
Countdown with Keith Olbermann
“Countdown With Keith Olbermann,” the landmark news and commentary program that reordered the world of cable news, returns as a daily podcast. Olbermann’s daily news-driven mix will include his trademark “Special Comment” political analysis, the tongue-in-cheek “Worst Persons In The World” segment, and his timeless readings from the works of the immortal James Thurber. The man who turned SportsCenter into a cultural phenomenon will broaden the content to include a daily sports segment, a daily call for help for a suffering dog, and a remarkable series of anecdotes covering a career that stretched from covering the 1980 Olympic Miracle on Ice a month after his 21st birthday, to anchoring the 2009 Presidential Inauguration and the 2009 Super Bowl pre-game show in a span of just twelve days, to rejoining ESPN as a “rookie” baseball play-by-play man at the age of 59.
Latest episodes

Jun 5, 2025 • 54min
MUSK ATTACKS TRUMP - 6.5.25
SEASON 3 EPISODE 133: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:45) SPECIAL COMMENT: It's still just at the passive-aggressive stage but Elon Musk has not only broken with Trump and ghosted Trump, now he has re-tweeted someone telling MAGAs to go to the comments at Fox News and read how "almost every comment is in agreement with Elon – to see so many vehemently disagreeing with Trump is wild.” This is not going to end well. Pass the popcorn. How is that POSSIBLE? Who could have EVER forseen that relying on a chemical’d-up, psychologically-impaired, persistent over-promising, compulsive sperm donor who may have been the victim of a botched penile implant, could be a BAD thing. Musk has ghosted Trump and is starting to attack Trump - and Trump can’t say a word because unless Musk bankrolls it Trump won’t be able to subvert the constitution and run for a third term – and unless Musk bankrolls it a Trump successor will never get off the ground and unless Musk bankrolls it the Republicans will lose the House next year AND maybe the Senate too. All Trump has been able to do is the really sad sight of a screenshot of a Musk tweet praising Trump. It’s from May 28th. THIS is the BEST part: Trump cannot trash Musk. As much as he wants to, as much as Musk attacks the House for Trump’s budget bill and its 2-point-4 trillion dollar add to the deficit -without mentioning Trump even though it’s TRUMP’S bill and those idiots in the House like Mike Johnson are just Trump’s SLAVES, as much as Musk is still protecting Trump from himself, Trump has to do the most difficult thing in the world: shut himself up. Keep his mouth shut. OTHER HEADLINES: Trump is now trying to sabotage Columbia's accreditation. It's not too late, Claire, break your deal and sue him for $100 Trillion. Trump the Russian simp also says he talked to Putin about Ukraine and Putin says he'll have to avenge the airbase attacks (what is he going to do? Start bombing Ukrainian cities?) A Republican senator actually asks 'What WAS we ranked" in reading and arithmetic in 1979. And Karoline Leavitt has the yips: she has now called Trump "Chump" three times in the last week. B-Block (25:00) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Steven Cheung wants you to ignore the legacy media. To prove why, he attaches a clip from...CNN. CNN's Abby Phillip lets a putz named Chris Sununu to compare Trump's post about Biden being executed/cloned to people insisting there are back-up Melanias. And on the same topic somebody named Kaylee McGhee White goes on Fox and insists the nation might've been run by "a cable" of unelected White House officials. C-Block (35:45) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Tomorrow's the anniversary of the day the president of MSNBC wanted to postpone breaking news to do anniversary programming he had dedicated himself to. The breaking news? Ronald Reagan had just died. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Jun 3, 2025 • 42min
BOULDER TERROR ATTACK: TRUMP HAS BLOOD ON HIS HANDS - 6.3.25
SEASON 3 EPISODE 132: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:45) SPECIAL COMMENT: “He came in through Biden’s ridiculous Open Border Policy,” Trump writes of the suspect who has confessed to the Boulder Flame-Thrower Attack, “which has hurt our country so badly. He must go out under Trump policy.” Yeah, great. Well, he DIDN'T go out under the Trump policy because the Trump policy is to ignore the actual dangers and simply arrest the innocent and those who pose no threat and thus Trump has blood on his hands. The attack on the weekly march of those remembering the Gaza hostage was carried out by a man here illegally, whom Trump and his big talking crowd of bullies, losers and cowards, have had FOUR months to find and remove, and have criminally failed to do so because they under phony tough guy Tom Homan and Dress-Up Barbie Kristi Noem were too busy kidnapping mothers and gay hairdressers and kids at their high school graduations and people here legally and immigrants dutifully showing up for their hearings the way law-abiding people – law-abiding means NOT LIKE TRUMP – do. That the suspect Mohamed Sabry Soliman, was still here, is TRUMP’S FAULT. Because the entire MAGA immigration STUNT is a show for the racists and the xenophobes. It goes after only the soft targets, it uses only brutality and force when neither is necessary, it is there to terrify one part of this country and satiate the sadism of the other. It is the opposite of securing borders – it is a prelude to the new Trump policy of “Re-migration” – and “Re-migration” is itself a prelude to Ethnic Cleansing. And the champion of re-migration, the demented, warped, soulless bastard behind that, is Stephen Miller, who couldn’t wait to turn the Sunday attack into a sword with which to again try to butcher this nation’s humanity. And I mean he COULDN’T wait, literally. If he had, more people would realize, Miller and his Gestapo are not the solution to the problem, they are its cause. B-Block (20:07) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: Something worse than what Glenn Greenwald revealed in "the tape?" How about Glenn Greenwald threatening to reveal me as his source for a story because I criticized him. Plus Riley Gaines has challenged me to a swim race. It's 50 years since I was admitted to my high school's Cum Laude Society and I have an admission to make. And the Washington Post reported that polling showed the weirdest name of them all is "Keith" and I thought they were both serious - and right. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Jun 2, 2025 • 1h 7min
NOT JUST A RE-POST: TRUMP SAYS BIDEN WAS "CLONED," "EXECUTED" - 6.2.25
SEASON 3 EPISODE 131: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:45) SPECIAL COMMENT: Trump believes Biden was cloned and executed. Five years ago. He sent this out on his social media account Saturday night:"There is no Joe Biden – executed in 2020. Biden clones doubles and robotic engineered soulless mindless entities are what you see…” If you hear or read that this was Trump RE-posting something that some OTHER lunatic wrote on Trump’s social media site, or that this was Trump TROLLING, or owning the libs - this is incorrect and minimizes the severity of Trump’s accelerating complete mental breakdown. Unlike the original, TRUMP’S version also includes a photo HE has added. No matter what YOUR explanation for this is, or mine, or Fox’s, or his enablers, this country cannot have a president who promulgates theories that his predecessor was a clone, or a body double, or a robot. The dynamic tension keeping someone this damaged and disturbed from deciding now’s the time to nuke the world because don’t worry the people HE likes won’t be affected, is the same as the dynamic tension keeping a badly built bridge upright. It can hold for years or decades and then one day it just collapses and kills everybody. MEANWHILE, MUSK INCONTINENCE STORY LEAKS: Elon Musk was reportedly peeing his pants non-stop during the election? Afterwards? I don’t mean metaphorically. I mean… peeing his pants. New York Times about Musk in May, 2024: “Around that time, Mr. Musk told people that his ketamine use was causing bladder issues, according to people familiar with the conversations... The Food and Drug Administration (warns) chronic use can lead to addiction and problems with bladder pain and control." Where is the Jake Tapper book about THIS? Between THIS and Trump’s revelation that Biden wasn’t cognitively challenged last year and that instead he was dead and cloned and a robot - what does Jake Tapper do now? B-Block (33:14) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Con writer Kurt Schlichter thinks somebody else is "Two clever by half" never realizing...he isn't. Andrew Cuomo's excuse for breaking NYC traffic laws? He thought the reporters waiting to ask him questions about running for mayor were protestors. And Jake Tapper is losing roughly two viewers for every Biden book he sells. C-Block (45:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL/SPORTSBALL CENTER: Baseball's annual commemorations of Lou Gehrig have begun. It's the right time to remind you that when "The Iron Horse" was stricken by ALS, plenty of America's top sports authorities were convinced he was either faking it or not deserving of sympathy. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

May 29, 2025 • 56min
LIBERATE THIS! JUDGES RULE TRUMP TARIFFS ILLEGAL - 5.29.25
SEASON 3 EPISODE 130: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:45) BREAKING NEWS: A Reagan judge, an Obama judge, and a Trump judge walk into a courtroom and rule Trump's "Liberation Day" tariffs - which not only crashed our economy but that of the entire world's - are not a legal use of the 1977 laws empowering him to take actions in the event of an economic emergency. This is not just any court. It's the United States Court of International Trade. Trump already appealed. Stephen Miller already called it a "judicial coup." The fact that America's corporations simply went along with Trump's crap when it knew - as the court knew - this was executive overreach - is its own problem. The halt on the tariffs will itself probably be halted by the appeals. So the re-shaping of the market will be re-re-shaped by the judges, and re-re-re-shaped by the further litigation. That, of course, is not Trump's problem. His only job is to break stuff. SPECIAL COMMENT: Now it's Governor Gretchen Whitmer has learned the lesson - twice. Never appease Trump, never negotiate with Trump, never cooperate with Trump, never support anything Trump wants, never do anything Trump wants. All that registers with him is: you are easier for him to destroy. She sucked up to him. She worked with him. He tricked her into appearing at his photo-op. She hid her face behind a folder like it was a perp walk. Now, he says he's looking into PARDONING THE TERRORISTS CONVICTED OF TRYING TO KIDNAP HER. There is only one way Gretchen Whitmer is going to SURVIVE Trump, Governor. Apple is going to SURVIVE Trump, Tim Cook. There is only one way Columbia is going to SURVIVE Trump, Claire Shipman. There is only one way the White House Correspondents are going to SURVIVE Trump, Eugene Daniels. If you haven’t figured it out yet, I’ll spell it out. Doing what he wants only tells him you will DO WHAT HE WANTS. So he comes back and gives you ANOTHER list of what he wants. He’s a blackmailer. He’s a crooked businessman. He’s a bully. There is only one way to SURVIVE Trump and that is to DESTROY Trump. In a world of White House Correspondents, be the PENTAGON Correspondents. In a world of Apples, be Wal-Mart. In a world of Columbias, be a Harvard. Put your hands on Trump’s shoulders and knee him in the groin. Stand up to him and you can then own HIM, like the Harvard newspaper op-ed writer who has proposed settling the disputes between her school and Trump by challenging Secretary of "Education" Linda McMahon, the wife of the wrestling slime bag, to a Steel Cage Match. ALSO: TRUMP CONFESSES to operating on Russia's behalf and to protecting Putin. HE LEARNS for the first time of the Wall Street analysts mocking him with the tariff acronym "TACO" ("Trump Always Chickens Out") and he chickens out. Turns out Tom Homan also worked for the top Private Prison company. A woman who contributed a million to Trump gets a pardon for her jailbird son. Anybody remember Rudy Giuliani's alleged boast he could sell you a pardon for two million, to be split between him and Trump. And a past president's grandson has died. The president he was the grandson of, left office in... 1845. B-Block (33:00) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Kristi Noem and the camel she rode in on. Jesse Watters and Rep. Tim Burchett try to make fun of men using straws not remembering there's a photo of Trump at Yankee Stadium using a straw. And boy did THIS sound familiar: Rupert Murdoch just buried a New York Post reporter who followed all the rules and instructions Murdoch's minions had laid out for him, because somebody didn't like the story... Just like in 2001 Rupert personally fired ME for doing exactly the same thing (C-Block 43:00 THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL). The punchline is the reporter's name is Josh Kosman and last September he was the guy at The Post who called and told me they were about to update the RFK Jr/Olivia Nuzzi sexting story by claiming I had lived with Olivia. So I busted his scoop and put the story out immediately. Now we're in the Rupert Isn't A Journalist Club. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

May 26, 2025 • 1h 4min
TRUMP MENTAL ILLNESS CRISIS - AND COVER-UP - WORSENS - 5.26.25
SEASON 3 EPISODE 129: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:45 SPECIAL COMMENT) The Trump Mental Illness Crisis - and Cover-up -worsens. This kind of reality detachment, in such different venues, on such different topics, from turning the West Point graduation ceremony into advice on when to marry a trophy wife to demanding somebody pay him a cut of what Harvard takes in tuition (and mistaking $52 Million for $52 Billion)... this kind of mental incapacity from any other president, at any other time – including Trump himself, seven or eight years ago – would have been greeted by wall-to-wall television and online coverage and banner newspaper headlines. Instead within 12 hours it was all forgotten so our national media could ignore the extinction-level-event crisis of a president gone fully insane, so it could return to regularly scheduled programming about how the PAST president wouldn’t instantly admit his acuity game had slipped to a B, B-minus. The Trump Trophy Wife remark, to say nothing of the overnight demand of a taste of the tuition action at Harvard, vanished by the time the Sunday news shows hit. Including the Sunday news show hosted by Jake Tapper. ESPECIALLY the Sunday news show hosted by Jake Tapper. Also missing from Tapper's show – and the others – the reality that Tapper and his co-author, gossip writer Alex Thompson, are going to have to withdraw their book about President Biden’s acuity issues. From Politico, Semafor, Breaker, and other outlets comes the not-so-startling truth: these idiots fact checked next to nothing. There's also an internal revolt against Tapper at CNN. MEANWHILE: What the hell is wrong with Kristi Noem, and why is Harvard doing so well in fighting back against Trump while my old colleague Claire Shipman and Columbia are circling the drain? B-BLOCK (36:40) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Death pimp and Republican Congressman Andy Clyde makes it easier to shoot people and buy his guns. Tim Walz says "Gestapo" and the right freaks out when it should be the left freaking out because he didn't say it last October. And Bill Maher has kissed more MAGA heinie yet still thinks anybody thinks he's a liberal. C-BLOCK (50:45) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: It's anniversary time! 24 years since I asked Rupert Murdoch how I should cover a story about Rupert Murdoch selling a baseball team for Rupert Murdoch's TV Sports network, and when I did what his office told me, he fired me. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

May 22, 2025 • 1h 11min
HOUSE MAY GIVE TRUMP NEW LAW ENDING CONTEMPT OF COURT - 5.22.25
SEASON 3 EPISODE 128: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:45) SPECIAL COMMENT: Trump wants – and his Republican Whore House of Representatives could give him, as early as today, more likely tomorrow – a LAW letting him not only ignore the courts and their injunctions or temporary restraining orders - but immunize himself and his minions from even BEING subject to CONTEMPT CITATIONS. The law, cutting the legs off every judge in this country including all of them on the Supreme Court, is sitting deep in the MAGA multi-trillion dollar budget bill, curled up like a snake ready to attack and poison the judiciary. At Trump’s sole discretion. Any court issuing a T-R-O against Trump or his pack of wolves with titles decimating safety regulations or firing tens of thousands of essential government employees; any court issuing an injunction against Trump kidnapping and renditioning people off the street; any court doing anything Trump doesn’t like could rule whatever IT likes but when it came to the only teeth such orders have – the threat of putting somebody who ignores them, IN jail, FOR contempt, would be GONE. The gist of this is the Trumpists found another loophole, about a cash bond requirement if you seek to enjoin the government. It’s normally set by the judge at Zero Dollars. This bill would make any such Contempt of Court findings or Injunctions set at zero… unenforceable. SO ICE has accelerated the renditions, now dismissing old charges that are currently being ajudicated and seizing the defendants at the courtrooms and putting them on flights to South Sudan or Libya or wherever because, if there's no Contempt of Court, who's going to stop them? ALSO: Kristi Noem having no idea what "Habeas Corpus" is? That was the SMART part. She also doesn't think "suspend" means "enact." Why is Trump investigating Andrew Cuomo? So if he gets elected Mayor of New York they can blackmail him into selling OUT New York. CBS is warned by Senators that its "settlement" with Trump may be a criminal bribe. And the bad news for CNN is, it's become a 24/7 Shopping Channel selling Jake Tapper's crap book. The good news is, they'll be televising George Clooney's live Broadway show about Murrow, "Good Night And Good Luck" so at least there'll be some pretend journalists on the network. B-Block (40:27) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Musk's "Grok" thinks Kristi Noem was talking about the WNBA. The guy Jeopardy fired as host after a week is now running Ben Shapiro's Propaganda Channel. And karma gets Bill Maher back for praising Trump and dissing Larry David: his "uncancellable" podcast studio? Cancelled. C-Block (52:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: The arrival of a piece of the fabric roof ripped off Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg last October by Hurricane Milton has inadvertently reminded me why I do this podcast, because it reminded me of the day nearly half a century ago when my dad the architect warned me not to go into an arena with another fabric roof that he (correctly) predicted was about to come off because of bad weather.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

May 19, 2025 • 1h 23min
BIDEN'S CANCER; TRUMP THREATENS SUPREME COURT - 5.19.25
SEASON 3 EPISODE 127: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:45) HEADLINE: BIDEN'S CANCER DIAGNOSIS: The concern here, obviously, is Joe Biden’s health and comfort. I know him enough, however, to believe that it has occurred to him that the timing of this terrible news carries with it one extraordinary irony. The car in which all of the Biden Acuity Truthers and Reporters and Book Writers and Finger Waggers has just stopped suddenly and they have all been ejected from the car they were climbing over each other in order to drive faster and faster. And you deserve it utterly, Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson and Jonathan Allen and Robert Hur and Politico and The Washington Post which yesterday MORNING printed a column that began “The verdict is in. Joe Biden is to blame.” (. ) SPECIAL COMMENT: TRUMP THREATENS SUPREME COURT. Trump has now descended to making threats against the Supreme Court. Under his own name? Indirectly and stochastically. Under the names of others whose menacing he re-posts? Directly. Directly. And specifically towards the justices HE himself appointed. This country is now in this frozen moment of madness in which its president isn’t just ignoring and trying to veto the judiciary and the Supreme Court, but actually encouraging violence against its members. Trump has also now amplified at least 14 posts demanding the arrest of former FBI Director James Comey, including one claiming Comey’s dumb photo proves the assassination attempt against Trump last year was quote “an inside job” and another calling for quote “public military tribunals” for President Obama – a post that was actually captioned “Re-truth if you want public military tribunals” which Trump… re-truthed. B-Block (34:20) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Trump thinks a soccer stadium in New York will be used in the L.A. Olympics. Somebody high up at Twitter-X turns Grok into a white supremacist holocaust denier. I wonder who?!? Jake Tapper and CNN and Politico climax years of political malpractice by exploiting Biden's mental lags and ignoring Trump's total mental breakdown. B-Block (45:40) SPORTSBALLCENTER: Three baseball managers fired in ten days? By the three teams most interested in forcing a lockout and no season in 2027? That's a coincidence. And a second look at the Joe Jackson/Pete Rose decision. C-Block (54:46) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: It's graduation season so time to look my graduation and the phone call the Friday before it when I asked the registrar if I WAS graduating and she said "Yes? No?"See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

May 15, 2025 • 1h 20min
IF THEY RE-DID THE ELECTION TODAY HARRIS WOULD BEAT TRUMP BY FIVE - 5.15.25
SEASON 3 EPISODE 126: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:45) SPECIAL COMMENT: Buyer's Remorse on an unprecedented scale. New polling from the new site of the last chief of 538, Elliott Morris: If the 2024 election were held again today, Harris would win by FIVE. And Trump isn't just underwater he's DROWNING: Net -16 on Approval. STRONGLY disapprove scores twice as highly as strongly approves. Net -34 on his economic decisions. Net -32 on inflation. Net -21 on tariffs and trade. Net -20 on cutting programs. Net -17 on the economy. Net -16 on foreign policy. Net -16 on health care. Net -16 on education. And the Democrats are up in the House midterms by +6. If this were this Obama or Clinton or Carter the right wing press would be DEMANDING the president either fire his entire cabinet or resign. ALSO: Democrats eviscerate Kristi Noem on Kilmar Abrego Garcia and she slanders him by calling him a terrorist. Look in a mirror, witch. BUY mirrors, Chief Justice Roberts and A.G. Sulzberger. Two of the most guilty perpetuators of Bothsidesism point fingers at everybody but themselves because we're all trying to find the guy who did this and as the commentator Darth notes, these two guys are fighting over who gets to wear the Hot Dog Suit. PSAKI PSHOW PSTINKS: MSNBC is trying to spin otherwise, but her ratings in the Maddow slot are, simply, not survivable. B-BLOCK (39:35) SPORTSBALLCENTER: What the heck? A White Sox fan gets elected Pope and five days later White Sox tragic anti-hero Shoeless Joe Jackson is suddenly made eligible for the Hall of Fame? (44:19) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: I'm sure it's delicious and healthy but doesn't a plant-based product called "Protein Puck" make you think of the movie "Soylent Green"? Politico thinks it's got any remaining credibility. Andrew Cuomo thinks HE'S got any remaining credibility and is accused of being backed by MAGA. C-BLOCK (54:10) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: If you want to skip this, please do. But I have a story about an inexplicable hockey card, why they made it in the first place, and why it took 40 years for me to obtain it. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

May 12, 2025 • 1h 2min
THEY WOULDN'T JUST SUSPEND HABEAS CORPUS FOR IMMIGRANTS - 5.12.25
SEASON 3 EPISODE 125: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:45) SPECIAL COMMENT: What do you like least? Suspending Habeas Corpus? Breaking the law by threatening to arrest members of Congress for obeying the law? Or Trump accepting a half billion dollar impeachable illegal bribe from the government of Qatar that the Attorney General has ruled ISN’T illegal and by the way the Attorney General used to be a lobbyist FOR the government of Qatar? They’re all nation-destroying events but bluntly there is no way back from a suspension of Habeas Corpus. It’s a one-man dictatorship then – because if you think SUSPENDING Habeas Corpus ‘just for undocumented immigrants’ is somehow acceptable on its face, remember two things. One is: that there would be NO HEARINGS and NO LEGAL RECOURSE for ANYONE seized in this way so that all they would have to do is CLAIM that YOU are an undocumented immigrant to rationalize disappearing you, and you would not have a hearing at which you could prove you were a citizen, and you would not have a lawyer to appeal the decision not to GIVE you a hearing. And Stephen Miller didn't even say 'we'd only suspend it for undocumented immigrants.' Of course threatening to arrest members of Congress for exerting their legal right of oversight to the Concentration Camp ICE just opened in Newark by accusing them of assaulting agents (you know: The Congresswoman hit my fist with her face!) is bad and it mainlines back to the idea that they could just arrest them and under suspended Habeas Corpus just disappear them. As Congressman Michael 'I'm Too Dumb To Realize I'm Calling For My Own Arrest' McCaul now says of the Jersey Democrats "you cannot be complicit with gang violence against our law enforcement. And I think perhaps that’s what it comes down to.” ALSO: Trump's new Qatari plane is an illegal, impeachable offense but since the AG already registered as a Qatari agent, just hit the shrug emoji. They've accused The Secretary of Scotch with plagiarism at Princeton. They fired the Librarian of Congress and Karoline Lie-vitt is so stupid she thinks kids check books out of the Library of Congress. Trump now wants Jeanine Pirro as interim U.S. Attorney in DC, which allows us to flash back to the time she lost a page of her speech announcing she was running for Senate and just stood there until they found it for her. And of course, there's a new Pope. Father Bob. Father Bob the White Sox fan. Meaning our Nancy Faust, who went back to the White Sox games yesterday to reprise her role as the greatest stadium organist of all time, is right when she says "Who knew? All those years I literally had a papal audience!" B-Block (46:27) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: This time they're all people I know and used to respect who have failed the world. Gavin Newsom has again proposed appeasing Trump. Bob Iger has again carried an immeasurable amount of propaganda water for Trump. And Claire Shipman, whom I adored, has stood by as Columbia University (you know, the place with the Journalism School) suspended four of its own student reporters for...reporting. C-Block (1:02:00) OUR PAL SMILES again needs your help.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

May 8, 2025 • 1h 24min
TRY AND STOP ME: THE NEW TRUMP 3RD TERM PLOT - 5.8.25
SEASON 3 EPISODE 124: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:45) SPECIAL COMMENT: The new Trump plot to beg, borrow, or steal a third term has dropped (that makes four different) and it follows the others in that a) somebody besides Trump has suggested it AND b) they've made it seem harmless AND c) they've made it seem like Trump has nothing to do with it and probably won't do it anyway AND d) they'll leave it to the will of the people to decide to convince him to, reluctantly, violate the Constitution. The twist in this new one is, it's positioned as: "The Constitution is Unconstitutional!" - namely, that because only the presidency is term-limited among federal offices, this must be invalid and overturned. Not that Trump wants it to be overturned. No, YOU want it overturned. Not that HE wants to stay on. But YOU will want him to. People are still not taking it seriously and still see the 22nd Amendment as a bulwark against any possibility of it happening. I'll review the other three plots and the fact that they've been working on them since at least 2017, and why you should never ever keep your eye off their machinations, nor forget the Trump Political Mantra: I'm going to do it - TRY AND STOP ME. STATE SECRETS PRIVILEGE: Trump and Stephen Miller are so scared that they won't get away with renditioning Kilmar Abrego Garcia that they have now thrown up the "State Secrets" crap to further stall his return. And they're talking about kidnapping people off our streets and sending them to Libya or Ukraine. And Trump's craziness continues to double as we get the back story on the movie tariffs and a redux on windmills and it makes me mad enough to SING ABOUT THE WINDMILLS IN TRUMP'S MIND. B-Block (49:30) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: The far right's open racism is on display as a Minnesota woman calls a five-year old the N-word and a million dollars is raised to defend her. Laura Loomer employs one of Hitler's first catchphrases. And they so distrust the Deputy Secretary of State that they won't let him touch the thermostat in his office. C-Block (58:22) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: This time of year in 1997 I saw a ghost. I know who he was. I know why he was there. I know why he was silently laughing at me. And I did what he wanted me to do. His name was Glenn Corneliess and there's a reason the new facilities of WVBR-FM in Ithaca, N.Y. are the Olbermann-Corneliess studios.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.