Countdown with Keith Olbermann

Guest Jack Smith, who will prosecute Trump for the January 6th coup attempt, reveals that Trump's plan started in 2012. Smith introduces an unidentified co-conspirator and discusses a motion filed to prosecute Trump. The podcast also covers Trump's connections to Sebastian Gorka and Salem radio, the analysis of January 6th video footage, and the need for accountability. Other topics include Otani's future, sponsor ads, and the 1982 NFL Players' Strike.

SERIES 2 EPISODE 84: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Here's an idea. What if - instead of waiting for Trump to manipulate our system and get elected again and use The Insurrection Act against AMERICA, we just used it against him - today? It's not like he's not guilty of... you know... INSURRECTION. B-Block (28:03) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: Deadline nears on Ukraine $: How could the GOP be anti-gun? Witness tampering in the Georgia Trump case (with singing). The online Mehdi Hasan petition exceeds 15,000. Trump calls Jimmy Carter "The First Lady" and never even notices. (33:13) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: COP28 actually put a UAE Oil Sultan in charge and they're all shocked he denied fossil fuels are killing the planet. Trump Diapers now on sale. And Christian Ziegler is not only in huge legal trouble, but the other woman was only really interested in his Missus. C-Block (38:36) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: I guess because I'm suggesting using The Insurrection Act to SAVE America rather than leaving it for Trump to use to DESTROY America, I want to tell the saga of "A Christmas Story" and how Little Ralphie finally figured out how to defeat the bully, Scut Farkas (by invoking the insurrection act!)See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SERIES 2 EPISODE 83: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT:  I’d like to apologize for what MSNBC has become. Again. I'd like to apologize AGAIN for what MSNBC has become. They fired Mehdi Hasan yesterday. He hosted one hour a week on Sunday nights and it might have been the best hour on the network because while I don’t know that I agreed with even MOST of what he said, he wasn’t doctrinaire and he didn’t simply repeat what Maddow says and he didn’t pretend to be a moderate because being a Trump propagandist didn’t work out for him like Scarborough does and he didn’t struggle to read a prompter full of Democratic Party talking points like Joy Reid does and to my knowledge he never fell asleep on the air like Andrea Mitchell does nor cause the viewer to fall asleep like Hayes and O’Donnell do. I do NOT know for certain why they fired him, I do NOT know if he said something about the Middle East they did not like, I do not know if the timing was coincidental. Let’s put it this way: they either fired him for his Middle East opinions DURING conflict in the Middle East OR they fired him for something else DURING conflict in the Middle East and thus made themselves look guilty of firing him for his Middle East opinions anyway. Just as important as the continuing asinine and ignorant conduct of the management of MSNBC and NBC and NBC News is the issue of personal integrity of the people at what is god help us the closest thing to a liberal news network in this country. MORE important than the FIRING of Mehdi Hasan, is the response from MSNBC’s stars about the firing of Mehdi Hasan. Want to read what Maddow and O’Donnell and Hayes and Wagner and Reid and everybody else said about this:   Wanna read it again? The POINT of HAVING the money IS that you SHOULD say "F YOU" to somebody at least once in your life. Not like Musk did; saying it to people who for some reason don’t want their ads next to antisemitic and Pizzagate posts. But in DEFENSE of something. FOR something. If there are three people at NBC – hell, three people in NEWS – three people in TELEVISION – who can at least get away with a loud pointed protest – hell, can get away with saying “If Mehdi Hasan goes or if Tiffany Cross goes or if we keep diluting our product down to badly rewritten Democratic Party press releases, we’re on strike” – if there are THREE people in media – besides like Taylor Swift - who can say “We are standing on our principles” and will LIVE TO TELL ABOUT IT, it’s Chris Hayes and Lawrence O’Donnell. Of course – you’ve gotta HAVE principles. ALSO the Judge Engoron Trump gag order is back in place and Trump is still endangering the judge, his wife, and now his son. And Politico says the editorial that provoked Trump to revive the self-own "I will kill ObamaCare" not only revivified the ISSUE; it revivified Biden’s campaign. Emails went out within hours. Nancy Pelosi got on a press call Tuesday. Biden hit Trump on video Wednesday. Commercials are already running on the state level. And then the Wall Street Journal ran another editorial on ObamaCare… attacking… TRUMP. For his failure to repeal AND his failed response to their first editorial. Whereupon Trump replied by attacking… the Wall Street Journal by calling the paper quote “Globalist” and the Editorial Page a “mess.” The Editorial Page whose editorial about ObamaCare got him so excited that he again vowed to replace ObamaCare and thus revitalized the Biden campaign and I haven’t fully diagrammed this bizarre confluence of events but I think the gist of it is: if Biden is re-elected we can thank… The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board? B-Block (31:46) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: House Judiciary subpoenas Harlan Crow and Leonard Leo and enrages GOP. Good. Wanna guess how many copies Marjorie Greene's book sold in its first week? You need only three digits. And Henry Kissinger is dead. Are we certain? (37:35) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Even The Daily Caller has fired Tucker Carlson. Lanah Burkhardt and book banning for fun and profit. And Three's Company: Florida GOP Chief accused of sexual battery by a woman who says she and he and his wife - who is the co-founder of Moms For Liberty - had a long-standing menage-a-trois polygamy thing going on. Oh so it's THAT kind of liberty! Moms for three-ways! C-Block (44:32) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: The first time I've ever read aloud Thurber's death-by-a-thousand-cuts critique of Salvador Dali's autobiography. "The Secret Life Of James Thurber."See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SEASON 2 EPISODE 82: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Trump has made a stochastic threat against the President of the United States: “Joe Biden should stop his Election Interfering Thugs before it is too late for him and the rest of the Country,” That is a threat and if you wrote it somewhere in public – depending on your rap sheet and past mental health – Secret Service might stop by for a visit. And Trump’s rap sheet includes manifest and growing clinical insanity. Oh and an attempt to violently overthrow the government of the United States. In the same post: “He’s got the Justice Department and others suing me… it opens up a very big and dangerous pandora’s box” which is yet another stochastic call for somebody to attack the Justice Department or its leaders or Jack Smith or all of the above, to say nothing of what – if he keeps saying it this loudly this often, voters might actually notice – is the hundredth repetition of his promise that he will actually do what he’s falsely claiming is being done to him – what he already DID do on a small scale – use the DOJ as a personal tool for revenge and suppression of any opposition. Trump also attacked Judge Engoron’s clerk and his wife: “Judge Engoron’s Trump Hating wife, together with his very disturbed and angry law clerk, have taken over control of the New York State Witch Hunt Trial aimed at me…” Again, this is the clerk he has doxxed, and now threatened; and added to this is Engoron’s wife. Five times in just four minutes yesterday Trump posted screenshots sent to him by the lunatic Laura Loomr of posts a Twitter-X account with various anti-Trump memes, over which Trump wrote “This is the judge’s wife saying this” and “Another from Judge Engoron’s Wife” and “Yet another from Judge Engoron’s wife” and “Judge Engoron’s Wife” and finally he ran out and just repeated “Judge Engoron’s Wife.”Spoiler alert: it’s NOT Judge Engoron’s Wife. 22 days ago she told Newsweek quote “I do not have a Twitter account. This is not me. I have not posted any anti-Trump messages.” Even if Mrs. Engoron IS somehow lying, boldly and on-the-record and with no wiggle room of course as we know, what a judge’s wife does in her life or on social media is immediate grounds for the judge’s impeachment. Right Ginni Thomas? And if he wasn’t self-destructing when he endorsed the Anti-semitic Great Replacement theory last week, or if he wasn’t self-destructing when he endorsed Pizzagate on Tuesday, he WAS self-destructing at the New York Times Dealbook Summit yesterday, daring advertisers not to advertise, implying no one could blackmail him with mere money. And congrats to interviewer Andrew Ross Sorkin for not getting any of it on him when Musk turned into a human debris field. A lesson, kids: never let them inject the Ozempic into your brain. B-Block (23:40) IN SPORTS: Aaron Rodgers plays a little football and doesn't rip anything. And could the biggest baseball import from Japan make his decision based on what uniform number a team is willing to give him? (29:09) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: The cognitive decline of Sean Hannity, Ron DeSantis "literally" standing in front of a freight train, and I'm back on Twitter-X thanks to the firm hand of Lauren Boebert. C-Block (34:30) EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: Myra - and her unborn puppies - in Devore, Ca. (35:30) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Every year at this time I am reminded that a Major League Baseball team once managed to get me fired from a job I hadn't started at. Which means that since 2000 they have done that, as often as they've won the World Series.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SERIES 2 EPISODE 81: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Trump is actually trying to keep his ass out of prison for subverting the 2020 election, by insisting that Russia interfered in the 2016 election. "Russia Russia Russia. And THAT, your honor, is the case for the defense of Dementia J. Trump" Trump is demanding that Judge Tonya Chutkan give his lawyers access to the FULL classified intelligence report proving the 2016 Russian interference, and so what if he’s spent seven uninterrupted years honking and bleating about “The Russia Hoax” and denigrating the intelligence community’s conclusion that Russia interfered in the 2016 election, while insisting there was no Russian interference and making it an article of faith within the Republican Cult that he was cleared of any Russian collusion and election subversion and so what if he WASN’T cleared of Russian collusion and election subversion because there WAS no Russian collusion and election subversion except now his defense is: there was TOO Russian collusion and election subversion. “Whereas the Special Counsel’s Office falsely alleges that President Trump ‘eroded public faith in the administration of the election,’” write his lawyers in a light night filing demanding more documents for their defense against Jack Smith’s Washington case, “the 2016 Election Intelligence Community Assessment uses strikingly similar language to attribute the origins of that erosion to foreign influence – that is, foreign efforts to ‘undermine public faith in the U-S democratic process,” Plus: Some of Mike Pence's interview with Jack Smith and his Grand Jury testimony has leaked and Trump could go to jail over the placement of a comma. In his book, Pence recounted that he spoke to Trump on Christmas Day of 2020 when the Pence-Can-Block-The-Certification Plot was already well underway. In the book Pence quotes himself as telling Trump – and the punctuation is essential: “You know, I don’t think I have the authority to change the outcome." But Pence told the investigators that the comma shouldn’t have been there at all and what he said was, quote, “You KNOW I don’t think I have the authority to change the outcome,” which suggests that Trump had begun to pressure – to threaten – Pence to violate the constitution at least 13 days before the January 6th coup attempt. And that is DAMNING. Not the colloquial “y’know” but “You KNOW I can’t do that.” And some of Liz Cheney's book is out and the shock of all shocks: Donald Trump has actually spent some of his adult life not eating: “She recounts the moment she first found out that McCarthy, fearing he had lost his ability to fundraise, secretly went to visit Trump at Mar-a-Lago just three weeks after the Jan. 6 attack. At first, Cheney thought the photo of the two men smiling and shaking hands was fake. But she was incredulous at McCarthy’s defense of his visit. He claimed Trump’s staff summoned him. “Mar-a-Lago? What the hell, Kevin?” Cheney asked. “They’re really worried,” McCarthy said. “Trump’s not eating, so they asked me to come see him.” “What? You went to Mar-a-Lago because Trump’s not eating?” Cheney responded. “Yeah, he’s really depressed,” McCarthy said. Oh have I got a couple jokes for YOU. B-Block (21:19) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: Elon Musk insists on Twitter that Pizzagate is real and the only person who proved it wasn't has gone to jail for child porn. So I'm leaving Twitter. (27:30) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: BBC Washington anchor covers Rosalynn Carter memorial, mispronounces her first name THREE TIMES; Ron DeSantis may have helped kill a guy; Senator John Kennedy gets blown out of the water by a mild-mannered gun violence expert. C-Block (34:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: My friend who wrote all the original "This Is SportsCenter" commercials, Hank Perlman, visited yesterday. So it's time to review our greatest work, especially the famous Alexi Lalas Guitar Smash episode.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SEASON 2 EPISODE 80: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Somebody finally told Dementia J. Trump that he’s been calling Biden “Obama” for the last few months. So he has fabricated a backstory that whenever he has MADE this cognitive gaffe, it has been “sarcastic," so he could “indicate” that “others” may actually be running things. And just to sell this excuse even harder, Trump has now begun to do the one thing that could most easily give back his poll numbers, particularly his improving numbers with minorities; the one thing that could most easily destroy Trump’s arguments about inflation under Biden; the one thing that would be the answer to the Biden Campaign Team’s Prayers. He has attacked ObamaCare. He has insisted he and the Republicans should never give up on TERMINATING it - just when almost everybody had forgotten he failed to do it despite 29 promises that he would, and that he lost at least two elections on it. It's not just a political millstone he's put around his own neck and the neck of every other Republican. It could also cost Trump his recent gains among minority voters. 80% of blacks and nearly 70% of Hispanics support ObamaCare and because of ObamaCare the rate of the uninsured among blacks and Hispanics has dropped roughly in HALF since 2010; just when Trump and Biden and events had tilted the entire profile of the election into things that favored Trump, Trump just brought back from the dead, what might be the LAST issue in which Democrats completely kick Republican ass. An NBC poll two months ago said Democrats are trusted by 2 to 1 over Republicans on Health Care. To sum it up, as an unnamed Biden adviser said: “It’s almost perfect that Trump would pick the ONE thing they haven’t really put front and center, which we know is incredibly unpopular, and say ‘Yeah, I’m gonna do this too!'" Thanks, Obama! Meanwhile, it is time for us to destroy Fox News. Twice in the last week its little oasis of presumed authenticity has proved to be just another venue for lying, journalistic terrorism, fraud, and partisanship that would embarrass Kimberly Guilfoyle. As late as Sunday, Fox was still intimidating that the horrible accident (never buy a car called a "Bentley Flying Spur") on the Rainbow Bridge at Niagara Falls was some form of terrorism, and as late as last night it was still insisting Biden "couldn't even avoid age questions while on vacation" then playing a tape of its own reporter shouting the only age question. It's beyond dishonesty, it's desperation and it needs to come crashing down. And there are ways we can make it happen. B-Block (33:20) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: Judge Chutkan rejects a Trump claim about imaginary January 6 evidence; Elise Stefanik somehow thinks she - a congresswoman - got the Trump Gag Order stayed; and now whenever you read Maggie Haberman or Jonathan Swan you'll remember they're holding back Trump news for their 2025 Trump book. (36:10) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Fox's Charlie "Butt" Hurt; Kevin McCarthy is dumber than we thought; and the Oxford Union chose HIM for their debate, instead of me. C-Block (42:30) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Like everybody else, I was once a Sports Illustrated writer. Hell, I was once in a sports media industry without AI-generated content (and as we just found out at SI: AI-generated writers!) and so competitive that when I was with UPI, my AP rival would not loan me a $1.50 piece of equipment to save my career at the Olympics when my own bosses had gotten me drunk!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SEASON 2 EPISODE 79: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Ludicrous as it looks, insane as Musk seems, corrupt as the Texas Attorney General is, this “Indict Media Matters” story is the FUTURE. It is practice, and Musk is the stand-in for the role ultimately to be played by Dementia J. Trump. Not merely politicizing but fully privatizing criminal prosecution in this country.  Media Matters catches Musk placing high-priced corporate ads next to antisemitic content, the corporations investigate, the corporations cancel the ads. Musk complains. Trump's Renfield, Stephen Miller, responds and lights the bat signal. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who has to do stuff like this or the billionaires will stop protecting him, promises to jail reporters for telling the truth. It's stochastic prosecution. The template is being sanded down and polished as we watch. This is practice for the bastards. Like January 6th was practice for the bastards. Just like the entirety of Trump’s time in the White House was practice for the bastards. Trump won't have to repeal the 1st Amendment to put Kristen Welker in jail. Or in theory, YOU, if you’ve ever tweeted or written anything online that he doesn’t like. Or in theory, ME. Hell: I could easily be FIRST. Trump doesn’t have to GET Congress to MAKE a law abridging the freedom of speech or of the press. He reads something he doesn't like in The Washington Post (or one of his benefactors reads something bad on somebody's website and calls Trump) and he just drops the prosecution down to a state and the next thing you know Texas or Florida or Missouri or Mississippi becomes a veritable journalistic speed-trap. The Trumpists are so confident that they are giving us previews of their plans for 2025. There is one way to beat them: Liberal money, matching them dime for dime to save democracy. That, or this Trumpian nightmare isn't the future - it's the present. B-Block (22:13) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: Mayor Adams' daily scandal is followed by a really weird sound bite. Senator Menendez needs to keep you from thinking about his gold bars so he hires a lawyer with the nickname "Gold Bars." (26:58) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Senator Kennedy does a racism and a sexism and a mispronunciationism; a Trumper messes up a meme; Nikki Haley just couldn't leave the nine-year old girl wearing the Haley hat alone. She had to ask her something. And Nikki got owned. C-Block (32:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: I'm just about the youngest person you know who actually remembers the assassination of President John F. Kennedy 60 years ago today. And now it's clear it was a turning point in another way: it was the beginning of Conspiracy Theory Nation.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SERIES 2 EPISODE 78: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: The democracy will certainly not survive Donald Trump but I am now wondering if it has any chance of surviving Sarah Wallace, Patricia Millett, Cornelia Pillard, and Brad Garcia and if you don’t know who they are, they are the latest people on the latest list of supposed liberals and supposed officers of the court who could get us all KILLED. Millett seems to be the most clueless of the three DC Appeals Court dilettantes who first STAYED the gag order issued against Trump in the Election Subversion case and then yesterday conducted the in-person hearing and all but announced that they WILL significantly limit the order because apparently when Trump starts ignoring laws he doesn’t like and jailing judges he doesn’t like, these idiots somehow think they will be immune because they were so fair to him back there in November 2023. Judge Millett seemed to base her nitwitted reaction to the two hours of oral arguments on the impact of the gag order on…presidential debates. “He has to speak ‘Miss Manners’ while everyone else is throwing targets at him? It would be really hard in a debate, when everyone else is going at you full bore. Your attorneys would have to have scripted little things you can say.” Miss Manners. Trump has to speak ‘Miss Manners.’ Do you get the same feeling I do that Judge Millette has no earthly clue WHO Dementia J. Trump is? Do you get the OTHER same feeling that I do that it has not occurred to, and will NEVER occur to, Judge Millette that so far there have been THREE presidential debates in the Republican primary and Trump hasn’t shown up to any of them and there is no reason to expect he’d have the guts to show up to one in the general election. And THEN there is Judge Sarah Wallace and I’m not sure she didn’t even harm the country MORE than Judge “Miss Manners” and Judge “I Would Assume” did. Judge Wallace heard the 14th Amendment disqualification case and at the same time that she ruled quote “that Trump incited an insurrection on January 6, 2021, and therefore ‘engaged’ in insurrection within the meaning of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment” she then superseded the Amendment itself in as remarkable an act of judicial cowardice as I’ve ever seen. “After considering the arguments on both sides,” wrote Judge Wallace, “the Court is persuaded that ‘officers of the United States’ did not include the PRESIDENT of the United States. It appears to the Court that for whatever reason the drafters of Section 3 did not intend to include a person who had only taken the Presidential Oath,” unquote. So she ordered him onto the Colorado primary ballot instead of saying “Yeah, I’m thinking they meant to include PRESIDENTS because otherwise having just survived the Civil War they decided to make sure Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee and Nathan Bedford Forrest could NOT run for anything EXCEPT President of the United States rather than showing some guts, Judge Wallace folded. The people who could DO something and they actually divide into two categories and two categories ONLY: Judges who are too effete to do anything and judges who are too scared to do anything. B-Block (22:20) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: How did Argentina elect as its new president Jason Bateman playing Wolverine? The late great Joss Ackland. And the newest housing requisite: Built-in Dog Showers? (26:15) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Just a Fox News typo, no doubt: "Osama Biden Laden"; Moms For Liberty's Philly chief is a registered sex offender; Senator Mike Lee launches the worst January 6th gaslighting ever. C-Block (32:20) EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: Milo in Tennessee (33:30) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: I anchored the telecast of the 1992 Baseball Expansion draft, 31 years ago this week. Star analyst Joe Morgan really didn't want to be there. REALLY didn't.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SEASON 2 EPISODE 77: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-BLOCK (1:44) BULLETIN: White House Deputy Press Secretary Andrew Bates issues searing condemnation of the antisemitism rampant on Twitter-X and specifically calls out Elon Musk's repetition of the antisemitic madness behind the 2018 "Tree Of Life" synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh. It is a dramatic and unyielding statement with language so strong it must have been approved by President Biden himself and signals his willingness to confront the antisemitism, and all religious and anti-minority hate, and Musk himself. It is a startling development. The remainder of this podcast is a repeat of Friday's regular 76th episode and if you've heard it you may skip it with my full blessing. But it does emphasize how a threat to ban Twitter-X and end all government contracts with him, could rescue it from Musk's prejudice and bullying (6:56) It is time for the government of the United States to ban “X” – the social media site still primarily known as Twitter - and to terminate all government contracts with its owner. Under Trump the government moved to ban TikTok as a security risk to the United States, so there is precedent for at least the attempt, because a process that has been accelerating for more than a year reached a climax Wednesday when owner Elon Musk answered a blatantly antisemitic tweet with the reply quote “you have said the actual truth.” Combined with surging anti-semitism throughout the website, and the use of Nazi hate speech and paraphrases of infamous Hitler quotes by the likely Republican candidate for president, the tinderbox of antisemitism has never been fuller or drier and Trump and Musk seem determined to light it ablaze – and with it, light ablaze the peace and security of this nation. Musk’s bizarre running of the Twitter-X platform had already destroyed more than half its value and even more of its advertising. Yesterday afternoon, IBM announced it was pulling its already-scheduled ads for the next three months – the New York Times says that was a million dollars’ worth. Rather remarkably, as of the close of business yesterday The New York Times had not yet cancelled Musk’s scheduled appearance twelve days from now at a Times event it calls its “DealBook Summit” which it describes as the gathering of quote “the most consequential leaders in business, politics, and culture,” unquote… and, I guess, the most consequential leaders in antisemitism. As the snowball rolling down the hill toward her reached speeds of about a thousand miles an hour, Musk’s hand-picked CEO Linda Yaccarino posted a comment at 3:45 PM Eastern that seemed crafted by the nation’s finest satirical comedians, or maybe Tim Robinson in the hot dog suit and the “We’re All Trying To Find The Guy Who Did This” meme. Quote: “X’s point of view has always been very clear that discrimination by everyone should STOP across the boad – I think that’s something we can and should all agree on. When it comes to this platform, X has also been extremely clear about our efforts to combat antisemitism and discrimination. There’s no place for it anywhere in the world – it’s ugly and wrong. Full stop.” If taken sincerely and literally, Yaccarino’s only possible next action would be… to suspend Elon Musk’s account. Musk has gone down a path from which he cannot backtrack. Twitter-X – at least HIS version of it – must be banned, and government contracts and other agreements – local, state, national - with his other firms: Space-X, Tesla, The Boring Company, Neuralink, and xAI must be terminated. Today. There is no other option. B-BLOCK (23:07) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: The George Santos ethics investigation is in. He doesn't have any. Remarkable research that suggests the Republicans haven't ONCE needed his vote. Paul Pelosi's attacker is found guilty, as is a J6 insurrectionist that MAGA has convinced itself was actually a Black Lives Matter Antifa George Soros plant.(28:20) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: It's an ugly word and Caitlyn Jenner just proved she doesn't know how to spell it. It's the word "Congresswoman" and Trump Junior just proved he doesn't know how to pronounce it. And it may be the last words Charissa Thompson ever says as a sportscaster. The former Fox Sports football sideline reporter volunteers the startling information that several times she DIDN'T interview the coach at halftime and simply lied and made up what she thought he would've said. Unless...she made THAT story up too. C-BLOCK (36:00) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: One James Thurber short story, above all others, is in the college textbooks and high school textbooks and middle school textbooks. And there's a reason for it: "The Night The Bed Fell."See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SEASON 2 EPISODE 76: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:44) It is time for the government of the United States to ban “X” – the social media site still primarily known as Twitter - and to terminate all government contracts with its owner. Under Trump the government moved to ban TikTok as a security risk to the United States, so there is precedent for at least the attempt, because a process that has been accelerating for more than a year reached a climax Wednesday when owner Elon Musk answered a blatantly antisemitic tweet with the reply quote “you have said the actual truth.” Combined with surging anti-semitism throughout the website, and the use of Nazi hate speech and paraphrases of infamous Hitler quotes by the likely Republican candidate for president, the tinderbox of antisemitism has never been fuller or drier and Trump and Musk seem determined to light it ablaze – and with it, light ablaze the peace and security of this nation. Musk’s bizarre running of the Twitter-X platform had already destroyed more than half its value and even more of its advertising. Yesterday afternoon, IBM announced it was pulling its already-scheduled ads for the next three months – the New York Times says that was a million dollars’ worth. Rather remarkably, as of the close of business yesterday The New York Times had not yet cancelled Musk’s scheduled appearance twelve days from now at a Times event it calls its “DealBook Summit” which it describes as the gathering of quote “the most consequential leaders in business, politics, and culture,” unquote… and, I guess, the most consequential leaders in antisemitism. As the snowball rolling down the hill toward her reached speeds of about a thousand miles an hour, Musk’s hand-picked CEO Linda Yaccarino posted a comment at 3:45 PM Eastern that seemed crafted by the nation’s finest satirical comedians, or maybe Tim Robinson in the hot dog suit and the “We’re All Trying To Find The Guy Who Did This” meme. Quote: “X’s point of view has always been very clear that discrimination by everyone should STOP across the boad – I think that’s something we can and should all agree on. When it comes to this platform, X has also been extremely clear about our efforts to combat antisemitism and discrimination. There’s no place for it anywhere in the world – it’s ugly and wrong. Full stop.” If taken sincerely and literally, Yaccarino’s only possible next action would be… to suspend Elon Musk’s account. Musk has gone down a path from which he cannot backtrack. Twitter-X – at least HIS version of it – must be banned, and government contracts and other agreements – local, state, national - with his other firms: Space-X, Tesla, The Boring Company, Neuralink, and xAI must be terminated. Today. There is no other option. B-BLOCK (17:50) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: The George Santos ethics investigation is in. He doesn't have any. Remarkable research that suggests the Republicans haven't ONCE needed his vote. Paul Pelosi's attacker is found guilty, as is a J6 insurrectionist that MAGA has convinced itself was actually a Black Lives Matter Antifa George Soros plant.(22:50) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: It's an ugly word and Caitlyn Jenner just proved she doesn't know how to spell it. It's the word "Congresswoman" and Trump Junior just proved he doesn't know how to pronounce it. And it may be the last words Charissa Thompson ever says as a sportscaster. The former Fox Sports football sideline reporter volunteers the startling information that several times she DIDN'T interview the coach at halftime and simply lied and made up what she thought he would've said. Unless...she made THAT story up too. C-BLOCK (30:30) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: One James Thurber short story, above all others, is in the college textbooks and high school textbooks and middle school textbooks. And there's a reason for it: "The Night The Bed Fell."See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.