Countdown with Keith Olbermann

EPISODE 215: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:43) BULLETIN: It's the Smoking Gun. 

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 (18:52) 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. (26:52) 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 (32:40) 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! (33:40) 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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EPISODE 214: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:43) SPECIAL COMMENT: Now it's a CONSPIRACY to obstruct justice - within Mar-a-Lago and within the larger Obstruction. After two reports Tuesday, it's clear Trump may have had a team of aides and a box-moving guy who were literally playing hide-and-go-see with stolen classified documents, shifting them from place to place, and trying to burn the security video OF them shifting them from place to place, in order to keep the FBI from finding them, in order to keep the DOJ from getting them, and in order to prevent even his own lawyer from knowing about them.

The newest stuff: The Washington Post reports that guy who helped Trump valet Walt Nauta move the boxes full of stolen classified documents at Mar-a-Lago is now suspected of then trying to find out from the Mar-a-Lago IT guy how you could get rid of security video at, say, Mar-a-Lago, showing, hypothetically, a guy who helped move boxes full of stolen classified documents. And not just that but that Trump’s primary Mar-a-Lago lawyer told Jack Smith’s Grand Jury that HE was told to search for the classified documents the DOJ and FBI wanted IN a storage room. And when he asked if he should search anywhere else – like in Trump’s Office – he was “steered away” and “waved off” and Trump’s office, of course, is where the FBI ultimately FOUND the MOST sensitive of the documents when it came back a month later.

Meanwhile the Debt Deal is going so disastrously internally for the Republicans that when he sought support for his argument against passing it, radical Texas goofball conservative Rep. "Chip" Roy quoted... ME.

B-Block (18:52) 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. (26:52) 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 (32:40) 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! (33:40) 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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EPISODE 213: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:43) SPECIAL COMMENT: 

Joe Biden has still won the debt deal but now there is the chance that not only will Kevin McCarthy will lose it, but so will Joe Manchin. That putrid, unreliable, self-aggrandizing, self-inflating, fraudulent, sheep-in-sheep’s clothing Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia has managed to stick the permitting legislation for his favorite project to accelerate the end of life on the planet from catastrophic climate change, the good old Mountain Valley Natural Gas Pipeline. But Senator Tim Kaine is moving to remove the good old Mountain Valley Pipeline from the deal, since it's “completely unrelated to the debt ceiling matter” and of course it IS completely unrelated to it, and Kaine will file an amendment to get it cut the hell out of the bill.

Because if President Biden would like to piss away the good will of averting a default that never should have been in play but Democrats in the House slept through the lame duck and Democrats in the White House apparently didn’t know about the 14th Amendment until a couple of weeks ago… and if President Biden would like to piss away the triumph of his victory over McCarthy, and if President Biden would like to piss away the early signs of a significant poll bump – Biden 46-44 in the Echelon Insights national poll, Biden 47-43 in the Clarity national poll, just out last night, and if President Biden would like to piss away all that, the way to do it is to umbrella this albatross of the Joe Manchin’s Integrity Memorial Pipeline into the Debt Deal.

Plus: MAGA Chip Roy on the House Rules Committee is now pretending there is a secret deal for only unanimous votes to move bills like this onto the floor, and another MAGA Dusty Johnson is politely calling him a liar.

Oh and, sorry, but the three-opponent-vanquishing hero of "Concession," Tom Wambsgans? The show's auteur says, no, he was NOT named after the three-opponent-vanquishing hero of baseball's 1920 World Series, BILL Wambsganss. Sorry!

B-Block (16:05) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: These really ARE postscripts. Not just more from the Wayback Machine but the story of how I GOT my first prestige job as a sportscaster on a top New York radio station just after my 21st birthday: the way everybody else does - by hanging around that station at 5:15 in the morning the day their sportscaster happens to call out sick.

C-Block (38:40) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Given today's headline, this is a good time to revisit the very FIRST Special Comment in this series: it involved fossil fuels, Joe Manchin, and the need to push Biden at all times. Also, a bad Howard Beale impression.

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EPISODE 212: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:43) SPECIAL COMMENT: I’d like to congratulate Joe Biden on kicking the asses of Kevin McCarthy and Donald Trump in the debt ceiling deal. More over, I'd like to thank Speaker McCarthy for writing President Biden’s first re-election campaign ad for him.

Reporter: “Mr. Speaker, How would you describe your interactions with Biden during negotiations?”

McCarthy: “Very professional, very smart. Very tough at the same time.”

Voice Over (Announcer): “President Biden. Even the Republicans think he’s very professional, very smart, very tough at the same time!”

Voice Over (Biden): “I’m Joe Biden and I approve this message because you heard him: I’m very professional, very smart, very tough at the same time.”

Voice Over (Announcer): “Paid For By Biden-Harris 2024 and the Committee to Make Trump Eat Spit.”

B-Block (11:52) Hey, it's Memorial Day. I'm OFF. Can't you TELL? Rather than re-purpose previous podcast components, here's stuff you'll either want to listen to, or not want any part of. Cool. It's your day off too. These are old newscasts and sportscasts and we start with one I had completely forgotten: a commentary for the United States Radio Network in 1985 in which I bash a football team owner named Donald Trump. And then three newscasts when New York radio station WNEW ran out of newscasters and had to have their 21-year old backup sports guy do drive time!

C-Block (27:53) An assortment, beginning fittingly with Memorial Day 1987 when I filled in for Brent Musburger on CBS Radio. Also in here, the day George Steinbrenner fired managers for the second time in the same year in 1982 (on WNEW) and a series of college broadcasts from WVBR at Cornell from 1979.

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EPISODE 211: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:43) SPECIAL COMMENT: The Washington Post's choice of its headline was the Mar-a-Lago workers moving boxes full of classified documents the day before the Justice Department stopped by to pick up what they’d subpoenaed, but that’s not THE headline in the story. THE headline in the story is really startling and could be the biggest in this week-long festival of leaks, this waterfall of sources-saying because this leak the Post DIDN’T think was the headline suggests Jack Smith has witnesses who saw Donald Trump commit not just obstruction of justice but espionage.

“Prosecutors…have gathered evidence indicating that Trump at times kept classified documents in his office in a place where they were visible and sometimes showed them to others… (they) have been told by more than one witness that Trump at times kept classified documents out in the open in his Florida office, where others could see them… and sometimes showed them to people, including aides and visitors,” unquote. So that’s literally espionage. Ten years or a fine or both. Per count. 18 USS Code 793 “Gathering, transmitting or losing defense information”paragraph “E.” Keeping classified documents is one thing. But having “unauthorized possession” of any document relating to the national defense and then being that guy who “willfully communicates, delivers, transmits, or causes to be communicated… to any person not entitled to receive it” is the point at which the option to not prosecute for espionage has typically ended.

Also: the Ron DeSantis Twitter disaster has been explained by tech experts. It's not tech, it's - what else - the cheapness of Elon Musk. Plus the judge not only throws the book at Oathkeepers culprit Stewart Rhodes but tells him to his face that he's not a "political prisoner" and most importantly of all, warns the courtroom and the nation that we could have another January 6th. And the TPM website decided to work backwards in its files on Rhodes and find where he made his national TV debut. You may not be that surprised by the answer.

Lastly just for laughs: Trump gets the year wrong and Junior tries to insult DeSantis but winds up saying "Trump" instead. 

B-Block (15:28) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: I lament what my invention, MSNBC, has become. Once we were liberal skeptics, calling out lies and pressing Democrats to earn our support and do what's right. Now it is a place where if NBC decided tomorrow to go right wing, all most of the hosts would need to do would be change names or dye hair and they'd get away with it. Because it's now about them. Happily, seven years ago this week Lawrence O'Donnell confessed he and the current crowd had "broken" my invention.

C-Block (35:05) Sam, the two-year old female in NYC (36:05) FRIDAYS WITH JAMES THURBER: My father's favorite Thurber story, the amazing saga of Thurber's 4th Grade Class and the other students who had been in it for decades: "I Went To Sullivant."

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EPISODE 210: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:41) SPECIAL COMMENT: Though they've paid him $900,000 for lawyers and another $500,000 from their "think tank," Trump's team has not heard from his former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and does not know if he has stayed silent, is a target of Special Counsel Jack Smith, or has FLIPPED ON TRUMP AND IS SMITH'S PRIMARY WITNESS. Even Jim Jordan, conspiracist-in-chief, says he talks to Meadows weekly but never brings up, you know, conspiracies. This could be why the Special Counsel's office is wrapping up - and leaking - everything.

Plus: Ron DeSantis should have used Fax, not Twitter. That unparalleled disaster is all he'll be remembered for, firmly eliminates Musk and Twitter as threats to Fox and others, and may make even Tucker Carlson think twice. CNN does schedule another Town Hall, because the first one went so well. And to Marjorie Taylor Greene's credit at least she knew which end of the gavel to bang against the table. Humiliation in the House.

B-Block (17:16) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: Briefly it looked like Tom Hanks had gotten into a fight on the Red Carpet at the Cannes Film Festival. I immediately flashed back to the day in 1999 when it briefly looked like Tom Hanks had gotten into a fight on the Red Carpet at the Oscars... with ME.

C-Block (36:00) EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: Poor Chelsea, on death row AGAIN in New York (37:05) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: In an LA-nostalgic mood, I must recount the day I got the scoop of the year in LA sports - maybe in all of sports - and then the cameraman said "wait - I may not have recorded that."

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EPISODE 209: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:43) SPECIAL COMMENT: The Special Counsel is at the End Game. From The Wall Street Journal: “Some of Trump’s close associates are bracing for his indictment and anticipate being able to fundraise off a prosecution, people in the former president’s circle said...Jack Smith has all but finished obtaining testimony and other evidence” (about the classified documents Trump stole and stashed).

What's more: Trump knows this is it.

His attorneys John Rowley and Jim Trusty last night wrote a “Dear Attorney General Garland” letter that Trump clearly composed. I don’t know exactly where this lands on the scale from Panic, to Desperately Trying To Gain Public Pity, to Lawyers Desperately Trying To Please Their Crazy Client. But it's desperate and childish and revelatory:

“Dear Attorney General Garland:

"We represent Donald J. Trump, the 45th President of the United States, in the investigation currently being conducted by the Special Counsel’s Office. Unlike President Biden, his son Hunter, and the Biden family, President Trump is being treated unfairly. No President of the United States has ever, in the history of our country, been baselessly investigated in such an outrageous and unlawful fashion. We request a meeting at your earliest convenience to discuss the ongoing injustice that is being perpetrated by your Special Counsel and his prosecutors.

"Thank you for your attention to this matter."

I understand Garland has composed his reply “Dear Mr. Rowley and Mr. Trusty, happy to meet you and your client, please come to my office at 123 Trump Pooped His Pants Didn’t He? Avenue, Washington D.C."

I know we all have Mueller Derangement Syndrome. But when the WSJ says it's over - it's over.

B-Block (15:19) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: Ron DeSantis will announce something everybody already knows. He'll announce it on Twitter, which will make all the Trump cultists hate Musk. And he'll announce it instead of something he just mentioned in passing the other day which is the first good reason he's given for supporting him over Trump. How would Trumpy try for a 3rd Term? And just when the CNN Town Hall thing seemed to be dying, its PR person sets it ablaze anew. (21:25) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Martin Shrkeli is back and weirder than ever; the Youth Poet Laureate's poem is banned in Florida because of one crazy parent; Matt Gaetz confesses the Republicans think of the Democrats as their "hostages" in the debt discussion.

C-Block (27:45) EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: Layla's Heart and Rescue in Texas needs your help (28:45) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Lauren Sanchez and Jeff Bezos are reportedly engaged. Engaged in WHAT?

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EPISODE 208: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Special Counsel Jack Smith is clearly pursuing a theory of Donald Trump’s stolen classified documents conspiracy in which Trump ignored a subpoena to return every classified document, committed Obstruction of Justice and violated the Espionage Act by hiding them from his own attorney’s search in order to retain them, and then somehow utilized them in post-presidency business deals with one of seven countries, including China and Saudi Arabia.

AND as evidence: Jack Smith has nothing less than the real time hand-written notes from Trump’s own attorney. The real-time record (one analyst describes it as “Special Counsel Smith strikes gold”) could be enough to put Trump in prison for ten years PER COUNT for not just willfully retaining classified documents, but deliberately HIDING THEM to keep his own lawyer from finding them and giving them back to the authorities – a brazen violation of a key part of the Espionage Act.

And from a separate sourced story and even more astonishingly, it’s clear the Special Counsel is ALSO pursuing evidence that Trump may have given, or traded, or SOLD classified documents to China, France, Kuwait, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and/or the United Arab Emitates. Whether the evidence can be obtained – whether it even exists – isn’t clear. On the other hand, Jack Smith didn’t pick the names of seven countries out of a hat.

B-Block (19:23) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: Congratulations, Anderson Cooper, you've escaped 4th Place! Chris Wallace? Not so much. SOMETHING good came from that network-ending Trump Town Hall: E. Jean Carroll IS suing Trump again. And the real nightmare of the fake AI of the "explosions" that never happened at the Pentagon and White House? The AI will only get more convincing (22:40) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Marjorie Taylor Greene's boyfriend claims Brittney Griner is a "man;" the GOP wants a NATIONAL stand-your-ground right to murder law; and what does it profit a man to run for president if he loses his face?

C-Block (27:50) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: My God, it's 23 years since I quit SportsCenter to go try my hand at news at NBC. The story's been told a dozen times in a dozen ways, none of them accurately. Especially the part of how an unexpected development after I quit - the arrival of a letter from the father of an autistic boy - caused me to go back to my bosses and say I was willing to stay, at least for one show a week.

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EPISODE 207: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: If we do not harden our stances and fight now and convince our less adamantine cohorts to do the same, we are going to lose this democracy. “Should the Democrats hold fast (on the debt ceiling) and not negotiate, or should they negotiate spending constraints with the Republicans,” reads the question in the new Harvard Harris Poll. 82 percent of Republicans say the Democrats should negotiate with Republicans. AND 41 PERCENT OF DEMOCRATS SAY DEMOCRATS SHOULD NEGOTIATE WITH THE REPUBLICANS. Are you KIDDING? Are you INSANE? Are you SUICIDAL? NEGOTIATE.

You do not negotiate with terrorists. You metaphorically shoot terrorists in the head. “I’m looking at the 14th Amendment. I think we have the authority. The question is, could it be done in time,” said the President from Hiroshima. “We have not come up with unilateral action that could succeed in a matter of two weeks or three weeks. That’s the issue. So it’s up to lawmakers.” With respect, Mr. President, it is NOT. Stop caving in to these fascists. They are NOT negotiating. They are NOT operating from any position of good faith or coherent philosophy except to try to destroy the economy and blame you and run against you on it and you have stated as much and you are still standing there with another metaphorical gun pointed against YOUR head hoping that you will find some middle road with the people who have spent the last 30 years dynamiting and jack-hammering all the middle roads.

I mean this is so obvious even POLITICO noticed it. POLITICO. Official stenographers of the 17th Century. Its LEAD story summarized where the quote “negotiations” unquote are, how Democrats have already caved and Republicans have gotten more intransigent. And even AXIOS noticed how determined Trump is to be elected Dictator, and how he is openly campaigning on eliminating democracy.

We need no more negotiations with Republicans. We need leaders who will fight and defeat them.

COMIC RELIEF: The boss of CNN's Chris Licht got one of the great thrills of life: the opportunity to give the commencement address at his alma mater. And he was booed and interrupted throughout by Boston University students angry over his Hollywood Studio's stance in the Writers' Strike. Or maybe they weren't booing and were just chanting "Zaz." Back at the ranch, a Trump social post over the weekend confirms my reporting from last week: that CNN is at minimum discussing a 2nd Trump Town Hall. And Anderson Cooper's viewers have left the silo and his show has now settled into 4th Place behind NewsMax - because obviously CNN is tanking to get the first draft choice.

B-Block (20:20) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: It is the greatest bad political soundbite of all time: greater than Herschel Walker's "erection," greater than Adlai Stevenson, greater than Sarah Palin's 117 entries. Also: never endorse somebody you can't be certain won't vote to overturn Roe v Wade later. And the Mississippi school forcing a trans girl to dress as a boy for graduation. (25:46) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Texas book banning affects Texas's poet laureate, Marge Greene denies she's a white supremacist so that must be somebody else's Confederate Flag. And George W. Bush makes a comeback.

C-Block (31:00) EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: One By One Animal Advocates, a group which has saved about 30,000 animals in West Virginia in a decade, itself needs our rescue help (32:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: As we move towards the two-week mark of the CNN crisis, a look back at the worst management decision in TV history, so bad that after a week they told the poor guy he still had the title but he wasn't permitted to actually DO anything.

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EPISODE 206: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44): SPECIAL COMMENT: “Republicans are back on the air,” Chris Licht’s boss said yesterday, 24 hours after Christiane Amanpour had politely vivisected Licht in front of all those new Columbia J-School grads.”Republicans weren’t on the air. During the McCarthy hearings, for those four days, we had 75 Republicans on the air. 41 went on us before they went on Fox. And the reason is…they are not going to get one more vote on Fox." And Trump is quote “the front-runner. He has to be on our network. We’re happy he’s coming on our network.”

And after spelling out CNN's new role as an advocacy network Republicans can use to find new votes, David Zaslav then says "advertisers...don't want to be part of an advocacy network,." Zaslav doubles down on his metaphorical suicide pact with Licht as their CNN strategy becomes clear: Increase advertising by decreasing viewership!

Plus the latest from inside the network on CNN In Crisis: Day 10. No retribution planned against Amanpour (yet); talks ongoing with Trump for a second event, maybe a second Town Hall; Erin Burnett and Anderson Cooper have officially fallen into fourth place behind NewsMax; and a new factor in this disaster. A week ago nearly 50% of stockholders voted AGAINST Zaslav's CEO compensation.

B-Block (21:41) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: The Republican plan to...defund the Air Force? Dianne Feinstein's health, and the urgency for her to resign, both grow. And Wednesday Marjorie Taylor Scumbag Greene was joking in public with Jamaal Bowman and yesterday she was claiming his body language threatened her and she fell right into the "That Black Man was looking at me." (26:15) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: As we commemorate the anniversary of the Mt. St. Helens volcano, a tribute to the fill-in newscaster who insisted it killed a former president. Elon Musk makes an offer we can't refuse. And Ron DeSantis sure showed Disney! He owned the libs, and the libs now own $1,000,000,000.

C-Block (31:30) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: Back to the first story of James Thurber I ever read aloud in front of people. Hilarious and deeply disturbing at the same time: "A Box To Hide In."

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EPISODE 205: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) CNN's Chief International Correspondent Christiane Amanpour has become the first on-air CNN journalist to openly criticize CNN's televising of last week's Trump Town Hall - and she did it in no less a venue than the Commencement Speech at Columbia's Journalism School. She was polite and diplomatic but still left little pieces of CEO Chris Licht spread all over the campus as she stealthily apologized for CNN, and one casual remark about how she "would have dropped the mike at 'nasty person'" completely erased the hapless moderator Kaitlan Collins 

Full coverage and recorded excerpts of Amanpour's speech to Columbia J-School grads.

B-Block (17:20) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: Jamaal Bowman, evokers of the 14th Amendment, the National Archives and the DA in NY are among those who are reminding Democrats: THROW THE FIRST PUNCH.

C-Block (31:12) EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: Venice - who you helped save when he was still named "Venom" again pleads for your help (32:10) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: The day I fell off a cliff making a Boston Market TV commercial: Eat Something! Well, I sure did.

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EPISODE 204: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:43) SPECIAL COMMENT: Chris Licht or somebody close to him has inadvertently confessed that the network did, as accused, illicitly pack the live crowd at the Trump Town Hall with Trump Supporters, and lied to the public when it insisted the crowd would represent the entire voting mix for the New Hampshire GOP Primary. 

A CNBC story (and it has all the ear-marks of a cable network public relations department clean-up operation) says Licht has defended the concept of the Town Hall ad insisted "history will look kindly" on his decisions but that CNN could've done some things better, including introducing the live crowd to the TV audience so viewers would know WHY THE LIVE CROWD SUPPORTED TRUMP. Licht or the Licht-adjacent leaker never stopped to think that they were admitting that the audience WAS stacked, hat the crowd was full of Trump plants. Furthermore they never stopped to think that saying that in retrospect they should have talked to some of the room full of Trump cultists before they started booing Kaitlan Collins and before Trump started to egg them on, supports the accusations by the Republican Governor OF New Hampsher Chris Sununu, and the former Republican Governor OF New Jersey Chris Christie, that virtually everybody they saw in that studio at St. Anselm’s College was a Trump supporter they recognized by sight. It also supports the accusation by Chris Christie that CNN let Trump choose who would be in the crowd. In one fell swoop, CNN has just admitted it was an almost-entirely pro-Trump crowd, and they shouldn’t have deceived the viewers into thinking anything else, but that they DID, and Licht wishes they hadn’t done that. Lie. To the viewers. To the nation. This elevates this disaster from mere television and journalistic malfeasance, into a literal kind of deception, a three-card Monte game, in which a bluntly, nakedly, unforgivably biased, slanted, fully-loaded fascist political rally was televised by a network whose executives and announcers lied that it was some kind of news or public events broadcast.

Lastly, and maybe worst of all, the CNBC piece hints that a network may be considering another Trump Town Hall. Read the tea leaves in the article and it's pretty clear that the network thinking about a Trump Town Hall 2 - that's leaking what it would do to improve on the first one...is CNN.

B-Block (19:54) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: Yesterday's lead? About the shocker inside the Rudy Giuliani sex story? That he was offering pardons for $2,000,000 apiece and splitting the money with Trump? Turns out the exact same story - Giuliani offering pardons for $2M/per - was reported in real time; The bid to expel George Santos and why a vote is imminent; and the good news is, Dianne Feinstein talked to a couple of reporters yesterday. The bad news is, she doesn't know where she's been the last three months. (25:13) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: DeSantis joins the chorus of people who never read the Bible but are still calling NYC's alleged Subway Strangler "A Good Samaritan;" a Trump shill Congresswoman insists she's NOT a Trump shill; and Lauren Boebert is divorcing her husband and he is reportedly furious. God! Why?

C-Block (30:00) EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: Shiloh, thrown from a car in Atlanta (30:50) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: This scenario playing out at CNN? Turning it into a right-wing propaganda network while pretending you're just making sure "all voices are heard?" The reason I keep talking about it, and feel so strongly about it, is that 20 years ago this spring MSNBC tried the exact same thing. Even put on a fascist commentator - literally wearing a Brownshirt on the air - named Michael Savage. And not only did ratings vanish but Savage embarrassed the company so badly he had to be fired. Then went all the producers. Then the executives. Finally the president of MSNBC, and the head of NBC News. It does not end well - as it won't end well for Licht and CNN.

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EPISODE 203: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) FOUR DIFFERENT LEAD STORIES: 

FIRST LEAD STORY: Allegation from lurid sex abuse lawsuit against Rudy Giuliani: Rudy said Trump presidential pardons were available for purchase - as of February 16th, 2019 - $2,000,000 each, half to him, half to Rudy Giuliani. And on February 7th, 2019, Giuliani revealed that if Trump lost the following year’s election there was a plan in place to claim quote “voter fraud” and he repeatedly discussed the plan with his business associate Lev Parnas. Jack Smith needs to talk to this woman and get the tapes she claims she has. because if there is a CHANCE that ANY of this is true, Rudy Giuliani will flip like a cheeseburger.

Paragraph 109: “Throughout the employment and attorney-client relationship, Giuliani forced Ms. Dunphy to perform oral sex on him. He often demanded oral sex while he took phone calls on speaker phone from high-profile friends and clients, including then-President Trump. Giuliani told Ms. Dunphy that he enjoyed engaging in this conduct while on the telephone because it made him quote ‘feel like Bill Clinton’ unquote.”

SECOND LEAD STORY: Republicans appear to have lost or misplaced (or, hint hint, never had) the Biden "whistleblower" or "informant" they think will end a presidency. The problem is, Chairman James Comer apparently uses the terms interchangeably. He doesn't know his informing from his whistleblowing. He may need to ask Giuliani. 

THIRD LEAD STORY: The Durham Report is out and it consists of… nothing. No indictments, no litigation, no calls for punishments. It concludes the FBI shouldn’t have investigated any of it. Just like that. The FBI Inspector General said some of the initial evidence that jump-started the investigation was dubious, but that the investigation was ENTIRELY justified. Durham’s report consists of him basically saying: no it wasn’t. I mean, remember what right wing media, especially Fox News, ESPECIALLY Sean Hannity – remember who they told their addicts were going to be exposed and indicted and revealed by Lord God Almighty John Durham. You ready? James Baker, John Brennan, James Clapper, Hillary Clinton, James Comey, Loretta Lynch, Andrew McCabe, Bruce Ohr, Nellie Ohr, Lisa Page, Samantha Power, Rod Rosenstein, Peter Struck, Sally Yale and of course, evil mastermind Barack Obama. Or as it turns out… None of the Above. The Durham Investigation indicted… none of them. The Durham Investigation blamed… none of them.

B-Block (19:03) THE FOURTH LEAD STORY: What did Chris Licht get himself out of prostituting Trump for the Town Hall a week ago tomorrow? He got himself fourth place. On Friday night, Vichy CNN fell to FOURTH in a three-team league. An average of 335-thousand total viewers. That's 1.1 million behind behind Fox, three quarters of a million behind MSNBC, and 22,000 behind… NewsMax? Honest to God. NewsMax. And Anderson Cooper, after he condescendingly scolded his viewers and claimed they were living in silos? Most cable news shows drop Thursday to Friday. Cooper? He dropped 28 percent. And there is no indication that Licht and CNN have finished rock-bottom yet, neither in the ratings nor the public revulsion. The Daily Beast last night not only quoted a CNN source who called the event “our Chernobyl”but added that Licht is fawning over a reporter from the magazine The Atlantic who is writing a profile of Licht and that somehow CNN and Licht think it’s going to be “a glowing profile of the boss.” (29:22) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: The unusual resume of the man who says you can't have a Congestion Pricing Scheme like London's in New York - because they drive on the other side in London. Plus Roger Ailes' widow attacks Murdoch. And his new book is out, but Josh Hawley's "Manhood" turns out to be a little short.

C-Block (34:40) EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: Duke and Simba, on the death list at Devore, CA (35:40) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Well, why not? Since it's Rudy Giuliani Day, how about the story from nearly 30 years ago of when I emceed a baseball events on the steps of City Hall while he was Mayor and a) when it came time to introduce me he didn't know who the hell I was and b) more importantly all day he didn't know where the hell HE WAS.

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EPISODE 202: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:43) SPECIAL COMMENT: Evidence mounts that CNN really did pack the audience at the Trump Town Hall, really did seed the crowd with almost nothing but Trump supporters. And it mounts that CNN let Trump choose the moderator (or at least veto other options to BE the moderator). And it mounts that CNN let Trump pick which pro-Trump talking heads appeared on CNN after the fixed Trump Rally ended. And it also mounts that CNN Chairman Chris Licht has intensified his criticism of the ONLY CNN front-facing talent to dare to even LIGHTLY criticize the decision to prostitute the network, Oliver Darcy, and that Darcy is deciding whether or not to quit before he gets fired.

Chris Christie has now joined New Hampshire governor John Sununu in asserting that the 400 "Republican and independent primary voters" were not just random people with a variety of favored candidates. Christie: "CNN went in the tank to get Trump on there. They allowed him to negotiate who was going to be in that audience. And those were all Trump supporters. That was a negotiation deal that Trump did with CNN" Governor Sununu: "I knew pretty much everybody in that audience. They're all Trump supporters."

CNN is already in "Quiz Show" territory. 60 years ago corruption like this led to Congressional hearings and Grand Juries. It should lead that way again.

Semafor News ids now reported new details of the Licht "fear of God" meeting with his lone on-the-record in-house critic, Oliver Darcy - and potentially a far more dire outcome. Quoting Max Tani’s piece “In the aftermath of the meeting and coverage, Darcy has wondered to colleagues whether he should resign, or if he will be fired by the network...A particularly bitter pill for some CNN employees, was an anonymous comment from a Licht ally to Fox News,”unquote. That comment? Quoting the Fox report, a “source said Licht received a quote ‘ton’ of messages from CNN staffers appalled by Darcy’s newsletter… the messages, according to the source, were like quote ‘what the eff…’” So now instead of bullying and threatening Darcy, Licht instead had a quote “ally” leak to Fox, of all places, that CNN employees were all on Licht’s said and not Darcy’s.

B-Block (20:04) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Troy Nehls complains about the open border. And the guy on the terrorist watch list they arrested at the open border. Which ain't open. It turns out Elon Musk's "free speech absolutism" means he's absolutely NOT going to pay for a lawyer to protect free speech in Turkey. And the Jamie Comer investigation of the Bidens is going great. Except they don't have any charges or evidence just an informant and a whistleblower and apparently they've LOST THE INFORMANT. (24:30) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: Kevin Ettinger (1933-2023)

C-Block (36:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: There's nothing new about a major television news operation making illicit, inappropriate deals with Republican presidential campaigns. Not only is it looking more and more like Trump did this with Licht's CNN, but I know from experience that in 2008, John McCain's campaign and the RNC demanded my head as the price of McCain showing up for the presidential debate Tom Brokaw was to moderate. Brokaw was more than happy to help them blackmail NBC. And he would later boast about it.

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EPISODE 201: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

This is a new, full, 20-minute segment of the news breaking Friday night about CNN's Trump Town Hall. The closing two blocks of this podcast are repeated from Episode 200 from 5.12.23.

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: CNN's amoral anti-journalistic thug chairman Chris Licht reportedly called the network's only internal on-the-record critic of its telecast of the Trump Nuremberg rally into his office and with at least three other senior executives present, "Put The Fear Of God" into media reporter Oliver Darcy. Additional reporting indicates Licht and CNN manipulated crowd reaction at the "Town Hall" site by telling the audience how it could and could not react. Trump reportedly agreed to do the CNN event because it knew it could manipulate moderator Kaitlan Collins.

The numbers don't lie: CNN primetime ratings drop 8% from pre-Trump levels. And Anderson Cooper's snide "living in a silo" remark is disproved by data: Since 2010 CNN has mentioned Trump supporters twice as much as those of all other presidential nominees and presidents combined. And Anderson is boiled alive by his friend and former CNN colleague Sunny Hostin on "The View": she says he's gaslighting us - and she's right.

And most importantly: The decisions and the deciders who inflicted upon us the Trump Town Hall reflected journalistic malpractice and citizenship betrayal. Anderson Cooper’s maudlin and condescending attack on his own audience, and the silence of Wolf Blitzer and Jake Tapper and Erin Burnett and ALL of CNN’s reporters and commentators are MORAL failings. Ladies and gentlemen of CNN, do you STAND for anything? Does the organization MEAN anything to you? I wasn’t there on Day One but I WAS there at the end of YEAR ONE and I’m damn proud of it, and I grieve what Chris Licht has done by prostituting it. YOU are the ones, Wolf Blitzer, Jake Tapper, Erin Burnett, even Anderson Cooper up there on your high horse, YOU are the ones keeping the original noble idea – news unrestrained by the need to put on ‘The Beverly Hillbillies’ at 8 PM, while making money – YOU are the ones charged by history, and your own ambitions and principals, with PROTECTING the idea of CNN, and in a broader sense, with PROTECTING journalism and in a broader sense STILL, with protecting DEMOCRACY. Are you going to DO it? Are you going to RISK something? Have you really all been working there for decades and NOT yet made enough money for the rest of your lives? Is there ANYONE at CNN willing to place their craft and their responsibility ahead of their paycheck, or… nah, let’s just let the media critic do it, by himself. Shouldn’t you go in there WITH him and say enough? Because guess what? Staying out of the fray and protecting your paycheck may work short term. May work for years. Or then again, it may not. There are a lot of ambitious anchors without any standards out there. Maybe it’d be better if you took a risk now in defense of, you know, the United States of America – even if Chris Licht DID get you fired. I mean which would you rather HAVE on your tombstone? I got fired because I protested when my network’s new paste-easting boss Chris Licht sold us out to Donald Trump? Or I got fired because they wanted to expand Kaitlan Collins Tonight… to FIVE HOURS?

B-Block (24:11) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: Biden really does seem poised to spring the 14th Amendment on Republican Debt Ceiling Hostage-Takers; Why is every news report calling the white man who choked another man to death on the NYC subway a "Navy veteran" rather than what they would call a person of color, something like "Crazed Subway Strangler"?  THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: There is ONE political boss still backing George Santos. There is one presidential campaign running on a promise to disenfranchise some of the people who would elect him. There is one CNN on-air person praising Kaitlan Collins' persistent impotence.

C-Block (33:30 EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: The brindle mix on the kill list in New York is named, in sad irony, "Free." (34:35) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: It's his story that best fits the saga of Trump and degeneracy mistaken for power: "The Greatest Man In The World."

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EPISODE 200: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: The journalistic malfeasance was so thorough, the internal staff rage so vituperative, and the on-air ratings so underwhelming, that if Anderson Cooper or Wolf Blitzer or Jake Tapper or all of them went into the office of Chris Licht’s boss this afternoon and said that the Trump Town Hall was the final straw and it had damaged theirs and the network’s credibility and they were walking out, Licht would be gone from CNN by Monday.

Instead, Cooper blamed his own audience! He began his program last night regretting… that CNN viewers were “staying in their silos” and directing his infamous condescension to his own audience, or what’s left of it after the Trump debacle. “Now, maybe you haven’t been paying attention to him since he left office… thinking it can’t happen again…” Cooper’s premise – that to understand Trump and the threat he poses, we have to approve of CNN’s capitulation to and collaboration with him, is absurd, indefensible, and sanctimonious. Instead of using his platform to bravely recognize that the threat of Trump is paralleled within CNN by the threat of Chris Licht and the conservatives he’s prostituting the network for, instead of showing just SOME guts, Anderson Cooper decided to try to guilt whoever was left to watch CNN last night. Shame on him.

The CNN town hall drew 3,308,000 TOTAL viewers, and 781,000 demo viewers. But just one hour after the Hindentrump crashed and burned live on CNN, the ratings bump was GONE. In the 10 O’Clock hour CNN was back to third place, half a million total viewers BEHIND Fox, 300,000 behind MSNBC. Three quarters of the total audience had vanished before midnight. By the ELEVEN O’Clock hour that “demo” audience of 781,000 had shrunk back to 186,000. They got nothing out of it. Nobody stayed. Nobody saw it and said “I like this new CNN. I’m going to try out their other shows. Like 'No You're Wrong Mr. President With Kaitlan Collins.'"

B-Block (20:00) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: Biden really does seem poised to spring the 14th Amendment on Republican Debt Ceiling Hostage-Takers; Why is every news report calling the white man who choked another man to death on the NYC subway a "Navy veteran" rather than what they would call a person of color, something like "Crazed Subway Strangler"? (23:20) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: There is ONE political boss still backing George Santos. There is one presidential campaign running on a promise to disenfranchise some of the people who would elect him. There is one CNN on-air person praising Kaitlan Collins' persistent impotence.

C-Block (28:30) EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: The brindle mix on the kill list in New York is named, in sad irony, "Free." (30:35) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: It's his story that best fits the saga of Trump and degeneracy mistaken for power: "The Greatest Man In The World."

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EPISODE 199: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-BLOCK (1:43) SPECIAL COMMENT: All mainstream American news organizations must today solemnly and unflinchingly look inward after what happened last night and understand that if you simply assume as CNN did that if you apply the journalistic rules of 20, 50, or 150 years ago to a candidate who will speak any lie, who will slander any person, who will manipulate any fear, who will betray any and all aspects of democracy, you will inherit the wind. CNN handed over 70 minutes of its primetime, and all of its remaining credibility, to a madman, to a criminal, to a liar, to a would-be dictator. It gave him an audience of braying cult members who gave him not one critical nor even less-than-fawning question. It gave him a moderator whom he ignored, mocked, insulted, lied to, lied about, and who in turn thought everything would be fine if she simply responded to his lies by saying “no you’re wrong.”

CNN must fire its CEO Chris Licht for birthing a journalistic abomination unprecedented in American television history last night; Its new owners must sell the network whose brand they irreparably damaged last night. E. Jean Carroll needs to sue Donald Trump for the new defamatory comments he made about he last night; And moderator Kaitlan Collins needs to sue her agent for ending her career last night.

Last night, CNN legitimized the lies and the feral venom of Donald Trump. And for whatever shamed remorse might leak out of that organization today and in the days ahead; for whatever sober self-reflection might be done at the New York Times or The Washington Post or the other outlets who may have now seen what happens when you apply the laws of honest journalism in a democracy to a man who will not and cannot even consider honesty or democracy; for whether or not some editor really stopped someone writing “Trump lied to and abused America for 70 minutes last night; here’s why that’s bad news for Joe Biden”…for whatever regret felt, or lesson learned.. there will be others who will look at the ratings as they come out later today and say “Did you see those numbers? We need to do one of those right away!”

It was a disaster from start to finish. And the bottom line is: CNN as a credible news organization, as the FIRST credible full-time American television all-news organization - THAT'S what's finished.

B-BLOCK (21:37) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: So many counts against George Santos that he, Devolder, and his drag queen persona could each get life sentences. The return of Feinstein. (24:00) IN SPORTS: NFL's new schedule: only two days a week WITHOUT any football. And you can be a top college basketball coach and use a homophobic slur and the word "Catholic" as the adjective before it and still NOT get fired? (27:34) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Which idiots scheduled their attack on the Biden family between the Santos arraignment and the CNN Trump fiasco? Alex Haley may have made up the quote that made enemies of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. And Senator Tuberville wants to make the Military safe for White Nationalists (like him).

C-BLOCK (33:40) EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: Beautiful young German Shepherd Lonzo may die in California (35:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Morning radio and sports fanaticism do not mix. One day a long time ago I criticized the New York Football Giants on the station that carried them. The DJ who loved them then came out into the newsroom and threatened to get me fired by 8:30 AM. But that wasn't the biggest surges. (50:00) ARTIFACTS: An actual broadcast from that era, me filling in for John Kennelly on The Ted Brown Show on WNEW Radio, 1981.

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EPISODE 198: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:43) SPECIAL COMMENT: A huge news day begins and ends with the jury finding, gee, guess what, Donald Trump IS a witch. Liable for sexual abuse against E. Jean Carroll and liable to show up on CNN tonight anyway. The CNN thing is the world coming full circle: three decades ago E. Jean Carroll was inadvertently responsible for launching both MSNBC and Fox News.

George Santos has been indicted but nobody would reveal for what - unless Rep. Dan Goldman let the cat out of the bag by saying the Feds had gotten him for "election fraud." The weirdest twist: Capitol Hill Police went to Santos's office out of "an abundance of caution." Did they think he had tried to harm himself? Nothing but stern words after the Biden-McCarthy debt ceiling meeting but POTUS himself invokes the 14th Amendment and the prospect he may say he is constitutionally OBLIGATED to prevent debt default no matter which stunt McCarthy tries.

Confirmation from Texas: the Allen Mall shooter WAS a white supremacist named Garcia, with Nazi tattoos, and the conspiracy theory fascists like Elon Musk are idiots. Harlan Crow, the man who owns his own pet Supreme Court Justice, may soon own a subpoena from Finance Committee Chairman Wyden after blowing him off. And there has been a Dianne Feinstein sighting! (Well no, actually, there was just a press release from her staff saying there would BE a Feinstein sighting).

B-Block (20:22) IN SPORTS: A Fox Sports/WFAN Radio host may be up to his neck in it after wildly accusing the team with baseball's best record of "cheating" - without any evidence or even made-up story. Trevor Bauer gets beaten up. And the A's are moving again before they even get to Las Vegas. (23:11) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Putin tanks his own parade, Musk and Tucker Carlson join forces to make the world safe for trust fund babies, and Melania Trump endorses Donald Trump because SOMEBODY'S CONTRACT MUSTA BEEN RENEWED.

C-Block (29:00) EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: 8-month old puppy Bruno, on the kill list in Big Bear, California (30:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Willie Mays turns 92. Not only am I still hoping to recover from the radio interview I did with him in 1979 in which HE PRETENDED TO BE SOMEBODY ELSE, but even in the birthday stories nobody mentioned that after establishing himself as a budding big league superstar Mays missed nearly two full seasons when he was drafted into the army - while all the young white players WEREN'T. That clearly cost him a shot at breaking Babe Ruth's career Home Run record.

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EPISODE 197: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: The United States of America is under attack by armed right-wing terrorists. The Texas Mall Shooter and every other one bent on killing the enemies living in their own mind might as well be Suicide Bombers, might as well be ISIS. The receipts on the Texas Mall Shooter are a mile long; he was a right wing media addict, he dedicated a hate-filled online rant to the terrorist “Libs Of Tik Tok” twitter account, he posted screenshots from the right-wing troll Tim Pool, a swastika tattoo covered those parts of his body not covered by an SS tattoo, he signed one comment with the name Adolf Hitler, he repeatedly posed in NAZI uniforms, he used a meme that suggested there were only two routes for Latino children: identify as black or become a white supremacist, and his pedigree as a right-wing, MAGA-inspired, neo-Nazi, perpetrator of stochastic terrorism, fueled by every component of Donald Trump and his coalition of hate, could not possibly be more easily discovered, more rapidly verified, more thoroughly self-convicting… and the right completely denies any of it is true.

I do not know what we do about the people in a society who deny any fact that does not serve them. Only once before was the nation faced with a third or more of its citizens believing in things that were did not true and did not exist, and that was before and during the Civil War. 

It sounds like madness to ask WHEN we need to consider an Executive Order declaring a State of National Emergency about right-wing terrorism but look at Allen, Texas and imagine the dozens and hundreds and thousands of Mauricio Garcias out there, becoming literally connected to the Proud Boys and a just-slightly-more-evil version of CPAC or MAGA or another Trump front group and then ask yourself what other means EXIST for us to stop a pervasive nation-wide violent suicidal reality-denying cult that looks ahead to November 5th, 2024, and sees opportunity.

B-Block (15:25) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Tucker Carlson's first heavy-hitter, Conservative icon ally in his newly-launched war against Fox is BRETT FAVRE? Was he wearing pants? Junior Trump has never heard of Nick Fuentes? MSNBC took WHOSE money? (18:27) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: One of the great New York newscasters, John Roland, has died at the age of 81. By itself, his career is worthy of remembrance. But to me he in part defines my youth: when I was 19 I was an intern in his newsroom, as I witnessed for the first time the bloody transition from a mandarin of anchors, Bill Jorgensen, to Roland. It's an amazing story from an amazing newscast best remembered for the words with which it began: It's 10 PM. Do you know where your children are?

C-Block (37:30) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS, PART 2: The thing is, to get my one college credit for spending the summer of 1978 working on Channel 5's "The 10 O'Clock News" and a half-hour nightly prototype of SportsCenter called "SportsPage" (with the man who a year later would anchor the first-ever episode OF SportsCenter), I had to write a very long, very blunt paper on my experience. I thought only my supervisor at Channel 5 and my professor would see it. Then, she liked it so much she made 100 copies and distributed it to her staff. Suddenly everybody knew which reporter all the producers called "Ted Baxter" and which talent drank so much that he'd be dead within five years. I still have the paper: I'll read you the highlights.

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EPISODE 196: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:43) SPECIAL COMMENT: "The first girl I walked up to," said one of the first bystanders to the scene in Allen, Texas, "was crouched down covering her head in the bushes, so I felt for a pulse, pulled her head to the side and she had no face." The cops then refused to take questions and the authorities had nothing but emotionless platitudes.

We live now in a society in which our children are randomly put to death in public, with weapons of war, by Right Wing Terrorists - and the Republicans treat it as blandly as if it were all as inevitable as Bad Weather. Hurricanes, Tornados, Thunderstorms, Mass Shootings. If they show any emotion it is to tell us this is god's will or to explain we have "lost" the battle to rein in assault weapons, as the shrill screeching fascist Megyn Kelly did.

The antidote to the dour acceptance of this slaughter must come from the president of the United States. He must act - by executive orders to address those peripheral areas that can at least reduce the carnage - and most importantly by stating the truth: Republicans Cause Mass Shootings.

B-Block (17:00) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: Judge calls Chump's bluff in E. Jean Carroll Trial, Pence gives Jack Smith guilty foreknowledge, Tucker Carlson has plans to burn down Fox, and Dick Durbin has excuses for Dianne Feinstein and John Roberts (21:45) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Ted Cruz can't tell one African-American from another, Chuck Grassley loses the thread on the "explosive" Biden document (it's the Burisma crap), and Vivek Ramaswamy is trying to bury his Fellowship. His... SOROS Fellowship.

C-Block (27:00) EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: Gray, in the worsening situation at the NYC pound. (28:05) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: 24 hours before Megyn Kelly's infamous tweets, of all the people who could have been walking on my New York street, who do I run into but the idiot NBC executive who gave her $69 million and tried to mainstream her. Happily I managed to avoid his gaze; as usual, Andy Lack was too busy listening to himself talk.

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EPISODE 195: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

Please note: this is the back two-thirds of Episode 194 from May 5, 2023, repeated and isolated so new listeners can get right to the Roger Bannister story without the news. If you've heard Episode 194, this'll be a re-run. Talk to you Monday!

A-Block (1:30) N SPORTS: Saturday, May 6, the sports world will do what it always does on May 6: celebrate the most remarkable track and field milestone of the 20th Century (and maybe of all time). It is now 69 years since Roger Bannister became the first man to run a mile in four minutes or less. It was an accomplishment as unbelievable as the Moon Landing; so unbelievable that an editorial in The New York Times asked if it would ever be accomplished again. Roger Bannister won immortal praise, for the rest of his long life and beyond, despite racism and controversy and one minor detail.

He could not POSSIBLY have been the first man to run a mile in four minutes or less. There is ample evidence of runners - other British runners in fact - performing the feat as early as 1770. And yet the history of these earlier athletes has been forgotten or erased - or deliberately purged. Why?

B-Block (19:17) IN SPORTS PART TWO: The erasure of the runners who "broke" the four-minute mile barrier in the 18th Century (or earlier) was no accident. It was the deliberate result of the flourishing of the fetishization of amateurism, first in Great Britain in the 1800's, and then throughout the world through the Olympic movement.

C-Block (25:30) IN SPORTS PART THREE: Sadly, the concoction by which Roger Bannister's feat 69 years ago was turned into "the first human ever, ever, since man crawled out of the ooze, to run a mile in four minutes" is more than just elitist revisionist nonsense. It also involves something even worse: blatant, obvious racism. It's an extraordinary story and you should learn the details so you can yell at everybody who tells you about the "great" Roger Bannister.

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EPISODE 194: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: TRUMP'S GLITCH SNITCH: Putting together scoops by CNN and The New York Times it sure looks like somebody - maybe Trump - is going to be charged with destroying or altering security video of the Mar-a-Lago storage room and the boxes of classified documents kept there. That could be a how-to-manual on breaking 18 US Code 1519 and when it's video or digital evidence, it often really does become a jail sentence of 20 years. And the Times says prosecutors have a cooperating witness from inside Mar-a-Lago and we don't know if that's the same snitch from last August, or a new one. 

(11:00) SPECIAL COMMENT: THE SUPREME COURT: Then there's Clarence The Corrupt and Mrs. Clarence The Corrupt. The Thomas Scandals are coming so quickly now they're going to have to coordinate schedules to avoid having them collide with each other. Megadonor/Fascist Harlan Crow's flunkies admit to Pro Publica's latest from the AM, that he paid for some of the tuition for Thomas's grand-nephew (whom he was raising "like a son"). But nobody's commenting on the PM scandal: The Washington Post reports Megadonor/Fascist Leonard Leo not only steered "Another $25K" to Ginni Thomas but did so with the involvement of Kellyann Conway AND Leo instructed her to leave Thomas's name off the paperwork. And this time there is something for the Senate to do about it. Not the Judiciary Committee, but Finance: get all their tax returns and get somebody to give up Clarence The Corrupt.

B-Block (19:05) EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: The inaptly named Venom, on death row in NYC (20:30) IN SPORTS: Saturday, May 6, the sports world will do what it always does on May 6: celebrate the most remarkable track and field milestone of the 20th Century (and maybe of all time). It is now 69 years since Roger Bannister became the first man to run a mile in four minutes or less. It was an accomplishment as unbelievable as the Moon Landing; so unbelievable that an editorial in The New York Times asked if it would ever be accomplished again. Roger Bannister won immortal praise, for the rest of his long life and beyond, despite racism and controversy and one minor detail.

He could not POSSIBLY have been the first man to run a mile in four minutes or less. There is ample evidence of runners - other British runners in fact - performing the feat as early as 1770. And yet the history of these earlier athletes has been forgotten or erased - or deliberately purged. Why?

C-Block (37:20) IN SPORTS PART TWO: The erasure of the runners who "broke" the four-minute mile barrier in the 18th Century (or earlier) was no accident. It was the deliberate result of the flourishing of the fetishization of amateurism, first in Great Britain in the 1800's, and then throughout the world through the Olympic movement. And it also involved something even worse: blatant, obvious racism. It's an extraordinary story and you should learn the details so you can yell at everybody who tells you about the "great" Roger Bannister.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

EPISODE 193: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:43) SPECIAL COMMENT: CNN's betrayal of journalism, democracy and America by giving Trump editorial control over part of its primetime next Wednesday has actually gotten worse. It is intended by Trump as a precursor to a "jump start" of his relationship with the new management of CNN, and it may be intended by CNN as a precursor to a pronounced lurch to the right in primetime - maybe even an 8 PM show featuring former Tucker Carlson employee Kaitlan Collins.

Barely anybody noticed that the start time for the New Hampshire "Town Hall" next week suddenly shifted from 9 PM EDT to 8 PM EDT and if you think that's trivial, think again. 8 PM is suddenly the Wild West of cable news. There are between a million and a million-and-a-half disaffected Tucker Carlson viewers looking for a new home and the signs are all there: CNN's Chris Licht wants their new home to be CNN. The network's primetime is in disarray (no CNN show is in the Top 25; the network just lost the 'ad demo' ratings to MSNBC for the first time in four years) and there would be no hesitation to shift Anderson Cooper from 8 to some later hour.

There's more bad news. CNN Political Director David Chalian, living in terror of losing another job to Republican complaints, again underscores the network's intent to treat Trump no differently than any other candidate - as if there were true in any universe. And while there are finally blowbacks from within CNN against Licht's looming disaster, CNN Contributor and January 6 victim Michael Fanone says he wrote an Op-Ed for CNN's website comparing giving Trump this time on CNN to giving a deranged person an AR-15 - and CNN won't publish it.

B-Block (15:53) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: Another News/TV News story continues to unfold. Most people seem to have gotten over the visceral shock of seeing Carlson assert "It isn't how white men fight" and understood that it's not the comment that got him fired but the prospect of Carlson being forced to read it aloud in court (and sending shock waves through the Fox Board and the cable carriers from which Murdoch is trying to get more money). But I'm still hearing two questions: Who leaked the text (and all those Carlson outtake videos) and Why? The Who is obvious: it's Fox. The Why should be just as clear: to dirty Carlson up. And how do I know all this? Because it's been done to me by my immediate-previous employer SIX TIMES in my career: in radio, in local TV, twice in cable sports, twice in cable news. 

C-Block (28:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Since we're on the subject of cable and TV News and Fox and dirtying things up: what I learned from going out on two dates with Laura Ingraham. The second of them was a quarter of a century ago, just about this time of year. I'll let you know when I recover from it.

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EPISODE 192: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:43) SPECIAL COMMENT: "A group of Trump guys surrounded an Antifa kid and started pounding the living shit out of him," Tucker Carlson texted to his producer on January 6, 2021. "It was three against one, at least. Jumping a guy like that is dishonorable obviously. It's not how white men fight." 

THAT is the thing Fox found, at the last moment, just as its trial with Dominion was about to begin, that it could not afford to let out publicly; not, at least, while Tucker Carlson was still its employee. I raised the likelihood that there was something just like this, something even worse than everything that had already come out. Got that one right.

That's not only why Murdoch settled - it's a major reason that Murdoch fired Carlson. It also suggests Fox is the source of the text (Exhibit 276 to be precise) because it serves a purpose for Murdoch now. It dirties up his EX-employee on his way out and makes him a huge risk for anybody else to hire.

Unfortunately it also segues into CNN's disastrous decision to double-down on its live Town Hall next week with Trump. Not only was its moderator, Kaitlan Collins, still working FOR Tucker Carlson at The Daily Caller seven years ago, but a cache of her articles there shows grotesque indifference to human suffering to say nothing of Islamophobia. Her "ICE BUCKET CHALLENGE HIPSTERS: THESE GUANTANAMO DETAINEES DID IT FIRST" not only says Khalid Sheik Mohammed "took the challenge a record 183 times" but mocks the 'challenge' itself - which was to raise money for ALS Research and Treatment. She also mocked Syrian refugees in another article, and authored a pair of homophobic tweets in college.

Yet it is Kaitlan Collins that CNN's political director thinks can stand up to Trump lying in real time. She can "prod, ask questions, follow up, and try to get as revealing answers as possible." It is this David Chalian quoted in a Vanity Fair piece explaining "we obviously can't control what Trump says - that's up to him" and how Trump's sedition and crimes "does not make our approach any different" to him.

CNN is standing on a precipice. If it does not cancel the Town Hall, fire Licht and Chalian, and fire or demote Collins, both its remaining journalistic credibility and any possible re-sale value it still has, will be erased. Because its last line of defense against Trump was getting a pay check as recently as seven years ago from Tucker "It's not how white men fight" Carlson to mock ALS, torture, and refugees.

B-Block (18:30) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: When Kevin McCarthy goes to the White House Tuesday to dictate terms on the debt ceiling, Biden may have a surprise for him: defaulting on US debt may be literally unconstitutional. And Chuck Schumer supposedly talked to Dianne Feinstein on Monday, except he didn't actually TELL anybody that. Politico merely read it of a photograph of the talking points he was carrying in his hand! (22:28) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: A woman who slammed her car into BLM protestors gets a deal for FIVE HOURS OF COMMUNITY SERVICE. Texas wants its Republican Secretary of State to be able to overturn Democratic election victories in Houston just...cuz. And Disney's unexpected witness against Ron DeSantis... Ron DeSantis!

C-Block (28:41) EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: Joe, not only hit by a car, but needing two surgeries and a Rescue desperate to pay for them (30:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: I was reminded on a dog walk why one of the best pieces of advice I ever got came from a man I worked with for only five months: the late Boston star newscaster Chet Curtis. Hear the harrowing tale of the day he walked into "his" restaurant ready to be recognized only to find nobody there knew who the hell he was. I ain't modest much, but when I am, it's because of Chet. 

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EPISODE 191: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:43) SPECIAL COMMENT: Chris Licht's transformation of CNN into Trump's journalistic whorehouse is now complete. He and other CNN executives have NEGOTIATED the terms by which Trump will PERMIT them to cover him. Licht gives Trump a free live hour+ of a "Town Hall" next week in New Hampshire. The ONLY questions will be from those voting in the GOP Primary and CNN will exercise no editorial control. It's a program-length advertisement for a seditious madman.And it's worse than that. The Guardian reports that Trump has been told his reward for deigning to go on CNN is that later, CNN may put on more Trump Campaign Surrogates.

The journalistic prostitution extends to NBC News. In March Trump abused, threatened, and expelled an NBC reporter, then threw his two phones recording their conversation. NBC reported none of this. Why not? Is it coincidence that Politico reports that NBC is among the other networks are "negotiating" for sit-downs with Trump - NBC included.

This is everything American media agreed it could not do again for the insurrectionist scumbag Trump. And no one at CNN or NBC has uttered a word of protest, and thus everyone at CNN and NBC shares the shame - and the disqualification from journalism.

B-Block ((17:25) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: Marjorie Taylor Greene's support is not exactly based in her district. The number of campaign contributions from her district? Six. (21:49) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Greg Abbott not only insults the dead but lies about them. 

C-Block (27:50) EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: Cannella in Tennessee (28:49) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: I like to joke that when we were at MSNBC together, we all used to think Chris Licht used to eat paste. Here's the back story of how Licht spent his days there nominally as Joe Scarborough's producer but actually tasked by Scarborough with trying to destroy liberal shows and suppress liberal voices there - just as he's doing now at CNN.

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EPISODE 190: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: This. Is. Not. A. Game. The Democrats MUST have the decisive vote in The Senate Judiciary Committee so AT LEAST we can subpoena the central figures in the Supreme(ly Corrupt) Court scandals. There are now so many of them I've lost track.

And Dianne Feinstein isn't there to cast that vote.

A whistleblower tells us John Roberts's wife has been soliciting money from top law firms seeking to have cases heard by SCOTUS. Her role is headhunter/matchmaker for lawyers, and maybe it really is only that. But it sure as hell looks like a cross between Influence Peddling and Protection Money. There's new evidence of multiple exposures by Brett Kavanaugh at Yale and the primary alibi just dissolved over the weekend. Roy Wood Jr was half right: Clarence Thomas AND Neil Gorsuch are NFT's. And from beyond the grave Antonio Scalia is still corrupting the high court with "Scalia Law" - basically a club to get Conservative judges more money.

The tragedy here is: of all people, Sam Alito has inadvertently revealed how SCARED the justices are of exposure right now. It's the moment to strike. But we can't, because Durbin and Schumer don't have the guts to risk asking Feinstein to quit. Well then to hell with all of them: Move to EXPEL HER.

B-Block (20:38) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: Reading the tea leaves in Jack Smith's Special Counsel investigation, they will use Mike Pence's BOOK to prove Trump knew fully he lost, and the $250,000,000 he raised afterwards to attack the election result was in fact massively large wire fraud. (24:11) IN SPORTS: Why did generic background NYC video on a playoff telecast yesterday include... The Twin Towers? And the passing of Mike Shannon, once seen leaping in hopes of catching a Mickey Mantle home run that was only 120 feet over his head. (27:21) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: HOW much has Twitter hate speech gone up under Elon Musk? Unironically, this Texas fascist wants to ban "Handmaid's Tale." And the OTHER Texas fascist mocks the execution-style murder of five people, and - as usual - disgraces himself.

C-Block (32:00) EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: Jacuzzi Bubbles, on death row in NYC (33:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: 39 years ago yesterday I began as a rookie TV sportscaster in Boston. Two weeks later, the Boston Red Sox brought up a rookie pitcher. And 16 years later that pitcher - Roger Clemens - picked up part of Mike Piazza's broken World Series bat and THREW IT AT ME (or at least that's what it looked like from where I was sitting in the Yankee dugout). The saga of the Clemens-Piazza bat, now approaching its 23rd year.

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EPISODE 189: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:42) SPECIAL COMMENT: No, I also don't have any idea WHAT Mike Pence told Jack Smith's Grand Jury yesterday but boy do I hope he incriminated everybody. On the other hand, I have a pretty good idea that barring the unforeseen, the terms of Tucker Carlson's contract with Fox will be such that the vague, poorly-lit, dog-whistle-filled twitter video from Wednesday night may be the last we see of him for awhile, and it may mark the beginning of his firing slipping out of our (often thankfully) breakneck news cycle. As a warning: the remainder of this episode is the reprise of five separate Carlson commentaries from the last five months, tracing his ascent to madness and his fall from employment. If you don't want to hear stuff you've already heard, you can cut out at about the nine minute mark and I won't take it personally :-) (9:20) November 22: When Tucker Carlson tried to get Trans people and drag performers and allies shot (20:51) February 21: The McCarthy-January 6th video deal is made and it is time to de-platform Tucker Carlson - and de-platform Fox "News."

B-Block (39:42) March 13: The Carlson gaslighting of the January 6th Capitol video was so clearly an attempt to foment obstruction of justice and rebellion that Carlson could've been indicted and arrested (58:12) But on March 14 it became clear - as Carlson re-ran several clips for the third time and obviously had nothing of interest to show anybody - that he not only wouldn't be arrested, but with THAT video, as they say, he COULDN'T get arrested.

C-Block (1:13:10) April 24: SCHADENFREUDE. The firing of Carlson as it happened, including me singing "Ode To Joy" with the original German lyrics.

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EPISODE 188: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:43) SPECIAL COMMENT: All the details are leaked to The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal. Rupert Murdoch did TOO fire Tucker Carlson personally, just weeks after meeting with him. Murdoch was furious at Carlson calling President Zelensky a "Ukrainian Pimp" and even joined a Fox editorial meeting to complain, and furious that Carlson had called a NewsCorp exec (presumably communications mogul Irena Briganti) a C-U-Later.

Worse still, the C-word insult appeared in the Dominion lawsuit discovery product. Fox attorneys managed to get it redacted, told Carlson. But he replied he didn't WANT it redacted: he wanted everybody to know he'd said it. And the Fox Board and some executives didn't know until the day before the Dominion trial was to begin - another reason Fox settled.

Bottom lines: Fox is clearly revealing everything it has in its Carlson closet in hopes of making him eternally unemployable. Oh, and about 25 days ago Murdoch had dinner at his home in Bel-Air with his fiancee and his top Fox anchor and before the month was over HE HAD FIRED THEM BOTH.

B-Block (19:33) IN SPORTS: Two weeks ago he tied the record for the longest hitting streak for any player 20 or younger. Today's he's in the minors. And it's the anniversary of Harry Chili, the guy who was traded for "A Player To Be Named Later" and then the "Player To Be Named Later." Except it never happened; it's just an urban legend (24:33) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Ronna McDaniel lies about Trump and debates; Ron Johnson may actually have a head made of cheese: he suggests Wisconsin will be a safer place to live after catastrophic climate change; and the Vanity Blue Checkmark guy on twitter trying to incite genocide against Trans people and allies.

C-Block (30:01) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: 90 years ago this month the most humble superstar I ever met, was born. Why I still miss my friend Elizabeth Montgomery and the extraordinary and hilarious advice she gave me within minutes of the day we met.

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EPISODE 187: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:43) SPECIAL COMMENT: The Corruption is coming down so heavy I feel like I need to wear a HAT. Now we have to indict a SECOND Supreme Court Justice. Nine days after he got onto the Court, Neil Gorsuch sold his part of a Colorado house for at least $250,000 to the head of a mega-law firm that has since been involved in 22 CASES before Gorsuch's court. Gorsuch has voted for their side in 7 of 10 cases.

And of course:THE DISCLOSURE FORM FOR THE SALE? GORSUCH LEFT THE BOX FOR THE NAME OF THE BUYER, BLANK.

The Senate Judiciary Committee can't subpoena Gorsuch or the buyer or Clarence Thomas or anybody because Dianne Feinstein is still MIA and can't provide the clinching vote. And John Roberts has finally replied to Chairman Dick Durbin's "invitation" to testify, and he said no way. He might as well have said "GOOD LUCK... DICK."

Meanwhile Ted Cruz confesses, on tape, to the Dueling Electoral Slates/Grand Commission/Let's Party Like It's 1876 Coup that he and other Senators and Congressmen started to run on January 6th before they were interrupted by the OTHER coup. And remember, as the trial begin, when Trump defends himself in the E. Jean Carroll rape case by saying "she's not my type" what he's really saying is "she's not my type TO RAPE."

B-BLOCK (19:44) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: Biden is too old? He'll be 81 on Election Day and Trump will be 78. And he failed to do...what? And your younger choice who can keep the Serial Killer out of the White House is... who? And why Fox didn't collapse at 8 PM after firing Carlson, why he hasn't said anything, and why he seemingly turned from the moderate he appeared to be on CNN and MSNBC into the monster on Fox (Frankly: the success of Maddow, Scarborough and I broke him). THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD (28:13) Saluting Alito at Harvard; the far right host now hoping to ban books, trans, and "weird sex" did his own sex film just a decade ago; and the woman over whom NBC's Jeff Shell destroyed his career reportedly was also hooking up with the now 80-year old billionaire owner of Hockey's Seattle Kraken. Hey, Babe, wanna ride on my Zamboni?

C-BLOCK (34:40) EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: Titus, on death row in New York (35:50) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: My appendix burst and not only did I not know it for two days, but I kept working - AND beat CNN in the ratings (today, my burst appendix by itself could beat CNN in the ratings).

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EPISODE 186: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-BLOCK (1:43) SPECIAL COMMENT: Let's all congratulate - and thank - Sidney Powell for getting Tucker Carlson fired. Because of the many final straws in this sad man's case, the MOST final was when it turned out he repeatedly called Powell the C-word.

And it all may be on tape. The real reason Lachlan Murdoch and Suzanne Scott went to Rupert Murdoch over the weekend and Rupert fired Carlson was that producer Abby Grossberg has - per her lawyer - nearly 90 recordings documenting her allegations of a toxic, abusive, misogynistic, sexist workplace in Tucker Carlson's office.

I have stitched together all the reporting on the biggest firing since Bill O'Reilly - including my own - and it boils down to this. Yes, Fox was furious at all the insults against management revealed (and redacted) in the Dominion files. But Grossberg's suit was the real menace. They would not go for a repetition of the O'Reilly or Roger Ailes sexual abuse scandals. And now Carlson may walk away with $20 or $30 million a year - but only if he DOES NOT WORK at any video or news outlet that could be considered a rival to Fox.

Plus: How Don Lemon messed up the chance to get to say farewell on the air, and why he might wind up on MSNBC. Among other reasons, NBC has a lot more money today: they won't pay my lying ex-friend, fired CEO Jeff Shell, a dime. He was fired for cause, and it sure looks like he tried to push his ex-flame Hadley Gamble into re-starting their affair, either by professional carrot or stick.

B-BLOCK (20:42) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: Fani Willis basically announces she will indict - or WON'T indict - Trump and company in July or August. She warns law enforcement to make appropriate preparations. The FAA shuts down SpaceX after Elon Musk nearly destroys two Texas towns. And The Wall Street Journal finds an instance where Harlan Crow did TOO have actual business in front of the Justice he bought, Clarence Thomas. (25:42) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Anti-vaxxer, Pharma conspiracy theorist Aaron Rodgers will now be paid by the heir to the Johnson & Johnson Pharma fortune. Marsha Blackburn wants to sell you a pizza-cutter. And somehow Fox's resident idiot Brian Kilmeade thought he should celebrate the Carlson firing.

C-BLOCK (30:15) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: If I'm bringing up Aaron Rodgers going to the New York Jets, I have to flash back to the day a New York GIANTS quarterback nearly kept me from graduating from college on time!

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EPISODE 185: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:43) SPECIAL COMMENT: Rupert Murdoch PERSONALLY fired Tucker Carlson over ex-Carlson producer Abby Grossberg's lawsuit for harassment, abuse, sexism, and misogyny. Murdoch also felt crossed by Carlson in many of the texts and emails produced by discovery in the Dominion lawsuit, but the firing was NOT a part of the settlement. There were also questions about impending lawsuits against Fox and Carlson by Smartmatic and Ray Epps.

But this was about how women were called the c-word in Carlson's office and how producers held a vote on which candidate for Governor of Michigan was more "f-able" and more might have come out if the Dominion case had gone to trial. There is a line, even at Fox (ask Bill O'Reilly or Roger Ailes). And Carlson found it and crossed it.

And take it from somebody who was himself fired personally by Murdoch. Tucker was FIRED PERSONALLY BY MURDOCH.

Don Lemon was also fired for misogyny, though it appears CNN actually gave him some time in hopes that his crass comments about Nikki Haley and when women were or weren't in their prime might fade in the background they didn't.

Still, this is a time to rejoice and wallow neck high in our schadenfreude! Let's SING SING SING!

NOTE. THE B AND C BLOCKS ARE REPEATED FROM THIS MORNING'S EDITION OF COUNTDOWN (EPISODE 184)

B-Block (23:31) WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: A nice racism tie between basketball's Phil Jackson and NC Lt. Governor Mark Robinson (who wants his fellow African-Americans to PAY reparations), Senator Hawley and his tiny manhood, and of course Elon Musk, who over the subject of checkmarks just Blue himself. BREAKING NEWS: NBC fires my lying ex-friend Jeff Shell as CEO - for lying. Deadline.Com reports he had an affair with a CNBC Correspondent, Hadley Gamble - the woman Russian state TV once accused of trying to distract Vladimir Putin with her "sex appeal" - and compared her to Sharon Stone CROSSING HER LEGS IN BASIC INSTINCT. I'm so full of Schadenfreude I actually sing "The Ode To Joy" in the original German.

C-Block (38:30) EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: Tobias in California. (39:30) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: If the Shell news isn't fun enough, CNN and Chris Licht make his biggest mistake yet. There are nine laws of cable TV news and the new Gayle King/Charles Barkley show will violate ALL NINE OF THEM.

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EPISODE 184: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:42) SPECIAL COMMENT: Fani Willis has a batch of texts from the Georgia Voting Machine Access scandal so powerful she could indict at least two Trump minions now - probably Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell right now - and maybe Trump himself because he knew about the plan as Giuliani pitched it a month earlier in the Oval Office as Trump listened. The good news/bad news is that nothing is touching Trump's popularity among Republican primary voters: 46% back him outright; 66% have him as their first or second choice. How could that be good news? DeSantis is NOT a successor. There is no successor. This could all die with him. The only cloud on the horizon? Dianne Feinstein. Not only can't Dick Durbin subpoena Clarence Thomas or John Roberts but when he was to humiliate himself by inviting Roberts to a hearing, Roberts doesn't even reply to his letter - he has a flunky do it for him. All this because Feinstein isn't there and rumored to be REALLY not there. The solution is simple: write up her resignation, forge her signature, and if she's lucid, she can protest and stop it. This isn't a game. For much of the Senate day Democrats do not have a majority because they're treating her like a beloved teacher fading out from a prep school somewhere. This. Is. Metaphorical. War.

B-Block (19:47) WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: A nice racism tie between basketball's Phil Jackson and NC Lt. Governor Mark Robinson (who wants his fellow African-Americans to PAY reparations), Senator Hawley and his tiny manhood, and of course Elon Musk, who over the subject of checkmarks just Blue himself. (25:10) BREAKING NEWS: NBC fires my lying ex-friend Jeff Shell as CEO - for lying. Deadline.Com reports he had an affair with a CNBC Correspondent, Hadley Gamble - the woman Russian state TV once accused of trying to distract Vladimir Putin with her "sex appeal" - and compared her to Sharon Stone CROSSING HER LEGS IN BASIC INSTINCT. I'm so full of Schadenfreude I actually sing "The Ode To Joy" in the original German.

C-Block (34:30) EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: Tobias in California. (35:30) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: If the Shell news isn't fun enough, CNN and Chris Licht make his biggest mistake yet. There are nine laws of cable TV news and the new Gayle King/Charles Barkley show will violate ALL NINE OF THEM.

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EPISODE 183: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: "My main cancer," the dying writer told the TV interviewer in 1994, "I call it Rupert." The prophetic words of the auteur of 'The Singing Detective' and 'Pennies from Heaven,' Dennis Potter, were said 29 years ago at this time of the year. He ruminated that he was living out the cliched plot of every writer: you're given three months to live - who do you kill? "That man Murdoch is the one who, if I had the time...I would shoot the bugger if I could." 1994.

Meanwhile your tax dollars in action: Murdoch and Fox may be able to deduct the entirety of the $787,500,000 payment to Dominion as an ordinary cost of business. It will translate to us as taxpayers underwriting $213,000,000. We pay part of Rupert's price to lie.

And he's right back at it: a spokesman insists about the upcoming Smartmatic case that there's nothing more newsworthy than the claims of fraud by "the President of the United States and his lawyers." And if Rupert settles that case on similar terms to Dominion, you and I will pay another $364,000,000 for Rupert.

B-Block (15:43) IN SPORTS: The original Philadelphia Athletics moved to Kansas City in 1955. They flirted with moves to Louisville, Milwaukee and Seattle before moving to Oakland in 1968. THEN they flirted almost annually with a move to Denver. And the first Las Vegas rumor floated in 1996. And now they appear set on a move to Nevada in 2027. This presents a couple of problems. One is: the threat to the water supply of Vegas. The second is: who's going to see a lame duck baseball team? One of them drew so poorly they stopped playing home games. Plus the Max Scherzer suspension, and the dumping of World Series hero Madison Bumgarner. (21:34) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Mike Lindell said he'd give $5,000,000 to anybody who proved his evidence of Chinese election interference was nonsense. An arbitration board just ruled: somebody proved it. Dick Durbin went ahead with his meaningless "invitation" to Chief Justice Roberts to a meaningless SCOTUS hearing because Dianne Feinstein isn't there to vote for a subpoena. And Elon Musk blows up Twitter and SpaceX on the same day.

C-Block (28:40) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Back to Rupert Murdoch. I always hated him (though not as much as Dennis Potter). But I hated him FAR more after he fired me, for following his rules and the instructions of his lackeys on how to handle a sports story involving him. 

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EPISODE 182: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:43) Ok I'm sorry for all the scatological references; I'm just fed up. A Federalist Society judge discovered by Chump's worms sitting on a bankruptcy court has ordered that the former Assistant DA for Manhattan HAS to sit for a deposition for Jim Jordan's Dog-And-Pony-Dung-Eating show and aid Jordan's effort to wipe Trump's ass with the Constitution. Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil has the nerve to insist no one is above the law and others are playing politics. Alvin Bragg should charge her with Obstruction of Justice. It's just more evidence that we must remember the GOP - The Party of Human Skid Marks - declared war on the rest of us in 2015 and we need to stop pretending they didn't. This country must be saved from the Republicans.

B-Block (17:20) IN SPORTS: Max Scherzer of the Mets ejected for a game for allegedly using unauthorized sticky substances on his hand. Problem is: they've had this rule three years, there have only been three objections, and they've all been by the same umpire: Phil Cuzzi. We may be returning to the infamous 1998 era of "UmpShow" in which the arbiters ejected everybody they could find, including once, during a game that decided which team would go to the World Series - me. (26:07) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Nancy Mace is proud she once waitressed at Waffle House. She may be headed back there after what she said about Biden. RFK Jr makes the mistake of running for president and running on the records of his father and uncles. And OH THE HUMANITY: a Matt WalshBlog speech is terrorized by "Antifa" armed with... marbles?

C-Block (31:25) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: 39 years ago this month I packed up and moved to Boston to start my dream job, for which they - and I - had waited ten months. The job lasted... FIVE months. The anticipation is truly greater than the event!

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EPISODE 181: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Just like American democracy I too am available for sale for $787,500,000. Since the SCOTUS Citizens United decision in 2010, it's been the corporations' world and we just live in it, unless they kill us. And corporations gonna corpo-RATE. Five years ago a company bought three-quarters of Dominion for 38 million. It just got a return of 1567%. "Money is accountability," said its lawyers. True - if YOU got the money. If you aren't, what you got was Tucker Carlson last night predicting a race war with impunity. 

Spare me the nonsense about Fox knowing it did wrong. Dominion didn't even get a retraction, let alone an apology. "We acknowledge the court's rulings finding certain claims about Dominion to be false." That's the 21st Century equivalent of "The White Star Line acknowledges that RMS Titanic missed its estimated time of arrival at Pier 54 in New York."

(10:15) IN CASE THAT ISN'T BAD ENOUGH: The Democrats are using the incapacitation of Dianne Feinstein as the excuse for not subpoenaing Clarence Thomas. Because the Democrats are adhering to the rules of Flag Football while the Republicans are all armed and if they needed a vote to subpoena Sonia Sotomayor they would push THEIR Dianne Feinstein down a flight of stairs to get it.

B-Block (17:04) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: McConnell makes a fascist funny; Greene insists Chump never said anything racist about Covid, then repeats all the racist things he said. A guy tries to destroy all the Anheuser-Busch beer in a Wal-mart. And Chump's new NFTs have pissed off...Tomi Lahren and Baked Alaska? (21:23) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: An elected Florida state official says Bud Light should be trying to kiss Kid Rock's ass. Jim Jordan tried to paint Manhattan as a crime hellscape by trotting out a woman whose boyfriend was murdered...in New Jersey. And Kara Swisher has the utter gall to ask Jen Psaki why there haven't been more Republicans on her MSNBC show. "What's the problem? Four shows and no Republicans." This is one of the questions that has led American media, politics, and society, into the sinkhole it's in.

C-Block (32:00) EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: Four puppies in the Bahamas trying to survive Parvo (33:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: It's not just Fox. Cable News corrupts completely. In fact, NEWS News corrupts completely. Let me tell you stories of what it did to Radio's Paul Harvey, and Rachel Maddow.

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EPISODE 180: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:43) SPECIAL COMMENT: Why did Fox wait until the last minute to offer to settle the Dominion defamation suit? I was once in a media lawsuit involving tens of millions and I have a guess: Fox must have known there was SOMETHING WORSE. There must've been a text or an email or something discovered late in the game, worse than Carlson saying he hated Trump passionately, and they were willing to buy their way out of it.

(10:44) THE CLARENCE THOMAS SCANDAL: So Mom is living rent-free, for LIFE, in the house the billionaire Republican activist bought from Clarence Thomas? And Harlan Crow's next mistake? He gave a sit-down interview to a Dallas newspaper and a completely bald and unconvincing account of his friendship with Justice Thomas. Asked if he'd still be Thomas's friend if he wasn't on the Supreme Court, Crow answered that it was a great question and HE DIDN'T KNOW. Ask what they talk about and he mentioned... his dog Otis.

(17:13) YOU ENDORSED WHO? Florida Congressman Greg Steube with a teeny weeny little Freudian slip. For the presidential nomination he has endorsed Donald J. Chump.

B-Block (21:50) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: As was joked on twitter: is Ron DeSantis trying to destroy DisneyWorld because he's not tall enough to go on the rides? And George Santos is running for re-election and has already lied in the press release! (25:43) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: I got a Republican insurrectionist who calls others "pedos" asking a 15-year old boy for nude videos; I got a Republican Congressman sending a link to a Holocaust-denying website in his official congressional newsletter; I got Republican County administrators dreaming of lynching African-Americans.

C-Block (32:00) EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: Elsa, in New York (33:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Speaking of the perversion of news that is Fox, I was there at the moment cable news went to hell in a handbasket. It was the night three of us (the others were the president of NBC News and the future president of MSNBC) found out that Princess Diana was dead.

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EPISODE 179: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:42) SPECIAL COMMENT: The Fox-Dominion Trial is delayed until Tuesday so the two sides can discuss settling out of court. DON'T SETTLE! I'm like everybody else who ever worked for Rupert Murdoch, dated Laura Ingraham, and was asked to co-host a show with Tucker Carlson! I need to see them all in the witness box, under oath, WEEPING.

Seriously, America could use the catharsis of an on-the-record verdict that Fox is not and never has been a news organization but even that isn't enough to destroy it. It needs juries doubling the demanded damages in this case AND Smartmatic to literally bankrupt the place (and survive appeals, including the Supreme Court, where Fox's lawyers think they'd win.

The late tea leaves aren't good. The delay and story of settlement discussions was broken by another Murdoch outlet, The Wall Street Journal, AND the promised Sunday night attack on Fox by Mark Levin against Dominion and the judge mysteriously never happened. We don't want them snatching peace from the jaws of war.

(8:20) Even when Clarence Thomas discloses something, he does it dishonestly. The latest revelations of his utter disregard for the Supreme Court's disclosure regulations. And could the vague precedent Richard Nixon used to force Abe Fortas to resign from SCOTUS in 1969 rather than face possible indictment, work with Clarence? In the interim, where is the Senate Judiciary hearing?

(16:25) Speaking of which: looks like the Texas judge in the appalling abortion pill ruling lied to the Senate during his confirmation process. Dick Durbin needs to get to work and get Matthew Kacsmaryk charged for perjury.

B-Block (22:51) IN SPORTS: The Oakland A's may not have much of a team, but they do provide every visiting team's television crew with the entertainment that is a live Possum living in the wall of the booth. And a wonderful farewell to Spencer, the official dog of The Boston Marathon (26:49) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: They'll be using Marjorie Barney Rubble Greene in a House campaign 1800 miles away. Turns out Nikki Haley's campaign doesn't know you can't count the same donation twice. And MAGA turns on Junior Trump. Remember, Buddy, this is how the French Revolution started.

C-Block (31:55) EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: Anastasia needs a foster near Devore, CA to save her life (32:55) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: There must be 10,000 ceremonial first pitches at baseball games all around the country every year, and 9900 of them must be bad. Here is the advice I was given 17 years ago that can save you from being one of the bad ones. Best of all, it involves CHEATING.

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EPISODE 178: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:42) SPECIAL COMMENT: Who knew? Clarence Thomas's family is apparently a living re-boot of the '60s TV Series "My Mother The Car" only it's "My Mother The Museum." That's the latest excuse from Clarence's pimp Harlan Crow, who says he only bought Clarence's mom's house to make it into a museum. Except 8-1/2 years later she still lives there - and he has yet to disclose the transaction. He could face a year in jail.

And Trump actually answers questions in the Letitia James $250 Million case in New York. Meanwhile Jack Smith, reported yesterday to be on the verge of making up his Mar-a-Lago Documents indictment decisions, is now reported to be on the verge of making up his Election Overturning indictment decisions. And out of nowhere, the arms dealer we shipped to Russia for the release of Britney Griner says he's sent Trump a telegram saying Trump's life is danger in New York and he should flee to Russia and even if he's not serious HOW GODDAMNED GOOD AN IDEA IS THIS?

B-Block (19:38) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Rhonda Santos MIA as Florida floods. Tommy Tuberville and others assume about the Woke Military and the leak, and Elon Musk and Tucker Carlson and others assume about the Tech Murderer. (23:00) IN SPORTS: The Tampa Bay Rays tie the record.Exorcism in the NFL as Dan Snyder sells. But College Sports brings back one of the worst people I've ever known in TV: Tony Petite.

C-Block (35:15) EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: Cookie was found as a stray in Van Nuys, California. She was chipped. They called her 'human' - who never called back. Now Cookie may be killed. (36:15) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: It's a railway espionage and murder mystery worthy of 'Murder On The Orient Express' except it's all happening only in Thurber's mind: 'The Lady on 142.'

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EPISODE 177: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:42) SPECIAL COMMENT: Trump stole a map. The map shows classified intelligence info. Trump took the map to Mar-a-Lago. Trump showed the map to "aides and visitors." That is the definition of the dissemination of national intelligence, and that is ESPIONAGE. That's up to 10 years in jail. If he showed it to a foreign power it's life - or worse.

And the New York Times also reports  "Prosecutors have now interviewed nearly everyone who could offer insight in connection with the documents..." while The Washington Post says Special Counsel Jack Smith has opened a new line of inquiry: into possible fraud by Trump on those idiots he conned into donating to fight a rigged election he knew WASN'T rigged. If that sounds familiar to you, that's exactly what Fox "News" did and it sounds like before the trial has even started Fox is losing its battle with Dominion. There are tapes of Bartiromo and Giuliani and Sidney Powell admitting they can't prove claims they've made on Fox against Dominion and Fox hid them from Dominion AND the judge and the judge is pissed.

And if it needed to get worse for Murdoch or Trump: Trump's ludicrous claim to Murdoch's minion Tucker Carlson that everybody at the courthouse cried as they arrested him is refuted by a Michael Isikoff news source, who adds a perfect metaphorical knife between the ribs of Trump's insatiable ego.

B-Block (15:57) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: The Justins are back, Chuck Schumer and other Senate Dems want DOJ to see if their 1st or 14th Amendment rights were violated and if citizens of Memphis and Nashville were denied their rights to choose their representatives, Tucker Carlson goes full racist on them. Ro Khanna calls on Dianne Feinstein to resign, and the New York Post inadvertently suggests Republicans aren't Americans. (19:30) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: The drama in MAGA-land: if they have to boycott Bud Light and Anheuser-Busch, how will they get drunk cheaply? A Missouri state senator doubles down on his belief that adults should be able to marry 12-year olds. And the first question on the application to work for Gov. Sarah Huckabee is: what's YOUR favorite thing about Gov. Sarah Huckabee?

C-Block (24:35) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Even for Los Angeles local TV, where if you hang on to your job for seven years you can keep it for seventy years, Jerry Dunphy was a mandarin. The first local news star and maybe the last. Shot in the parking lot of his station. Fired by one station one night, hired by another 24 hours later. And his memorable catchphrase "From the desert to the sea to all of Southern California: a good evening." It was memorable - except when Jerry Dunphy COULDN'T REMEMBER IT.

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EPISODE 176: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:42) SPECIAL COMMENT: As he sentenced the 1/6 defendant, the Federal Judge spoke clearly and on the record: "There are still people who believe the election was rigged. There are still people who support Donald Trump, though not many showed up at the court in Manhattan. We'll see what happens here at THIS COURT WHEN THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT MOVES IN A FEW MONTHS, I SUSPECT."

What the...heck?

Was Judge Paul L. Friedman ruminating? Surmising? Telling us things maybe he knows that we don't? His comments were a warning that we are now in a time when January 6 Trumpian violence could easily be repeated with an eye towards 2024. Whatever they meant, they are the most intriguing yet made about Special Counsel Jack Smith's investigation of Trump.

Also Stephen Miller testified to Smith's Grand Jury again (even though it was daytime), and Alvin Bragg clapped back at Jim Jordan and Trump's other henchmen by suing to quash their subpoena for his records and his testimony. 

And maybe best of all, Trump told a credulous Tucker Carlson that as he was being arrested and processed last week "They signed me in and I'll tell you people were crying. People that work there. Professionally work there, that have no problems putting in murderers and they see everybody. It's a tough, tough place and they were crying. They were actually crying. They said 'I'm sorry.'"

Well, look, it's POSSIBLE. I mean if you or I had to listen to him in person, we'd probably burst into tears as well.

B-Block (14:30) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: Justin Jones and Justin Pearson may have done more than they know: the governor moves to tighten gun background checks. Defund Clarence Thomas! The Fox-Dominion trial begins. How to use Trump to sink all GOP candidates. And the speech I once gave outdoors - and literally heard crickets. (20:32) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: The Fox contributors who think Dan Bongino should be FBI Director and the 2020 Election was rigged but Biden won anyway. The Wisconsin congressman who says his Wisconsin people think New York is too dangerous even though apparently Milwaukee is three times as dangerous as NYC. And the winner: on 3/8 Texas State Rep Bryan Slaton introduced a bill banning Drag Shows because they were "grooming events" for "the sexualization of our children." On 3/31, per a new reported complaint to the Legislature, he allegedly invited a female intern to his home and gave her alcohol even though she wasn't old enough to legally drink. OOPS.

C-Block (27:04) EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: Sammy, dumped by his family in December, is on the kill list tomorrow (28:10) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: I basically have done no drinking since July 25, 1982, because that was the day I had as many as 40 beers in ONE DAY and still showed up on the air at radio at 5:30 the following morning and at CNN at 9:30. Do not try this at home, or anywhere else. It's called "Functional Alcoholism."

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EPISODE 175: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:42) SPECIAL COMMENT: A week ago, frankly, none of us OUTSIDE Nashville knew whether the Tennessee’s State Government had a House, a Senate, an Assembly, a Parliament, a Duma, was inflated or stuffed. Yesterday, Justin Jones was reinstated to the Tennessee House. Tomorrow, Justin Pearson will be. 

I am trying to think of exactly WHAT Republicans got out of this. The two young representatives will have been out of office for a total of four days, MAYBE five. They went from obscure state legislators to superstar magnets drawing international coverage. They provided energy and hope to the movement, support for which had inspired the racist acts of a racist legislative body, to do SOMETHING about the epidemic of gun violence in this country. The forces of right have not had a real WIN in perhaps two decades and even though this one is just symbolic, it resonates: it shows us that the whole thing is NOT impossible to fight, and that dramatic and important milestones can occur almost spontaneously, virtually immediately, breathtakingly panoramically.

Plus: The Senate Judiciary Committee will actually HOLD A HEARING INTO SCOTUS CORRUPTION! Trump and Rhonda Santis are at it again. Melania apparently has a new contract. And Jim Jordan is coming to Fun City! There goes the neighborhood.

B-Block (20:23) SPECIAL COMMENT: The latest mass gun slaughter was at a bank, 11 days after Ted Cruz had insisted the solution to mass gun slaughter was to put as many armed guards in schools as they have in those impregnable fortresses: banks. The solution isn't guns, it isn't mental health checks, it's money. We must financially crush the people for whom gun violence is a profit center. And I mean crush the businesses, the politicians, and if need be, the states.

C-Block (40:25) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: His ratings debacle at the new CNN reminded me to tell you of the time Bill Maher and I almost had a fistfight at his after-show party, because I insisted I was "aware" of him when we overlapped in college. It turned out my barely-remembered "awareness" of him at Cornell was ALSO of a near-fistfight...in 1978!

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EPISODE 174: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:42) SPECIAL COMMENT: No Justins, No Peace. The Nashville Metro Council today votes to replace the expelled Justin Jones with...Justin Jones! But a Memphis rep says her city has been threatened with the loss of $350 Million in state revenue if it replaces the expelled Justin Pearson with...Justin Pearson. Just think about it: a week ago you had no idea who either of these men were! Thank you, Cracker Fascist-Republicans! (5:42) WE ALL KNOW what Clarence Thomas IS, we're just arguing about the price. Now we're arguing whether or not the guy who bought him is also a Nazi sympathizer because he happens to own a house full of Hitler memorabilia including paintings he painted. Did Thomas give Harlan Crow a heads-up on the Citizens United decision? Maybe worse still: Harlan Crow also gave money to Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema! (14:58) LIBERTY OR REPUBLICANS:: Texas's Governor tries to legalize political assassination, and Montana tries to solve the risk of re-electing a Democratic Senator with a new law that simply eliminates Democratic candidates. (20:50) HAPPY EASTER From The Defendant: Trump becomes what he has always deserved to be: just a punchline in my podcast.

B-Block (25:25) IN SPORTS: The most dominant start to a baseball season since 1884. One problem: in 1884 the team was so dominant it caused the league to fold. More Problems with NHL Pride Night. And America's greatest political orator, Coach Gregg Popovich of the San Antonio Spurs, goes off on school gun violence (32:13) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Matt Taibbi learns you can always relay on Elon Musk, he'll always let you down. RFK Jr hires his key man: Dennis Kucinich? And what kind of baseball article is titled "Starters Who Can't Keep It Up"?

C-Block (37:15) EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: Naitan in Tennessee (38:15) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: From Jack Kerouac to Keith Hernandez to me, writers and fans and athletes have simply created imaginary baseball leagues and played fantasy and table-top baseball. It's so prevalent that one man created a fictional Major League Baseball player named Lou Proctor and actually got him into the record books!

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EPISODE 173: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:42) SPECIAL COMMENT: President Biden needs to federalize the Tennessee National Guard in order to help re-establish democracy in that state. A GOP Super-majority employs sanctioned government bigotry, racism, and fascism to EXPEL two African-Americans who had the temerity to protest the slaughter of school children there. The cracker NRA members who did this did everything but call them "boy," describe them as "uppity," or say "what we have is failure to communicate."

(9:45) SPECIAL COMMENT: The Senate must impanel a committee in hopes of forcing the resignation or arrest of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, our 21st Century version of Boss Tweed, a walking, breathing version of a "FOR SALE" sign.

(24:15) SPECIAL COMMENT: Alvin Bragg has a TAPE of The Defendant and Michael Cohen talking about hush money for women. And Jim Jordan may just be stupid enough to conduct hearings on Bragg and Trump and Stormy Daniels and let the Democrats prosecute him day after day after day. Plus those Secret Service agents are testifying TODAY, per CBS News, to Special Counsel Jack Smith's Grand Jury.

B-BLOCK (29:32) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: Biden strikes a devil's bargain with fascists who will never stop with what he's giving them: SOME trans athletes can be barred from high school and college sports? And Sean Spicer's TV career is over (31:40) IN SPORTS: Mastering the Masters after a double-bogey on the 1st Hole. The Pitch Clock is 8 days old. The Pitch Clock will soon be sponsored. (33:53) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Don Lemon looks really bad, Charlie Kirk and Glenn Beck are really dumb, and Travis Tritt will show those LGBTQ-friendly Bud Light people - he won't let them give him any more free beer!

C-BLOCK (40:40) THINGS I PROMISED TO TELL: I met my first boss Sam Rosen and future Disney chairman Bob Iger on the SAME day. When I had to write my last college English paper about an interesting character I had just met - I didn't choose Iger.

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EPISODE 172: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:43) SPECIAL COMMENT: The Defendant - and that's got to be his only name going forward - The Defendant blows up the only thing the GOP managed to get to stick to the Democrats in years: "Defund the police!" by insisting "Defund the DOJ and FBI!" You'd think maybe somebody in the House GOP leadership wouldn't want to reemphasize the fact that The Defendant was arrested - every day between now and next January when the trial is scheduled to start.

And contrary to everything you were told by every news organization, The Defendant was TOO charged with tax evasion. And The Defendant is now going to have to see his Vice President testify against him to the Special Counsel's Grand Jury, which is already hearing how The Defendant planned to seize voting machines even though his entire leadership team had already told him that there had been no foreign manipulation of them. The Defendant might get the benefit of a fake Democratic challenger to Joe Biden, as Steve Bannon sends out my former friend Bobby Kennedy Jr as a mindless stalking horse. And amazingly, government doesn't have to be like this. What the farewell address of New Zealand's Prime Minister could teach us - if only we bothered to learn anything in this country.

B-Block (22:06) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: (27:12) SPECIAL COMMENT: From Tuesday's special bulletin podcast: most media missed it. The Defendant wasn't just charged with falsifying business records. He was charged with ELECTION INTERFERENCE. Plus we now have the story of an apocryphal Trump Love child to cringe over).

C-Block (43:20) SPECIAL COMMENT: From Wednesday's podcast: Six hours after Judge Merchan warned The Defendant not to incite violence, The Defendant attacked the Judge, his daughter, the District Attorney, and his wife. Do not hesitate, Judge: The Defendant will just keep doing this until you put him behind bars. Put him behind bars NOW!

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EPISODE 171: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:41) SPECIAL COMMENT: Judge Juan Merchan was balanced and calm and fair. The Defendant AND The District Attorney must restrain themselves. "Please refrain from making statements that are likely to incite violence or civil unrest." Please do not use rhetoric that "could jeopardize the rule of law."

SIX HOURS LATER Donald Trump said "the real criminal" was District Attorney Alvin Bragg. He attacked Bragg's wife. He said that he had "a Trump hating-judge with a Trump-hating wife and a Trump-hating family." AS Judge Merchan had asked both sides to refrain from further incendiary language, Trump's idiot sons had doxxed Merchan's daughter and distributed an article bearing her photograph, and right wing media pounced on her.

DONALD TRUMP HAS ALREADY VIOLATED THE JUDGE'S GUIDELINES AND HE WILL NOT STOP UNTIL SOMEONE - OR EVERYONE - GETS HURT. THE JUDGE NEEDS TO CALL TRUMP'S LAWYERS AND TELL THEM TO PUT THEIR CLIENT'S FAT ASS ON A PLANE AND GET IT BACK TO NEW YORK BECAUSE HE IS GOING TO RIKERS ISLAND FOR CONTEMPT. 

Trump already disseminated images of himself with a baseball bat in one photo and D.A. Alvin Bragg in the adjoining image. He already said there would be "death and destruction" were he to be arrested. He will not stop. He has never stopped. This judge has the chance to stop him - maybe strongly enough that finally this movement will itself stop out of the cowardice behind its bully facade. 

Jail Trump for contempt - today.

B-Block (17:35) SPORTS: For the week since the baseball season began I have had the gnawing sensation that something important was missing. Last night it dawned on me that it felt as if I was at a great game but the seats next to me were empty. And indeed they are. We are without two of the poets of the game, for the first time in decades. First: In memory of Vin Scully.

C-Block (41:39) SPORTS: And, Second: In memory of Tim McCarver.

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SPECIAL BULLETIN EPISODE 170: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:42) My ex-landlord has been arraigned on 34 counts of felony falsification of business records, but they ARE felonies because D.A. Alvin Bragg is alleging that they were committed to further a bigger, massively more important crime, one being almost ignored by the news media.

Bragg isn't prosecuting him for a payoff to a porn star, nor even the business records. He's prosecuting him for ILLEGALLY INFLUENCING THE 2016 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION. If the case comes to court it will be an attempt to put a former president in jail for trying to defraud not investors and not even the state of New York, but the VOTERS.

The ambition is extraordinary. As is another detail that seemed to elude most reports. David Pecker, Michael Cohen and Trump were ready to pay a Trump Palace Doorman $30,000 to buy his apparently inaccurate story that there was a TRUMP LOVE CHILD SOMEWHERE.

And just as the judge was admonishing both sides to tamp down the rhetoric, Fredo Trump and Junior Trump were doxxing the judge's daughter and manufacturing a conspiracy involving her and Biden and VP Harris. It is impossible to believe Trump will not wind up violating the Judge's warnings.

The protests were also hilarious: Marjorie Greene fled out of fear of counter-protestors with whistles. And she revealed she's dating a right wing TV talking head. AND HE KISSED HER LIVE ON THE AIR AT THE END OF THEIR INTERVIEW.

But the real essence of this story is contained in one post Trump made in route - as Special Counsel Jack Smith's Grand Jury made its THIRD headline of the week (an appeals court rules that key Trump aids like Mark Meadows and Stephen Miller MUST testify to Smith's Grand Jury). The door has been opened, the seal has been broken, the precedent can be set. You CAN indict and arraign a former President of the United States and the earth will not spin off its axis. And you CAN make Trump realize reality is bigger than just him. You could read the fear in his last pre-hearing post: “Heading to lower Manhattan, the courthouse, seems so surreal, WOW they are going to ARREST ME. Can’t believe this is happening in America.”

You bet your ass it's happening.

B-Block (18:59) It is 14 years to the day since my mother Marie passed away. She was not only the baseball fan in the family; she was one of the most prominent baseball fans in the country, all because of one bad throw by Chuck Knoblauch in 2000. Plus: advice learned from bitter experience about why the loss of a parent can hit you twice: you are remembering the very first fear you had as a child. Marie Olbermann, In Memoriam.

C-Block (36:29) EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: Cuda, in the South Los Angeles pound for TWO YEARS and finally cracking up. (35:30) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: CNN and MSNBC did not show Trump in a car, then Trump in a plane, then Trump in another car, for three hours yesterday just because it was a comparatively shiny object. They're both trying to cozy up to Trump viewers, just in case they have to go Hard Right to protect their owners. As crazy as it sounds, it's happened before: let me recount for you the saga of the time MSNBC tried to go further fascist than Fox and hired this psycho Michael Savage to host a TV show, at the direct orders of the president of NBC.

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EPISODE 169: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

I EXPECT TO BE UPDATING THIS EDITION IN LATE AFTERNOON 

A-Block (1:42) SPECIAL COMMENT: Trump leaks details of the 34-count indictment and tries to blame D.A. Bragg for the leak, but inadvertently confesses by screwing up the number. Anyhow, ALL the counts are felonies, not just one. The judge also rules against video cameras during the arraignment, though still photographers can come in to do a "spray" before the action start, and ONE video camera will be permitted in the hallway. No holding cell, no handcuffs, no mugshot - unless there is a mugshot. The Trumpers were demanding one while the Trump Lawyers were demanding the opposite.

And again, the REAL threat to Trump comes out of Washington where the Jack Smith Grand Jury will now hear from a bunch of Secret Service agents about the classified documents Trump stole and stashed at Mar-a-Lago, maybe as early as Friday. And while Sean Hannity tries to shush him, Trump not only confesses he did what the latest reports accused him of (rifling through the boxes and keeping the secret documents he wanted to keep) he even simplifies the motive we've all been kept up at night worrying about. He notes with the gleam of avarice, "They ended up paying Nixon 18 million for what HE had!"

B-Block (16:26) It is 14 years to the day since my mother Marie passed away. She was not only the baseball fan in the family; she was one of the most prominent baseball fans in the country, all because of one bad throw by Chuck Knoblauch in 2000. Plus: advice learned from bitter experience about why the loss of a parent can hit you twice: you are remembering the very first fear you had as a child. Marie Olbermann, In Memoriam.

C-Block (34:35) EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: Cuda, in the South Los Angeles pound for TWO YEARS and finally cracking up. (35:30) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: CNN and MSNBC did not show Trump in a car, then Trump in a plane, then Trump in another car, for three hours yesterday just because it was a comparatively shiny object. They're both trying to cozy up to Trump viewers, just in case they have to go Hard Right to protect their owners. As crazy as it sounds, it's happened before: let me recount for you the saga of the time MSNBC tried to go further fascist than Fox and hired this psycho Michael Savage to host a TV show, at the direct orders of the president of NBC.

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EPISODE 168: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:41) SPECIAL COMMENT: The source is a dubious British tabloid, but the idea has been deemed completely possible and entirely appropriate: Trump's lawyers are reportedly expecting that Judge Juan Marchan will issue a GAG ORDER against Trump today or tomorrow, precluding him from speaking about the case to reporters, or posting on social media about it, or giving a speech about it (as he plans to do, Tuesday night from Mar-a-Lago). The reported punishment: a fine of up to $1,000 and up to 30 days in jail. Trump meanwhile is reported to be ready to go back on the offensive and "eff up" Alvin Bragg, the judge, and the politicians his paranoia tell him are behind this.

At the same time, maybe tomorrow they should take a second set of Mugshots. Jack Smith reportedly edges closer to charges of Conspiracy to Obstruct Justice as The Washington Post reports he now has a paper trail because of the texts and emails of an obscure assistant named Molly Michael. During the January 6 Committee hearings we learned that at the White House, Trump used to dictate his emails and have HER send them out on HER account. And that may be devastating evidence against him in the nearing charge that not only did he steal Classified Documents but instructed others to lie about whether or not he'd returned them - a classic obstruction conspiracy. Plus he had some strange obsession with documents about the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley.

Plus: all those cliches the Trump Apologists are using to deflect from the absolute appropriateness of the indictment? Let me help you refute them. Ex-Manhattan DA Cy Vance actually updated us on the first ("Bragg's predecessor wouldn't pursue the case") and hints at interference to stop his investigation by none other than William Barr. We'll track the exact nature of George Soros's donations - not to Bragg but to a group that donated to Bragg. And we'll remind you that the next time somebody says 'you can't prosecute a presidential candidate' that Trump himself promised to prosecute FOUR of them and actually tried to get a U.S. Attorney investigating the least likely of the bunch.

B-Block (24:11) IN SPORTS: NCAA Women's Hoops title game overshadowed by second classless gesture in last three rounds; Last November's Phillies Phold extends to 2023; MSG's Jim Dolan sued and a warning to him: You could end up taking tickets at the arena you now own (28:13) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Sure, Biden's insulting King Charles even though no American president has EVER attended a British coronation; Jim Jordan calls for defunding Law Enforcement, and the great Lesley Stahl and CBS News and 60 Minutes get the chance to end Marjorie Taylor Greene's career with ONE follow-up question, and completely fail. (31:48) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: My old NBC Election boss Mark Lukasiewicz with the reminder that (if there's no gag order) Trump will give a speech full of lies after tomorrow's indictment and the networks DO NOT have to carry it live. And this reminded me that all of today's money-only logic in TV news was prophesied by the greatest media movie ever made: Network (1976).

C-Block (45:51) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL, PART TWO: We are now in the 47th year of prophecy after prophecy in "Network" coming true. I'll review the 30 or so things predicted in the Paddy Chayefsky classic that were literally unbelievable the day the movie premiered, but are now merely...unremarkable.

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EPISODE 167: SPECIAL WEEKEND EDITION, COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:41) SPECIAL COMMENT: Associated Press reports that at least one of the reported 34 charges against Trump for falsifying business records is a FELONY offense. That not only lines up with previous reporting but when added to the CBS reporting that Alvin Bragg had obtained communications and documents not previously known to the public, it supports the theory that the Felony charge could involve TAX CHEATING. David Frum guesses "this case will turn out to be about Trump cheating on his taxes (again): allegedly creating false invoices so as to convert the payoff to Stormy Daniels into a LEGAL BILL to his lawyer - and then DEDUCTING the fake legal bill from his TAXABLE INCOME."

There were way too many updates to NOT do a special weekend edition. On Social Media, Trump is in full-fledged panic: by dinner-time last night he had already exceeded 100 posts full of rage and Mark Levin clips and in one verging on the same kind of terroristic threats as a week ago: "HOW MUCH MORE ARE AMERICAN PATRIOTS EXPECTED TO TAKE?" The Secret Service has toured the courthouse at 60 Centre Street so Trump is scheduled to appear at 2:15 PM EDT next Tuesday. After saying "Democrats want Civil War" (six weeks after demanding a "national divorce") maybe Marjorie Barney Rubble will lead protests when she comes to New York Tuesday, but so far there's been nothing - for or against - in NYC. There was one guy in front of Trump Tower yesterday (and he was whispering).

Trump and his various attorneys (and they need numbered ear-tags, like cows) will move to throw out the judge, and the charges, but they will not approach a plea deal. And District Attorney Bragg will not approach giving Trump's house chairman the documents and testimony they want: in fact he may have just warned them that they could be charged with interfering with his prosecution.

There were developments in two Trump-adjacent cases Friday. The election fraudster Douglass Mackey (who conned a couple thousand Clinton voters to try to vote by TEXT in 2016) has been convicted. And Dominion's defamation suit against Fox will proceed and the judge will tell the jury NONE of what Fox said about Dominion was true.

And two belly laughs. One, I'll save for the podcast itself. In the other: Eric-Fredo Trump on Thursday told Fox that Bragg is obsessed by his father even though shoplifting is so bad in New York that he went to CVS to get some Tylenol and found it behind plastic protection. On Friday he told NewsMax that he went to Duane Reade to get Advil and found it behind plastic protection. Time to get Eric some Motrin.

B-Block (21:52) COULD TRUMP PASS A SANITY TEST, Part 1: An updated version of the 2016 Vanity Fair piece and video that forever linked me to the Oompa Loompa.

C-Block (44:50) COULD TRUMP PASS A SANITY TEST, Part 2: The conclusion and the final score and guess what...he COULDN'T.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

EPISODE 166: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:41) SPECIAL COMMENT: Manhattan District Attorney's Office Confirms: Trump has been indicted. Improbably, Hannity sums it up best. And the breadth of reported counts (34?) suggests the range of charges could include really dangerous ones like tax crimes or lying to banks. In confirming he'll be brought in, Trump makes two outstanding bloopers. Sean Spicer has to announce it on Newsman. And maybe the most important consideration: life teaches us that in anything controversial, the toughest thing is to go first. Today it's twice as easy for Fani Willis or Jack Smith to indict him than it was yesterday afternoon.

Plus: just for fun I'll read you Trump's 2014 fan letter to me. No - seriously. Talk about a blooper!

B-Block (19:46) COULD TRUMP PASS A SANITY TEST, Part 1: An updated version of the 2016 Vanity Fair piece and video that forever linked me to the Oompa Loompa.

C-Block (44:00) COULD TRUMP PASS A SANITY TEST, Part 2: The conclusion and the final score and guess what...he COULDN'T.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.