Introduction

SEASON 2 EPISODE 32: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Joe Biden really really really really really really really really really really should take Trump up on his Acuity Test Challenge. Trump alluded to it four times again yesterday - his belief he can PROVE he is the mentally competent one and Biden is the opposite.

And Biden should jump on it with both feet.

I know it sounds nuts and I know it sounds undignified and I know it sounds unpresidential and on the other hand this is America 2023 – right now we are the world’s leading distributor OF nuts and OF undignified and OF unpresidential. Ian Millhiser of Vox summed it up last night: coverage of Biden’s age, Biden’s acuity, is quote “starting to take on the same character as the 2016 But Her Emails coverage – find something that is genuinely suboptimal about the Democratic candidate, and dwell on it endlessly to ‘balance’ coverage of the criminal in charge of the GOP” unquote and he’s exactly right. The American Political Media Industrial Complex will bothsides this country to death – it all but succeeded in 2016 and again in 2020. After years of promoting idiots into key editorial decisions, after years of reaching the point where balanced news consists of the following: here is a pound of truth, here is a pound of bullshit.

So if Biden responding to Trump’s psychotic post “I hereby challenge Rupert Murdoch and sons, Biden, WSJ heads, to acuity tests! We can also throw some physical activity into it” lessens the chances of all of us, you know, winding up dead because our teeming millions of fellow Americans whose stupidity is too vast to be described by mere human language can’t tell the difference between an undulating mass of blubber and madness, and a nearly 51-year veteran of service to this nation in its Senate, its Vice Presidency and its presidency, whose worst critics and most virulent haters still insist is actually simultaneously an enfeebled skeleton and the indefatigable mastermind of an international conspiracy and actually runs this country AND Ukraine and will personally remove every gas stove and dishwasher in America with his bare hands – if Biden saying to Trump “acuity test? Feats of strength? Let’s go, Fat Boy” can actually change that narrative – he HAS to do it.

Donald Trump IS bluff. His life is bluff. His alleged net worth is bluff. His patriotism is bluff. His intelligence is bluff. His marriage is bluff. His ability to remember his kids names is bluff. His business success is bluff. His hair is bluff. Once – just once – JUST ONCE someone needs to step down off the stage of dignified reluctance and CALL TRUMP’S BLUFF, slap him across the face, and keep slapping him until the crowd of support that forms around all bullies, backs away and looks for a different one.

And now, for once, and ONLY for once, Joe Biden should imitate Trump. Employ the jujitsu. Do not ignore the punch. Do not evade the punch. GRAB the fist and pull it towards you. And even if what follows does not FINISH Trump on the American stage – and I honestly believe it could – it WILL re-set this essential narrative of competence and acuity and age and insanity.

B-Block (23:46) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: Another day, another one of my ex-bosses in trouble. It was Walter Isaacson, briefly and unhappily the president of CNN at the turn of the century, who wrote the book about Elon Musk that revealed Musk had been meddling in American foreign policy, on behalf of the Russians, against the Ukrainians. And now suddenly, what Isaacson wrote Musk did has been changed in The Washington Post - to make Musk look a little less guilty of violating The Logan Act. Which flashes me back to the day Isaacson, then president of CNN, called me in and asked me if CNN should have a comedy-oriented news hour and instead of asking if I'd like to try it, asked me if I thought Jon Stewart would.

C-Block (44:35) GOOD NIGHT AND GOOD LUCK.

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