Countdown with Keith Olbermann

EPISODE 112: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:42) SPECIAL COMMENT: Garland has to go - and NOT because he appointed a Special Counsel; that'll probably work to Biden's advantage. We have to have somebody there to protect the Trump Investigation and Merrick Garland has again shown he's not smart enough to be trusted with doing it. Garland has to go because of a question nobody's asking: Who illegally leaked this confidential investigation to CBS News? How could it leak barely four days after the internal recommendation to name a Counsel? How could Garland have handed this case requiring ultimate secrecy to a Trump appointee? How could he NOW hand the case over to a DIFFERENT Trump appointee who used to clerk for Justice Rehnquist and has his own page as a "contributing expert" to The Federalist Society? We've all long had reasons to question Merrick Garland's intelligence and savviness, but these are the last straws. He's just no damn good at this, and right now we have no margin for error for a guy whose Department of Justice is a sieve, and doesn't understand the realities of the Trump cult. B-Block (16:48) SPECIAL COMMENT No. 2: This is the third time I have suggested Garland must either act or resign. In September, as Trump tried to block the Mar-a-Lago investigation via the "Special Master" there was a way around the stall for Garland. And he just sat back and did nothing. C-Block (25:30) SPECIAL COMMENT No. 3: And in October, Garland seemed to willfully ignore that week-long orgy of Trump's boastful confessions about the documents he stole. (40:45) It's so bad that there's even a James Thurber fable, the moral of which is the story of Merrick Garland. It's called "The Bear Who Let It Alone."See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

EPISODE 111: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:42) SPECIAL COMMENT: Washington Post's huge scoop. The Justice of Department is now investigating whether Trump or his minions paid for the attorneys of witnesses in the Special Counsel's investigation and to the Grand Jury. It's the Cassidy Hutchinson question and it's critical to proving perjury, suborning of perjury and obstruction of justice. DOJ is subpoenaing witnesses' retainers with their attorneys. For the second time in three nights the breadth of Jack Smith's investigation has widened. Did you see it on CNN? Are the Post and the Times pushing it? They are not, because they have the "new" Biden story: NBC has one source saying somewhere (their source doesn't know where) somebody (their source doesn't know who) found something (their source doesn't know what). And another stampede reminiscent of the Clinton-Lewinsky "Anything Is News" mindset of 1998 is underway. The knives are out for Joe Biden, and CNN's goal is obvious: it will participate in the cover-up of the crimes as Donald Trump. It's so bad CNN actually brought Maga Maggie Haberman in to "analyze" the Biden sliver and she actually said "We don't know the details, BUT..." Oh by the way, on the same day it broke its "story," NBC News... fired its president. B-Block (19:44) SPECIAL COMMENT 2: I really think we have forgotten how serious the allegations are against Trump. Donald Rumsfeld's onetime speechwriter wrote "If Trump's classified document mishandling was 'irresponsible' so is Biden's." Well, no, it wasn't 'irresponsible.' Trump's classified document mishandling was 'when Ethel Rosenberg did the same damn thing in the 1950's we executed her.' Let's really play the CNN Whataboutism game. Here's what I reported on August 9, 2022. C-Block (36:10) SPECIAL COMMENT 3: Oh and lookee here: this is from September 8, 2022, when we first realized that Trump had stolen nuclear documents outlining what nukes another nation did and didn't have. Not only did this espionage and kleptomania hit home, but three months and four days ago I actually said here that sooner or later, CNN would join the cover-up of Trump's crimes. Point to moi.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: It is amazing but true: the coverage of the Biden document story by Fox News has been more restrained and responsible than has CNN’s. The desperate attempt to position the Think Tank Papers story  as one that - in the words of a CNN commentator - "almost exonerates" Trump, continued last night. The raw numbers are startling: between 5 and 11 PM ET Monday, MSNBC gave the story 14 minutes, Fox News gave it 29 minutes, and CNN gave it 107 MINUTES. Three and a half times as much as Fox! And the worst perpetrator of CNN’s willingness to literally lie to its viewers has been Anderson Cooper. The first words out of his mouth last night were how quote “President Biden’s first public statement on the classified documents uncovered at his former private office” were 'breaking news.' I suggested in real time that if Cooper had any remaining self-respect he would quit before his program was over. He didn't. He doesn't. There is much more than money to what CNN's new fascist troika - Chris Licht, David Zaslav, and John Malone - is doing. This is the Clinton-Lewinsky night-after-night brainwash play: convince America that if Biden is not guilty, Trump is not guilty. And having sold their souls, they will keep pushing this as long as we don't stop them. B-Block (18:45) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Poor Mike Pompeo couldn't get anybody to blurb his book so he had to do it himself. He competes with a climate denier who insists if we reinstate wind power we will automatically reinstate The Atlantic Slave Trade, and the nimrods like Tomi Lahren who complained that Ukraine's president went to Hollywood for the Golden Globes last night - even though he didn't. (23:58) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL No. 1: The perfidy of using cable news to brainwash didn't start with Chris Licht. I was there the day the Chairman of GE was ready to shut down MSNBC because his Mommy the Bill O'Reilly fan believed her son was building IEDs to kill America because Fox told her so. C-Block (41:55) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL No. 2: My first experience with the ad salesmen who pretend to be cable's journalistic decision-makers came even before my first MSNBC show in 1997. That's when the big meeting with the man Microsoft thought shared editorial control of MSNBC was to meet with me, and NBC's execs were worried about only one thing: how effectively I ignored him.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

EPISODE 109: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:45) SPECIAL COMMENT: We're really doing "But Hillary's Emails" again, huh, CNN? Huh, NBC? Huh, CBS? Huh, New York Times? Huh, Washington Post? THE HELL WE ARE. CBS's website broke the story accurately ("Documents MARKED classified...found at Biden's think tank") and then Norah O'Donnell dropped the caveats and mitigations and tarted the story up. The Post bothsidesed and whataboutismed the Biden story, invoking Trump in the subhead. The Times comped Trump in Paragraph 5. And worst of all, an hour after CNN broke a genuinely important story: Special Counsel Jack Smith subpoenaing Rudy Giuliani in the Trump Post-Election "Save America PAC" Fundraising crimes, what did Anderson Cooper lead with? His network's own, important, resonating scoop? Nope. The Paste Eaters of CNN buried their own scoop - six nights before their Giuliani Documentary Series starts, too! - so television's longest-running failed marketing experience Anderson Cooper could alter the facts and mislead the nation by saying "Turns out the former president is not the only one with a classified documents problem. The CURRENT president has one as well." Sure, Coop. If a Swiss Army knife is the same as Jack The Ripper's Murder Weapon. Fire. Them. All. B-Block (20:02) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL PART 1: That "bronchial thing" turned out to be a sinus infection, but happily in September I brought you the career story that fits perfectly this descent into "But Her Emails 2". I would've just re-read it anyway: It was June 5, 1998, when I tried to quit as the anchor of MSNBC's top Clinton-Lewinsky-Starr show and two NBC News executives asked me to see an NBC official as part of a process to leave the network - except she turned out to be their leg-breaker and told me NBC versus me would be "David and Goliath" and NBC would crush me. C BLOCK (33:35) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL PART 2: But it was even worse: she promised that if I quit, NBC would put my parents "out on the street." That's how closely Ken Starr forged the link between his live made-for-tv political reality show and the profits at all the networks.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

EPISODE 108: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: The Rules Package the new Speaker of the House/Hostage Kevin McCarthy will present today will include a subcommittee with which Jim Jordan and Matt Gaetz insist they can investigate ANYTHING the Justice Department does, including active criminal investigations. What these toads don't know is that they're not the first half-baked fascists to try this, and something called The Linder Letter will protect DOJ from testifying, supplying evidence, or prosecuting anybody for contempt of Congress for ignoring the Gaetz-McCarthy masturbatory star chamber. Trump can't escape justice - not this way. Though the Holman Rule, which in theory could allow the House to zero out the salary of anybody in government, is a little more of challenge, there's a way to work around that, too. So as you hear the Taliban 20 and their puppet McCarthy emit dire threats today, have a good laugh. B-Block (15:40) EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: Waffles in Shreveport. (16:52) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: Deport Bolsonaro back to Brasil? Why? Deport Bannon and Jason Miller to Brasil - DETAIN Bolsonaro here. And, just when you thought Matt Schlapp had lost his grip. (19:23) IN SPORTS: Now we have to worry about the popular baseball pitcher Liam Hendriks. (21:52) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: How to delete an offensive tweet and get others to disseminate it for you, by a Florida MAGA Congressmen, plus the National Hockey League has an idea for its All-Star Skills Competition: ALLIGATORS. C-Block (25:49) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Two happy anniversaries, within days of each other. How I helped to launch ESPN Radio, and then days later while traveling FOR the new network, happened to meet the lovely, delightful, gifted actress - the late Elizabeth Montgomery.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

EPISODE 107: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:43) Kevin "Oceans 11" McCarthy is overshadowed by The Daily Beast report that CPAC lynchpin and MAGA Caucus inspiration Matt Schapp has been accused of "sustained and unwanted and unsolicited" sexual groping by a man working for Herschel Walker's Senate campaign. The Schlapp story overshadowed what should've been the real headline: Congressman Don Bacon floated, on Fox News no less, a plan to offer the Democrats improved committee ratios and other procedural (but not insignificant) goodies in exchange for support for McCarthy because the GOP is going to have to be bipartisan to get anything done and it might as well start now. (6:00) But at least half a dozen other Republicans stepped on rakes. One of them led to the House breaking out in chants of "Ha-keem Ha-keem" and another is as remarkable a diatribe as I've ever heard in politics. (9:30) I don't put much stock in Ali Alexander, but he accused Marjorie Taylor Greene of an unspecified crime in Georgia and went deeply misogynistic to insult her. Get your popcorn. B-Block (14:20) EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: Zsa Zsa in Georgia (15:40) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: The January 6 Presidential Citizen Medals vie for news space with a wrongful death suit against Trump, a sexual harassment suit against Rudy, and Prince Harry's Frozen Junk (19:00) IN SPORTS: You can use the word miracle: Buffalo Bills player Damar Hamlin is moving his limbs and asking for scoreboard updates, and Alex Rodriguez may have gotten caught shoveling about shoveling (21:07) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Conservatives blast Hannity, Bothsidesism in the House, and Joe Rogan is the dumbest guy on the planet. Again. Still. Forever. C-Block (26:47) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Sunday would've been Elvis Presley's birthday so it's time to play it again: not only did I - at age 18 - actually do a radio commercial for an Elvis Presley Concert that he never lived to see, but the tape of it still exists!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

EPISODE 106: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:44) SPECAL COMMENT: OK, you guys. I got it. I got the solution to the Republican debacle over the endless Sisyphean votes for Speaker of the House. BEFORE Congress convenes at Noon, Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries walks into Kevin McCarthy's office and says "Kevin! Do you WANT to be Speaker? Do you REALLY want to Speaker? I can MAKE you Speaker. Right now." And he hands him a small index card which reads "212 DEMOCRATIC VOTES" and then he says... B-Block (15:23) EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: The Mt. Vernon, New York, shelter is closing. We need to save its dogs and cats by the end of the month. (16:22) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: FBI tries to goose the 1/5-1/6 Pipe Bomber investigation and hey, Trump, guess who's back in town? (18:11) IN SPORTS: The Red Sox do SOMETHING, will anybody get in the Hall of Fame, and meet Marcel Marcel (21:00) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Roll Call introduces the political equivalent of baseball metrics (and will regret it for the rest of time), Kari Lake goes nuttier, and MSNBC whores itself out - again. C-Block (27:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: He was the most famous newscaster in Los Angeles from 1960 through 2002 and he had the most famous sign-on catchphrase and everybody in Southern California knew it by heart - except for the night HE FORGOT IT.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

EPISODE 105: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:45) SPECIAL COMMENT: The Taliban Caucus lights the Republican Party and the House of Representatives on fire, while on his first day, the New Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries perfectly whips his members to do literally do nothing more than bring their popcorn and watch everybody from Gaetz to McCarthy burn, baby, burn. It was a beautiful thing, and it left the full range of fascists from Tucker Carlson to Rep. Byron Donalds having to cobble together the nonsensical sophistry that their self-defenestration was actually democracy in action. If Jeffries can manage to keep the Democrats from reverting to their natural desire to do ill-timed good on behalf of the institution rather than let the Republicans shoot themselves again today, he will have won the 118th Congress no matter which Liz Truss the GOP eventually settles on in place of the wounded McCarthy. B-Block (15:15) SPECIAL COMMENT No. 2: There is the tragedy of Damar Hamlin of the Buffalo Bills, and then there is the disgusting reality that the National Football League is now trying to gaslight us. OF COURSE the league intended to resume Monday night's game even after the stricken player fell. And now the NFL has lied about it and sleazily blamed Joe Buck, Suzy Kolber and all of ESPN, to cover up its own insensitivity and callousness. This is, of course, the history of the NFL, which did the wrong thing after JFK was assassinated, and after Mayor George Moscone and Councilman Harvey Milk were assassinated hours before a Monday Night Football game in San Francisco, and after it was told flights could not be guaranteed to get its players and media to games the weekend after 9/11. But this lie makes the Hamlin nightmare even worse - as does the rank exploitation of it by the anti-vaccine conspiracy theorists, who spit on the memories of Chuck Hughes and J.V. Cain and Hank Gathers and so many athletes who died on the field, from cardiac distress. (30:54) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Trump and Michael Flynn are no match for Congressman-Elect George Santos. C-Block (36:09) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: In 1973, Charles Crawford was interviewing me for his TV news story from one of the earliest baseball card shows. In 1983, he was sitting next to me on the anchor desk at CNN. He introduced himself and I said "we've met before." His reaction when I told him how and when is worth your time.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

EPISODE 104: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:44) Of course, in the spirit of the candidate, and the entire Republican Party, when I say "I know who the secret candidate for speaker is," I might be lying. I am, however, telling the truth about the inevitability of the farce that must result if you run endless Political Purity Tests and try to use The Universal Solvent as a political tool. (6:20) Also ruining the Republicans' day, the George Santos saga. More lies - about Covid and Brain Tumors - and the Brazilians reviving their prosecution of Santos for fraud. (7:39) And were that not enough to spoil the coronation or schlock-blocking of McCarthy, there are the final Farewell Gifts from The House January 6th Committee, from Steve Bannon's plan for a January 21st Coup to Hope Hicks' breathless worry about her resume leading to the rhetorical question "Whaddya mean, NOW?" B-Block (15:30) EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: Polo in New York (17:11) IN SPORTS: The health of Martina Navratilova, the self-defeating success of Outdoor Hockey games, Jim Harbaugh's latest NFL dalliance and the day I operated on his knee, and how in the hell was Trump claiming a 2015 tax deduction for a football team he bankrupted in 1985? (21:30) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: two New York politicos, one blocking measures to save shelter dogs, the other resigning for Election Fraud (guess his party?) compete with Sean Spicer who can't spell, Period. C-Block (26:57) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Next Monday it'll be exactly 40 years since I looked out my apartment window just before bed, and looked down to the street and got a big surprise. The saga of Keith and the Molotov Cocktail.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

EPISODE 103: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:55) BARBARA WALTERS: IN MEMORIAM. Since her death Friday, there has been one story after another about Barbara Walters the groundbreaker and Barbara Walters the feminist and Barbara Walters the interviewer and Barbara Walters the role model and each of these accolades is more than justified. But I'm not seeing enough about Barbara Walters, the person with a large soul who survived as huge a disaster as ever befell the career of anybody in television, who fought her way back from punchline to immortal, and who thanked everybody who protected her, and tried to protect everybody - women and men alike - who might be facing any of the attacks she fought off in the years following 1976. As she wrote me once: "I'm not as tough as I pretend to be and the support means the world to me. I cannot thank you enough." B-Block (16:40) SPECIAL COMMENT: Chief Justice Roberts reinforced his reputation as the human embodiment of the "This Is Fine" dog in the burning room meme. Did his year end message on the judiciary for New Year's 2023 address Samuel Alito's insults towards this country? The revelation that he discussed Hobby Lobby with one of the theocrats before ruling? The madness of Ginni Thomas trying to overthrow the government? The Court throwing away its remaining credibility? No. He knows who the real victims here: The Justices. C-Block (26:15) SPECIAL COMMENT: Roberts, of course, is nothing compared to Sam Alito. Where is Alito's reply to The New York Times report about his leak to Hobby Lobby? Where is the Court's reply to the Judiciary Committees of the House and Senate demanding answers about it? Alito is a clear and present danger to this country.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.