Ad break

SEASON 4 EPISODE 29: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (2:30) SPECIAL COMMENT: The correct question has been lying there, invisible in the forest, for the trees.

It was Mary Trump who finally saw it – and asked it: “Why the hell (do) they KEEP giving him cognitive tests?”

That’s IT - isn’t it? THAT'S the question.

None of the details, none of the giraffes versus elephants, none of his stupid boastful insults about it, none of the small stuff. It's the big picture. Why the hell DO they keep giving him cognitive tests?

And I’ll add a corollary to Mary Trump's burst of simple genius: Why the hell do they KEEP giving him cognitive tests almost exactly six months apart?

Friday October 10, 2015 at Walter Reed, which he boasted about on board Air Force One this week. And Friday April 11, 2015, which he had also boasted about on board Air Force One last spring. Those dates are almost six months apart. 182 days.

If they’re not giving him pre-scheduled cognitive tests every six months that’s a helluva coincidence. 

Why the hell do they keep giving him cognitive tests?

And I’ll add a second corollary to Mary Trump’s question: why did they give him an MRI? Is it the first MRI to accompany a cognitive test? What was it an MRI of? I mean it may be irrelevant (I once had an MRI to see how my sinuses were draining correctly). You really CAN get MRIs for almost trivial stuff.

But you don’t get cognitive tests for trivial stuff.

Why the hell do they keep giving him cognitive tests?

PLUS: Trump says the Constitution prohibits him from running for president again. Again, mid-flight, after boasting about things that aren't real, he said: “If you read it it’s pretty clear. I’m not allowed to run." So that’s that, huh? That’s what all the experts say.

The same experts who said there was no Presidential Immunity.

So – what happens next? He just changes his mind? Or decides this term is eight years not four? Or he just cancels the 2028 election?

This isn't bluster and it isn't trolling. They might get away with it and they might not, but there are plans. And the more we're convinced they can never pull them off, the more likely we are to see another "presidential immunity" ruling from The Supreme Court. Or another Aileen Cannon. Or another January 6.

B-Block (24:00) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Steve Bannon wants to expel Zohran Mamdani from this country. Hell, we should expel Bannon. If we can find a truck that can carry that much blubber. There's a media writer named Rich Greenfield who has extrapolated from the possibility that Comcast might buy CNN and merge it with MSNBC and he has the exact right person to run it: Charlie Kirk's widow (a bible student). And as ludicrous as that sounds, the guy now running CNN wasn't even home from his visit to the White House to try to butter up Trump and the Trumpists when one of the Trumpists mocked him on twitter for visiting. Today, appeasers not only lose, they get flamed on social media.

C-Block (36:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: With the Dodgers in the World Series again it is time to hurry back to the greatest moment in their Los Angeles history: Kirk Gibson's pinch-hit homer even though three-quarters of his body was barely movable, to win Game One of the 1988 World Series and set them on the path to one of the greatest upsets in baseball history, over the vaunted Oakland A's. Gibson's homer was a surprise to everybody. Except me. Because I predicted it just before the first pitch of that final inning began. And there's a WITNESS.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.