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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Countdown with Keith Olbermann