Avsnitt
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SERIES 2 EPISODE 180: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: We may have had a breakthrough with the electorate.
Democratic AND Republican pollsters are finding a shocking number of undecideds or Republicans who will not vote for Trump because of his talk of trying to make himself eligible for a third term, or eliminating term limits entirely, or elections entirely. The fundamental lesson of January 6th - that he will never leave office voluntarily - has sunk in. And which ever way the cult is trying to position it, these voters are taking it seriously.
More over, these seem pollsters are finding a sudden surge in independent and even Republican backlash against The Supreme Court because the gutting of Roe-V-Wade has caused countless voters to reconsider what kind of havoc a corrupted Trump-owned Court would be willing to do to fraudulently bring about the America the fascists want.
It's stunning news and combined with additional polling showing Biden running far behind Democratic Senators in the swing state, it suggests not only that there are margins of victory to be added to his vote totals in those states, but that there is a straightforward way to get them: campaign AGAINST dictatorship, third terms, and a rogue Court.
PLUS: THE DEFENSE RESTS at the Trump Trial. Literally, in his case. All you need to know about what happened was that on Trump's Tuesday posse was comedian Joe Piscopo, who was very good on his last hit, Saturday Night Live, which he just left recently. Well, no, not recently - FORTY YEARS AGO THIS MONTH.
B-Block (30:47) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Marco Rubio doesn't know what the phrase "last name" means. Chris Cillizza has just discovered people have been diagnosing mental acuity of presidential candidates from afar (it started a decade ago, by Trump. Chris thinks it started earlier this week with Stuart Stevens). And having burned through CNN, MSNBC, PBS, and Fox News, Tucker Carlson premieres on Russia-24.
C-Block (37:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: At 5:40 AM he told me he was going to get my fired from our radio station, and kill me. At 6:40 AM he was promising me a multi-year contract as a new sportscaster on our radio station. It's more than four decades ago and it is still as scary an experience as I've had in my career. The Ted Brown Story.
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SERIES 2 EPISODE 179: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: The FIRST item, letter A, on Trump's gag order: "Defendant is directed to refrain from making or directing others to make, public statements about known or reasonably foreseeable witnesses."
After the last time – after the last TEN times, to be exact – Justice Juan Merchan was explicit that, next time, he’d have to consider jailing Trump. Well Trump talked about witness Robert Costello – the one whom the judge metaphorically kicked in the gonads as the court day came to a roaring end. AND he talked about witness Michael Cohen and as the judge had ALSO explicitly stated, it didn’t matter if he was reading or quoting somebody else’s words. If there is any remaining doubt in Merchan’s mind that the premise of the Trump defense is not some kind of refutation of the charges but instead an all-out attack on the rule of law, on the judge, on the court, on its authority to dare to thwart Trump – the man who wants to put the “dick” in dictator – he must erase that doubt. This is why the outburst from the witness Robert Costello – an attorney - where he complained about Merchan’s rulings in real time – could be the last straw that sends Trump to the big house. That was Trump’s witness, the prosecution fought Merchan to keep him out, Merchan sided with the defense, the witness metaphorically spit in Merchan’s face.
MEANWHILE: Alito has NOT changed his story again and there is no Democratic politician with the guts to even conduct a hearing into his amazing corruption. But Brian Beutler has a suggestion that could at least illuminate reality and punish Alito and the fascists for his perfidy.
B-Block (33:23) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Politico is so corrupt that the boyfriend editor hyping the girlfriend's article doesn't even bother to put it third or fourth on its list. The guy who finished second to Larry Hogan in the GOP Maryland primary? Robin Ficker? Does that sound familiar? And RFK Jr, wrong about his residence and just three presidents of Iran behind the times.
C-Block (43:25) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: The event was a couple of days ago but there's always time to celebrate not just the birthday of the immortal of Willie Mays but the day he gave a 20-year old me a radio interview that began with him doing a voice out of all the bigoted cliched movies of the 1930's.
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Saknas det avsnitt?
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SEASON 2 EPISODE 178: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:40) SPECIAL COMMENT: Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito has not only now CONFIRMED that the upside down American flag flown in front of his home three days before President Biden’s inauguration WAS meant to support the Trump “Stop The Steal” plot – but in blaming his wife and neighbors for it, he has blatantly and transparently LIED in his excuse.
“I spoke directly with Justice Alito about the flag story in the New York Times,” posts Shannon Bream, a host on Fox News. “In addition to what’s in the story, he told me a neighbor on their street had a quote ‘F Trump’ sign that was within 50 feet of where children await the school the bus in January ’21.”
THAT’S the lie. Local schools – city of Alexandria AND Fairfax county - had resumed REMOTE learning a MONTH earlier. There were no school buses. There were no kids waiting at bus stops waiting for the school buses that never were. Alito seems to have forgotten that anybody could check this.
"According to Justice Alito, things escalated and the neighbor put up a sign personally addressing Mrs. Alito and blaming her for the January 6th attacks. Justice Alito says he and his wife were walking in the neighborhood and there were words between Mrs. Alito and a male at the home with the sign,” unquote. Again – this sign could not have been seen by kids at a bus stop. “Alito says the man engaged in vulgar language ‘including the c-word.’ Following that exchange Mrs. Alito was distraught and hung the flag upside down quote “for a short time.” Justice Alito says some neighbors on his street are ‘very political’ and acknowledges it was a very heated time in January 2021,” end quote.
Alito said he had had “no involvement whatsoever” in the flying of the flag when contacted by The Times on Wednesday or Thursday. By Friday he suddenly had an involved and intricate story of an increasingly bitter and intense series of confrontations with his neighbors, including his wife becoming quote “distraught” – and especially the vivid and enraging detail about the flag with the F-word being visible to neighborhood children the school bus stop.
He's lying. Again. In multiple ways.
The Democratic response? Resign? Hearings? More limp-flagged calls for recusal and SCOTUS ethic rules. What would the Republicans be doing if – to merge two current Supreme Court scandals - say, Justice Katanji Brown Jackson had hung an ANTIFA-related flag or sign from HER home and taken cash and gifts directly from George Soros? Chairman Durbin needs to think about that – or somebody needs to think about it for him – and then he should do THAT.
B-Block (16:28) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: Exactly what American journalism needed: Chris Cillizza has authored a "Mission Statement." It is even more hilariously self-unaware than any actual article he's ever written.
C-Block (38:30) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: A lot in this episode about the media, so let's hear from Thurber and how they tried to turn him into a radio star and instead turned him into a nervous wreck: "How To Relax While Broadcasting."
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SERIES 2 EPISODE 177: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: A lawyer yelling "you're a liar" at a witness does not make him a liar, despite what Anderson Cooper says. The storyline before the Trump Trial began was: If Michael Cohen keeps his cool when Todd Blanche screams at him, he'll prevail. He did it, and yet the networks rushed to ignore it. Prosecutors have already said they'll only need about an hour of re-direct of Cohen next Monday, meaning that's all the time they expect to require to polish him back up. They are still winning - plus there is still the wild card that in his perpetual over-confidence Trump may testify.
And yet that's not where I start because sometimes the most important story and the most interesting one are not the same thing. The primary sidebar takeaway from Cohen's testimony was based on a poorly worded tweet that the author, Ron Filipkowski, deleted. “Cohen testified that his main media contacts to get positive stories run about Trump were Maggie Haberman, Katy Tur, and Chris Cuomo." Except Cohen DIDN'T say that. He was asked if he had good relationships with reporters. Haberman? "Yes," he replied. Tur? "Yes." Cuomo? "Yes." I am thus in the position of defending - in part - the transactional Haberman, my appalling ex, and the ridiculous Cuomo.
Having said that, they are all imperiled because of what Cohen DID say.
Plus we have a really great punchline to the day in the courtroom in which a would-be Trump Insurrectionist learned that loyalty to him is a one-way street, even if the only thing you wanted was a wave.
B-Block (29:43) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: Exactly what American journalism needed: Chris Cillizza has authored a "Mission Statement." It is even more hilariously self-unaware than any actual article he's ever written.
C-Block (51:44) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: A lot in this episode about the media, so let's hear from Thurber and how they tried to turn him into a radio star and instead turned him into a nervous wreck: "How To Relax While Broadcasting."
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SERIES 2 EPISODE 176: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:45) SPECIAL COMMENT: DON'T BE FOOLED. TRUMP HAS SET THE TABLE SO HE CAN BAIL OUT ON THE DEBATES.
"Please let this TRUTH," Trump wrote after the CNN and ABC debates were announced (and "TRUTH" is just an ironic brand name, like everything else Trump calls his crap), "serve to represent that I hereby accept debating Biden on Fox News. The date will be Wednesday, October 2nd. The hosts will be Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum. Thank you.”
The Publishers' Clearing House style childish fake legalese ("Represent...hereby...thank you") is the tell. Trump has agreed to the two debates with Biden and simultaneously given himself a way out of going to either of them. Some time between now and the Atlanta debate next month he can simply insist Biden "recommit" to the imaginary third debate, and when Biden refuses, he can back out - claiming Biden backed out first.
A late statement from the Biden campaign yesterday showed I'm not the only one thinking this could be in the cards. It's Trump to a tee: What does he have to gain from a debate in which there is no audience, where microphones go off automatically when time expires, and in which Biden does not flail.
ALSO: HOW DID MSNBC LET THAT SCOOP GET AWAY? An in-court witness told them, live, Tuesday night, that he saw Trump reviewing the comments of his surrogates who insulted the judge and his family in Trump's place. It was evidence that there was a Trump conspiracy to evade the gag order and it was a huge story. And Alex Wagner changed the subject.
Regardless: Justice Merchan must conduct a hearing immediately. It was Trump who CALLED Mike Johnson and the other Republican prostitutes his "surrogates." Presumably there will be more of them today. They are a new and clever means of Trump violating the order by proxy and Merchan should send him to jail for it.
B-Block (31:28) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: "How MSNBC’s Leftward Tilt Delivers Ratings, and Complications," read the headline in The New York Times. Suddenly I was young again. This was obviously some sort of re-print from 2007. My hair was dark, I could still digest pizza. The sub headline made me happier still: "NBC’s leaders have been forced to grapple with how to square its cable news network’s embrace of progressive politics with the company’s straight-news operation.” Ah yes, thumbing through my scrapbooks from 2006 and 2007 and – that was in the New York Times YESTERDAY? SERIOUSLY? NBC executives are still exploiting The New York Times to whine about the "partisanship" of MSNBC? Holy crap!
C-Block (49:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Since we're on this subject, time to re-tell the saga from June 2009 when the "friction" The New York Times reported on yesterday as if it were new (or even just not impossibly old) was so bad that the Chairman of GE - the corporation that then owned us - had decided to take MSNBC off the air because the $200,000,000 a year we made him just wasn't enough to compensate him for having his conservative Mom call up and yell at him.
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SERIES 2 EPISODE 175: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:44): Dumboesque Senator Tommy Tuberville has gone on the Newsmax propaganda channel and revealed the obvious: the Speaker, the Senators, Congressmen, (one) Governor and one political jock-sniffer (Ramaswamy) who've stunt-attended Trump's New York trial are there to help Trump evade Judge Merchan's Gag Order.
Merchan must bring them into court, put them under oath, and get their testimony as to what Trump demanded that Mike Johnson, Cory Mills, J.D. Vance, Tuberville, Doug Burgum, and Ramaswamy do to help him get around the Judge's order. Then find Trump in contempt because the gag order ALSO precludes him from telling others to attack witnesses or the judge's family for him.
Also, thanks for Ramaswamy for the funniest Freudian slip of the trial, in which he accidentally called Trump a "sham politician."
MEANWHILE: A day ago I asked The New York Times to give us a "Walter Cronkite" moment and instead it gave us a Judith Miller Moment. Introduced into evidence yesterday? Texts from Michael Cohen to Maggie Haberman from 2018 reading “Big boss just approved my responding to complaint and statement. Please start writing and I will call you soon." What she wrote presented Cohen's (and Trump's) lies about Stormy Daniels and the payoffs as facts. She wrote it the same day and came back and wrote it again the next day.
There is a difference between facts (Cohen texted me) and the truth (WHAT Cohen texted me isn't true and I didn't bother to try to find out or even caveat the lies - and Haberman and The Times have to go. As they fired Judith Miller for disseminating George W. Bush's "Saddam WMD" lies so they must fire Haberman - the same Haberman who two days ago dismissed Cohen's testimony as "hearsay" and who is still writing Times leads on this story TODAY.
B-BLOCK (40:47) WHY The Times needs to give us a Walter Cronkite Moment.
C-BLOCK (64:39) GOOD NIGHT AND GOOD LUCK.
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SERIES 2 EPISODE 174: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: We need a Walter Cronkite moment from The New York Times. The New York Times needs, one day – one day soon, one day now – to devote the entirety of the front page – to a headline, and an editorial, signed by the publisher Sulzberger and the editor Kahn and the key columnists and correspondents – headlined “TRUMP IMPERILS DEMOCRACY” and sub-headlined “YOUR LIFE AT STAKE.”
We need a Walter Cronkite moment from The New York Times and when Trump went to a Philadelphia area seaside resort called Wildwood, drew maybe 10,000 cultists, lied and had the Republican mayor lie and say it was 80,000, complained that immigrant students don’t speak English and immediately afterwards said something like “Borden-in-riv-iv,” said something else like “carry doubt-ite-by-rite,”claimed the president between Ford and Reagan was named Jimmy Connors, said the Chinese were preparing to invade Beijing (their own capital), insisted the entire country was grateful that he killed Roe-V-Wade, thanked – by name - the Supreme Court justices who gutted it, suddenly invoked the fictional cannibal character Hannibal Lecter, seemed to praise him, claimed the character was dead, and got the name of the movie wrong, and then insisted all immigrants are Hannibal Lecter – and all of that was after he was introduced by some immigrant who called him “President CHUMP"... the New York Times story, by a sixth-stringer named Michael Gold, mentioned… none of that. This was what Editor Joe Kahn’s writer told consumers of the most influential news organization in America, quote: “After a long and often tense week in his criminal trial in Manhattan… Trump… took part in a time-honored ritual enjoyed by countless New Yorkers in need of a break: He went to the shore.”
Oh ho ho, how clever.
The Times instead lets Maggie Haberman dismiss as “hearsay” Michael Cohen’s first-hand recounting of what Trump told him about ‘not being on the market for long’ if Melania dumped him and if Haberman doesn’t know the legal definition of “hearsay” get rid of her. And the Times made room for an op-ed bashing Joe Biden by Mark Penn, a dishonest right wing pollster who has been posing as a Democrat for at least 20 years.
In Court: “Michael Cohen calmly describes Trump’s hush money instructions,” reads the headline in The Washington Post. The SUB-headline quotes Trump: “Just do it.” That’s what the prosecution needed out of Cohen. And it needs it again out of him today. AND whenever the cross-examination begins. It needs him making more self-abnegating jokes about ‘angry, even for me.’ It needs him testifying as he did yesterday: that he was there in Trump Tower, days before Trump was sworn in as president, with Allan Weisselberg, reviewing a handwritten document plan to repay Cohen for the Stormy Daniels hush money and how they would hide it. And that Trump said “smart individuals” had told him, Trump, to pay the $130,000. And that Trump told him he knew if the Daniels story got out it would be a disaster for the CAMPAIGN. And it needs him producing one outstandingly sleazy quote from Trump per day on the stand, like when Cohen asked Trump about the impact on his wife MELANIA if the story got out and Trump said “don’t worry. How long do you think I’ll be on the market for? Not long.”
B-Block (22:54) EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: California Assembly Bill 2265 and what it can do to save dogs - and save shelters the horrible cost of killing them. (24:27) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: An update on the back story to the "This Is SportsCenter" commercial I did with soccer's Alexi Lalas, in which I reprised John Belushi's moment in "Animal House" in which he smashes the guitar against the wall. The update? The DVD with the outtakes literally fell off a shelf here yesterday. Enjoy.
C-Block (40:35) GOOD NIGHT AND GOOD LUCK.
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SERIES 2 EPISODE 173: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: I don’t know much about the law but I do know the Trump Trial has confirmed one of the immutable truths of the field: Never hire an attorney with a rating of 3-1/2 stars.
Susan Necheles somehow managed to lose to Stormy Daniels during the second day of cross-examination in Trump-On-Trial yesterday; lose so badly and obviously that Trump’s team was forced to file for a desperation mistrial from the very thin ice of basically claiming Necklace forgot to object to something that Daniels said on TUESDAY.
All of a sudden the Trump defense was claiming – and leaking to every news organization, by the way – that Daniels had dog-whistled a subtext of rape or assault when she gave details about Trump standing in front of her, and not using a condom, and a bodyguard being out in the hallway – and we should just ignore that when she said all that, THREE DAYS AGO, Trump’s lawyer with the three-and-a-half stars rating Susan Necheles said… nothing. Not even the only thing you or I would remember to say if we woke up in some alternate universe where we were in that courtroom as Trump’s lawyer: “OBJECTION.”
And that might have been Necheles's best work.
Ms. Necheles: “You have experience in making up fake stories about sex?”
Ms. Daniels: “The sex is real. That’s why it’s not a B movie.”
Ms. Necheles: “NOW you have a story about having sex with President Trump, right?”
Ms. Daniels: “If that story was untrue, I would’ve written it to be a lot better.”
Ooops! There goes another half a star.
Ms. Necheles: “You had sex with a cameraman?”
Ms. Daniels: “I started dating him and he became my husband.”
A reminder: None of this needed to be heard by the jury. If Trump’s defense had stipulated, yeah, they had sex, she wouldn’t have been allowed to testify. Or they could have just asked her what she knew about Trump’s involvement in the non-disclosure agreement and the payoffs and she could have said “nothing” and Ms. Necheles could have said “nothing further, your honor.” This is a case – a relatively boring case with excruciating details about how routine company checks got sent to the White House for Trump to sign even as president and he never ignored a single detail that cost him more than 99 cents – a relatively boring case about falsified business records and the attempt to interfere with an election and Trump’s team turned it into wocka-wocka-wocka, and his credibility and their credibility against the credibility of a pornographic actress and guess what: the actress won.
ALSO: Oh by the way, last month Trump assembled around 20 of the nation's top oil and fossil fuel executives and offered them a deal. He'd sell them the world to destroy as quickly as they wanted - repeal all regulations and make Doug Burgum Secretary of Energy or VP or whatever - if they'd simply give him a billion dollars with which to get elected. So when you worry that democracy is on the ballot in November, just remember, no, it's worse than that: human EXISTENCE is on the ballot.
B-Block (23:10) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Mark Levin tries to get around calling Judge Juan Merchan "a pervert" because he was listening to Stormy Daniels' testimony. Failson Andrew Giuliani is "reporting" on the trial and puts me in an impossible position by blasting Lawrence O'Donnell. And Chuck Todd ISN'T gone after all. He has just written a masterpiece of nonsense: an Epic Poem of bothsidesism in which he concludes Biden and Trump both need to admit their mistakes. He spends one paragraph on Trump's mistakes and about a dozen on how Biden failed to bring the country together (while Trump was tearing it apart).
C-Block (34:00) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: No gentle reminiscences here. No prophetic tales of heroes who were actually schmoes. Thurber goes for the jugular vein of the famous Avantgarde artist Salvador Dali in "The Secret Life Of James Thurber."
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SERIES 2 EPISODE 172: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Robert F. Kennedy Junior who may turn out to be the spoiler who throws the election to Trump says under oath that his cognitive problems and short term and longer term memory loss from a worm that ate his brain and then died.
On the other OTHER hand, too early to tell if it’s an outlier or the start of the new wave, but swing state poll: Wisconsin, Quinnipiac, Registered voters: Biden 50 Trump 44. Three-way: Biden 40 Trump 39 Kennedy and his Worm, 12.
Nevertheless. I’m not confident we can stave off fascism in this country because: worms in Kennedy’s brain. AND Trump’s trial in Florida has been delayed until the twelfth of never by an unqualified judge HE appointed and his trial in Georgia has been delayed indefinitely – probably into next year - because the appeals court says it WILL listen to Trump’s appeal of the ruling that the district attorney didn’t have a financial conflict of interest just because she hired her boyfriend to work on the case (because guess what: there IS a deep state and among its constituent parts are the legal system and partisan judges and the Supreme Court and an Attorney General who will go to his grave believing the people exist to serve laws rather than laws existing to serve the people. Also, because OBAMA’s most public adviser criticized all the sex talk in the Stormy Daniels testimony and, oh by the way, WORMS IN KENNEDY’S BRAIN.
Memory loss, quote: “caused by a worm that got into my brain and ate a portion of it and then died. I have cognitive problems, clearly. I have short-term memory loss, and I have longer-term memory loss that affects me.”RFK Junior, in a deposition during his divorce in 2012.
When Kennedy said I was his HERO - I KNEW something was wrong.
MEANWHILE the man who called out The New York Times for its vengeful coverage of Biden answers the Editor-in-Chief's strawman response that the paper won't become part of the Biden campaign. "In general, and this is a complaint I have had about the New York Times that is two decades old – I wish they would take good faith criticism from the left with as much seriousness as they take BAD faith criticism from the right," says Dan Pfeiffer.
B-Block (24:51) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Lobbyist Jim Courtovich (if you're going to make a threat by quoting 'The Godfather' you better make sure you get the quote right), Speaker Mike Johnson (you know "intuitively" that non-citizens are voting? Is that like I know "intuitively" that there must have been fraud in your election? No facts, just a Spidey Sense?), and Congressman Mike Collins (You think last week's racism-at-Ole-Miss tweet was disqualifying? Wait'll you see this week's joke about the JFK and RFK assassinations).
C-Block (32:10) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Trump mocked Lawrence O'Donnell after Tuesday's court session, so it's probably time for me to mock him. The day they finally incarcerate Joe Scarborough, O'Donnell will become the least sincere person on MSNBC. Ever seen the pilot of the old HBO show "The Newsroom"? Where the back-up tries to steal the show from the guy he's filling in for? Guess who that's actually about?
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SEASON 2 EPISODE 171: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:45) SPECIAL COMMENT: First of several underemphasized meta-headlines from Stormy Daniels' testimony: Trump’s lawyer Ms. Necklace seems to have made inroads in her effort to convince the jury that Ms. Daniels would say or do almost anything for money. Uh, she’s a pornographic actress. Whether you approve that profession, or abhor it, or like me you’re agnostic: one statement should not be among those you express in shock or dismay or surprise: “Oh no, she’s a pornographic actress, she will do or say almost anything for money.”
Which leads to the next meta headline. My GOD the media, especially the television networks, treated her testimony like they were cicadas and Stormy Daniels was the ring girl who stepped between the ropes to announce the start of year 13. My GOD they all awoke from somnambulance about bank records and cell phone extractions and the testimony of comptrollers and people named RONA and were able to say – at least to themselves – good grief, get a load of those rebuttals.
Which leads into the next meta headline: Stormy Daniels is not on trial here. She’s only incidental to the case. That is NOT what you would have thought if you watched coverage of this case. The sex isn’t illegal, the money isn’t illegal, Trump isn’t illegal, Daniels changing her story isn’t illegal. Buying her story to keep it from becoming public in the weeks before an election and then hiding the payoffs to prevent THEM from becoming public in the weeks before an election – THAT’S illegal and all those boring receipts and records and notations written by hand by a guy named Allan – with TWO L’S – THAT is the case. And denying it as Trump has – LYING about it, as Trump has – is why Stormy Daniels is there. To testify.
I have to admit I was a little surprised by the last headline. If the Monday juxtaposition of Trump Maybe Going To Jail Over The Gag Order and Kristi Noem Quintuples Down On The Idea That Shooting Puppies In The Face Is A Good Thing underscored how MAGA believes it has the right to kill, then YESTERDAY’S juxtaposition of Noem’s disastrous media tour – more on that shortly – and Trump On Trial underscored that these really deeply disturbed, borderline personalities, do NOT do well when confronted with reality from which they cannot run and they cannot hide.
And then there's Noem, who got beaten up on Fox by my old friend Stu Varney and, stunningly, on NewsMax. But it's all right, she still thinks she's killing it. Yeah, the way his presidential roll-out killed it for Greg Stillson.
B-Block (24:33) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL/SPORTS: Seen anything about this week being the 70th Anniversary of Roger Bannister "breaking the 4-Minute mile?" There's one problem.
C-Block (42:20) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL/SPORTS PART 2: That one problem? Roger Bannister WAS NOT the first man to run a mile in four minutes or less. It's a sad story with a lot of bias and even racism in it.
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SERIES 2 EPISODE 170: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:45) SPECIAL COMMENT: The reaction to Justice Merchan’s stark warning to Trump that he may put him in jail the next time he violates the gag order, and the defense inside the Trump cult of Kristi Noem for murdering her dog and threatening Biden’s dog - these are actually the same story.
The point is: killing.
They are about one thing: at their core, Noem and Trump and MAGA and Trump’s Supreme Court Justices and his slaves inside the House and the Senate believe they have a right to kill. Today, they have a right to kill their dogs. Tomorrow? Your dog. Then the judge. The day after that immigrants. Finally, anything and anybody.
Do not mistake them, nor what this is about. Do not forget that even as chilling a phrase as “political violence” is itself just a euphemism. Political violence is: murder. Individual murder, mass murder, or if the rest of us are lucky, just attempted murder or threatened murder.
Every Trump attack on every witness, on every judge, on every prosecutor, on every opponent; every stochastic call to “end” this; every reference to “bedlam”; every meme of the President of the United States bound and gagged; every Tim Scott refusing to honor the outcome of an election; every reference to patriots and deep states and rigged elections and I am your retribution – they all have the unspoken second half: those who try to stop us will do what we say or we will kill them. One third of Trump supporters who’ve heard about Noem killing her dog told a YouGov poll that it WAS acceptable. 29 percent weren’t sure. So the total of Trump voters who would not criticize it was six out of ten.
AS THIS UNFOLDS, THE NEW YORK TIMES completely disconnects from reality.
“When you are Democrat you start off essentially at 40 percent (of the vote) because you have civil service, you have the unions and you have welfare. They get welfare to vote, and then they cheat on top of that. They cheat,” Trump said of Biden and the Democrats. “'These people are running a Gestapo administration’ Mr. Trump told donors who attended the event at Mar-a-Lago, his private club in Palm Beach, Florida, according to an audio recording obtained by The New York Times."
An audio recording. OBTAINED by The New York Times.
Where is this recording?
Why has this recording not been made public by The Times? Why is the paper suppressing it?
Incredibly, at the same time the paper's editor gave an interview to Semafor News that discredits everyone who works at The Times as he dismisses any awareness that his coverage has normalized Trump without a sufficient sense of crisis or threat. "To say that the threats of democracy are so great that the media is going to abandon its central role as a source of impartial information to help people vote – that’s essentially saying that the news media should become a propaganda arm for a single candidate, because we prefer that candidate’s agenda," said Joe Kahn. “It’s our job to cover the full range of issues that people have. At the moment, democracy is one of them. But it’s not the top one – immigration happens to be the top, and the economy and inflation is the second. Should we stop covering those things because they’re favorable to Trump?”
Nothing to see here. Just the editor-in-chief of The New York Times living in a world defined by Fox News talking points, and populated entirely by strawmen.
B-Block (38:15) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: The Tigers say their new uniforms are "going 0-60." Nancy Mace claims the victim of half the GOP Antisemitic tropes is behind all the pro-Palestinian protests too. And Obama's campaign manager has the new podcast every one has been clamoring: he co-hosts with Kellyanne Conjob. (47:20) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL/SPORTS: Seen anything about this week being the 70th Anniversary of Roger Bannister "breaking the 4-Minute mile?" There's one problem.
C-Block (1:04:51) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL/SPORTS PART 2: That one problem? Roger Bannister WAS NOT the first man to run a mile in four minutes or less. It's a sad story with a lot of bias and even racism in it.
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SERIES 2 EPISODE 169: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Trump is full of shit.
Nothing about the gag order precludes him from testimony. What caused him to change his mind and suddenly announce no, he's not testifying after all, is sheer naked fear. He heard the Smoking Gun tape of himself and Michael Cohen mapping out how to pay hush money to his girlfriend before the election, and he crapped himself.
I'll play the tape and you'll see. The last thing you do after THAT tape is played, is talk. In a fitting metaphor, on Trump’s pants are so on fire about why he's too scared to testify, that his post-court photo op was at a New York Fire Department Station. He also mocked reporting about how he's been falling asleep in court and then 90 minutes later, he fell asleep in court - again.
MEANWHILE: We are in such an unprecedented place in this country’s history that if Trump were now to pick Kristi Noem as his running mate and announce they were going to campaign on a platform of puppy killing, the cult would do it. He’s not likely to try it. But then did you really think that Noem’s response to her self-defenestration would be to double down and claim the dog she murdered was far more evil than she let on and was a threat to her children.
By next week she’ll be claiming Cricket had clamped her vicious jaws around her daughter’s neck. Or that she was holding Noem’s kids hostage. And by the way, she may have no other choice than to double down and claim she is the real victim here, because there is emerging evidence that the story of Kristi Noem luring the dog into a gravel pit and shooting it in the face because it was randomly attacking other animals and posed a threat of some kind that might be a COVER STORY.
As America’s hatred washed over her, she laid low – until Wednesday. That’s when she went on with Sean Hannity and resumed trying to get people to buy the book, and buy her story. But her story has now changed. Cricket was no puppy. She was a working dog – and 14 months old. That Cricket was untrained wasn’t HER fault. Quote: “It was a dog that was extremely dangerous. It had come to us from a family who found her way too aggressive. We were her second chance. The day she was put down was a day that she massacred livestock... (Livestock? Chickens. But of course killing animals is just a first step – and then you’re Ted Bundy)...“that were part of our neighbors. She attacked me. And it was a hard decision.” That was Wednesday night. By yesterday afternoon on social media, Noem saw an out. “I had a choice between the safety of my children and an animal who had a history of attacking people and killing livestock. I chose my kids.”
So. She's already changed the story. Was the version in the book also changed? Was the murder worse? Was the timeline of who saw it different? Could Noem have shot the dog as her family watched?
B-Block (19:47) SPECIAL COMMENT: I am largely agnostic on the issues, and having taken part in student protests against Vietnam and racism in the 7th Grade in 19-freaking-70 I'm in favor of them at any time. But what's happening on campuses today is NOT 1970 revisited. It's not on the level of Black Lives Matter. The arrests aren't unprecedented, the right to protest isn't being destroyed, and the students might want to recognize that their decisions are simply increasing the chances that everything they want will NOT happen, culminating in a Trump presidency in which they or their successors will be detained by the Army or shot on sight or both.
C-Block (28:05) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: Thurber's mother was down with the whole occult stuff. Him? He barely delved. But this is another week where we need a pure silly story and he produced one when he went into the worlds of supernatural (and German dialects). "The Black Magic of Barney Haller."
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SERIES 2 EPISODE 168: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Enough excuses. In a speech in Wisconsin yesterday, Trump talked about, attacked, and attacked the accuracy of, Cassidy Hutchinson - a probable witness against him in the Election Subversion trial in Washington.
He has thus violated both the terms of his release on bail, and the gag order long ago imposed upon him.
Judge Tanya Chutkan must now jail him.
There is no evading this. While under threat of imprisonment if he violates the gag order in the Hush Money Election Interference case in New York, he has violated the gag order in the Election Subversion case in Washington. Judge Chutkan has no excuse this time. Revoke his bail. Somebody, for once, for God’s sake, for America’s preservation – draw the line in the sand.
And just for added insolence, in attacking Hutchinson he confirmed the gist of her testimony, that he tried to talk his Secret Service detail into taking him to the Capitol on January 6th so he could watch his scum try to overthrow American democracy. He's been lying about this for three years.
In his speech Trump also insisted he was president three years ago (he wasn't), butchered the word "infrastructure," and of particular relevance to the moment, reminded the current protestors that he would prohibit refugees from Gaza and reinstitute his ban on Muslims.
PLUS a small slip in that extraordinary Time Magazine interview suggests that his extensive, inappropriate, and entirely corrupt shadow diplomacy with other nations may have included some kind of arrangement with Putin by which Russia continues to hold Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich hostage, until and unless Trump regains power.
B-BLOCK (18:20) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: The collapse of the regional sports cable television market not only felled last year's San Diego Padres but it's now taken an NHL playoff game off the air in the middle of the action. When The Gateway Pundit wonders if you might be an unreliable source - you might be an unreliable source. And given that it was a stunt bill with no more impact than the week full of Republican Make Appliances Pollute Again legislation, it's amazing that Marjorie Taylor Greene decided to explain why she voted against an Antisemitism measure - and her reasoning was that it might make it illegal to proclaim that the Jews killed Jesus.
C-BLOCK (27:40) GOOD NIGHT AND GOOD LUCK.
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SERIES 2 EPISODE 167: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Trump is officially in contempt of court and has been threatened with jail time if he again violates the gag order and testimony from the stand continues to bury him alive as he buried the Stormy Daniels scandal and none of that is CLOSE to being as important as his new and most virulent threat yet to destroy this country via political VIOLENCE. And it underscores why we – LOYAL Americans – must destroy his cult first.
Cover story, Time magazine, all the nightmares of Trump becoming dictator, but laid out with unusual clarity for someone as insane and demented as Trump. Quoting the interviewer (Eric Cortellessa) “Trump does not dismiss he possibility of political violence around the election.” Quoting Trump: “If we don’t win, you know, it depends. It always depends on the fairness of the election.” The author asks him about his social media post in which Trump claimed a stolen election “allows for the termination of all rules, regulations and articles, even those found in the constitution,” Trump then denies he said it. Quoting Trump: “I never said that at all. I never said that at all.”Within moments of this lie – no, not a lie, a distinction without a difference in that he never SAID it, he merely WROTE it, on Truth Social, on December 3, 2022 – within moments he declares the CURRENT government has “broken the constitution. They have gotten very far astray from our Constitution..."
What about his remarks about being a dictator only on day one? He says he was kidding. Doesn’t he realize it horrifies those who see dictatorship as the opposite of America? Quote: “I think a lot of people LIKE IT.”
So the police become militarized and the military becomes Trump’s personal gestapo and the states and cities that don’t promise fealty to him don’t get federal allotments and the federal government becomes his personal staff and if he doesn’t win the elections they’re UNFAIR elections and violence is fine and most people WANT a dictator anyway and he chooses who gets prosecuted and he chooses which budgeted money gets spent and where because he’ll give himself a line-item veto and he’ll put anybody here illegally into concentration camps… or anybody he SAYS is here illegally and if that’s YOU – who are you going to get to STOP him?
ALSO: "Jail may be a necessary punishment." Justice Merchan bemoans the low limits of the fines he could impose upon Trump for being in contempt of court after breaking the gag order nine times. So Imprisoned Don is on the clock.
B-Block (19:04) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: That embossed giant representation of The Queensboro/59th Street Bridge on the new batting helmet of the New York Mets is wonderful, until you realize it ALSO looks like something never ever associated with baseball. Kayleigh McEnany is the latest Trump pusher who can't add or subtract integers. And Jesse Watters invokes the Loch Ness monster to explain why he thinks the Trump Gag Order is unconstitutional.
C-Block (27:37) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Let's continue on the subject of Watters, whose stupidity is anything but an act, and whose cupidity was honed as Bill O'Reilly's henchman and stalker-by-proxy. Let's talk Jesse and revisit some of the best Billo moments.
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SERIES 2 EPISODE 166: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: We need a special counsel to investigate the six conservatives on the Supreme Court.
We know Harlan Crow spent thousands on Clarence Thomas – for what precise purpose We know somebody paid off Brett Kavanaugh’s debts – who? When? Why? We know Leonard Leo’s gang spent millions to put Gorsuch and the others in place – what did they get in return? We know the Trump appointees all lied to the Senate and said Roe-V-Wade was settled, then voted to overturn it – were they paid to? We know the conservatives looked at the 14th Amendment, which states when, why, and how to appeal disqualification from the ballot, and ignored the Constitution. To what end?
We know those conservatives have now signaled that they will countenance a coup, or presidentially-ordered domestic assassinations, or anything, so long as they can pretend they were official acts, and so long as they don’t have to rule until and unless Trump is president again. What inducement could make even conservatives – even conservative lawyers – prostitute themselves? And most of all we know, that if the polarity was reversed – if this was a Republican administration now and that was an utterly corrupt and criminal DEMOCRATIC president on trial – and a 6-3 LIBERAL Supreme Court impeding and slowing and obstructing justice – we KNOW that the Republican administration would do: There would be a Special Counsel investigating the Court.
There are lesser solutions. Joyce Vance suggests Jack Smith empty his January 6th evidence at a hearing to determine what might be subject to 'presidential immunity.' Brian Beutler suggests something stronger. The gist is: we – I mean all of us who have a faint hope that there’ll be representative government in this country a year from today – WE must stop assuming that being right about everything DECIDES everything any more (if it ever did). The Biden campaign is going to have to stop assuming that the president being right and good and Trump being the worst person in this country’s history is going to be enough. We need to go on OFFENSE and the goal has to be to metaphorically GUT the bastard – and to metaphorically GUT all the OTHER bastards in his gang. As said by the character of the prime minister in “House of Cards” – the good version – we need to put a bit of stick about.
ALSO: There's little new left to say about the psychopathic monster Kristi Noem. Yet I actually found something. It's not good. And it's from her alleged boyfriend.
B-Block (25:41) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: The lovely celebrity columnist Cindy Adams just turned 94. Somebody leaked her birthday party guest list and it's the twelve people you meet when you get to hell. The New York Times is so strung out over Politico's reveal that its publisher is altering the news to punish Biden for not doing an interview that it has issued a furious denial about journalism and principles and THE STATEMENT IS ANONYMOUS. And unfortunately not only did Nancy Pelosi call out my ex for being a Trump apologist but based on her reaction she has no idea that everybody agrees she's a Trump apologist.
C-Block (35:16) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Well it ain't Thursday but it IS Tur-Day. Since I'm already talking about my ex, face planting on MSNBC every afternoon, I might as well tell you the rest of the story. About her jumping the political shark. About her book. And about how she deceived me. And The New York Times. And The Washington Post. It's exhausting.
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SERIES 2 EPISODE 165: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Justice Samuel Alito should wake up tomorrow in Gitmo. Or in a hospital prison ward being examined for illness, mental or otherwise.
He and the other Conservative members of the Supreme Court are as dangerous to the future of this country and its citizens and its freedoms and its representative form of government, as any terrorists who have ever lived. If presidents knew they might be prosecuted for little things like trying to overturn a valid election and illegally staying in office, Alito told the lawyer representing Jack Smith, they would be way more likely to try to overturn a valid election and illegally stay in office. So, if you want to preserve democracy, you CAN’T prosecute a former president for trying to overturn a valid election and illegally staying in office.
THAT is the constitutional position of the leading justice on the Supreme Court, the ones Trump’s sheep follow, echoing almost word-for-word, things that the mad traitor Trump has posted on his social media feed about persecutions and retributions and retirements. This is Samuel Alito telling you that the way to insure peaceful transitions of power is: you can’t prosecute a lame duck president who partially – and nearly FULLY – disrupted the peaceful transition of power.
It sounds like something Joseph Heller CUT from his novel Catch-22 as too stupid to be useful as political satire.
And it just went downhill from there. They asked Trump's lawyer if assassination of the opposing presidential candidate or a military coup might be considered a president's "official acts" and he said yes.
Ultimately, what the six conservatives on this destructive, fascist court hinted at yesterday, was how far they would go to prostitute themselves to rule FOR Trump in any case that comes before them. We’ve already seen them erase the clear mandate in the 14th Amendment because they felt it would deny American democracy the right to vote itself out of existence. We have now heard them try to cobble together any bullshit they had in their brains to immunize Trump for his countless crimes. But we have also been forewarned that if a case comes before THIS court relative to THIS election, they will figure out what is best for Trump and make up the reasons why.
They WILL.
After yesterday, you and I now KNOW this.
ALSO: The gag order Trump keeps violating in New York will require another hearing with Justice Merchan. But not until next Wednesday. Because we all know we have all the time in the world. On the other hand, Trump addressed all his many legal cases late yesterday and sounded terrible. Breathless. You know how old he sounded? 206!
B-Block (24:50) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: For the first time they all come from one newspaper, for misdeeds revealed in one article. They are New York Times Washington Bureau Chief Elizabeth Bumiller, writer Peter Baker, and publisher A.G. Sulzberger, and they are the vindictive little shits who could help cost us democracy. Because as Politico reports, Sulzberger has ordered the paper to fixate on Joe Biden's age as payback for Biden refusing to give The Times a one-on-one interview. Apparently Sulzberger thinks when Trump comes to round up the liberals, intellectuals, and reporters, everybody at The Times will be issued a pass.
C-Block (38:50) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: Deliberately chosen to have nothing to do with Trump or politics or The Times, his wonderful story of a loathed practical jokester: "Meet Birdey Dogged."
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SEASON 2 EPISODE 164: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: The 'Presidential Immunity' case beginning today at the Supreme Court?
Trump's already won.
Because while most of the coverage is binary (the Court will never invent something as anti-democracy as 'presidential immunity'/the Court will grant Trump presidential immunity) the real point here is that the delay already created by the Supreme Court's conspiracy to keep Trump from facing justice and to fix the election so he can seize power, has already guaranteed the jury can't possibly get the case before the election. The point from here on in is to extend that delay and the way to do that is to send the case BACK to Judge Chutkan with some lame ass "review" to see if there are parts of Jack Smith's indictments Trump might be immune from.
Trump's already won.
Plus: the Arizona Fake Elector Indictments are in. Trump is an unindicted co-conspirator and Giuliani and Christina Bobb are among EIGHTEEN just plain indicted. And as I always say, democracy survives not because of our efforts to preserve it, but by the stupidity of those who would destroy it. Fox nimrod Jesse Watters has found his analogy for Trump prevailing no matter how his enemies try to lay him low: Trump is King Kong. "And what happens with King Kong? You remember! So he's going to bust out of this cage eventually."
Jesse doesn't know that King Kong gets killed.
B-Block (24:09) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: The L.A. Dodgers get an entertainer who has sung the anthem at their games five different times ARRESTED for asking them to let her bring her purse into the stadium with her. Pastor Shane Vaughn thinks if you say 'I'm not calling Joy Reid...' followed by a really racist insult, it means you didn't call her that. And Cornel West thinks he's going to beat Trump and apparently does not know the people trying to get the signatures needed to get him on the ballot work...for Trump.
C-Block (35:48) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: If it's Supreme Court day, why don't I tell the story of the day I was invited on a first date by a woman who thought the ideal thing to go see was...Clarence Thomas's chair at the Supreme Court. Yes, it was Laura Ingraham.
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SERIES 2 EPISODE 163: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Trump faces a month in jail for contempt of court - or at minimum, he will be THREATENED with a month in jail for contempt of court.Trump's lawyers, led by Todd (of Todd, Emil, Susan and Alina) beclowned themselves before Justice Juan Merchan during the Trump Gag Order Violation Hearing yesterday and the judge said he was "reserving his decision" which is almost always news so bad for the one side that has so infuriated the judge that he doesn't want to be in the room with them when he rules against them.
The prosecution demanded $10,000 in fines and the threat of a month in jail and as Merchan told the lawyers they were losing their credibility, another story broke. Whatever happens there have already been quiet conversations with the Secret Service over what you do when you finally do put a former president in jail for an hour or a lifetime.
As to the trial and the only witness thus far David Pecker – as to what came out of the Pecker at the Trump Trial – nothing new, if you’ve been paying attention. He and Trump and Michael Cohen set up a machine by which they bought stories about Trump – true ones, false ones, something-in-between ones – like the child out of wedlock one and the Stormy Daniels one and the Karen McDougal one – and the critical testimony was about the love child story. The doorman selling it got $30,000 to start, then they checked the story, found it wasn’t true, Pecker of the National Enquirer was about to release the doorman from his Non-Disclosure Agreement when Michael Cohen said don’t do that until AFTER the 2016 election because it could damage the Trump campaign.
That’s the conviction right there. They paid these people – Stormy Daniels included – not to protect Trump the person, not to save him from lies, not to save him from the truth - but to influence the outcome of 2016 election.
And it would be sad in another context, but
the lede yesterday? That he wanted his mobs to at minimum SURROUND every courthouse in the country? Especially New York State Supreme Court, 100 Centre Street? I got a few scoffs at that. Turns out he REALLY expected. He REALLY believed it. And it didn’t happen. It REALLY didn’t happen: CNN’s Jim Sciutto with the sad truth. He wrote “Other than the first day of jury selection when I saw a pickup waving Trump flags and heard a handful of Trump supporters, their presence has dwindled. I don’t see any outside the courthouse today. If Trump was expecting a large and lasting public show of support here, it hasn’t materialized.”
Well of COURSE that’s what he was expecting. IN FACT he was expecting another January 6th. And I emphasize again that the ultimate importance of this trial may simply be exposing him to weeks of radiation-leak-levels of reality. Because after it DIDN’T happen he had to tell his people – and most importantly his EGO – that it DID: “Thousands of people were turned away from the courthouse in Lower Manhattan by steel stanchions and police, literally blocks from the tiny side door from where I enter and leave,” unquote. Utterly untrue. Nobody showed up. Not thousands, not hundreds, not dozens, not even family and friends. Like he has FRIENDS. That was his friend testifying against him. His friend – a Pecker.
PLUS: Tucker Carlson is dunked on by Mitch McConnell, Trump is dunked on by Mitt Romney, and the Republicans are dunked on by...Axios? Which reports they've... castrated themselves?
Video or it didn't happen!
B-Block (26:44) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: This surfeit of media-government interaction reminded me of the first time I ever encountered it, back when the Bushies were so naive they thought I was doing their bidding during the controversy over the made-up story of Saddam Hussein getting nukes from Niger. I was to interview Ambassador Joe Wilson - who debunked the W bull - and yet they thought I was going to slice him up, so they sent me all their talking points, and revealed the identities of all their "friends" at NBC.
C-Block (41:00) GOOD NIGHT AND GOOD LUCK
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SERIES 2 EPISODE 162: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Stochastic threat number one million. Trump returns to his propaganda channel to insist that his thugs should be, quoting his online post, “allowed to protest at the front steps of Courthouses, all over the country” rather than be “rudely and systematically shut down and ushered off to far away ‘holding areas’ essentially denying them their constitutional rights.” He tells them “Rally behind MAGA. Save our country. The only thing you have to fear is fear itself.”
When THAT stochastic call to lay siege to federal buildings didn’t work (why does that sound SO familiar?) Trump tried what he thinks is smooth and subtle. “The Palestinian Protests at Columbia University have closed the college down. But the area surrounding the Courthouse in Downtown Manhattan, is closed up like a drum, with New York City’s Finest (Police) all over the place. Why not send some to Columbia… Republicans want the right to protest in front of the courthouse like everyone else.”
Again. Seems oddly familiar. Reduce law enforcement around an area Trump wants to see sacked by gangs and militias and morons ready to spring him or hang a Vice President or, who knows, kill a judge. He forgot to note “will be wild.”
Justice Juan Merchan
There is little for Justice Juan Merchan to DO about this latest threat other than to encourage the city and the state of New York to have tanks ready because frankly if Trump terrorist gangs again rise up against the government as he had them do on January 6th the only way the point is going to be made clear is if it ends with the New York Department of Sanitation having to clean them up with brooms and hoses and garbage trucks. But with Trump following yesterday's half-day in court ending with more violations of the gag order, Merchan can at least regain control of this mess by - if not jailing Trump at today's gag order hearing - at least saying: if you do it again I will revoke your jail and send you to Rikers Island. We have to grasp this nettle eventually, let's do it now.
In the long term, the ACTUAL Trump Legal headline may have come not from New York but Florida where witness exhibits in the Trump Espionage case reveal that the feds have a small coterie of witnesses close to Trump including an unidentified Person 16, clearly a senior Trump aide but not in the innermost circle, who revealed nothing less than the fact that Trump’s “people” told his valet and co-defendant Walt Nauta not to worry about the stolen documents case, that it’s not going anywhere, yet even if he were to, say, get charged with lying to the FBI, Trump will pardon him after he regains power.
B-Block (26:33) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: The man Nate Silver once thought was a top-five candidate to be the next Democratic presidential nominee, Eric Adams, is down to 16% support for re-election as mayor of New York. Kevin McCarthy is surprised to learn his claim Hillary Clinton never conceded is a lie. And ESPN's policy - no, you can't be a sportscaster on one station and an advocate for a presidential candidate on another - was right. I know: I helped to author it because the day when you (or I) could is long gone. So why is today's ESPN letting Stephen A. Smith do it? Why is he campaigning for Trump on Fox News? ESPN must silence him - or fire him.
C-Block (37:32) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: So I once had an agent named Art Kaminsky who at the same time he was negotiating to extend my deal at KCBS in Los Angeles was also sending his other clients in for the job. And he ordered his partner Lou Oppenheim to NOT tell me as he literally walked out of the meeting at which KCBS told him whether or not I was staying. This all ends with them serving me with papers hours before my first SportsCenter, 32 years ago this month!
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SEASON 2 EPISODE 161: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Justice Juan Merchan MUST put Trump's ass in jail for violating the gag order - even if it's only one hour at Rikers Island.
Trump is determined to break Merchan, break the New York Court, break the Criminal Justice System. He is a cornered and wounded animal and this is life-or-death for him. Think of a cockroach - only with thumbs. So it's him or us that gets broken, and Merchan has to make sure it isn't us.
Trump tried to finesse the gag order by quoting somebody else – this worm Watters from Fox – denigrating the jurors and the judge and adding to the pile of stochastic inducements to violence against anyone who thwarts Trump. And by morning one of the jurors – the silhouette of their name and the vague depiction of their home – was quitting out of fear. Because what Trump sought by denigrating the jury WORKS. Because Trump’s intimidation WORKS. Because Trump’s terrorism WORKS.
Prosecutors began Day 3 of the trial yesterday noting he had violated the gag order SEVEN times just since jury selection started and they actually UNDER-SOLD the most egregious of the violations, with Joshua Steinglass saying “the defendant reposted about liberals lying to try to get on the jury, a post by Jesse Watters.” That was NOT a re-post. Trump does dozens of re-posts a day. You hit a re-post icon, a couple of rounded arrows. Maybe you add a comment. Trump KNOWS what a re-post IS.
That is NOT what Trump – or someone in control of the social media account bearing his name – DID. What Trump did was to make a NEW post, QUOTING Watters. It redd – and still reads:“They are catching undercover Liberal Activists lying to the Judge in order to get on the Trump Jury - Jesse Watters.” It is in Trump’s own electronic hand. It is not a re-post. It is not ‘technically ok within the gag order’ because Trump ISN’T lying about the judge and the jurors and endangering them all, he’s just QUOTING Jesse Watters lying about the judge and the jurors and endangering them all.
RUNNING THE HEADLINES: Derrick Van Orden, a walking PTSD demonstration, calls Matt Gaetz "tubby" and Marjorie Taylor Greene demands anybody who votes for Ukraine aid be conscripting into its military as the House Republican caucus comes apart at the seems. Happily Jared Moskowitz is there with the big yucks and a Rick Perry protege has the best idea yet: four Republicans should resign from the House to own the liberals. FOUR? How about FIVE? FIFTY? Think big be big my friend!
And why on earth did Kari Lake devote a disturbingly large part of a campaign speech to repeatedly saying "strap-on?"
B-Block (31:18) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Clay Travis goes from being the knight in shining armor defending the sanctity of women's sports from destruction by trans athletes, to insisting that Caitlin Clark isn't actually popular and nobody CARES about women's sports. The Charlotte GOP still hasn't realized it insulted Trump online and he'll see it eventually. And Twain was wrong: history DOES sometimes repeat itself. In 2005 I watched on in astonishment as Bo Dietl began his new MSNBC show by calling a gay reporter a "fudge-packer" and get fired within two weeks. Now, he's been fired for ANOTHER homophobic rant directed at ANOTHER reporter. Did you know Dietl's specialty in the NYPD was to serve as the mugging decoy? So he was mugged 500 times? Does it show?
C-Block (48:00) EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: Snowie is fine - now - but her family could use a little help plowing through the bills for the medical wizardry that saved her life. (49:30) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: Appropriately enough, Thurber takes a dog who was alive when Teddy Roosevelt was president and makes him seem as new as the youngest pup. "The Dog That Bit People."
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- Visa fler
