, and his ability to pay for those lawyers AND this campaign may be severely constrained - and it's all because of Elon Musk!

B-Block (19:05) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: Whatever actually happened with Congressman Ronny Jackson and the 15-year old girl and the cops at the rodeo, his office felt compelled to issue a press release insisting he WASN'T drinking. The X-sign is gone. Tommy Tuberville is all ears after he loses Space Command for Alabama. RFK Jr's PAC is literally half-funded by an 81-year old Republican. (22:10) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Musk. Again. Threatening to sue to prevent free speech and protect hate speech. DeSantis fanboy Pedro Gonzalez and MORE antisemitic texts including one against Nancy Pelosi whom he doesn't know isn't Jewish. And the U.S. Congressman who believes that a soldier is buried under the floor of the Capitol rotunda.

C-Block (28:45) FIRST ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATIONS of the start of Year 2 of this here pod. Thank you kindly for listening.

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EPISODE 257: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:43) SPECIAL COMMENT: It's just guess but I think Trump is TERRIFIED that his “Property Manager” Carlos De Oliveira is about to flip. Trump freaked out again last night about Jack Smith and the documents and Hilary emails and Biden documents and the Special Counsel covering the Biden documents review – and without provocation from any known developments – and the LAST time he did that I told you “SOMETHING is going on at the Grand Jury but I’ll be damned if I know what” and hours later there was a superseding indictment on the documents so with that context let me say it again: SOMETHING is going on at the Grand Jury because Trump may not have MANY human traits but he is really good on exhibiting cause and effect. And this freakout may have something to do with either or both of two developments. At 10:30 this morning, at the James Lawrence King Federal Justice Building in Miami, Courtroom 5, before Magistrate Judge Edwin G. Torres, we will see present himself for his first appearance who else but Trump’s newest co-defendant, his Mar-a-Lago “Property Manager” Carlos De Oliveira: the guy who gave us THE money quote, so far, of the destruction of evidence and obstruction case, “The boss wants the server deleted.”

And if the Trump freak out doesn’t owe to THAT indictment hearing, and the prospect that not everybody is as dumb as Walt Nauta, and that a YEAR ago Trump wasn’t sure De Oliveira wasn’t the kind of guy who’d flip, then it’s the fact that CLEARLY Trump’s Mar-a-Lago I-T Guy Yuscil Taveras already flipped.

B-Block (18:51) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: The Trump stochastic terrorist who hunted Barack Obama moves to be released from jail, and we have a SCOTUS problem: Sam Alito isn't just corrupt, he's gone crazy (22:38) IN SPORTS: Max Scherzer, Jordan Hicks, others traded as baseball's deal deadline looms. But what the GM of the New York Mets said AFTER he traded Scherzer kind of paints himself and his owner into a corner in which they have to sign Shohei Ohtani (29:26) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Ron DeSantis's pro-slavery campaign costs Orlando $4.6 million. NJ Congressman Christopher Smith wants to scuttle the World HIV/AIDS program over a conspiracy theory. And Musk reinstates Kanye West.

C-Block (35:15) EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: The adorable Petros in Devore CA (36:15) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: I made a flub on D-Day which reminded me of the day the president of MSNBC staked everything on covering the 60th Anniversary OF D-Day - and major news broke which he tried to avoid running in order to protect his dream!

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EPISODE 256: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:43) SPECIAL COMMENT: “The boss wanted the server deleted.” WHY would you try to destroy the security video if you didn’t do anything wrong? WHY would you try to destroy the security video if it didn’t PROVE you broke the law? WHY would you move the documents after the government said don’t move the documents, and WHY would you move the documents without remembering that you’d get caught ON security video MOVING the documents, and why when you DID remember that you’d get caught on security video would you then try to destroy the security video and GET CAUGHT TRYING TO DESTROY THE SECURITY VIDEO? Why would you personally launch a plot to destroy the server that seemed to have been good at only one thing – leaving clues.

And oh by the way this is still on top of the espionage. I went to a January 6th Indictment and a Stolen Classified DOCUMENTS Indictment broke out!

It was the cover-up sank Richard Nixon. The cover-up got Bill Clinton impeached. And THIS cover-up – Destroy the Servers, Destroy the Servers, now looks exactly like the Server cover-up Trump accused Hillary Clinton of in 2016, a theme he pounded weekly and daily and hourly and arguably won him the White House. And one thing we can infer from the superseding indictment is that the government has witnesses to whom Trump showed the Mark Milley Iran War document, and has all Trump’s Property Manager’s texts and it looks like it has his IT Guy, Employee 4? He and Employee 5 are testifying against Trump and they have all of Walt Nauta’s messages right down to the SHUSH emoji he used to remind the person he was telling all this to not to tell anybody. (Prosecutor holds up giant blow-up of Nauta text with SHUSH emoji, six feet tall. “Perhaps, Mr. Nauta, THIS will refresh your memory!”)

And let us not forget: the January 6th Indictments are still coming. Today? Beginning of next week? They remain next. POOP EMOJI!

Trump’s guilt is now even more obvious than ever; thus so too is the fact that we are playing Beat The Clock. Is the play now to offer to trade Trump justice and revenge in a disqualification plea deal?

B-Block (22:00) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: Maybe Trump had his Property Manager also send the IT guy to fix McConnell. Can he have a look at Feinstein? And while he's at it, maybe he could remove the adult content from Rep. Nancy 'I Skipped Sex To Be Here, Reverend' Mace. (26:30) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: The Barbie movie. Now they will ALL BE Barbie Movies. Jonathan Turley suggests Biden might pardon his son and then announce he's not running for re-election. And while Senator Tommy Tuberville is blocking military promotions, The Washington Post reports he's also dragged his own father's honorable military record through the mud by inflating his service in World War 2.

C-Block (33:20) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: I haven't read this one to you before. It's a delightfully crafted story of the crassest kind of practical joker: "Meet Birdey Doggett."

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EPISODE 255: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:43) SPECIAL COMMENT: What if that had been Joe Biden and not Mitch McConnell? What if that had been JOE BIDEN stopping mid-sentence, going glassy eyed and catatonic for 30 seconds, having to be led away by his colleagues, returning only to mumble his insistence he was fine - and a bad joke? What kind of Hell would the Republicans have unleashed on us? "Resignation! 25th Amendment! Cover-up! Seizure! Aneurysm! History! Diagnosis! Prognosis! Body Double!

And - I get it - 100 Minority Leaders aren't worth ONE President. But what would Republicans have DONE with this? And what DID Republicans do with Trump's Covid hospitalization and Trump's 2019 mystery trip to Walter Reed? What if it was Joe Biden making a bad joke about Mitch McConnell's health instead of Mitch McConnell making a bad joke about Joe Biden's? And the reporter replies "Oh nice." The Republicans, and the news media - partisan and otherwise - would've gone insane over this story. Or if it had happened to an elderly Democratic Senate leader.

Plus the Hunter Biden plea deal collapse really hurts Jim Jordan and Jamie Comer - and Jordan admits it. And I swear something is going on at the Trump Grand Jury. Trump is freaking out again. But I'll be damned if I know what it is. And Marjorie Taylor Greene exceeds her usual boundaries of stupidity. After two dozen listens I still don't know what she said, and I don't know what she MEANT to say.

B-Block (16:11) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: Underwater temperatures in the Atlantic off Florida are as hot as a Jacuzzi and the highest on record. Asphalt temperatures in Arizona are 180 and have sent people to the burn ward who merely fell to the ground. We have skipped "Climate Crisis" and gone right to "Climate Catastrophe." And he may be finished but Chris Licht ain't finished. First he destroyed CNN. Now his hope for revenge is destroying Variety. (26:00) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Somebody took a Community Note over his vaxxer conspiracy tweet; he just threatened advertisers; he just purloined the handle @X - yes, Elon Musk takes Win, Place and Show.

C-Block (31:05) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Saturday would've been my Dad's 94th Birthday. I don't know which seems weirder to write here: "94th" or "would've."

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EPISODE 254: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:42) SPECIAL COMMENT: There are no signs that the Jack Smith Grand Jury actually did indict Donald Trump yesterday in Washington. So why and how - just minutes after the Grand Jurors went home for the day - did Trump write and post: They "Are now indicting me"? Does Trump know something we don't? Or is it just that if you send out 60 social media posts in a nine-hour span, your odds of being actually pertinent and right, begin to approach 100%?

Meanwhile: Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy beclowns himself. First he says of President Biden "this is RISING to the level of impeachment inquiry." But by morning he has switched to: It "would rise to the level." And finally, to "We wouldn't HAVE to rise."

B-Block (15:59) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: One part of the Climate Catastrophe that we forgot about. When it hit 115 degrees in Catania in Sicily, all the underground electrical cables melted. Texas A&M goes full on McCarthy, punishing a lecturer who dared to criticize the Lieutenant Governor. And Trump's top legal advisor has his first Biden scalp: he's proved the DOG is guilty of deep personal corruption (21:27) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Sean Hannity and Elon Musk lead the chorus jumping to the conclusion that LeBron James' son suffered cardiac arrest because of Covid vaccine because no athlete ever went into cardiac arrest before Covid except all those other ones who died. Andy Ogles demands the media stop "sensationalizing" mass murderers - unless they were to pose with long guns on their Christmas cards. And Greg Gutfeld defends the Fox/DeSantis claim that slavery helped slaves by teaching them all to become blacksmiths, by saying that those in the Nazi death camps who had useful skills survived and all the other unskilled ones didn't. He has not been fired. Not yet.

C-Block (26:53) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Tomorrow is Uma Thurman Day. I was supposed to have coffee with her, then dinner with the network president who had a plan for us to save the network from the idiot who owned it. And then plans changed...

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EPISODE 253: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:42) SPECIAL COMMENT: Trump may be indicted for the January 6th attemped coup – today. Or, not!

But clearly as of 1 PM eastern at the Prettyman Courthouse in DC, the window TO indict is open for the first time on this 10th day since Trump received Jack Smith’s 2nd Target Letter. The window from Target Letter to indictment last time might have been as short as 10 days, maybe as long as 20.

Plus what could be at the center of a THIRD set of indictments: more testimony from Trump staffers that he knew damn well that the election wasn’t stolen and that he didn’t win it. And that in February 2020 he even praised the improved election security and audit capability for paper ballots, nine months before the 2020 Presidential Election.

And Trump online: reposts Marjorie Pornography Greene’s “little bitch” quote about the Special Prosecutor, and a moronic poll over Republicans’ “Dream President”

Plus: obeying Supreme Court rulings is now optional. Who knew? That's the verdict from the Republican Governor of Alabama Kay Ivey, and the Republican Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy. So I guess Roe-V-Wade wasn’t overturned and that key 2nd Amendment case – Heller – doesn’t say anything about the right to own a gun after all.

B-Block (16:33) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: Doug Burgum, your pro-vigilante presidential aspirant. Ben Shapiro on Barbie: Go Woke Go Broke. World on Barbie? $337 Million opening weekend. My late neighbor Tony Bennett. (23:00) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Fox blasts USA Women's Soccer team for not singing the national anthem while it NEVER PLAYS the national anthem on the games it televises. Elon Musk doesn't OWN "X" for social media (and no, he's NOT calling them 'Xeets') and the World Trade Center promotes itself with a photo of the building - and a passenger jet.

C-Block (28:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: In an all-new edition, I have two stories about baseball's newest Hall of Famers. Fred McGriff was drafted by the Yankees but traded away as a minor leaguer for garbage because an active Yankees player insisted to George Steinbrenner it was a great deal, and Scott Rolen insisted to me that the highlight of his 1996 season was the elaborate practical joke he, his minor league teammates, the manager, and the umpire concocted and played on me during a game - and he stuck to this even after I reminded him that 1996 was the year he began his Hall of Fame major league career,.

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COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN: EPISODE 252

A-Block (1:42) SPECIAL COMMENT: 

As they say at the big sports DRAFTS: Jack Smith, you are ON the clock.

As soon as midnight passed on the east coast, the Special Counsel’s window of warning to the recipient of the Target Letter closed. Donald Trump has had his chance to testify to the Grand Jury or demand that evidence be submitted to the Grand Jury or other witnesses be questioned BY the Grand Jury and all evidence suggests he didn’t even bother to say ‘no thanks’ and Smith can and will indict him at any time on god-knows-HOW-many-violations of US Code 18 Section 241 Conspiracy Against Rights (the suppression of vote counting statute, with or without violence), US Code 18 Section 371 Conspiracy To Defraud The United States, and US Code 18 Section 1512 Corruptly Obstructing An Official Proceeding – and the only question is, WHEN Smith notifies him and when Trump pauses from chain-eating cheeseburgers and threatening revolutions long enough to leak the news. On “The Simon Conway Show” in Des Moines, just getting viral last night, Trump again stochastically threatens terrorism if he's jailed, saying his supporters are 200 times more fired up than last time. And forgetting he now longer is in charge of the tanks.

You will also recall on the 27th of last month when McCarthy went on CNBC and said “Can Trump win that election? Yeah he can. The question is, is he the STRONGEST to win the election? I don’t know the answer” and within hours he was back on TV insisting oh yes he DID now the answer and it was Trump is stronger than Hercules and it was clear Trump had yelled at McCarthy, possibly on the phone and possibly simply by opening the window and yelling at him across the country. Politico reports Trump demanded of McCarthy “he needs to endorse me – today!”

McCarthy, who is of course WITH Trump Win, Win, or Tie, had to come up with a bullshit excuse to NOT endorse Trump. Quickly. So quickly you wouldn’t believe it. To his credit he cobbled together some sophistry - that he had to remain neutral through the primaries because if he didn’t, HIS relationship with HIS caucus could influence which ones of them did and didn’t endorse Trump. Trump bought it but was still enraged and demanded a pound of McCarthy and now McCarthy made his fatal mistake. “The house would vote to expunge the two impeachments against the former president. And as McCarthy would communicate through aides later the same day, they would do so before August recess.” And now, Politico says, “we’re told that Trump brings up the matter in EVERY CALL he has with McCarthy, prodding the speaker about WHEN he will bring expungement to the floor.”

Oh and guess what. Doesn't look like McCarthy has the votes!

B-Block (22:31) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: The RFK Junior hearing. NOT GOOD, BOB. A bad idea just before you don't tell the truth about your past antisemitic and anti-vaccine comments, to remind everybody that you are on the record and under oath. And first they bought Clarence Thomas. Then they bought him good pub. (27:23) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Jim Jordan actually repeats the fascist bullshit that my friend Henry Aaron died from a Covid-19 vaccination. Ron DeSantis explains how you can sue Ron DeSantis. And Tucker Carlson's Videopalooza was so effective it would've gotten "The Q Anon Shaman" MORE time in prison.

C-Block (34:20) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: Two stories of Man Versus Life and why you should just leave mediocre enough alone: The fable of The Mouse Who Went To The Country, and Nine Needles.

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EPISODE 251: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:42) SPECIAL COMMENT: The same-day reporting on what was in Jack Smith's 2nd Target Letter to Trump was incomplete (possibly because Trump was the direct or indirect source and he only skimmed the letter and saw only the Statute Heading not the statute itself). If the Letter is any guide, The Special Counsel's centerpiece to the January 6th prosecution of Donald Trump is US Code 18 Section 241 - originally a Reconstruction-era law designed to prosecute Ku Klux Klan members for terrorizing freed slaves and keeping them from voting. It later morphed into the preferred tool for voting fraud and was affirmed in a Supreme Court ruling written by Thurgood Marshall in 1974, per The New York Times. It would fit all the "Fake Electors" schemes, but it would match what Trump tried to do ("I just want to find 11,780 votes") perfectly. It is the denial of the most fundamental constitutional right.

Bottom line: Smith wants to prosecute Trump for trying to have a RIGGED THE ELECTION. For ELECTION INTERFERENCE. For FIXING THE VOTE.

It would be an irony that would ring through the ages. I'll assess its meaning and how and why we missed it (John Barron? John Miller?) on Tuesday night, plus Trump's disastrous legal day.

PLUS: Trump may not have had the WORST day. Ask Marjorie Groomer Greene, who spent the day showing America her porn collection: giant blown-up photos of Hunter Biden having sex. It was so bad, and the Republicans so beclowned themselves, that Congressman Jared Moskowitz quipped "Maybe now we need to call HUNTER Biden 'The Big Guy.'"

B-BLOCK (21:43) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: Stanford's student-run campus newspaper wins all the awards: its investigation of the University president's academic research work just led to him quitting. This flashed me back to how MY university president's academic qualifications (Dean of Engineering; co-discoverer of Element Number 85) saved the two of us from getting on a damaged Allegheny Airlines plane they were trying to repair with paper towels (29:12) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: If they're gonna make up Biden Million-Dollar Bribes, go big. And who better to believe anything than Maria Bartiromo. There's also the Maryland Congressional candidate who didn't know he was one, and the self-martyring saga of Twitter clown Catturd.

C-BLOCK (35:20) EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: The sad tale of Fizz in the NYC pound (36:25) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: My producer had to explain to me that no, Rachel Maddow wasn't going to be on our MSNBC primary night coverage because my boss actually had LIED when he said he'd signed her to a contract, and we were about to lose her to CNN because Larry King offered her $250 to work there that night. 

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EPISODE 250: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:42) SPECIAL COMMENT: We now have more Trump Trials than court schedule time FOR Trump Trials. Well - this is what we wished for!

The SECOND federal set of indictments of The Defendant could be handed up as early as Thursday though Friday is likelier still and the likeliest is Trump being notified Thursday or Friday and then announcing it and we will re-enact early June where we all know in advance and there’s enough time for the sledge gangs to put up all the stages and tents and refreshment stands because the circus is coming to town.

We DO know what was in the Jack Smith January 6th Target letter – second in a series of who knows how many (collect them all) -- received Sunday by Trump’s lawyers. It was Rolling Stone that broke it: it listed just three CATEGORIES of federal statutes the government claims Trump violated and is likely to be charged under: Conspiracy to commit offense or defraud the United States; deprivation of rights under color of law; and tampering with a witness, victim or an informant. A few hours later ABC NEWSconfirmed those three categories word-for-word and both reports note what is NOT in the letter. As Rolling Stone puts it quote “the letter does not mention statutes on sedition or insurrection” (and I’ll add there is no category mentioned that could even obliquely house charges of wire fraud for scamming people into donating into this bottomless slush fund ostensibly designed to fund Trump’s effort to overturn a stolen election Jack Smith has clearly been trying to prove Trump knew WASN’T stolen). Perhaps the most important fact about the Target Letter is that it does NOT have to be inclusive and it does not have to spell out charges and that there were counts in the Classified Documents case indictments that were not even obliquely referenced in THAT letter, either.“Trump is the only person named in the letter,” says Rolling Stone’s source. Quoting ABC: “Multiple sources tell ABC News that allies, aides and attorneys for the former president have been working to determine if anyone else received a target letter: “we can’t find anyone” unquote, a source said Tuesday afternoon.” Rudy Giuliani’s lawyer confirms HE did not get a target letter; same from John Eastman’s; no firm answers from Jeffrey Clark, Michael Roman, Boris Epshteyn, or (cough) Mark Meadows, or any other Trump lawyer involved in the fake electors end of the coup attempt. Conventional wisdom had developed that Jack Smith was going to reel in not only Trump but a lot of his legal co-conspirators and that’s one of the problems with Conventional Wisdom.

OTOH here's the conventional wisdom: this case centers on faking government documents (the electoral results) and using them to falsely claim it's the law that Pence had to invalidate Biden's certification.

B-BLOCK (21:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Well it's just past my first dog Stevie's 11th birthday and given I've done three of these in 24 hours I'm going to devote the rest of this podcast to the extraordinary hour in which I went from a man who had never had a dog and knew he never would, to one who has now had five full timers including three rescues and three others who were here briefly. Hell - I have a lot of wasted time to make up!

C-BLOCK (35:40) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL, PART 2: How Rudy Giuliani fits in the story. And my interview with Stevie. Sorta :-)

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EPISODE 248: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:42) SPECIAL COMMENT: Judge Aileen Mercedes Cannon will now begin to decide whether we all live or die. This, sadly, is not hyperbole. A federal judge who has presided over a total of four trials for a total of fourteen days will today make the first of a series of decisions that will ultimately end with whether we all live or die. The forest really CAN never be seen because we’re next to the trees and how fitting the analogy is because while we are down here taking samples of the bark to check markings by Jack Smith, the big picture is: this judge, Aileen Cannon will at minimum help decide whether or not Donald Trump is kept out of the White House and that will at minimum help decide whether or not we have any chance of maintaining a president who will lead this nation and thus this world through climate change.

It really is that stark, and I think we forget about it and then something snaps the picture into focus and in my case it IS two pictures. The first is that one grinning idiot in the black "SAN DIEGO" shirt and the black shorts and the black cap and the black sunglasses in Death Valley taking selfies with a digital thermometer reading 131 degrees - both as if that heat couldn’t hill him, personally, and as if that 131 degree temperature was temporary or transient or unique to that locale or something he has to take a picture of so he can preserve it for his grandchildren and oh by the way at the present rate of acceleration of the climate catastrophe don’t worry about preserving it for your grandchildren because you’re not going to have any, nor is anybody else, because the last words Donald Trump ever speaks on this earth will be about how money is more important than anything or how climate change is a hoax or both and if any of the existential decisions about this planet of the next five years are made with Trump as president - we're all dead.

The other image was this redneck Jason Aldean, the pride of MAGA, New Year’s Eve guest at Mar-a-Lago, the yodeling darling of the Climate Denial crowd dropping a song on Friday daring black protestors to – to quote the title “Try That In A Small Town” – and then having to run off the stage and get two IV’s stuck in him so he didn’t lose consciousness while singing the ferocious tropical heat of Hartford, Connecticut. In July. At night. But there’s no man-made climate change. Try THAT in a Small Town, Jason, after the energy grid has failed and your governor chased away all the doctors because Woke.

109 in Rome, 110 expected in Miami, 126 in Sanbao China, 152 at Persian Gulf Airport which is in Iran but closer to Dubai than anywhere else and it didn’t matter because it was 152. So if the power had failed at Persian Gulf Airport, I mean, again, energy grid failure -- as if it were Texas -- there would’ve been a mass casualty event. Judge Cannon is to tell Trump’s lawyers and Walt Nauta’s lawyers and Jack Smith’s team some preliminary findings about the process for handling classified information at the trial and all the indications she gave yesterday suggested she would be adding an item to the agenda: the planned trial start date and timeline and we are now on the path. 

She won't be the only one who decides whether we all live or die. But she gets the first set of decisions.As to us, history doesn’t usually SCHEDULE stuff this important in advance. It didn't warn us about Bubonic Plague or Archduke Ferdinand or Hitler or John Brown. But it's warning us in advance about this. I guess that means we're lucky.

B-Block (17:30) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: Flynn and Bannon are subpoenaed for the Smartmatic suit against Fox. So? Do they tell the truth, or lie? Harlan Crow tries to deduct the Good Ship Super-Yacht Clarence Thomas; Pink Beret Girl from 1/6 is finally found - and turned in by an EX. And the rule of thumb in cable news is: the first week of a new show is its ratings peak. Which means Kaitlin Collins soon will not be watching her own program. (22:51) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Megyn Kelly blasts RFK Jr's sister because Meg is too dumb to know what RFK Jr's sister DOES; The mayor betrays Atlanta over Cop City; and brilliant plan, Vivek Ramaswamy: on the Supreme Court, he wants: Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, and the judge who protected a Beauty Pageant's right to discriminate against transgendered people.

C-Block (28:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: If Lionel Messi really is going to debut for the Miami MLS team Friday we have to welcome him in the only way Countdown can. Whatever your watch may say, it's always SOCCER BREAKDOWN O'CLOCK!

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EPISODE 249: BULLETIN COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:41) BULLETIN: The SECOND set of Trump Indictments by Special Counsel Jack Smith which will come as early as Thursday in Washington – the second in as many months -- may make the first ones look like a small stack of parking tickets. As news has broken this morning and this afternoon we are seeing the outline of a HUGE number of counts – dozens – the June 29th report by the British newspaper “The Independent” of 30 to 45 more charges being readied may actually be CONSERVATIVE – it could be FAR MORE than 45 counts. And just as breathtaking may be… the range of charges: those hazy details just coming into focus at the horizon could include everything from simple cheesy financial fraud, to the I-word: Insurrection. “A SPRAWLING case,” as it is phrased by the sources of Robert Costa of CBS News – and again quoting them -- “focused on how Trump acted after he was informed by many, that claiming the election was rigged, would be pushing fraud. AND, whether Trump criminally conspired to block certification.”

Trump is clearly going to be indicted by the Special Counsel – AGAIN – conceivably as early as this week – and THIS time there is reason to believe he will be indicted not just for premeditated fraud because he conned the gullible cultists for donations to cure a stolen election he knew WASN’T stolen, but also indicted both for the palace coup that was the phony electors scheme AND the violent coup he unleashed stochastically every day between his “it’ll be wild” tweet of December 19th and his speech on the Ellipse on January 6th. At 9:21 Eastern this morning Trump himself revealed he is the recipient of ANOTHER Jack Smith target letter: “stating that I am a TARGET of the January 6th Grand Jury investigation and giving me a very short four days to report to the Grand Jury, which almost always means an arrest and indictment,”unquote. Well on the last part, Trump WOULD know. 

And there is the one lingering little detail I spent so much of your time on, on Monday. WHY did he make that Freudian Slip on Saturday and refer to "The Insurrection Act"? Why did he kill the post half an hour later and replace it? When 24 hours later he would learn he is almost certainly to be indicted for the...insurrection?

NOTE: THE REST OF THIS PODCAST IS A REPEAT, IN ITS ENTIRETY, OF THIS MORNING'S EPISODE 248. IF YOU'VE HEARD IT, TURN IT OFF, I WON'T TAKE IT PERSONALLY.

(12:00) SPECIAL COMMENT : Judge Aileen Mercedes Cannon will now begin to decide whether we all live or die. This, sadly, is not hyperbole. A federal judge who has presided over a total of four trials for a total of fourteen days will today make the first of a series of decisions that will ultimately end with whether we all live or die. The forest really CAN never be seen because we’re next to the trees and how fitting the analogy is because while we are down here taking samples of the bark to check markings by Jack Smith, the big picture is: this judge, Aileen Cannon will at minimum help decide whether or not Donald Trump is kept out of the White House and that will at minimum help decide whether or not we have any chance of maintaining a president who will lead this nation and thus this world through climate change.

B-Block (29:25) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: Flynn and Bannon are subpoenaed for the Smartmatic suit against Fox. So? Do they tell the truth, or lie? Harlan Crow tries to deduct the Good Ship Super-Yacht Clarence Thomas; Pink Beret Girl from 1/6 is finally found - and turned in by an EX. And the rule of thumb in cable news is: the first week of a new show is its ratings peak. Which means Kaitlin Collins soon will not be watching her own program. (34:00) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Megyn Kelly blasts RFK Jr's sister because Meg is too dumb to know what RFK Jr's sister DOES; The mayor betrays Atlanta over Cop City; and brilliant plan, Vivek Ramaswamy: on the Supreme Court, he wants: Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, and the judge who protected a Beauty Pageant's right to discriminate against transgendered people.

C-Block (40:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: If Lionel Messi really is going to debut for the Miami MLS team Friday we have to welcome him in the only way Countdown can. Whatever your watch may say, it's always SOCCER BREAKDOWN O'CLOCK!

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EPISODE 247: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:42) SPECIAL COMMENT: Why did Trump imply he was quote “being charged under the Insurrection Act?” Why did Trump put that out THOSE words – “Insurrection Act” on his social media propaganda site and then delete the post within half an hour and replace “Insurrection Act” with “Espionage Act”? Is there a chance somebody has told him that he may actually BE charged under the Insurrection Act? Could Jack Smith be prosecuting him under the Disqualification Clause of Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment? Could the Special Counsel try to get Donald Trump DISQUALIFIED from ever again holding office in this country?

The very thought of it is breathtaking.

“No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States… to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof." Any person will make tens of thousands of mistakes with words in his life and Trump, more than that, but almost all substitution mistakes – you MEAN one word but SAY or WRITE another – have one minimum threshold: the person who substitutes the one for the other – the person who writes “Insurrection Act” when he INTENDED to write “Espionage Act” – has been thinking about The Insurrection Act. The word “insurrection” did not fall off a shelf and hit Trump in the head and he suddenly wrote it when he MEANT to write “Espionage.”

If I haven’t been clear let me state this explicitly: I don’t have a source in the Special Counsel’s office. I don’t have a cousin whose meter maid’s twin brother’s spiritual advisor’s uncle’s nephew types up the daily notes. Nor have any of the people I actually DO know who MIGHT have those kinds of sources said anything. Nor is there anything – ANYTHING – from any of the solid dozen or so reporters covering the coming Trials of Trump that suggests… anything. Nobody has said Smith is think about prosecuting him on Insurrection. And yet I am still sitting here wondering why he wrote what he wrote and I am absolutely convinced Trump has been thinking about the Insurrection Act. So setting aside the one thing you and I most WANT to be true – that even some of Trump’s idiot legal advisers including the non-lawyer ones have told him they may charge him with it… what else could it be?

B-Block (20:50) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: Tucker Carlson goes off the deep end and as he attacks six presidential contenders to their face it finally dawns on me whose career his has always reminded me of: it was the top American political commentator of 1938. He too was fired while at the pinnacle. He never returned - and he was dead six years later. (27:33) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: The Michigan GOP bank account is down to five figures, Eric Adams is still rhetorically beating up the 84-year old holocaust survivor, and Steve Bannon makes me an offer I cannot refuse.

C-Block (33:00) IN SPORTS: A brilliant idea! Bring in an aging ex-GOAT from another country to finally make MLS a big deal. Sure it didn't work the first 50 times but Messi's different. Isn't he? And the Buck may not stop here as the Mets near a purge (36:30) Meaning I have to tell the story of the day 30 years ago next month Buck Showalter locked all his players in the trainers' room at Yankee Stadium to teach me a lesson and blame it on them. And I LIKE Buck!

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EPISODE 246: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: 

As a Democratic Congressman Jared Moskowitz asked the trillion-dollar question – whether James Comer and the House Oversight Committee and their indicted fugitive Chinese Agent witness have quote “jeopardized Homeland Security in their search to help Donald Trump” – Comer and Nancy Mace and Speaker McCarthy and all the others attached at the hip to Gal Luft have Thelma-And-Louised it and they are headed right for the edge of the Grand Canyon. Moskowitz is not yet trying to put this directly under noses AT Homeland Security but that is the inevitable outcome. Gal Luft is indicted as a Chinese agent and the Republicans are trying to use him to help Trump seize power. People go to prison for this.

Is Comer adroitly fleeing? Not at all. He has scheduled more hearings next week with his OTHER discredited "witness." And Speaker McCarthy has claimed the revelation that Luft was indicted 254 days ago only increases his credibility because it emphasizes that nobody indicted Hunter Biden and McCarthy is not a bright man, just a clever one, like the rat who can find the quickest way through the maze to the cheese that is the House Speakership.

NOW would be the right time to explain this whole thing with the Chinese Energy company C-E-F-C that Gol Looft and Hunter Biden did indeed both work for, and why the similarity ends there, and why it is a dangerous thing to let a man as dumb as Kevin McCarthy try to “extrapolate” anything when it is a remarkable development that in that sound bite you just heard Kevin McCarthy SPELL “C-E-F-C” correctly.

Here is the Kevin McCarthy-Jamie Comer “extrapolation.” 

Hunter Biden consulted for the Chinese energy company C-E-F-C.

Thus to the Republicans that means he WORKED for C-E-F-C.

Thus to the Republicans that means he TOOK MONEY from C-E-F-C.

Thus to the Republicans that means the ENTIRE BIDEN FAMILY was BANKROLLED by C-E-F-C.

Thus to the Republicans that means the ENTIRE BIDEN FAMILY was BRIBED by C-E-F-C.

This is known not just as extrapolation but as sophistry. Let’s use the same process here about somebody else: ME.

I used to be the lead sportscaster Fox Sports News owned by Rupert Murdoch and News Corp.

Thus to the Republicans that means I WORKED for Rupert Murdoch and News Corp.

Thus to the Republicans that means I TOOK MONEY from Rupert Murdoch and News Corp.

Thus to the Republicans that means that the entire OLBERMANN FAMILY was bankrolled by Rupert Murdoch and News Corp.

Thus to the Republicans that means that the entire OLBERMANN FAMILY was BRIBED by Rupert Murdoch and News Corp.

I think I am spotting a subtle failure in the chain of logic here.

Plus: his name is Eli Crane and until yesterday his only claim to fame was founding a company that made shell casings into bottle openers. And then he explained he was NOT trying to keep "colored people" out of the military.

Ooops.

B-Block (22:40) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: Hats of to Representative Kamlager-Dove of Los Angeles. She responds to Marjorie Barney Rubble Greene in the truly correct manner: by asking for Advil. And the Actors' and Writers' strikes are seen from many perspectives but have you ever considered it this way: L.A. is a factory town. 18 of every 1000 employees works IN entertainment and the other 982 want to. Southern California could be in a new Great Depression within six months. (35:02) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: The congressman who reportedly edited his own wikipedia entries; the "Fresh Fit" podcast that suddenly added "Fuentes Holocaust Denial;" and Ohio State Representative Bob Young, who in two hours attacked his wife, his brother, and his brother's Storm Window. In the case of the latter - by crashing through it.

C-Block (41:00) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: Only a master could combine obvious misogyny with equally obvious certainty that women were better than men. And James Thurber was a master, as you'll hear in his deadpan epic "Mr. Treble Gets Rid Of His Wife."

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EPISODE 245: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:43) SPECIAL COMMENT: Groups of Congressional Democrats have now separately called for investigations of Gal Luft and his influence on Congressional Republicans, investigations by the House Armed Services Committee, by the House Foreign Affairs Committee, by the House Select Committee on China, and by the House Oversight Committee. investigations into the obvious security breaches and the potential national security threat. But if the questions are about quote “security breaches,” quote “our national interests and those of our allies” quote “national security” then the investigation needs to be conducted by the Office of Homeland Security and The Office of the Director of National Intelligence because while the big red rotating, blaring siren may be Luft. But he isn’t a sitting member of the House or the Senate and this nation needs to know immediately to what degree if any, Congressman James Comer, Congressman Jim Jordan, Congresswoman Nancy Mace, Senator Ron Johnson and other Republicans, have been compromised by China, or have been targets FOR compromise by China.

TRUMP’S STOCHASTIC TERRORIST who went to kill Obama after Trump doxxed Obama, WILL stay in jail until trail. Judge Zia Faruqui has ordered him held indefinitely, saying the quote “temperature is way too high in our political discussions” unquote and adding that the consequences could be quote “catastrophic” if Taranto were released and was free to do the things he thought elected officials were telling him to do. Translation: Faraqui believes Taranto could still be a Trump stochastic terrorist, and could easily still head to Obama’s home or anywhere and do anything he thought would please Trump.

RAY EPPS is suing Fox and Tucker Carlson for defamation and is using the same local lawyer Dominion Voting Systems used and based on the filing it looks like Ray Epps will wind up OWNING Tucker Carlson and maybe Fox as well, possibly just because of one 100-word paragraph Carlson belched on March 11 of this year: “A lot of this was clearly influenced by federal agents or informants. It was, ok? But I did not want to suggest someone was a federal agent or informant unless I knew for a fact, because you really could get someone in trouble. Right? If you’re like, THIS was the guy and like, we don’t know. I DO know for – I mean it’s very clear – something very strange is going on with Ray Epps. We’ve named him repeatedly, we’ve invited him on the show repeatedly. I mean don’t lie to my face, the Ray Epps thing isn’t, isn’t organic, sorry." 

If Tucker Carlson WASN’T trying to tell his audience that Ray Epps was a Federal Agent and Informant who influenced the events of January 6th…what the hell ELSE could Carlson have possibly been TRYING to SAY?

B-Block (23:38) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: Miles Taylor, launching a new podcast today on whistleblowers within the Trump Administration, says he and his boss talked Trump out of headlining the 2018 State of the Union by announcing he would invoke The Insurrection Act to allow troops to remove or menace migrants. The BBC Presenter story finally goes public even though everybody knew it was newscaster Huw Edwards because all the other reporters kept saying "Huw is it" instead of "Who is it." And oh by the way he wasn't guilty of anything (29:15) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: A pollster reminds us that though inflation in June was remarkably better, prices are still higher than in 2021. Clarence Thomas's aide accepted Venmo; and Barry Bonds really thinks he should now get into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

C-Block (34:15) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Because my bosses decided that the night before was the right moment to teach me how to drink, I found myself atop a mountain at the 1980 Olympic Ski Medal Runs without an audio cassette. There was but one other radio reporter there and though nobody would've ever known, he refused to loan me a spare. His name was Jack Briggs. This is his story (and as a bonus: I've attached a report I did FROM the Olympic skiing days earlier, and a two-minute commentary on how I thought we could make Luge the next big sport in America.

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EPISODE 244: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:43) SPECIAL COMMENT: Do the Republican leaders know WHERE their fugitive foreign agent Gal Luft is?

Does Senator Ron Johnson – demanding immunity for Luft so that this multi-national con-man can testify to the House – know Where Gal Luft is? Does Chairman James Comer – still insisting Luft must testify despite the damning revelation that he has been under indictment in this country for 20 months for allegedly bribing a Trump Advisor on behalf of Chinese interests – does Chairman Comer know where Gal Luft is? Does Congresswoman Nancy Mace – still on board the sinking Luft ship and calling him quote “our witness” and promising “we are going to work as hard as we can and deliver as much evidence as we can to the American people so that they can decide whether or not Joe Biden should be in prison” – does Representative Mace know where Gal Luft is?

And if the answer to any of these questions is yes – or the answer to the question “do any of them know how to reach him through intermediaries” is yes – then why have they not communicated to the proper authorities the whereabouts of this FUGITIVE FROM THE AMERICAN JUSTICE SYSTEM AND FOREIGN SPY – and why has the Department of Justice not questioned them about what they know about Gal Luft

What do the Republicans know about Gal Luft and how long have they known it?

ALSO: Jack Smith’s gang goes back to work, the Fani Willis Grand Jury is impaneled in Atlanta, and incredibly the DOJ is defending Trump in the Peter Strzok/Lisa Page lawsuit because it’s not like Trump is trying to end representative government in this country by manipulating the law or anything.

B-Block (17:19) IN SPORTS: We had that rarest of sporting events last night: one in which THE highlight was carried off by…the fans in the stands at the Baseball All-Star Game in Seattle and what they chanted. It is staggering to realize that the telecast of 1980 Game was watched by roughly five times as many fans as watched the one last night – and the population was a third smaller in 1980. There are lots of reasons (the players are not playing to win; the stars don’t show up; gone are the days when 9 of the 10 All Star MVP Awards between 1963 and 1972 went to Hall of Famers). But the real reason the game is now meaningless is that baseball threw away the greatest organic gift it was ever given. For 96 seasons, the owners, players, and fans of the American League HATED the fans of the National League, and vice versa. Happily baseball was good enough to throw that away and reduce the two Leagues to bookkeeping arrangements by introducing Interleague Play so they could sell some New York Subway Series caps. (30:25) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Senator Tommy Tuberville doubles down in defense of White Nationalists, then suddenly reverses and says they are racists, then disappears. Congressman Jim Jordan wants to move the FBI Headquarters to Alabama. And this is the kind of man you want leading the free world: the dark horse Republican presidential candidate who will pay you TWENTY dollars if you will donate ONE dollar to his campaign. How does he do it? Volume! Volume! Volume!

C-Block (35:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Baseball used to matter so much that local Los Angeles TV sportscasters used to make up crazy conspiracy stories about it, to try to get ratings. Let me tell you of two mind-blowing stunts told by two of my rivals in just my first year doing the sports on the local news in LA nearly 40 years ago: the guy who told his viewers to call a hotel and harass the manager of the All-Star team whom he believed had insulted a local Angels player, and the other guy who insisted that even though the L.A. Dodgers lost the 1985 playoffs they should show up anyway to the World Series and demand to play, because HE and HE ALONE had discovered that the home run that beat them wasn’t a home run at all!

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EPISODE 243: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:43) SPECIAL COMMENT: It's COMEUPPANCE DAY!  The ENTIRE Republican Hunter Biden/Jo Biden fairy tale has burst and collapsed to the ground, pinning Jamie Comer and Chuck Grassley and Lindsey Graham and Fox News under the rubble. And the fascists’ pretend-FBI plant they swear was behind January 6th has decided to sue Fox and maybe Tucker Carlson separately.

The so-called “Missing Hunter Biden Witness” doesn’t have evidence of Chinese bribes of the Bidens -- he turns out to be a Chinese spy who was bribing a member of the Trump Transition Team. The so-called “Biden IRS Whistleblower” whose entire life consists of swearing the Attorney General refused to grant a U-S Attorney the authority to prosecute Biden, has been completely contradicted BY the U-S Attorney who says the Attorney General GRANTED him the authority to prosecute Hunter Biden anywhere in the country. And the attorney for the so-called “stage manager of the insurrection” around whom Tucker Carlson built a short-lived career but a long-lived conspiracy says the four month grace period is up and he is preparing the lawsuit against Fox.

It’s COMEUPPANCE DAY!

B-Block (18:54) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: Hours after Turkey said it wouldn't support Sweden's NATO admission until the European Union admitted Turkey, Turkey suddenly supported Sweden's NATO admission. Inscrutable even for the Kremlin: Putin met with WHO? And the Taliban endorses Twitter (21:39) IN SPORTS: The New York Times Sports Department was right! The New York Times Sports Department no longer exists! (25:02) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: The graphic that actually appeared on cable tv, and NOT on Fox, describing GOP impeachment plans for Hunter Biden. If you want stupid, it's Representative Nicole Malliotakis and Maria Bartiromo. And serial sex abuser Larry Nasser is stabbed in prison.

C-Block (29:30) EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: Morty in Brooklyn (31:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Stop throwing around the prospect of Anthrax at the White House because there was some Cocaine at the White House. At least until you've had real anthrax sent to you. Or even fake anthrax. Like I was. Four times.

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EPISODE 242: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:42) SPECIAL COMMENT: Not even five days since it went live, Zuckerberg's 'Threads' has exceeded the 100,000,000 users mark. And what is Musk doing? Calling him a "cuck" and personally servicing "Libs of TikTok." He's already made a fool of himself threatening to sue Zuckerberg and he HAS sued Twitter's old law firm for accepting the money Twitter owed it. So as Twitter is losing about two and a half billion dollars in value a month, what is his only other play? What it's ALWAYS been: ask the government for a bailout. It HAS to be!

For once I'm rooting for the Republicans to take a state-level plan national. One Michigan county GOP leader says of another Michigan county GOP leader "“He kicked me in my balls as soon as I opened the door." And a dismissed budget chairman says new State GOP boss Kristina Karamo's spending is "so far out of proportion with income as to put us on the path to bankruptcy.” MAGA: Make America Groin Again.

THIS is unlikely: Ron DeSantis says Trump colluded with Big Tech to bury the Hunter Biden "story" in 2020. Again - more of this please, Republicans.

Even President Zelenskyy is scoring points off Trump, and while in an ideal world we'd admit Ukraine to NATO tomorrow, Biden makes two unanswerable points as to why we can't - not now.

B-Block (19:04) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: Oh, nothing, it's just Tucker Carlson losing 92.5% of his audience between Episode 1 and Episode 8. You can guess which paper asked that moronic cocaine question. And Trump's imbecility at a Dairy Queen invokes one of my Dad's greatest stories and greatest punchlines. (25:04) IN SPORTS: The same day the LOS ANGELES Times sports section essentially announces it's going out of business, the 28 surviving members of the NEW YORK Times sports section rebel and protest and mutiny against their dying outlet in the only way they can: With a letter to the editor. And MLB is trying to spruce up and speed up its player draft. But with it cut from 70 rounds to 20, what happens to all the people who won't be drafted and thus won't start their careers as the lifers who are the backbone of the game?  (34:11) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: The podcast host talks about liquidating Joe Biden. The podcast guest - Jeanine Pirro - doesn't walk off the show. And given that assassination-adjacent conversation, why is Nikki Haley STILL predicting the president's death? Plus: Andrea Mitchell thinks magnetometers can detect cocaine. I think I detect the time for Andrea Mitchell to retire before she destroys her reputation and becomes Tom Brokaw.

C-Block (41:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Last week was the 20th Anniversary of Ambassador Joe Wilson's famous New York Times Op-Ed that destroyed George Bush's lie that there was WMD in Iraq - and thus destroyed George Bush's legacy. So they decided to destroy Joe Wilson. And craziest of all: they thought I could help. Only one problem - they couldn't figure out how to spell my name so they could email me the weapons.

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EPISODE 241: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:42) SPECIAL COMMENT: The judge in the Taylor Taranto case bought prosecutors – and former President Obama – and the COUNTRY – a little more time by NOT ruling yesterday on whether or not Taranto can be held without bail until trial. He ordered prosecution and defense to return to court NEXT WEDNESDAY to continue arguments. That MIGHT be enough time for the Justice Department to actually get its act together and stop sleep-walking while the rest of us face this NIGHTMARE. At the courthouse yesterday, assistant U-S Attorney Allison Ethen confirmed the government INTENDED to seek additional charges against Taranto. What charges? No answer. When? No answer.

The Trump Stochastic terrorist who hunted Barack Obama was so untethered from reality that he was kicked out of a group that holds nightly prayer vigils outside the jail in Washington for January 6th Insurrectionist Defendants. Because the robot is dangerous enough. It is WUSA-TV Channel 9 in Washington reporting that just a week ago the leaders of this January 6thvigil group asked Taranto to leave.THEY disassociated themselves from him because  -- as the wife of convicted Three Percenter Guy Reffitt told the reporter, Taranto quote “did an interview saying he believed Ashli Babbitt was not really dead.”

Concurrently, CREW finds that 174 of those defendants specifically said they were quote “answering Donald Trump’s calls when they traveled to Washington and joined the violent attack on the Capitol…” In Court filings, in transcripts, in news items, these 174 people, again quoting the CREW report, “considered Trump their leader and believed they were FOLLOWING his lead by joining the insurrection” and nearly all of those made some reference to his December 19th “It’ll be wild” tweet ABOUT January 6th. Of the 174, NINETY FOUR specifically cited Trump’s remarks IN his January 6th speech “as the reason they went to the Capitol.” CREW notes ominously that these totals do NOT include those at the speech who were part of the attack on the Capitol but not yet arrested. Hours after the CREW report, CNN joins the chorus of reporting that the office of the Special Prosecutor is zeroing in on the chaotic White House meeting earlier in Trump’s day – the tweet was on the 19th, the meeting on the 18th.

That’s how far gone Taylor Taranto is. The wife of the militia leader whom prosecutors proved in court quote “lit the match” of the insurrection – who was sentenced to seven and a half years in prison -- SHE didn’t want to associate with him.

Also Walt Nauta pleads not guilty as new details of the security video are released and they explain why the DOJ thought Trump had pulled the old switcheroo. And Walt finally got a Florida lawyer named Sasha Dadan and this was once posted on Facebook: “Got a ticket? Don’t pay it! Call attorney Sasha Dadan Bonna. Free consultations, affordable prices.”

B-Block (18:29) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: Prigozhin is here? Prigozhin isn't here? Marjorie Traitor Greene ISN'T here. Musk is suing Zuck for suing all the guys Musk fired? Pence ends his campaign before it's even begun? (22:51) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Actor Jim Caviezel says there's no free speech while he goes on a media tour promoting his new film (and reveals on the last Jesus picture he was hit by lightning AND was hit by a 150-pound cross which would make me re-think the plot). What? Trump Junior's story about getting "cancelled" by Australia isn't true? And speaking of which: it was a touching story. The mayor of New York still carried in his wallet a photo of his fellow cop who fell in the line of duty in 1987. And then they found that the photo had been printed off the internet and stained with coffee to make it look holder help us help us we keep electing loonies here send help send help

C-Block (29:30) EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: The New York pound crisis continues. They're ready to kill Yu-Gi-Oh just a week after he arrived. (31:00) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: a story I've never read you here before.You've met the person Thurber writes of: she is not convinced that MacBeth is the murderer and is angry Shakespeare violated the Agatha Christie rules. It's "The Macbeth Murder Mystery."

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EPISODE 240: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: One of Trump’s stochastic terrorists went to Barack Obama’s house to assassinate him. Anybody else notice this, or was it just me? And that a Washington judge was having a hard time last night finding an excuse to hold him without bail? Hold the WOULD-BE ASSASSIN without bail? And that Trump had doxxed Obama and finally found a sucker willing to do his bidding for him? AND park his van full of ammo and weapons a few blocks from Obama’s home. AND livestreamed himself threatening Jamie Raskin and Kevin McCarthy and oh he was going to take his van to Maryland to a federal facility containing a nuclear research reactor and blow up the van and the nuclear reactor and… I mean am I the only one seeing this anywhere?

Trump – crazier and more dangerous by the minute – is finally clearly and inextricably linked to a guy ready to answer Trump’s constant drumbeat to try to get one of his cultists to kill, without TELLING them to kill and thus leaving himself open to prosecution FOR killing or incitement-to-kill, and the Department of Justice remains asleep at the switch. The US Magistrate Judge in DC, Zia M. Faruqui managed to avoid having to release Trump’s figurative flying monkey – his name is Taylor Taranto – by keeping him in stir overnight and putting the onus on the government to answer the judge’s question: if the original charges against this would-be political murderer Taranto were simply left over trespassing accusations from January 6th, and the government wanted him held without bail because he’s a flight risk, what if the Judge finds he’s NOT a flight risk? Is it enough that threatening key Democratic and Republican congressmen and talking about going to a government nuclear reactor and blowing up your van next to – oh and responding to one former president’s publishing of another former president’s address by going there with a van full of weapons of death – is THAT quote “clear convincing evidence” of a danger to the public and even if it is, does that mean the judge can really hold him in jail?

Yeah, you guys let Taranto loose while the lot of you argue over how many angels can dance on the head of this proverbial pin, and, you know, if he goes back to Obama’s neighborhood or, I dunno, tries to ram the White House with his van while screaming “TRUMP IS GOD” as he does so, maybe then prosecutors can indict him for various vehicular and parking offenses.

B-Block (20:00) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: Miles Taylor says Trump negotiated with Erik Prince to form his own private mercenary army to dispatch to Afghanistan and Venezuela; RFK needs money more than power; Steve Bass's new horizon; farewell to Dr. Frank Field and Marvin Kitman. (25:50) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Laura Ingraham wants to defund Jack Smith. How about demoting him to 7 PM? The warmest day since July 4, 122,977 BC. And GQ Magazine first neuters a piece that offended David Zaslav of Warner BROS, then kills the piece completely, then it turns out GQ's Editor is producing a film FOR WARNER BROS.

C-Block (34:10) EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: Angelina, L'il Bit and Prince in Georgia (35:20) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Nothing makes me smile more than a week with July 4th in the middle. It's because of that kind of calendar that I got my first network job just 44 years ago. The holiday ate up nearly all the business days they would've had to look for anybody besides me! (Plus that first broadcast from July 1979).

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EPISODE 239: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:43) SPECIAL COMMENT: Jack Smith is reportedly ready to indict Trump on between 30 and 45 MORE counts. And he is preparing to indict several of Trump’s lawyers from the Fake Electors Scheme including (voluntary interview notwithstanding) Rudy Giuliani. And all that is reported by the same British newspaper that correctly nailed the Miami indictments two days before they were finally handed up. CNN adds that the main Trump campaign official in charge of the Fake Electors will take the immunity deal he was offered and testifying for the Special Prosecutor.

If the source for Britain's "The independent" is correct, Trump could be facing as many as 77 counts in a superseding indictment, although its sources are not clear if those charges would come in a superseding indictment in Florida or might be filed in a different jurisdiction (and we have already discussed the possibility of Trump being indicted in New Jersey for The Trump Confession Tape, plus all the crimes still on the table in D.C.). There is one intriguing new twist to the seemingly trivial question of where to indict. It will, quoting the story, “depend in part on whether they feel the Trump-appointed district judge overseeing the case against him in the Southern District of Florida, Aileen Cannon, is giving undue deference” to Trump. As to the hapless Giuliani, Feinberg’s source says that despite the ex-Mayor’s proffer offer to prosecutors, Rudy will quote “most definitely” face at least some charges from Jack Smith’s office, dating to his actions in the interval between the election and January 6th.

Also: Trump showed that secret map to the co-chair of a lobbying firm taking millions from at least three Chinese tech firms closely linked to the Chinese government. The “I should not be showing the map” map? The “so don’t get too close”map? Wednesday night ABC News identified the person Trump showed the classified map to as Susie Wiles, a Trump adviser and campaign official and his potential 2024 campaign chair. Last night the NEW YORK POST, of all news outlets, identified Susie Wiles as the co-chairman of Mercury Public Affairs, lobbying mouthpieces for at least three really bad, really dangerous Chinese firms including Alibaba – the online retailer and web services company that is actually partially owned BY the Chinese GOVERNMENT and which the Post says Susie Wiles’ company, Mercury, is STILL receiving payments from.

And the nightmare unfolds at the Supreme Court: Affirmative Action is struck down and although work-arounds are offered and President Biden lambasted the Fascist Theocratic Court's interference with the settled law of the nation and agreed that the court is not a "normal" one, when offered the cure, he shied away: "If we start the process of trying to expand the court, we’re going to politicize it, maybe forever, in a way that is not healthy, that you can’t get back.”

President Biden? It's irredeemably politicized NOW. It's FOREVER. It is ALREADY not healthy. And we can't get it back.

(17:54) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: The 5'7" Prime Minister of the UK violates the first rule of comparative height: NEVER give away 14 inches in a photo. Pirro, Ingraham, others at Fox mock Biden's use of CPAP machine despite own physical and emotional problems; New York Mayor Eric Adams must resign: he rages against a renters' advocate, compares her to a slaveowner, insults her repeatedly. She's an 84-year old woman who escaped the holocaust yet within seconds of her remarks he played the race card against her.

B-Block (28:06) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Not only did Joe Biden spend most of his senatorial career fighting a reputation as a hothead, but when he decided to fight it he turned to advice about how to productively focus his anger to...me?

C-Block (39:10) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: I succumb to Bothsidesism! If I have a long Biden story, I must offer a long Trump story. And Thurber wrote one, and somehow managed to do it 15 years before Trump was born. When success is mistaken for character and the worst person in the world is mistaken for "The Greatest Man In The World."

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EPISODE 238: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) Rudy Giuilani has offered to flip. It is almost certainly NOT against Trump and it may even be a finesse play to distract Jack Smith FROM Trump (and from himself). But that "voluntary meeting" with prosecutors we heard about early in the week turns out to have been a "Proffer Offer" in which he essentially auditioned as a witness.

The New York Times also has what – under the proffer protection that whatever he told them IN that interview will not be used against him unless it turns out he was lying – prosecutors asked him about: 1) About a plan to create fake slates of pro-Trump electors. 2)“They focused specifically on the role played in that effort by John Eastman." 3) Quote: “Giuliani also discussed Sidney Powell” 4) “Ms. Powell… also took part in a meeting in the Oval Office in December 2020 during which Trump was presented with a brazen plan, opposed by Giuliani, to use the military to seize control of voting machines and re-run the election.” 5) “Prosecutors further asked Mr. Giuliani about the scene at the Willard Hotel days before the attack on the Capitol” and the group of conspirators gathered there – the Times names Eastman, Boris Epshteyn, and Steve Bannon. CBS News, which does NOT use that tell-tale term “proffer,” also says he was asked about Jeffrey “Can I Put My Pants On” Clark? And 6) CBS had one other detail which reads quote: “The special counsel did not indicate that Giuliani is a SUBJECT of the investigation and his team does not believe he is” which then raises the question why the hell would he be trading information to the Special Prosecutor as a potential immunity deal? I’m Rudy and I’m a good citizen, so don’t prosecute me?

Moreover: time and time again throughout American criminal history – especially American POLITICAL criminal history – key witnesses have changed sides while telling themselves they were not giving up THEIR guy and then once they see how much MORE protection they will gain FROM giving up their guy… they GIVE UP their guy. When it was time to get immunity for his role in Watergate, my friend John Dean’s starting point was, according to the giggling reminiscence of his attorney Charlie Shaffer, “We can’t talk about The P” – “The P” -- Dean’s shorthand for President Nixon.

B-Block (19:48) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: She's trying to play to the right of Boebert and Greene by raging against abortions and human stem cells - even saying using some of the latter for research "makes us no better than Nazis." Now her family financial disclosures are out and Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna's husband owns stock in a medical company that uses human stem cells. And a MAGA "prophet" says he saw an image of Trump in the sky over "Rush Mountmore." (25:19) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Meltdown in RFK Jr Merch-land. Just when you thought he couldn't possibly be connected to foreign interference turns out the image in his merchandise ad is just a photoshopped stock shot of a Russian woman on a Russian street. Nancy Mace and Tommy Tuberville try to take credit for local Biden projects they voted against. And the Jersey Munitions Dealer and OAN guest didn't like those 32 old growth trees that blocked his view of New York City. So he had them cut down. Two problems: they weren't on HIS property and the law there says he now has to replace them and that could cost him nearly $2 Million.

C-Block (32:10) EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: Duke the beautifully-behaved Doberman on death row in Baldwin Park, California. (32:52) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Somebody asked me why TV executives seem like idiots. I said "SEEM?!?" and then instead of trying to explain it to her I just told her the saga of Rick Kaplan, who was president of CNN and then MSNBC and once credited himself for a format change from a year earlier that we did only once and abandoned but he didn't know because he DIDN'T HAVE CABLE IN HIS HOUSE.

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EPISODE 237: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: There arises today the distinct chance that the two Non-Trump-Employees heard on the Trump Confession Recording supplied their copy of the recording to Jack Smith, and that they will testify against him. It may be coincidence but we know this much for sure: days after they were at Bedminster in July, 2021, after a lot of publicity in newspapers and with Tucker Carlson for their new venture, the co-publishers of Mark Meadows' book all but disappeared from public view. 

The recording does not exist in a vacuum. Why is everybody looking at it that way It's a tape of FIVE PEOPLE TALKING IN A ROOM. Any of whom can be called to testify ABOUT THE TAPE. And we don’t really know, because nobody’s really focused them, who the OTHER four people are. And we don’t know what THEY think of the tape. And we don’t know whether any of them are already on that list of possible witnesses Smith may call in the documents trial. The New York Post had a throwaway reference last night: “Two of the people Trump speaks to in the audio are believed to be Kate Hartson and Louise Burke, who had started All Seasons Press, a conservative publishing company…”

You do not have to have a hyperactive imagination to wonder: if the Post is right and it was both of them that as Ms. Burke and Ms. Hartson left Bedminster that day two years ago next month one of them realized that they had just been shown top secrets and had it within their power to get Trump indicted for not keeping top secrets SECRET and it put the fear of God into them. Hell, Kid Rock says Trump did it with HIM and even HE was smart enough to get frightened.

Did they go to the FBI?

Meanwhile Trump really DID change HIS story three times yesterday. When he got burned by Bret Baier on Fox last week, Trump insisted about the document referred to in the transcript of the recording, quote “there was no document.” Yesterday he posted only that he was covered by the Presidential Records Act. Then in New Hampshire he insisted he had kind of told Baier there WAS a document. Then to reporters on his plane he said no, he never had a document, just building plans. And golf course plans. And a newspaper story about Iran. And he was showing off.

All in one day.

Plus Walt Nauta didn't testify because his lawyer decided he needed lots more money to take THIS case. But Rudy Giuliani reportedly pre-testified in an interview with the Special Counsel's staff.

B-Block (24:32) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: SCOTUS votes 6-3 in favor of keeping democracy after all (though it's really more like 5-4). The Senator whose state's top industry is tourism tells tourists not to go there. A Bob and Ray sketch comes to life. They once imagined Chocolate-Flavored Ketchup. The National Culinary institute is introducing COLA-Flavored Ketchup - for use on HOT DOGS. (35:01) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Elon Musk deliberately or inattentively starts punishing accounts which block RW ads on Twitter. Last week The National Hockey League betrayed Pride Night. THIS week it puts its player draft in the city whose incoming owner is a noted anti-same-sex marriage and adoption ex-Governor. And yes RFK Jr shared an online stage with an anti-vaxxer who says the Covid vaccine causes you to become magnetic. But I'm the winner because I accidentally called RFK Jr "JFK Jr" and that is utterly unfair...to JFK Jr.

C-Block (36:30) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Fox just changed its lineup to put its 10 PM host on at 7 because its audience is now too old to stay up to 10. This flashed me back to the day, nearly 15 years ago, when I first realized that the future of cable news was... there wasn't any. The day they let a guy who knew nothing about cable news and cared even less bully the people who ran MSNBC. His name was Tom Brokaw.

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EPISODE 236: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:42) SPECIAL COMMENT: Donald Trump will be convicted for criminal violations of The Espionage Act. Because there are smoking guns, and then there are the smoking guns so profound and so productive that they turn the Eastern Seaboard sky orange. And this one is the second kind. CNN GOT the clip of the actual recording of Trump showing off classified Joint Chiefs of Staff military plans for attacking Iran. AND then The Washington Post got it. And then The New York Times got it. I haven’t yet checked my high school paper, The Hackley Dial.

First: It fulfills the first rule of Trump: everything is worse than you could possibly imagine – he’s laughing as he commits crimes prohibited by The Espionage Act, his flunky is making Hillary Clinton jokes, he’s making Anthony Weiner jokes, he’s ordering Cokes. Second: It HAS to have come from Mark Meadows. It HAS to have. Third: It fulfills the prophesy of Ryan Goodman from Just Security: it IS NOT just Trump committing a crime, it is Trump narrating his own crime, as he crimes. Fourth: the tape has a postscript, something that was for whatever reason NOT included in the transcript of the tape that was included in the charging document filed by Special Counsel Jack Smith.

Meanwhile there are also huge developments in Smith's pursuit of a Trump indictment in the Fake Electors, Wire Fraud, and January 6th Coup strands of his perfidy.

B-Block (21:50) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: In memoriam: the former President of Current TV, and also my boss at CNN in 2001-02, the legendary television news producer David Bohrman. If you've watched it, it was something Bohrman dreamt up.

C-Block (41:30) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Bill Maher is back in the news as an Anti-Vax sympathizer, fawning over the demented Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. I nearly got into a fistfight with him in 1978, didn't remember it until 2009, when we nearly got into a fistfight again. I clearly should've followed my first instincts.

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EPISODE 235: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: 

While we wait to see if Yevgeny Prigozhin accidentally falls out Vladimir Putin’s window in a month, or Vladimir Putin accidentally falls out Yevgeny Prigozhin’s window in a month, it is clear that Jack Smith is again in the End Game for more Trump Indictments – about Fake Electors – and he and his team are also really shockingly confident that they will get a quick conviction of Trump in the documents case.It was obscured because television news and even most big-time newspapers exceeded the number of big stories they can effectively cover simultaneously – ONE – and we had Russia and the Titanic Sub – but Jack Smith has obtained the testimony of two Nevada Fakes and may have already bought the testimony of the guy who was the Trump Campaign’s Director of, in essence, Fake Electors. Smith is also locking in testimony and he is clearly coming down the stretch towards indictments. Almost certainly that will include the deplorable Justice Department hatchet-man Jeff “Can I Put My Pants On” Clark and Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell and with any luck Jenna Ellis and Boris Epshteyn too and probably Trump as well. The key is: Smith is reportedly close to a deal for the testimony of the Trump Campaign's clearing officer for the entire Electoral Slate conspiracy: Michael Roman.

All the while: Trump keeps confessing to the Documents charges, and one national security attorney reads the latest DOJ motion and determines that the Special Counsel believes that trial WILL occur this year and won't last long.

B-Block (19:00) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: I can see Russia from my house and if you think that conflict "ended" Saturday, think again. RFK's PAC is reportedly run by MAGA PAC. CNN got rid of Chris Licht's graphics. Did they also get rid of Licht's new primetime star? (24:31) IN SPORTS: Baseball congratulates itself on another pointless trip to play regular season games in England. The first such trip was 149 years ago. Seriously. Is Aaron Judge sprained or torn or both? And why run differential makes no difference. (28:28) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Meghan McCain, Lance Armstrong, and Nikki Haley were too obvious so I went with Chuck Todd, Greg Abbott and Stew Peters.

C-Block (34:40) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: It happened on a Sunday night and last night was a Sunday night so sure enough I was reminded of it. There's no surprise quite like the one you get when you look out your apartment window and notice the building is en Fuego.

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EPISODE 234: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:42) SPECIAL COMMENT: He’s behaved like a lot of things before but until now Trump has NEVER sounded so desperately scared. “CONGRESS WILL HOPEFULLY NOW LOOK AT THE EVER CONTINUING WITCH HUNTS AND ELECTION INTERFERENCE” it began.“CONGRESS, PLEASE INVESTIGATE THE POLITICAL WITCH HUNTS,” he begs. All caps. “THE ONLY WAY THEY CAN WIN IS TO CHEAT. STOP THEM NOW!,” he pleads. ALSO all caps. It’s everything but “Mommy I’m scared. They caught me.” What caused this? I mean, apart from the insanity? Via Discovery, he’s received much of the Department of Justice evidence supporting the 37 counts against him, including all the audio tapes – the vainglorious interviews he gave which are apparently peppered with references to documents and secrets and I-can’t-tell-you-this-but-here-goes. Plus: if he didn’t before, HE now knows WHO testified against him and what they said.

There is another Sam Alito All-Expenses-Paid-Vacation scandal. It is not nearly as startling and quid pro quo-ish as taking a 100-thousand dollar private jet trip to Alaska courtesy of a Hedge Fund Guy and then years later voting for a Supreme Court judgment that gave Hedge Fund Guy two billion, 400 hundred million. CNN got on-the-record confirmation from the director of the Notre Dame University Religious Liberty Initiative that her group did INDEED pay the traveling expenses for Alito to go to its conclave in Rome last July and give a speech mocking anybody who dared criticize him. No laws were broken, only the basic tenets of judicial honesty. The Notre Dame University Religious Liberty Initiative has a legal clinic, and since its founding in 2020 it has filed a series of “Friend Of The Court” briefs on cases being heard by… the Supreme Court. Happily, Sam Alito always has another hair he can split. Quote: “My understanding is that Notre Dame Law School’s Religious Liberty Initiative has a number of components, only one of which is a clinic that, like the legal clinics at many other law schools, files amicus briefs in the Supreme Court. I was not invited to speak in Rome by the CLINIC.”

And Marjorie Taylor Greene has extended the “Marjorie Taylor Greene called Lauren Boebert a quote “Little Bitch” unquote” story another day. She was good enough to explain to Semafor News WHY she called Lauren Boebert a quote “LITTLE BITCH” unquote. “She has genuinely been a nasty little bitch to me.” Greene re-told the story as witnesses had broken it to The Daily Beast: Anna Paulina Lunatic was talking about impeachment when Boebert came over to Greene to complain about Greene’s recent remarks. “I told her exactly what I think about her.”

B-Block (15:10) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: Oh cool two more Republican presidential candidates. Moms For Liberty backs down, then backs down again, after quoting Hitler about how to own children and thus the future. Jeff Zucker's CNN journey could go from getting fired to buying the place. Or, since it's in The New York Post: maybe not. (18:40) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Canadian Member of Parliament Matt Jeneroux addresses his nation's crisis. He wants an "official grievance" filed against Taylor Swift for not coming to Canada on her next tour. Why don't you try The World Court At The Hague? The lesson of the lost Titanic Submersible? Charlie Kirk says it's don't hire black pilots. And there are bigots and cowards and homophobes. But if you FOLD to homophobes for money and pretend you're not folding to them but doing it to protect the people you just abandoned, you are worse than all the kinds of homophobes put together. And that is National Hockey League Commissioner Gary Bettman.

C-Block (26:05) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: His bizarre but compelling story of a handyman with an accent and his own pet thunderstorms: "The Black Magic of Barney Haller."

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EPISODE 233: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:43) SPECIAL COMMENT: The most influential conservative justice on the Supreme Court accepted a free private jet flight worth $100,000 from a hedge fund manager and then six years later the justice voted in favor of a Supreme Court decision that gave the hedge fund manager’s company $2,400,000,000. Neither all the hand-wringing and self-martyring in the world by the recipient, Samuel Alito, NOR all the hand-wringing and calls for ethical reform in the world by the likes of Senate Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin changes the fact that we shouldn’t have to have rules aying that is a bad and corrupt idea and you shouldn’t do it. The issue of SUPREME COURT ETHICAL STANDARDS is important and overdue and maybe, Please Christ, this will scare Dick Durbin out of his stupor, but the REAL issue is SAMUEL ALITO’S ETHICAL STANDARDS and the unfortunate complication is that he CLEARLY DOESN’T HAVE ANY.

Dick Durbin now plans a Senate Judiciary Committee "mark-up" of Supreme Court ethics rules but of course it can't pass without the House. But what he can - and MUST - do is scare the crap out of Alito, Thomas, Leonard Leo, Paul Singer, Harlan Crow and the rest of them. Subpoena them. Dirty them up. Use words like bribe and corruption and deal.

PLUS: It's almost too good to be true. On the House Floor, Marjorie Taylor Greene reportedly called Lauren Boebert a "little bitch" which is news enough by itself, but it also allows all of us to keep repeating that Greene reportedly called Boebert a quote "little bitch" unquote.

AND: Kari Lake posts a photo of herself in a bikini with Trump around her waist. Trump, in inflatable pool float form. At least she didn't post a photo of herself blowing it up.

B-Block (14:55) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: After John Durham testified to the House Judiciary committee and imploded, and after Kevin McCarthy got booed off the rostrum announcing the censure of Adam Schiff, I am beginning to suspect Durham and McCarthy are Democratic plants. (22:35) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Ron DeSantis boasts about Florida's unemployment data - "amoung the best." Misspelled "among." Well - it wasn't about education, was it? Plus while the right invokes the time a 69-year old grandmother served for January 6, she asks them to stop and says she was wrong to be there. And an online guy has just discovered what he thinks is a previously unknown obscure presidential candidate who he's determined to introduce to the rest of us. The guy's name is Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

C-Block (30:10) EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: If you can make it, we need you to go to the Board Meeting of the New York Pound THIS MORNING (31:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: When I worked for Ted Turner, covered him as he met with striking NFL players, made him gush with pride and then angry enough to fire me, and then actually used my head and turned the situation into a win-win.

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EPISODE 232: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:42) SPECIAL COMMENT: Sam Alito must resign from the Supreme Court after Pro Publica dropped a ton of bricks on the conservative icon/fraud's head: a Supreme Court case worth as much as $2.4 BILLION to the company of a hedge fund robber baron named Paul Singer, after Paul Singer gave Sam Alito a free ride to Alaska on a private jet. Alito didn't declare the ride and didn't recuse from the case. His argument? The seat "as far as I am aware, would otherwise have been vacant. It was my understanding that this would not impose any extra cost on Mr. Singer. Translation? If it was worth anything, why did he give it to me for free? Alito rushed a panicky, sloppy, typo-riddled denial before Pro Publica actually published, and it ran as an Op-Ed on The Wall Street Journal Editorial page.The Op-Ed also implies that the Journal's "informed sources" close to the Supreme Court all this time - including about the Roe-V-Wade leak - was almost certainly Alito.

Plus: Part 2 of Fox's interview with Dementia J. Trump is highlighted by his belief that the stalking horse being run against Biden in the Democratic primary is JFK JUNIOR not RFK JUNIOR. Huge if true. And new polling about DJT is actually newsworthy: GOP approval slips 10 points in one poll.

And a special message to all those Conservatives whining about the Trump indictments and the Hunter Biden plea deal: We don't care. We no longer care what you think. Think what you want - we give up. We will now focus on defeating and silencing you.

B-Block (18:15) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: Somebody put something in the water in the Op-Ed room at The New York Times. SEVENTEEN different "Why (Pop Culture Item X) Explains America" articles. And the contention that 'America Has A Lot To Learn From The Fox Sports Cable Debate Show Skip Bayless And Shannon Sharpe Do That Nobody But Nobody Watches' (24:09) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Do you remember who Liz Truss was? Do you remember who the Lettuce was? Liz is mad about the lettuce. A raid at Paris HQ raises the question: Why do we HAVE Olympics? And how could the Peter Hotez/RFK Junior/Elon Musk/Joe Rogan debate nonsense get any worse? How about if the worthless Megyn Kelly joined in?

C-Block (29:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Somebody brought up "Citizen Kane" the other day and I was flashed back again nearly 40 years to the day I met one of its stars - Hollywood immortal Joseph Cotten - and didn't realize it was him because I was on my way to interview Mickey Mantle. Keith name drops faster than you can. Enjoy.

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EPISODE 231: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:43) SPECIAL COMMENT: Obviously President Biden must fire Attorney General Garland and Deputy Attorney General Monaco and not merely because neither of them can possibly continue after yesterday’s revelations in The Washington Post just as none of US can possibly continue holding our breaths wondering WHAT about the Trump and January 6th prosecutions they will screw up NEXT. Two years and nearly six months after the first attempted coup and Garland and Monaco still do not understand that this is about SELF-DEFENSE: of Justice, of Democracy, of America. If that ISN’T your attitude about the response to Trump and the coup attempt that was and the coup attempt that WILL be get out. But especially if you are in the Justice Department and you don’t understand that the point WAS and WILL BE to eliminate YOU; if you don’t understand that the ultimate goal of Trump and the creatures around him is to take the limitless finances they have been given, and the limitless TIME they have been given - BY YOU - and walk into the Department of Justice or whatever white shoe law firm you have escaped to, and hand you a piece of paper bearing a fascist order signed by a fascist judge convicting you of being an official Trump-brand enemy of the people and authorizing the Trump Police to HANG you - get out. Because, then, you will have rendered this nation – at its time of greatest peril - defenseless just as the coalition of Hate gears up for another attack. Because, then, you will have nowhere to hide from them because the rest of us, whom you have left without defense, will be fending for ourselves.

And Merrick Garland and Lisa Monaco have to go, first. Because I don’t know what’s LEFT for them to screw up here but I’m sure Garland will find something in his style book for the Department of Justice that says that unless you deliver the subpoenas by Pony Express, you can’t move against a criminally insane ex-president unless you make sure you wait just long enough that there’s no way any of the verdicts can be rendered until after the election that might put him back in office, upon which he will have the charges withdrawn or will pardon himself or will simply ignore ALL the laws ALL at once and tell you to take you to take him to the Supreme Court. 

B-Block (22:30) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: If you're the president of MSNBC and you are asked 'If Trump were interested, would you put him on MSNBC in a live town hall format' and your answer is not "HELL NO" you must be fired. And if her answer was not "HELL NO" and you're one of the MSNBC hosts whose primetime show was spun off from mine all those years ago (Maddow, O'Donnell, Hayes) and you do not use your power to push back against the network's president and her journalistic perfidy, you have forfeited your credibility and reduced yourself to the status of Check-Cashing Talking Head.

C-Block (48:00) SPECIAL COMMENT REDUX (Note: this is repeated from Monday's Episode 230) Special Counsel Jack Smith may be readying an indictment against Trump for illegally attempting to coerce Mike Pence to defy his legal duties in the Electoral College count? Ryan Goodman from “Just Security,” whom I cite here frequently though I don’t know him and only because he knows this stuff, told Bill Kristol’s podcast that he thinks Jack Smith quote “going to indict Trump for the False Slate of Electors scheme” – and with Goodman saying the odds Fonny Willis indicts on False Electors and election interference in Georgia are 90 percent, Trump could face twin federal and state cases on overlapping topics. And then Goodman adds something that took my breath away. Indicting Trump for False Electors, “AND quite probably/possibly the pressure campaign against Mike Pence.” Wait – what?

Goodman sets the odds on Jack Smith indicting Trump ABOUT PENCE… at 60 to 70 percent. Pressuring the Vice President, Goodman says, quoting him again “is independent of whether or not he thought he won the election. He can think he won the election, doesn’t matter. But you can’t try to coerce a public official to defy their legal duties – which is just to count the votes.” Goodman doesn’t mention that, but you will remember that Stewart Rhodes and other Oathkeepers were prosecuted for – and convicted of – interfering with Congress’s ability to complete its legal duties. Ponder for a moment the prospect of Smith indicting Trump, running for the Republican nomination, for attempting to coerce PENCE, running for the Republican nomination. Oh and necessarily having Pence TESTIFY AGAINST TRUMP either before Trump is nominated or before the election. 

I’m beginning to think we may have WILDLY under-estimated how many MORE things Jack Smith is about to indict Trump for. There is reason today to believe that the number of separate indictments OF Trump BY Smith could be as many as FOUR. Maybe even FIVE

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EPISODE 230: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:43) SPECIAL COMMENT: Special Counsel Jack Smith may be readying an indictment against Trump for illegally attempting to coerce Mike Pence to defy his legal duties in the Electoral College count? Ryan Goodman from “Just Security,” whom I cite here frequently though I don’t know him and only because he knows this stuff, told Bill Kristol’s podcast that he thinks Jack Smith quote “going to indict Trump for the False Slate of Electors scheme” – and with Goodman saying the odds Fonny Willis indicts on False Electors and election interference in Georgia are 90 percent, Trump could face twin federal and state cases on overlapping topics. And then Goodman adds something that took my breath away. Indicting Trump for False Electors, “AND quite probably/possibly the pressure campaign against Mike Pence.” Wait – what?

Goodman sets the odds on Jack Smith indicting Trump ABOUT PENCE… at 60 to 70 percent. Pressuring the Vice President, Goodman says, quoting him again “is independent of whether or not he thought he won the election. He can think he won the election, doesn’t matter. But you can’t try to coerce a public official to defy their legal duties – which is just to count the votes.” Goodman doesn’t mention that, but you will remember that Stewart Rhodes and other Oathkeepers were prosecuted for – and convicted of – interfering with Congress’s ability to complete its legal duties. Ponder for a moment the prospect of Smith indicting Trump, running for the Republican nomination, for attempting to coerce PENCE, running for the Republican nomination. Oh and necessarily having Pence TESTIFY AGAINST TRUMP either before Trump is nominated or before the election. 

I’m beginning to think we may have WILDLY under-estimated how many MORE things Jack Smith is about to indict Trump for. There is reason today to believe that the number of separate indictments OF Trump BY Smith could be as many as FOUR. Maybe even FIVE.

B-Block (20:11) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: Nikki Haley tries to make it sound like she DIDN'T say The Confederate Flag was just a symbol of "sacrifice, service and heritage" until Dylann Roof came along and spoiled it with his mass murdering. The Joe Rogan-JFK "debate" stink. The Bland leading the Blind? What on earth would they debate? HOW stupid Rogan is? And Military Mean Tweets (25:07) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Why was Lou Dobbs' wife subpoenaed in the Smartmatic case? David Clarke tries to get the Saudis off the hook for the Khashoggi murder. Curt Schilling says it's time for more shots, like at Concord, but he only means shots metaphorically. And the Chia Pet of Fox, Jesse Watters, has a plan for the homeless.

C-Block (33:35) EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: The New York crisis continues, with poor 3-year old Dior and her pneumonia (34:35) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Speaking of Lou Dobbs' wife, it was just 42 summers ago when she and Lou had to leave CNN New York in a hurry and they had to hire as an emergency temp a radio sports guy with no TV experience - me. THEY started my career!

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EPISODE 229: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:42) SPECIAL COMMENT: First The Washington Post reported Trump had ignored advice from his $3,000,000 flat fee lawyer to settle with the DOJ, return ALL the documents in exchange for no charges. But he refused because non-lawyer Tom Fitton - who has a BA in English - told him the lawyers were wrong. Then it turned out Fitton told him that because of a case Fitton's outfit, Judicial Watch, lost. And they couldn't have lost it because they suck, it had to be a definitive ruling that gave all presidents the right to keep everything. 

Now it turns out that even after that revelation, Trump is STILL deferring to Tom Fitton for legal advice he is wildly unqualified to give. He seems to have done it... last night! Fitton tweeted some nonsense in the morning. Trump regurgitated it as a social media post at dinner time: “So now that everyone understands that the Presidential Records Act, plus the Clinton socks case, totally exonerated me… when are they going to drop all charges against me, apologize, and return everything that was illegally taken?” The answer, as any lawyer or sane person could tell you, is, they’re NOT. The Presidential Records Act DOESN’T exonerate Trump, nobody “understands” the specious claims of exoneration, the Clinton Socks case is an irrelevant red herring and it’s not even CALLED the “Clinton Socks” case, they aren’t dropping the charges against Trump, nothing was illegally taken, and nothing is being returned to him. But Trump isn’t listening to that. He is listening… to Tom Fitton, Pretend Lawyer.

Plus the New York Times goes inside the mind of Trump (careful): It explained in depth the reference to Trump’s “Beautiful Mind” boxes that when they appeared in the indictment document mystified so many while the rest of us immediately saw Russell Crowe. “It was a reference,” wrote The Times, “to the title of a book and movie depicting the life of John F. Nash Jr., the mathematician with schizophrenia played in the film by Russell Crowe, who covered his office with newspaper clippings, believing they held a Russian code he needed to crack. The phrase had a specific connotation. The aides employed it to capture a type of organized chaos that Mr. Trump insisted on, the collection and transportation of a blizzard of newspapers and official documents that he kept close and that seemed to give him a sense of security. One former White House official, who was granted anonymity to describe the situation, said that while the materials were disorganized, Mr. Trump would notice if somebody had riffled through them or they were not arranged in a particular way. It was, the person said, how “his mind worked.” 

That explains Trump perfectly: hose are HIS documents. When will you give him back HIS documents. They are HIS. Not yours. Not the government’s. No law makes a difference. He held them. They have his name on them. He put them in the box. Not THAT box, THIS box. This is existential to Trump. To quote the Bugs Bunny cartoon about Daffy Duck and the treasure of Ali Baba “It’s mine, you understand? Mine! All mine! Get back in there. Down down down. Go go go. Mine mine mine.”

Oh and when Trump went into that Cuban bakery Tuesday to "celebrate" after his indictment and shouted "Food for everyone!" Guess who didn't pay.

B-Block (19:45) IN SPORTS: You've heard of Spiking The Football? The man who INVENTED Spiking The Football has passed away. Baseball's Commissioner insults the Oakland fans who were about to lose their team rather than empathizing them just to keep them as possible San Francisco Giants fans, and now the Justice Department will investigate the Saudis buying pro golf. (27:00) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Anti-transgender slob Michael Knowles says we need to revert to the world of the year 1220. Did I tell you Pat Sajak was a schmuck? He is retiring to run a whack doodle religious college. And the "Wannabe Dictator" graphic on Fox about Biden Tuesday night? The producer - an old Tucker Carlson staffer - is OUT.

C-Block (32:27) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: The most visual of his many fantastical, farcical stories of his crazy family: "The Night The Bed Fell."

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EPISODE 228: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:42) SPECIAL COMMENT: Trump may have done the one thing that would force the ENTIRE Republican party to repudiate him: The Israelis Intelligence Corps and the Mossad reportedly think Donald Trump has damaged the security of the state of Israel. “Top brass in the Israeli defense establishment,” writes the intelligence and strategic affairs correspondent Yossi Melman in the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz, “are concerned that secret documents seized from (Trump) include material whose exposure has damaged Israel’s security.” Melman quotes two senior Israeli defense officials, one from the Mossad and the other from the Intelligence Corps as saying, quote: “It’s an absolutely reasonable possibility that some of the documents are about Israel and its capabilities, maybe even its nuclear program,” unquote. And reading between the lines, Melman and his sources never once mention the story of Trump reading the details of the Mark Milley plan to attack IRAN to Mark Meadows’ ghost-writers, so presumably what Israeli Intelligence fears is that Trump has damaged other elements of their nation’s security.

So ANOTHER fault line opens between Trump and Republican Sacred Cows: Trump versus Troops, Trump versus Law And Order, Trump Versus… Israel. Damaging the 21st Century Republican Party’s supposed allegiance to Israel is the most sacred of its cows because it is viscerally important to the party’s fanatical religious base. Polling from as recently as 2018 confirms that at least HALF of the Evangelicals don’t give two actual spits about ACTUAL Jews or the NATION of Israel. It is simply a tentpole belief of their cult that before all the bible-thumpers can go to Heaven in a rapture, all the Jews have to be in Jerusalem and be converted or die. The Republicans pretend allegiance to Israel in order to maintain ownership of the Evangelicals who need Jerusalem preserved so they can be converted when the alarm goes off at Rapture O’Clock.

Plus Pence takes a Nikki Haley style Trump-Endangered-The-Troops climbdown, Ryan Goodman thinks Smith has a backup play in New Jersey just in case things come acropper in the Florida trial, Judge Cannon has exactly 14 days of active Judge Stuff, Trump turned down a chance to make all this stuff go away.

And the story of the British TV producer who shouted "President Trump? Are you ready to go to jail?" during his creation of a false victory narrative at a Miami Cuban bakery after the arraignment Tuesday, takes a strange twist. The guy who got in her face and called her a "Stupid B----" has self-identified, and he's a former member of the Trump Government AND was involved in image polishing for Putin in America, Michael R. Caputo.

B-BLOCK (18:20) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: To finish off the Michael Caputo story and his world-class exit quote from the Trump Regime in 2020. Plus the Archives are mad at Trump AGAIN. Lindsey Graham makes another threat. And Fani Willis officially says she isn't postponing anything. (24:45) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Elon Musk wants America to have a dictator who'll kill everybody; The New York Times and Fox News share dishonors over Trump's Tuesday; and why do all these supposedly anti-pedophilia right wingers say such creepy things about kids and kids' characters and sex? Why did Ben Shapiro talk about Bert and Ernie wearing "assless chaps"?

C-BLOCK (33:30) EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: All the strikes are against 10-year old Slinky in the New York pound (35:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: The day in 1974 that I didn't go to Boston University because of...Howard Stern.

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EPISODE 227: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:43) SPECIAL COMMENT: Where is the enterprise, where is the daring, where is the simple nerve of Sophie Alexander, International Affairs producer for the UK’s SKY News. As Trump is doing the carefully staged man-of-the-people bit, the same act from the day he threw rolls of paper towels to the drowning residents of Puerto Rico, he hops into the Cuban hang-out The Versailles Bakery and all Sophie Alexander did was shout a question at Trump: are you ready to go to jail? “The emperor has no clothes.” 

Put her in charge of CNN!

Plus: "The Emperor Has No Clothes." No, not me. Congressman Don Bacon of Nebraska, as Trump was arrested for the second time in 70 days.

“The espionage act has been used to go after traitors and spies.” Again – not me. Trump himself, last night, after prosecutors let him turn yesterday into one long campaign ad.

“I certainly won’t support a convicted felon for the White House.” Also, not me. Republican Congressman Ken Buck of Colorado, Freedom Caucus member, signatory to the Texas Amicus Brief-Coup Attempt, who ten days ago said the investigations and the lawsuits and the arrests almost gave Trump credibility and he didn’t care and who yesterday changed sides. Like Nikki Haley and Tim Scott did. Like a trickle of other Republicans have. It may stop here. If it doesn’t, it may stop Trump.

I hesitate to even HOPE that this is where enough of the G-O-P breaks to split the party but the last two days have shown what such a split would look like and it is along two simple fault lines: both conceits are wildly untrue but the Republicans think of themselves as the party of law and order, and the party of absolute prioritization of the military and what has been obvious to the rest of us for eight years is suddenly obvious to many in the GOP: Trump believes neither in law-and-order nor the military – Trump believes only in himself.

What happens when it's The Troops...or The Trump?

B-Block (23:11) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: Tommy Tuberville doesn't show up, meaning Dick Durbin can bypass Tuberville's hold on Military Promotions, and Durbin says 'but that wouldn't be playing the game!' And Pat Sajak retires. Good! He's a schmuck! (28:48) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: MSNBC supplants Fox News atop the cable news ratings for the first time in 120 weeks. You're welcome. Vivek Ramaswamy tries to play the crowd at the Trump arraignment. And Doctor/Senator Bill Cassidy posts an umbrage selfie and makes a huge mistake.

C-Block (33:40) EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: Puppy Simba, on death row at an insanely overcrowded New York pound (34:40) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: The day the president of MSNBC decided to try to chase me around the live studio while his pet project was debuting IN the live story and I had to figure out what to say when I called the cops to tell them he was threatening to kill me.

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EPISODE 226: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:42) SPECIAL COMMENT: In a normal world the criticisms were so milquetoast and so covered in caveats that they'd barely be noticed. In the context of the perpetual darkness of Donald Trump and the Coalition of Hatreds, they are bursts of sunlight. They inspired absolutely nobody, and it could all go away tomorrow as it has so many times before, but graded on degree of difficulty Nikki Haley and Tim Scott each gave The Gettysburg Address yesterday.

SOMETHING has happened in the calculations of other Republicans regarding today’s indictment of Donald Trump. As it ridiculous as it might be Haley and Scott are running for the Republican nomination and that there have been calls on the right for them and everybody but Trump to drop out and endorse Trump as a way to show they believe in Trump. And instead, at an event where he announced the endorsement of 140 Republicans, Tim Scott instead said “This case is a serious case with serious allegations.”

And while that squeak heard round the Trump-World was reverberating, Nikki Haley went on Fox and said if the indictment is “true...President Trump was incredibly reckless with our national security. More than that, I’m a military spouse, my husband’s about to deploy this weekend. This puts all of our military men and women in danger, if you talk about what our military is capable of, or how we would go about invading or doing something with one of our enemies. If that’s the case, it’s reckless, it’s frustrating and it causes problems.”

In the time of terrified subservience, as if Trump were Shtalin with hemorrhoids, Nikki Haley accused Trump of being reckless with the national security and endangering the lives of military men and women and talking about our military plans to invade – or defend against – other countries. In other words, she said everything I said on this podcast yesterday. And all the things DEMOCRATS WON’T SAY. And she said them on Fox. 

Tim Scott and Nikki Haley would be the LAST two I would’ve expected this from, and they did it on the same day, and they did it in what was for them very high profile venues and it means that they have completely re-calculated the equations. Each had slammed the indictments, unequivocally, last week.

Haley and Scott didn’t grow consciences over the weekend. The scales did not fall from their eyes. Neither is smart enough to have figured this all out by themselves. They HAVE to seen internal polling, or heard dire assessments of what is behind the indictment, or gotten advice from people THEY know and people they think know, that this is the moment to turn on Trump. It could be something we don’t know about or it could be something The Wall Street Journal put up at noon yesterday. Headline: “Trump Needs White Suburban Women. His Indictment Splits Them. Key swing group could help decide who takes White House in 2024.” 

SOMETHING has HAPPENED.

B-Block (20:43) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: Fox sues Tucker Carlson for damages. Damages? Have you SEEN his Twitter videos? And the Saudi purchase of the PGA Tour now has to get past a Senate investigation (24:44) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Josh Blackman, would-be Maureen Dowd replacement; The Guardian has bad news for Harmeet Dhillon; And the guy who nearly killed The Washington Post, Fred Ryan, quits to become the boss at the Center For Civility at The Ronald Reagan Foundation (that's a job that comes with 52 weeks of vacation a year).

29:32 THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: I played a clip of him a few weeks back, from a New York radio newscast we did together in 1980. He was the most talented person I ever worked with, and in the 40 years since nobody's come close. He was also the most mean-spirited, the most screwed up, and he met a tragic end. Will Spens, remembered.

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EPISODE 225: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:42) SPECIAL COMMENT: 

Donald Trump has put the lives of tens of thousands of American service men and women at risk – all around the world – by stealing the documents. Donald Trump doesn’t give a damn if American troops live or die. Donald Trump HATES THE TROOPS. And why aren’t we hearing that? Bill Barr, The National Review, Governor Sununu, and The National Review blistered Trump. Scott Jennings, the rabid CNN conservative? Jennings hit a point that in normal times would have been enough for the Republicans to have already thrown Trump overboard, for all time? “If you had a son or a daughter who was serving…in a hostile place and you thought maybe their information was in a document that could have been picked off the friggin floor, do you know how this could impact a military family? The thing is when you’re commander in chief, you have this responsibility to the military and the people who serve. It’s sort of offensive to me actually that we would be so cavalier with the information that could possibly put our people in jeopardy.”

And if there is anything more shocking than the number of anti-Trump statements ESPECIALLY from lawyers and from HIS lawyers – it is the fact that in normal times the Democrats would have taken the essence of Scott Jennings’ point: TRUMP PUT THE LIVES OF THOUSANDS OF AMERICAN SERVICE MEN AT RISK, and they would have hung that fact around the necks of not just Trump and everybody close to him, but around the necks of EVERY Republican who didn’t condemn him and the Democrats would be screaming “Why does Donald Trump hate the troops?” and “Why does Ron DeSantis hate the troops?” and “Why does Lindsey Graham hate the troops?” and if the POINT ITSELF wasn’t decisive enough, the Democrats could follow it up with the new CBS News poll that asks is there a national security risk if Trump kept nuclear and military documents and the answer was YES, Trump put the National Security at Risk, YES… from 38 percent OF REPUBLICANS.

Why in the chorus of sheep bleating about Trump’s rights and Hillary Clinton this and weaponization that, are virtually ALL the dissenting voices… Republicans? Where are the Democrats? Where are the Democrats talking about the grave risk Trump was and is to National Security? Where are the Democrats demanding that he will be president again only over their dead bodies? Where are the Democrats saying no matter how this trial turns out, Trump definitely put American troops at risk for the sake of his ego, and he may have gotten American troops KILLED, and he may STILL get American troops KILLED? Where is the outrage?

Axios reports the Democratic National Committee asked Democrats in the Committee to no-comment the indictment. The PRESIDENT is no-commenting the indictment. The entire hierarchy of the Democratic Party is staying off-stage because of some kind of nonsensical, 1975-notion that to speak out against Trump’s criminality and treachery and treason is to somehow grasp a third rail, that because if you speak up for truth and honesty and Americanism and you are a politician you have somehow POLITICIZED truth and honesty and Americanism. Mr. President, House Democrats, Senate Democrats, we elected you to stand up for the rule of law, against Trump. Proclaim it and exult in it. Your silence will be mistaken for weakness. Kick him when he's down - and sing the anthem while you do it.

B-Block (20:05) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: How lucky is the Glenn Beck ally who confronted Brittney Griner in an airport? She could've snapped him in half. Conor McGregor TRIED to snap an NBA mascot in half. And Fox and Friends comic relief Brian Kilmeade thinks David Beckham had to learn English when he moved to America. (23:43) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: Join me in celebrating the one year anniversary of Minet.

C-Block (39:20) EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: Troubadour in New York (40:30) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Just last week a new doctor asked me if long ago I had fallen off a cliff or something and I had to explain to him - Yes! While filming a TV commercial! Doesn't everybody do that?

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A SPECIAL TRUMP INDICTMENT WEEKEND EDITION; EPISODE 224: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:41) SPECIAL COMMENT: I am sorry only sorry the 37 counts in the indictment of Donald Trump is not a capital case. It is that bad, and he will remain a threat to every man, woman and child in this country as long as he lives. Worse yet, the running joke yesterday was Trump spilled all of our secrets - on the floor at Mar-a-Lago. How could all of the foreign spy organizations have NOT stolen them?

How do we know they didn't?

How can we be certain?

“The classified documents Trump stored in his boxes included information regarding defense and weapons capabilities of both the United States and foreign countries,” reads the indictment. The next sentence is worse. Trump had documents detailing “United States nuclear programs.” There are references to a document about American nuclear weaponry and another about another country’s nuclear capacity. The next sentence is WORSE. He had “potential vulnerabilities of the United States and its allies to military attack.” The next sentence is WORSE. He had America’s “plans for possible retaliation to a FOREIGN attack.” All that keeps us safe from countries that still harbor dreams of attacking this country – North Korea, Russia, maybe China… all that could have ENABLED those countries to transform those dreams into battle plans… all of that, Donald Trump stole and kept. And kept near the club pool. And near the liquor supply closet. And other documents were kept in the bathroom, next to the toilet.

It. Is. That. Bad.

It is as bad as the Rosenbergs, as bad as the other nuclear spies of the 1950’s, as bad as Rick Ames and Robert Hannssen. It is, in fact, worse.

B-Block (29:07) THE REST OF THIS PODCAST IS REPEATED FROM FRIDAY'S EDITION: Donald Trump has been indicted on seven charges and the foremost of them is  a violation of the Espionage Act, specifically designed to send to prison for ten years, someone who was legally allowed to possess UN-classified National Defense Information, but refused to return it to the proper government authorities. It's 18 US Code 793-D. It fits the allegations against Trump better than any of his suits. It erases all his stated defenses and excuses, like Trump’s belief he owned a magic wand of declassification, and a new one posited in just the last few days that he was the president so of COURSE he had the right to possess defense information. It describes a crime involving information that ISN’T classified, which the defendant at some point HAD the right to possess. Trump lawyer James Trusty says even he hasn’t even seen the actual indictment but only had broad strokes painted to him, and mentioned the Willful retention part of the Espionage Act (confirming 18 US Code 793-D), multiple charges about false statements, conspiracy, and quote “several obstruction-based charges” including witness tampering.

At approximately 7 PM Eastern Daylight Time on Thursday June 8, 2023, his attorneys were informed by the Department of Justice by PHONE, and HE was informed by those attorneys, that Trump had been indicted in Miami on seven separate SEALED counts of criminal conduct none of them yet formally revealed to the public but clearly pertaining to the classified and defense documents he stole and kept in his home and office at Mar-a-Lago and reportedly including charges of Illegal Retention of National Defense Information, Conspiracy To Obstruct Justice, False Statements to government investigators. Seven counts. For context: the usual number of indictments for former presidents or current presidential candidates is… approximately… zero.

CBS News is reporting that for all his bravado, Trump reacted to the indictments with anger because Trump had quote “people in his inner circle who reassured him for months that it was very unlikely to happen.”

And this momentous day in history is capped by the worst home video ever recorded. It is a masterpiece of missteps. On the Rushmore of Rushed-Work. A new high in low. Trump posted it at 7:57, from his golf club in Bedminster New Jersey, he is standing in front of a large painting, seemingly depicting a White House office scene from the late 19th Century. Trump has been positioned directly under a spotlight of some kind so his Flock of Seagulls combover that he has honed to exactly his preferred shade of spray-on Gold Rust-O-Leum has been bleached white and it looks like a yarmulke that has slid forward towards his bright white eyebrows. He is also perfectly placed in front of the painting in such a way that a man shown standing in the painting now appears to be one foot tall and standing ON TRUMP'S SHOULDER. And were that not stupid enough, he is twirling his mustache like Snidely Whiplash just back from tying Sweet Nell to the train tracks. It's startlingly fitting. 

C-Block (49:40) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: SCOTUS shocks with voting rights decision that could tip House to Democrats; Chris Licht is gone but so are CNN's ad revenues; We cross our 10 millionth download! (52:00) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Why bash Gene Simmons because he knows about the politics of Northern Ireland? You can still taste the air on the Atlantic seaboard but Fox will still mock it all. And OF COURSE George Santos's lawyer went to the Capitol on January 6th!

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EPISODE 223: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:42) SPECIAL COMMENT: 

Donald Trump has been indicted on seven charges and the foremost of them is  a violation of the Espionage Act, specifically designed to send to prison for ten years, someone who was legally allowed to possess UN-classified National Defense Information, but refused to return it to the proper government authorities. It's 18 US Code 793-D. It fits the allegations against Trump better than any of his suits. It erases all his stated defenses and excuses, like Trump’s belief he owned a magic wand of declassification, and a new one posited in just the last few days that he was the president so of COURSE he had the right to possess defense information. It describes a crime involving information that ISN’T classified, which the defendant at some point HAD the right to possess. Trump lawyer James Trusty says even he hasn’t even seen the actual indictment but only had broad strokes painted to him, and mentioned the Willful retention part of the Espionage Act (confirming 18 US Code 793-D), multiple charges about false statements, conspiracy, and quote “several obstruction-based charges” including witness tampering.

At approximately 7 PM Eastern Daylight Time on Thursday June 8, 2023, his attorneys were informed by the Department of Justice by PHONE, and HE was informed by those attorneys, that Trump had been indicted in Miami on seven separate SEALED counts of criminal conduct none of them yet formally revealed to the public but clearly pertaining to the classified and defense documents he stole and kept in his home and office at Mar-a-Lago and reportedly including charges of Illegal Retention of National Defense Information, Conspiracy To Obstruct Justice, False Statements to government investigators. Seven counts. For context: the usual number of indictments for former presidents or current presidential candidates is… approximately… zero.

CBS News is reporting that for all his bravado, Trump reacted to the indictments with anger because Trump had quote “people in his inner circle who reassured him for months that it was very unlikely to happen.”

And this momentous day in history is capped by the worst home video ever recorded. It is a masterpiece of missteps. On the Rushmore of Rushed-Work. A new high in low. Trump posted it at 7:57, from his golf club in Bedminster New Jersey, he is standing in front of a large painting, seemingly depicting a White House office scene from the late 19th Century. Trump has been positioned directly under a spotlight of some kind so his Flock of Seagulls combover that he has honed to exactly his preferred shade of spray-on Gold Rust-O-Leum has been bleached white and it looks like a yarmulke that has slid forward towards his bright white eyebrows. He is also perfectly placed in front of the painting in such a way that a man shown standing in the painting now appears to be one foot tall and standing ON TRUMP'S SHOULDER. And were that not stupid enough, he is twirling his mustache like Snidely Whiplash just back from tying Sweet Nell to the train tracks. It's startlingly fitting. 

B-Block (22:00) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: SCOTUS shocks with voting rights decision that could tip House to Democrats; Chris Licht is gone but so are CNN's ad revenues; We cross our 10 millionth download! (25:00) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Why bash Gene Simmons because he knows about the politics of Northern Ireland? You can still taste the air on the Atlantic seaboard but Fox will still mock it all. And OF COURSE George Santos's lawyer went to the Capitol on January 6th!

C-Block (32:00) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: Some James Thurber stories are funny and some are poignant and some are supernatural. But some also have plots worthy of Arthur Conan Doyle writing Sherlock Holmes. And such a one is "The Catbird Seat."

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EPISODE 222: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:42) SPECIAL COMMENT: The White House correspondent for the UK newspaper “The Independent” Andrew Feinberg reports that Special Counsel Jack Smith will ask his Washington grand jury to indict Donald Trump for violating the Espionage Act and for obstructing justice – no later than a week FROM today and as early as today. The Independent also reports that Smith has been RATHER clever. The anticipated indictment of Trump about the stolen documents will be for violating 18 US Code 793, Gathering, Transmitting or Losing Defense Information, a part of that does NOT require that any actual documents in question to be CLASSIFIED, but merely that there is defense information involved and the accused stole it or told others about it or lost it. That in turn means that the cornerstone of Trump’s defense: a president can declassify whatever he wants, he doesn’t have to tell anybody he’s done it, he just does it by thinking about it with his superior mind – is irrelevant. Classified, shmassified. Those guilty of doing it “shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years or both”

The timing caveat, quoting The Independent:” It is understood that prosecutors intend to ask grand jurors to vote on the indictment on Thursday but that vote could be delayed as much as a week until the next meeting of the grand jury to allow for a complete presentation of evidence, or to allow investigators to gather more evidence for presentation if necessary” unquote. The caveat from a news consumer’s P-O-V should be: as of recording time, there is no separate reporting confirming what The Independent published. However, The Guardian says Trump’s lawyers were told LAST WEEK by Smith’s office that he is a prosecutorial target on the stolen documents and obstruction of justice. The New York Times says Trump’s legal team was notified he is the target on the HANDLING of the documents, but no idea when. ABC, CNN and Politico report the lawyers were sent a target letter. 

The Times adds “Aides and advisers to Mr. Trump spent the day in a state of high tension.” I BET THEY DID. The Trump response to all of this, on social media: “No one has told ME I’m being indicted.” The felon is always the last to know!

B-Block (13:37) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: CNN fired Chris Licht - at dawn - in Central Park - explains what caused all the damn SMOKE here. He was fired for being a schmuck. He should've been fired for not understanding that the cable news "middle" he pursued doesn't exist, will never exist, hasn't existed for 25 years. Journalism and "advocacy" and profits can all be made. You just have to be what he wasn't: Good At It.

C-Block (29:40) UPDATE: Fox is telling Tucker Carlson he can't DO a "series" on Twitter. They have a contract with him, he can't create video content for any rivals, and they're right. Besides, Episode 1 revealed his awful secret: Tucker Carlson sucks  at just staring at a camera and yammering. Take the cash, Tuckson (30:40) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: I've been talking about Chris Licht since August 19 of last year - the 15th episode in this series. I want you to listen what I said then, the day after he cancelled the network's only show that recognized the threat to democracy that was Fox News and its imitators.

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EPISODE 221: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:40) SPECIAL COMMENT: The UK newspaper "The Independent" reports Trump may be indicted as early as tomorrow for violations of the Espionage Act, specifically 18 U-S Code 793, Gathering, Transmitting or Losing Defense Information, a part of the act that does NOT require the actual documents in question to be CLASSIFIED – a deliberate choice by prosecutors, a strategic one, which thus completely ERASES Trump’s defense that whatever he stole, he had somehow DE-classified it by blinking three times in succession or throwing ketchup at a particular White House wall. Those guilty of violations of 18 U-S Code 793, quote, “shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years or both” and the Independent Counsel’s Grand Jury will be asked to vote an indictment against Trump for violating 793 as early as TOMORROW, with the caveat that “that vote could be delayed as much as a week until the next meeting of the grand jury to allow for a complete presentation of evidence, or to allow investigators to gather more evidence for presentation if necessary” unquote.

“The Independent” reports emphasizes that an indictment on ONE charge from 18 U-S Code 793 is far from all of it – that Trump may also be indicted on OTHER counts within the Espionage Age umbrella, AND potentially for Obstruction of Justice, AND that Jack Smith’s mysterious FLORIDA Grand Jury is still operating and further indictments could emanate from there. The Washington Post in fact reports that the BULK of indictments could come from the Miami Grand Jury, which could give us a scenario in which there is ONE indictment in Washington tomorrow or next week, and many more from Florida in the weeks to come.

The Independent’s White House correspondent Andrew Feinberg adds that Mark Meadows DID flip, so, told you so. Quote: “It is understood that the former North Carolina congressman testified as part of a deal for which he has already received limited immunity in exchange for his testimony. A source who was briefed on the agreement claimed that the alleged agreement will involve the ex-chief of staff entering pleas of guilty to unspecified federal crimes.” The Independent says Meadows attorney George Terwilliger said the guilty plea story is quote “complete bull(spit)”but would NOT answer questions about immunity or testimony.

B-Block (8:47) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: CNN fired Chris Licht - at dawn - in Central Park - explains what caused all the damn SMOKE here. He was fired for being a schmuck. He should've been fired for not understanding that the cable news "middle" he pursued doesn't exist, will never exist, hasn't existed for 25 years. Journalism and "advocacy" and profits can all be made. You just have to be what he wasn't: Good At It. (18:50) NOTE: The remainder of this bulletin is from Wednesday's original podcast: Mark Meadows has flipped. There’s no other possible conclusion. The news has been coming for weeks. Per ABC, Meadows testified to the Jack Smith Election Grand Jury and to the Jack Smith Documents Grand Jury. And 20 members of the Trump Secret Service detail - past or present - have been subpoenaed to testify in Washington, while we begin to see what the third Smith Grand Jury in Miami is all about and how it might but Trump on trial there and not Washington.

And this all explains both why Bloomberg reports "Trump representatives in recent weeks have asked for recommendations of Washington-based counsel with trial experience…” and why Trump returned yesterday to stochastic terrorism. He made social media posts demanding that his thugs "fight" to prevent his indictment, just as he told the crowd on the Ellipse in Washington on January 6 to "fight" the certification. Dismiss Trump and his animal-like cunning and destructive skill at your peril and OUR peril. What you think you see in him is as bad as you think it is. Or worse. Always. Always. On January 6th. Yesterday. The Truth Social posts were made in hopes of getting somebody to attack Jack Smith or Merrick Garland or someone. The Trump thinking is not complex: "This other creature is in my way. Destroy this other creature."

B-Block (38:20) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: Chris Licht does it again! ANOTHER presidential town hall - and how you can get one. And when is the parade for CNN Media Reporter Oliver Darcy and will he be riding in the front car or in the metaphorical hearse in the back? (21:29) IN SPORTS: Don't delude yourself. The PGA golf tour did not "merge" with LIV Golf. It sold itself to the Saudis, after a year of talking about Saudi blood money. It's despicable and it will either be prevented, or it will destroy the sport in the country. And Jacob deGrom is probably out of baseball until Opening Day 2025. Who didn't see that coming? (26:59) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: It's condescending, proselytizing Harris Faulkner of Fox - and her pronouns are D,U,M,B.

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EPISODE 220: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:43) SPECIAL COMMENT: Mark Meadows has flipped. There’s no other possible conclusion. The news has been coming for weeks. Per ABC, Meadows testified to the Jack Smith Election Grand Jury and to the Jack Smith Documents Grand Jury. And 20 members of the Trump Secret Service detail - past or present - have been subpoenaed to testify in Washington, while we begin to see what the third Smith Grand Jury in Miami is all about and how it might but Trump on trial there and not Washington.

And this all explains both why Bloomberg reports "Trump representatives in recent weeks have asked for recommendations of Washington-based counsel with trial experience…” and why Trump returned yesterday to stochastic terrorism. He made social media posts demanding that his thugs "fight" to prevent his indictment, just as he told the crowd on the Ellipse in Washington on January 6 to "fight" the certification. Dismiss Trump and his animal-like cunning and destructive skill at your peril and OUR peril. What you think you see in him is as bad as you think it is. Or worse. Always. Always. On January 6th. Yesterday. The Truth Social posts were made in hopes of getting somebody to attack Jack Smith or Merrick Garland or someone. The Trump thinking is not complex: "This other creature is in my way. Destroy this other creature."

B-Block (17:32) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: Chris Licht does it again! ANOTHER presidential town hall - and how you can get one. And when is the parade for CNN Media Reporter Oliver Darcy and will he be riding in the front car or in the metaphorical hearse in the back? (21:29) IN SPORTS: Don't delude yourself. The PGA golf tour did not "merge" with LIV Golf. It sold itself to the Saudis, after a year of talking about Saudi blood money. It's despicable and it will either be prevented, or it will destroy the sport in the country. And Jacob deGrom is probably out of baseball until Opening Day 2025. Who didn't see that coming? (26:59) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: It's condescending, proselytizing Harris Faulkner of Fox - and her pronouns are D,U,M,B.

C-Block (32:20) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Speaking of a great pitcher like Jacob deGrom, I actually once covered for one of the great pitchers of all-time, a jerk named Roger Clemens, because while he almost got in a fight with a fan during the World Series and I got it on tape, it truly wasn't his fault. So I suppressed the tape and cost myself a job.

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EPISODE 219: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:42) BULLETIN: Trump is again attempting to foment a violent coup against the government of the United States and in so doing confirming that he is about to be indicted by Special Counsel Jack Smith and whatever charges Smith has ready he should bring them before his Grand Jury now and urge a judge to detain Trump without bail. “It’s about Election Interference” Trump wrote at the start of a social media post at 8:12 Eastern Time this morning, which ends “They are using the DOJ and FBI against me to Rigg the 2024 election. They’ll hit Hunter with something small to make their strike on me look fair. Nothing about these fascists is fair or honest. FIGHT!” The word “fight” is in capital letters and followed by an exclamation point and it is clearly not directed at his attorneys. He followed up two minutes later with quote “Election Interference. Don’t let it happen.”

Again – that instruction to prevent his indictment or arrest was not directed to attorneys or family members or anybody else. It was directed to his mob – just as it was directed to his mob on January 6th. It is not political speech, it is not dissent, it is not protest, it is not free speech, it is stochastic terrorism.

And the word that elevates this from Trump’s usual psychopathic communications is quote “fight” unquote. It should send cold chills down your spine because he used that word in its various forms SIXTEEN TIMES in that incendiary speech from the ellipse that sent the gang into the Capitol and sent democracy teetering on the edge of destruction. “We fight,” he shouted. “We fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country any more.” And now, in literally the days before his indictment for stealing this country’s – and other countries’ - nuclear secrets and our military’s war plans for attacking Iran, he has used his social media account to again attempt to incite insurrection – and more immediately to somehow prevent the Department of Justice from indicting him for mishandling classified documents, for obstructing justice, possibly for destruction of evidence, suborning of perjury, and – though they won’t do this – for these posts today.

(7:40) The remainder of this podcast is the original June 6 2023 edition as originally posted. SPECIAL COMMENT: The whiny visit of Trump lawyers to beg Jack Smith not to indict their client so he wouldn't yell at them again turns out to have actually confirmed ONE important fact. We can't be sure Smith has already decided to indict Trump on the stolen documents. But we CAN be sure he has NOT decided NOT to indict him - otherwise there would've been no need for the meeting. Others are thinking that way too: Trump's lawyers, trump, The Times, The Post, The WSJ, and CNN all think we are at the end game.

And - a leak about leaking water? Isn't this where we came in with Trump? From draining the swamp to draining the pool, Jack Smith has been pressing the guy who helped move the classified document boxes about how he drained the Mar-a-Lago club pool and managed to flood the room where all the security video logs were kept. If that isn't a callback to about a dozen other plot points I don't know what is!

B-Block (20:04) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: How can you apologize and make it worse? Ask Chris Licht! By lying during the apology, getting support only from those at other networks, and finally being accused by a tabloid of fudging the only feel-good part of your story. The weight loss wasn't 5 AM workouts: it was Ozempic. (29:48) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: A Nebraska lawyer wasted taxpayer money trying to silence a state legislator on an anti-trans bill because the legislator has a trans child. Elon Musk's newest conspiracy theory: the advertisers are out to get him. Can't we take Twitter away from him? And Congressman James Comer's whistleblower and informant and secret FBI document? They are all just a rehash of the Rudy Giuliani crap that didn't even fool Bill Barr in 2019.

C-Block (35:45) EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: Lilou, in the Bahamas, needs neurological help (36:51) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: The most fun moment in one of those old "SportsCenter" Commercials? The Alexi Lalas one, where I got to pretend I was John Belushi, smashing a guitar in "Animal House."

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EPISODE 218: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:42) SPECIAL COMMENT: The whiny visit of Trump lawyers to beg Jack Smith not to indict their client so he wouldn't yell at them again turns out to have actually confirmed ONE important fact. We can't be sure Smith has already decided to indict Trump on the stolen documents. But we CAN be sure he has NOT decided NOT to indict him - otherwise there would've been no need for the meeting. Others are thinking that way too: Trump's lawyers, trump, The Times, The Post, The WSJ, and CNN all think we are at the end game.

And - a leak about leaking water? Isn't this where we came in with Trump? From draining the swamp to draining the pool, Jack Smith has been pressing the guy who helped move the classified document boxes about how he drained the Mar-a-Lago club pool and managed to flood the room where all the security video logs were kept. If that isn't a callback to about a dozen other plot points I don't know what is!

B-Block (15:00) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: How can you apologize and make it worse? Ask Chris Licht! By lying during the apology, getting support only from those at other networks, and finally being accused by a tabloid of fudging the only feel-good part of your story. The weight loss wasn't 5 AM workouts: it was Ozempic. (24:48) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: A Nebraska lawyer wasted taxpayer money trying to silence a state legislator on an anti-trans bill because the legislator has a trans child. Elon Musk's newest conspiracy theory: the advertisers are out to get him. Can't we take Twitter away from him? And Congressman James Comer's whistleblower and informant and secret FBI document? They are all just a rehash of the Rudy Giuliani crap that didn't even fool Bill Barr in 2019.

C-Block (30:45) EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: Lilou, in the Bahamas, needs neurological help (31:51) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: The most fun moment in one of those old "SportsCenter" Commercials? The Alexi Lalas one, where I got to pretend I was John Belushi, smashing a guitar in "Animal House."

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

EPISODE 217: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:43) SPECIAL COMMENT: As reports swirl, we seem to be on the verge of SOMETHING from Special Counsel Jack Smith and the Grand Jury. It is reportedly to reconvene this week after a month off. And DOJ is reportedly set to meet with Trump's lawyers. And now a new question: would DOJ make at least a token plea deal offer to him? A LOT going on.

(7:29) SPECIAL COMMENT: Having learned nothing from anything, Just to convince the RNC to give the network a Republican Presidential Primary debate, CNN is reportedly ready to partner with a far right website - and even have one of its propagandists co-moderate the debate WITH a CNN star ON CNN. And NBC is also prostituting itself to get a shot at a Republican debate, sending Lester Holt to try to talk them into it.

And we continue to have fallout from Tim Alberta's profile of CNN CEO Chris Licht in The Atlantic. Actually, it's less fallout and more an autopsy because Licht would have fared better if he'd gone into the Atlantic OCEAN. There is soooo much to discuss, but not too many possibilities as to what might happen next. As Burt Lancaster says to Tony Curtis in "Sweet Smell of Success": "You're dead, son. Get yourself buried."

B-Block (35:50) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: "When I took over ‘Meet The Press’,” said Chuck Todd on Meet The Press as he announced his own firing FROM Meet The Press, “it was a Sunday show that had a lot of people questioning whether it still could have a place in the modern media space. Well, I think we’ve answered THAT question and then some.” He's self-aware to the last. And Lauren Boebert caught in a huge lie: she didn't fail to vote on the Debt Ceiling in protest; she just didn't make it in time - and it's on tape. IN SPORTS: the ultimate fan protest in a replica uniform and the Mets with a novel Hall of Fame induction (46:10) WORSTS: Marine LePen DOESN'T prove her French party wasn't associated with the Russians, Elon Musk's lawyers make a court filing that essentially disproves "The Twitter Files;" And a "comedian" goes on NewsMax and makes what she thinks is a joke but is actually a 150-year old racist trope about fried chicken.

C-Block (50:40) EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: Lola in Miami (51:40) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: The day my ability to tolerate Chuck Todd for one more moment snapped like a dry twig during a drought and I could no longer bear to even be in the...same fantasy football league as him.

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EPISODE 216: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:43) BULLETIN: It's the Smoking Gun, and it's still smoking!

After the drama of the original revelation of the "Bedminster Tape," a further shocking bit of news. The Guardian reports that on the tape Trump is heard lamenting that he DID NOT declassify the Mark Milley Iran document. This ratchets up Trump’s self-incrimination. “For several minutes of the audio recording, the sources said, Trump talks about how he cannot discuss the document because he no longer possesses the sweeping presidential power to declassify, now out of office, but suggests that he should have done so when he was still in the White House.” Thus on the tape he discusses the document… that he says… he cannot legally discuss.

Trump is on tape, not just ADMITTING that after he left office he KEPT classified top secret MILITARY plans for an American war on IRAN but BOASTING he kept them, AND describing the details of the American attack strategy, AND attributing the document to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, AND describing it to at least four people none of whom had the requisite security clearance to even know the document existed, let alone hear any of the details, AND saying he would like to share those details with them, AND then acknowledging he couldn’t because even an ex-president can’t just declassify whatever he wants, AND acting as if he is holding the top secret document in his hands as he’s talking about it, AND the conversation took place not at Mar-a-Lago but at his golf course in Bedminster New Jersey, AND the recorded conversation took place in July 2021 before Trump returned ANY of the documents he stole, AND two of the other people were there working on the autobiography of Mark Meadows, AND one of the others was his former White House press aide Margo Martin, AND Trump knew he was being recorded, AND the story of the meeting appears IN the Meadows Autobiography, AND this may be the tip of the Trump Tapes iceberg. Quoting CNN’s exclusive: “During the summer of 2021, sources say multiple people were making recordings of Trump as he held conversations with journalists and biographers.”

And this tape is in the hands of… Special Counsel Jack Smith.

Apply every cliche you can think of: this is a Smoking Gun inside a weapons depot filled with nothing BUT Smoking Guns. And that bit about tapes is just the tip of the iceberg because this isn't just "The" Trump Tape. It's The FIRST Trump Tape.

B-Block (27:31) IN SPORTS: The Dodger disaster continues. They folded to the pressure of "The Catholic League" (which is one loud guy named Bill) and uninvited a Nun Drag group supported by actual Catholic Nuns. Since? Dodgers rightly attacked by LGBTQ community and local fans, so they reversed and RE-invited. Now they've been attacked by a pitcher for The Washington Nationals who has called for fans to boycott the Dodgers, and their own star twirler has announced a Christian Night at Dodger Stadium - evidently BEFORE the team was ready to. (36:52) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Someone claiming to be the wife of a serving marine says the president needs to be "executed publicly." Elon Musk paid $44B for twitter. One of his co-investors now says it's worth $15B. And disgraced disloyal ex-General Mike Flynn has found a new calling: SELLING SPERM.

C-Block (40:50) EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: Bentley was rescued by a clueless group which stuck him in a luxury kennel and he has to be ransomed! (41:40) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: I never wanted to do politics. Then one day I went from interviewing Chris Kattan on MSNBC to anchoring the 1998 State of the Union Address

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