SEASON 2 EPISODE 143: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: First Trump accused the Democratic Party of hating Israel. Then he proclaimed "any Jewish person that votes for Democrats hates their religion. They hate everything about Israel" and said "Israel will be destroyed." If that wasn't enough antisemitism, late yesterday Trump doubled down on it, reminding us he has previously shown he assumes that the oldest trope is one he assumes to be true: that Jews are loyal first to Israel or their religion and anything else - like America - last.
It is that one central piece of Trump's personality from which prejudice and pogroms and holocausts can spring.
We already know of his praise for Hitler, and his first wife saying he kept a book of Hitler's speeches in a bedside table. And before you drift off on this topic, Trump introduced NEW Hitler ploys as recently as this past weekend. The whole “January 6 Hostages” is just a replay of how a pre-empowered Hitler used to talk about Nazi party members who’d been jailed and his reverence for Ashli Babbitt is just a replay of Hitler’s constant invocation of Horst Wessel (shot by the Communists) and the idea of having a second National Anthem is just the co-anthem of Germany until 1945: The Horst Wessel Song.
ALSO: Trump's "Presidential Immunity" argument to the Supreme Court? It's now been filed, and it boils down to one idea: you can't prosecute an ex-president because no ex-president has ever been prosecuted. By that logic, you can't elect a Republican president to non-consecutive terms because we've never done that.
AND: Trump has now dismissed Mike Pence's announcement that he would not endorse him. We shouldn't, largely because of Rule 6, The Stalin Rule, in the "Seven Rules for Dealing With Autocrats and their Enablers" by the international democracy advocate and trainer Trygve Olson.
AND BAD POLL, OR FIRST WAVE? Six weeks ago Florida Atlantic University's survey had it Trump 45 Biden 41. Now? Biden 47 Trump 45. Because, as the Biden campaigners insisted would happen, a lot of independents and undecideds just realized Trump really IS the Republican nominee.
B-Block (22:16) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: He looks like he hasn't slept in 25 years but sometimes Mark Levin is the funniest man alive: his Trump questions that he doesn't realize he's answering by asking them. CNN has the latest programming innovation: Bill Maher Friday re-runs in Saturday primetime! And Nick Kristof thinks The New York Times needs more conservative columnists and conservative Letters to the Editor because nobody told him conservatives want to arrest him and the rest of the liberals there and oh by the way "Letters to the Editor" were last a thing in 1999.
C-Block (39:10) THINGS I NEED TO REMIND YOU OF: This Saturday is the anniversary of Trump's most recent binge of stochastic terrorism. It began with Alvin Bragg, rang through the lives of Jack Smith and Arthur Engoron and now, me. This is Trump's doing, and I'll say it yet again: he needs to be charged with domestic terrorism, convicted, and jailed for the rest of his life.
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Countdown with Keith Olbermann