Countdown with Keith Olbermann

A-Block (1:40) SPECIAL COMMENT: As I reported in our live video version of this podcast on YouTube and Twitch right after the "debate," there were three participants in the CNN event last night, not just two. President Biden was competing against the tag team of Trump and CNN.  I warned here on Wednesday that CNN's abrogation of the primary responsibility of any journalistic effort anywhere and at any time in the history of the world (when the guy urinates on your leg and tells you it's raining, you're supposed to SAY something) had the potential to render the first Biden-Trump "debate" into a repeat of the network's disastrous live Town Hall with Trump last year. But in that one, and though she failed, Kaitlin Collins at least tried to push back against Trump's firehouse of lies. Last night, Jake Tapper and Dana Bash disgraced themselves and disqualified themselves from any future reportorial credibility (under the guidance of CNN political director David Chalian and new chief Mark Thompson). CNN gave Trump 45 minutes in front of an audience that may have topped 100,000,000 to lie about everything from January 6th to his own golf performance. I documented 40 of the lies. I think I missed two-thirds of them, or more. CNN pushed back against exactly none. The network had promised to at least not abide Trump's lies about the 2020 election and having set the truth bar as low as it could have gone, failed to reach even that.It's not just that Bash and Tapper should be fired (and Chalian and Thompson and anybody else in management responsible for this utter, corrupt pandering to Trump). If I had done what they did, I would have resigned and fled the country by now. And probably changed my name. In a just world, CNN would be forced off the air and out of business, today, and its offices evacuated and the empty buildings leveled. The operation where I began my TV career in 1981 and resumed my news career in 2002 is dead and its credibility is now marked with the NewsMaxes and RSNs of this world. As to Biden's halting and hoarse performance, he is bloodied but unbowed. More on that in the third segment of this podcast. B-BLOCK (17:01) MORE SPECIAL COMMENT: We'll review some of the key clips from the Trump Town Ha--- I'm sorry "CNN Presidential Debate" including the remarkable truth that while one of the candidates is seeking the office to avoid prison and will do anything to anybody to win - as he tried to do in 2020 - Tapper and Bash did not even bring up the topic of democracy until the 39th minute of the "debate," and waited even longer to question Trump about his status as the worst criminal in our nation's history. C-BLOCK (40:28) QUESTIONS FROM YOU: Observations from viewers of the debate and the live podcast and my replies - including the three or four different components to one obvious question: "Is it too late to replace Biden?" There are three answers, the most important of which is: if you do, you trade a still likely victory over evil for certain defeat. No would-be replacement comes within 10 points of Trump in polling. It's that simple.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SERIES 2 EPISODE 201: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: As debate day arrives there could not be a more potent nor ominous metaphor for our political crisis than the one in DC. There, a 3000-pound replica of the Lincoln Memorial is… at this hour… melting in the hot sun. As Trump tries to destroy democracy and Biden tries to destroy Trump, the climate disaster that has already begun and on which Trump would apply the finishing touches, has so imperiled the six-foot tall wax statue of Lincoln outside a Washington elementary school, that the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities has removed Lincoln’s head “to prevent it from falling and breaking.” Can you think of worse imagery? Polling indicates more than half of voters expect to watch tonight, and that a rather startling 11% actually expect to have their opinion of who to vote for changed by the results. The three groups produce the most voters who feel that way are the ones in which Trump has had the most unlikely growth: voters under 35, African-Americans, and Hispanics. If Trump actually blows that growth tonight he's cooked. And we will either have a debate right after the Supreme Court rules on this Trumpian "Presidential Immunity" nonsense, or the night before it. It becomes a simple, tangible truth that if the Court invents this immunity and declares this nation a monarchy, the king won't be Trump but Biden and he can take any steps he wants without fear of consequence. It's kind of hard to believe but it is literally true that if SCOTUS creates immunity today, Biden could have arrest Trump tonight - during the debate. B-Block (17:22) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Jamaal Bowman didn't lose because a Nevada Republican called him names, or because AIPAC spent millions, or because progressives are in retreat. He lost because of Jamaal Bowman. The sports TV world is in such trouble a Major League Baseball team is now in essence PAYING its fans to watch its game broadcasts. And Hung Cao, the nut job GOP candidate for Senate in Virginia, tries to get out in front of a huge scandal by blaming a USA Today story that he may have padded his military resume on... the font their reporter used in their email. C-Block (30:35) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: He should've been one of the greatest of all-time in the news business. But bad luck and bad survival skills combined to lay Will Spens low: The Most Talented Man I Ever Worked With.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SERIES 2 EPISODE 200: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT:  With the news that tomorrow night, debate moderators Danna Bash and Jake Tapper will NOT fact-check Trump in real time, CNN has abrogated yet another journalistic imperative at yet another Trump event offering him yet another step towards imposing a dictatorship on this nation. Oh, ok, says CNN: on the 2020 election, yeah, they’ll push back. But otherwise?The moderators “are not participants in the debate. They are facilitators,” said a CNN spokesman. CNN’s woeful political director David Chalian – largely responsible for the Trump Town Hall debacle last year – told the New York Times that a live debate “is not the ideal arena for live fact-checking”even as that spokesperson who refused to give their NAME to Axios said that there WOULD be SOME fact-checking of major falsehoods and smaller details on secondary CNN platforms. So they’re going to do it, they’re just not going to do it where it matters or when it matters. Just to further confess that the decision to NOT fact check Trump’s firehose of lies as he makes them, WHERE he makes them, is another principle thrown away to make sure Trump shows up or doesn’t batter the network, or both, that SAME spokesman said that Trump's lies about 2020 are “inaccuracies.” WHAT SHOULD BIDEN DO? When Trump says something crazy – about sharks OR the economy OR anything in between – START by saying “Donald Trump is insane. And he’s wrong. Here’s why.” This is especially true if Trump tries the “are you better off now than you were four years ago?” Emphasize Trump’s criminal culpability about Covid. The million dead. The bleach. The putting light in your body. The economic collapse. The fact that in February Trump knew it was airborne and lied to the public for months as Americans died. Say it, Mr. President, say it bluntly: Trump killed a million Americans. There are American millions HE killed for whom there is no question – they ain’t better off now than they were four years ago. AND bluntly say that he killed the economy. That the inflation we are finally stopping now is TRUMP Inflation. It’s TRUMP COVID inflation. That the president with the worst job records since Herbert Hoover was Trump. That violent crime exploded under Trump. That there were two kinds of criminals under Trump: muggers and murderers on the street… and ex-presidents who tried to overthrow the government. And the most important truth to hit him with – the most important truth to dispel what Brian Beutler dubbed “Trump-Stalgia and Trump-Nesia” – the most important truth to enrage Trump – is the truth that he lost. That he lost the election. That he’s a loser. And that instead of taking it like a man, he had other people try to overthrow the government, he didn’t even have the guts to go to the Capitol during the coup. B-Block (21:30) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Troy Nehls has been wearing a combat medal he never deserved. The military took it back. He says it's the establishment trying to punish him. Vivek Ramaswamy praises the Julian Assange deal, rips the Julian Assange deal, blames Biden, even though he was indicted by Trump. And Missouri's Attorney General sues New York State to somehow impact Trump's 34 Felony Convictions here and says there would be no way some rogue D.A. would have taken Abe Lincoln off the campaign trail in South Carolina in 1860 for being anti-slavery when, of course, Abe Lincoln was taken off the BALLOT in South Carolina in 1860 for being anti-slavery. C-Block (33:44) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: I did an interview about my doctor and friend Renée Richards over the weekend so it's time to tell how I met her - and more importantly why - when she treated me after I slammed my head on the front of the 7 Train at Shea Stadium in New York in 1980.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SERIES 2 EPISODE 199: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Trump and his henchmen opened not one but two emergency exits for him to bail out of Thursday's debate against The President and blame it on Biden. And in doing so, his dumbest press secretary yet went on CNN and called Adolf Hitler "HILTER." H-I-L-T-E-R, Hilter. I don't know if she should be fired for invoking HItler, or if she WILL be fired for getting the name of Trump's role model wrong. It's Karoline Leavitt, the former centerfielder of the St. Anselm College softball team and the idiot who previously insisted the word 'damning' is correctly pronounced 'dammaning,' tried to filibuster CNN's Katie Hunt about how biased debate hosts Jake Tapper and Dana Bash really are. As Hunt cut first the answer and then the interview off, Leavitt insisted anybody could spend five minutes googling how many times Tapper had compared Trump to "Adolf Hilter." Bypassing the whole Hitler/Hilter stuff, "Damaning Hilter" Leavitt adopted the traditional pose of the Martyred Trump Huckster and did the rounds of the fascist media outlets. When she went on Steve Bannon’s outlet he said either CNN apologizes to her, or Trump should cancel the debate. Hours later, Trump opened a second emergency chute, again demanding drug tests before the debate, as his personal quack Congressman Physician Prescribe Thyself Ronny Jackson wrote a long letter to the White House requesting such tests (and saying nothing about any stashes he may have left there). Who knows if Trump really will bail. But he's got FOLAD (Fear Of Losing A Debate) all covered. MEANWHILE: it's a long shot but I'm beginning to wonder if somebody on Jack Smith's side is laying the groundwork for indicting Trump anew - in New Jersey. There has been a second news leak in just three business days, about Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Espionage Scandal. Yesterday’s leak via ABC News did not resonate among American news media which can generally only BARELY handle one thing at a time – like the debate. The story itself – about Trump making an almost-secret special trip to Florida in July 2022 to make sure nobody had touched the documents he stole from the White House and hid from his own attorney - may not be much more than another one of those threads that you pull on and maybe it just comes off in your hand – or maybe it unravels the entirety of Trump’s size 62 suit. I don’t even think prosecutors know what they have here. But he went down there two weeks after he had bankers' boxes shipped from Mar-a-Lago to the Bedminster Golf Course. They didn't contain Ivana. B-Block (20:35) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: I have somehow forgotten, for years, maybe 35 years, the first and arguably the best joke I ever made about Trump. I'll correct that here. Not only are the British Conservatives on track for a historic loss in the July 4 election but two candidates, a party official, and a security guard have been caught allegedly wagering on which day their prime minister would select for Election Day! And the rare two-wins-in-a-row for Puck media guy Dylan Byers, carrying still more management water as he turns gutsy Washington Post reporting on the paper's ongoing management scandal into “a plan to dig for unflattering information.” C-Block (27:20) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: How did I forget to tell you this one through the first 500 episodes of this podcast? How could I have missed the 24th anniversary last week? I'll just mention the principals: my mother, me, a former New York Yankees infielder named Chuck Knoblauch - and Babe Ruth. .  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SERIES 2 EPISODE 198: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: The New York Times' sourced story - that a year ago first a senior federal judge in Florida phoned Judge Aileen Cannon and urged her to hand off the Trump Espionage/Stolen Classified Documents case to some other judge, and when Cannon ignored the idea, the CHIEF federal judge in Florida phoned Cannon and warned her that the optics of ruling on the president who appointed her with disastrous - is not just a great bit of reporting. It's a clear shot across the bow of Cannon. It's an indicator that this is her last chance to voluntarily recuse from a case she has so mishandled that even when both Trump and Jack Smith said they were ready to start the trial, SHE refused. I think it's a legitimate inference that if she again ignores it, a real move will be made against her (maybe even against her fitness to continue as a judge). The chief judge who issued the warning was appointed by Governor Bush and then President Bush and to me it's clear this was a planned leak. Let's hope it works. MEANWHILE IT'S TIME FOR RFK JUNIOR TO DROP OUT. The nephew of a martyred President and son of a man who easily could've won the office has now threatened to jail Dana Bash and Jake Tapper of CNN - and the whole network management and production staff - because the network has excluded him from the debate next week. Kennedy's farcical, dangerous, insane Trump stalking horse campaign has to end. He isn't a victim and he isn't being persecuted. He's nuts. AND DONALD SUTHERLAND HAS DIED. This spectacularly talented man was, I am proud to say, my friend. He appointed himself my "acting father" after my Dad died. He was supportive, insightful, hilarious, and I think I can tell you something you may not know about him: he was as good a writer as I've ever read. I will read you one of the dozens of emails he sent me. I will restrain myself and chose one about baseball, not one about...Jane Fonda. B-Block (27:55) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: What if a Tucker Carlson fell over in Australia and nobody was there to hear it? His speaking tour? Plenty of good seats available. Jeff Bezos still won't do the obvious: Will Lewis has to be fired before he crashes The Washington Post. And Dylan Byers trots out words like "hero" and "great" for my late friend Howard Fineman. 14 months ago he gratuitously and painfully insulted him in a story that gad nothing to do with Howard just because he felt like taking a shot at somebody. Byers, a management-jock-sniffing jackass, might meet the same fate 30 years from now - except nobody will remember his work. C-Block (40:02) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: One of the existential premises of his work was: everything in the world could be reduced to a husband and wife arguing over the dumbest of things. This week he has her insisting that he is murdering her wrong in "Mr. Preble Gets Rid Of His Wife."See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The podcast discusses Biden's lead in the Fox News poll, Trump campaign's media control at the convention, rumors of Trump backing out of the debate, and doubts on Kennedy Jr.'s state ballot claims. It also covers a memorable sports moment involving Willie Mays and critiques on reporting ethics and Fox News.

SERIES 2 EPISODE 196: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Yesterday in Milwaukee the melting of Trump's brain reached - or at least neared - its completion. He called the President of the United States and the obsession of his life "Joe Bride." He had lots of other episodes, but this is the all-time new high in low. JOE. BRIDE.  No - he’s fine. Ask Dr. Johnson. Dr. Jackson. Dr. Johnson. Dr. Jackson. My sister. My daughter. Joe Bride.  Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita, who are in essence running the Trump CAMPAIGN, are reportedly “worried” about Trump – specifically about his deteriorating mental condition. Can’t imagine why (JOE BRIDE). And this is coming from two former Republicans still plugged into THAT side of the ball. Wiles and LaCivita, per Rick Wilson, are going to friendly journalists and, quoting Wilson, “are starting to whisper that ‘no one can control (Trump)’.” Former Republican Senate aide Tom Nichols meanwhile put his finger to the wind and said that the FLOOD of Trump campaign efforts to make it look like the no one can control PRESIDENT BIDEN are making HIM suspicious. Nichols now writes quote: “Republicans and their media ecosystem seem to be in a panic about their candidate… if Trump is doing so well, why is his campaign and its support system in right-wing media resorting to easily disproved lies?”  Trump also stepped into it AGAIN not IN Milwaukee but ABOUT it. His campaign had to deny a heavily-sourced report from the ABC Television station in Chicago that during the convention – in Milwaukee – the place he called HORRIBLE last week – he won’t even stay in a hotel there; that he will stay in his building in Chicago and COMMUTE. MEANWHILE: Roger Stone may conceivably have cost Judge Aileen Cannon her job. In the latest undercover audio released by my friend the investigative journalist Lauren Windsor and her colleague Ally Sammarco, Stone – at a Catholics for Catholics event AT Mar-a-Lago – made the mistake of hinting that the fix is IN in Trump’s trial for stealing and keeping classified documents and other espionage act crimes… that when the Trump-appointed Cannon conducts a hearing day after tomorrow on the Trump motions to DISMISS all or most of the charges on the fabricated premise that the Special Counsel was unlawfully appointed, Stone seems – even for him – unusually confident Cannon really WILL throw the case. AND TRUMP JUNIOR tweeted a photo of CNN’s Jim Acosta and wrote “LOL. Looks like CNN Fake News loser Acosta got an embarrassingly bad hair dye job.” Talk about “embarrassingly.” Bad hair dye job? Remember that among other living hells, Don Jr. is the guy who on a regular basis mounts that gargoyle Kimberly Guilfoyle who at age 55 trying to look 35 now has SO much make-up and SO much hair dye that she looks like Bette Davis in the movie “Whatever Happened To Baby Jane?” B-Block (21:19) Willie Mays, two days before he and the Negro Leagues in which he played, are to be honored with a San Francisco Giants' game at Rickwood Field where Mays' first team the Birmingham Black Barons played, has died at the age of 93. (32:17) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Josh Hawley spreads the "Biden wants to sit during the debate" lie. The BBC's unfortunate typo about self-identification for job applicants and what it did to the word "deaf." And Jeff Bezos sends an email to his Washington Post staff about the building being on fire and stuff and talk about getting a roll of stamps and e-mailing it in! C-Block (42:05) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Since Bezos is in the news, let me tell you of when I worked with his fiancé Lauren Sanchez, blackmail victim, and when I worked with David Letterman's future blackmailer.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SERIES 2 EPISODE 195: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Trump is losing his mind. If Joe Biden gave a speech in which he claimed everybody agreed he was in full robust mental health because he’d passed a test administered by Doctor Anthony… Hopkins. Or Anthony Bourdain… or Anthony Michael Hall – any Anthony except the doctor who gave him the theoretical test, Doctor Anthony FAUCI. If that had happened to Joe Biden there would be nothing else on television or the internet. But Trump has gotten away with it in part because he is so crazy, so loudly, so often, that it all runs together and, perversely, each Trump mental disaster stops seeming like it’s part OF a sequence. Each Trump mental disaster REPLACES the one before it. I have a thought experiment about that to underscore how that’s even MORE true than you or I might assume it is. But the second half of the headline? That he's losing his mind AND the election?New Ipsos poll for Politico yesterday: ONE THIRD of all voters say they are now LESS likely to support Trump. Among independents, same number, a third, less likely to vote for him; only 12% of independents say MORE likely to vote for him.Ipsos also dug a little deeper. Are the convictions IMPORTANT in your decision whether or not to vote for Trump? 22% say the convictions ARE important AND make them less likely to vote for him.  He's losing. And Biden has dfinally called him a "convicted criminal" in an official campaign ad. Next? The President saying it himself. I think that is also coming. B-Block (41:47) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Another GOP flag scandal: Newt Gingrich is back because his eyesight is almost as weak as his intelligence. The Michigan Republican who posts, disavows, then embraces an AI endorsement from Martin Luther King. The Associated Press puts out a transparent ad for Trump. And Royce White, would be Republican Senator from Minnesota, would have you believe that there is a crime wave there caused by... water fountains? C-Block (50:02) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: The almost certainty that Turner Sports is about to lose the NBA reminds me of the summer Ted Turner almost got the rights to the NFL. Not the games - the entire league.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SERIES 2 EPISODE 194: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:44) Trump and Mike Johnson are plotting for House Republicans to somehow "overturn" Trump's convictions in the Stormy Daniels Election Interference trial. That was what they were SUPPOSED to talk about when Trump met with the House GOP yesterday but amid all the threats and terrorism and dictatorship and violence we forget that at his core, Trump is a moron. Whether he and Johnson actually got around to conceive some extra-constitutional scheme to enact ex post facto measure, before or after the election, who knows. All we do know is that Trump wound up insulting and enrages Milwaukee, a month and a day before the Republican Convention is supposed to open there. The blowback was a welcome respite. Three different Wisconsin Congressmen made up four different excuses for Trump calling Milwaukee "horrible." One of them, Bryan Steil, first said Trump said no such thing, then in a local TV interview contradicted himself and said Trump did say it, but was referring to "specific things." The upshot of all of this - and Trump's word salads - and Trump's manic blinking at his news conference where he couldn't handle any questions - is the ever-increasingly obvious reality that Trump is currently losing his mind. And that means for all its bravado and fealty the Republican Party is shackled to a corpse. B-Block (24:30) TRUMPDATE: Late breaking news about Trump's fear of going to prison and the likelihood that if he goes it'll be in a place that is halfway between New York City and ESPN (huh?) (26:14) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Rishi Sunak explains he grew up deprived because he didn't have the British equivalent of HBO. The downward spiral of ex-human being Mark Penn gets worse. And Lauren Boebert is caught vaping in public again and you know WHAT HAPPENED LAST TIME! C-Block (34:00) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: For the first time, a chapter from Thurber's only non-fiction book "The Years With Ross." It includes a quote from a New Yorker Magazine writer that to me is one of the five or ten greatest things uttered by anybody in the history of the world.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SEASON 2 EPISODE 193: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: I have no use for Merrick Garland, in large part because he is one of those people who would never think to do this, and never realize that his Republican counterpart would do it in a heartbeat. Found in Contempt of Congress for ignoring a subpoena, as rammed through by Jim Jordan, who BEGAN to ignore a Congressional subpoena two years and a month ago? Garland should get a grand jury to indict Jordan TODAY. LET THE ASS-KISSING BEGIN: Trump goes to Capitol Hill for the first time since his attempted coup. Just to ratchet up the imagery, he'll be at the Capitol Hill Club, which is where the still undiscovered terrorist left one of his/her pipe bombs the night before.  COULD SCOTUS DECIDE TODAY? It is to issue decisions today and tomorrow. One of them may be about Trump's imaginary "Presidential Immunity." Or not. Or maybe they'll keep it a secret. Or run it up a flag poll to see who'll salute. Another bid to make them follow SOME rules has been vetoed by Lindsey Graham. AND IN MEMORY OF MY FRIEND HOWARD FINEMAN: There is a tiny silver lining in Howard's story, which he honored me by sharing with me since his diagnosis and prognosis 18 months ago. He was with me from literally the HOUR my political career began through last Wednesday when his "intro" to the B-Block last ran. He was brilliant, supportive, honest, indefatigable, funny, beloved, and I will tell you why his fight made our sadness just a little easier to endure. B-Block (25:14) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: So she felt she had to tell everybody to stop calling Jill Biden "Hunter Biden's mother" because she wasn't his biological mother. Someone wrote - and I could not find a clip to confirm this - that she then implied that when the President referred to his wife, and to Hunter as "their son" it was a sign of dementia. So we need to talk about what's wrong with Katy Tur. We'll start with the fact that Katy is herself the step-mother to two children. I have known that families and motherhood have been issues for her since we met in 2006, even before we lived together. But to drag this onto the air - onto news coverage - is unforgivable. It's time for MSNBC to find somebody else. C-Block (45:02) GOOD NIGHT AND GOOD LUCKSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.