Countdown with Keith Olbermann

Urgent call for Biden to arrest Trump terrorists and allies to save the nation; Critique of columnist misquoting Biden; Humorous anecdotes of historical inaccuracies and job listings; Reflection on past lunch meeting with Senator Biden and call for a rapid response director for his campaign

SERIES 2 EPISODE 208: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:44) COUNTDOWN BULLETIN: In a disturbing end to an otherwise low-news interview with George Stephanopoulos of ABC News, President Biden was asked how he will feel if he stays in the race and loses to Trump. "As long as I gave it my all and I did as good a job as I know I could do, that's what this is all about." I'm not sure how that question could be answered, but that answer is terrifying. As Mr. Biden undertakes his second rehab tour this year, with the interview and a rally in Madison, Wisconsin, Senator Mark Warner of Virginia is reportedly convening a meeting among his Democratic colleagues to urge them to join him in a trip to the White House to burst what they see as an informational bubble around the president. In the meantime, Governor Maura Healey of Massachusetts, who just six weeks ago led a big-money fundraiser for the president, issued an on-the-record statement urging Biden to carefully reassess whether he's the right candidate to defeat Trump. And House Minority leader Jeffries will convene his committee ranking members on Sunday to discuss the situation. While a groundswell seems to be forming for a consensus Kamala Harris candidacy, there seem to be two questions to ask yourself in formulating your own opinion as to what to do next: 1) the debate is two months from next Tuesday. Do you want JOE Biden participating in it? And 2) Do you want a story, the lead story, or the only story every day between now and the debate to be some form of: How does the president seem?See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SERIES 2 EPISODE 207: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: “No one’s pushing me out. I’m not leaving.” The President yesterday on a conference call with his campaign staff, and notably ALSO with Vice President Harris. “Let me say this as clearly and simply as I can: I’m running. I’m the Democratic Party’s nominee. No one is pushing me out. I’m not leaving. I’m in this race to the end…” the President’s fundraising email last night. “I had a bad night… I screwed up,” he told a radio interviewer. I understand why the president said what he said, and I understand why the email reads as it does, and I understand he may fully or almost fully believe all that and I do NOT understand WHAT they are doing at The White House. The New York Times led a succession of reports that President Biden had told an ally “that he is weighing whether to continue in the race” although, perhaps crucially, after the White House issued a flat denial the Times ALTERED the hook and the story to focus on the idea that “he may not be able to salvage his candidacy if he cannot convince voters that he is up to the job." I do NOT understand the litmus test the President and his advisers have apparently convinced themselves will be the magic wand. I’ll quote The Times: “Mr. Biden’s allies said that the president had privately acknowledged that his next few appearances heading into the July 4 holiday weekend must go well, particularly an interview scheduled for Friday with George Stephanopoulos of ABC News and campaign stops in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.” The interview with Stephanopoulos is not live. It is taped. The campaign stops in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin are presumably going to follow all the other campaign stops with teleprompters. If someone is telling the President that doing well in more totally controlled, utterly contained, hothouse environments, is going to quell in the slightest the impact that continues to resonate from a week ago in Atlanta, THEY are crazy. And if the PRESIDENT thinks doing what amount to canned events will quell the impact, he is DOOMED. And between them, if he gets through a pre-recorded sitdown interview, and he gets through two speeches and there AREN’T questions from reporters or at minimum questions from THE CROWD, and he and the campaign boast about these events as some kind of TRIUMPH, then the outcome will be this: he will have forced HIMSELF off the ticket, NOT because of the debate, but because of the week AFTER the debate. The way to steer out of the skid, the way to find the magic wand, the way to “salvage his candidacy” as the Times put it and “save his reelection bid” as CNN put it and “stay in the race” as ABC put it, was – maybe still IS – to hold a news conference, and I mean call a news conference on 20 minutes’ notice – not one next week at the NATO summit in DC, but NOW, and take whatever they’ve got for you; and it’s to do a town hall somewhere (or as Jim Clyburn says, a series of them), and if you want some comparatively comfortable exercise, that Stephanopoulos interview has got to be LIVE. And it would be best to do these things on consecutive days. B-Block (19:49) JULY 4TH AND THE BAD PRESS LOU GEHRIG GOT FOR DYING: It's a remarkable reflection on media then and now. We think of the tragedy of the New York Yankees star as having moved 85 years of fans and writers and just humans. Not so. One columnist insisted Gehrig was faking it. Another insisted he had infected his teammates. Funny you don't hear those articles read often. I'm going to do it for you. C-Block (47:00) GOOD NIGHT AND GOOD LUCKSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SERIES 2 EPISODE 206: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: “I wasn’t very smart. I decided to travel around the world shortly before the debate,” the President has now said at a fundraiser in Virginia. He then described his arduous travel through 15 Time Zone changes for the G7 and D-Day, and how it affected him at the debate: “I didn’t listen to my staff and then I came home and nearly fell asleep on stage.” The debate was June 27. He returned from his travels on June SIXTEENTH. This followed by only a few hours a suggestion from Nancy Pelosi that Biden (and Trump) takes an acuity test: "Both candidates owe whatever test you want to put them to, in terms of their mental acuity and their health — both of them. I think it's a legitimate question to say, is this an episode or is this a condition? When people ask that question, it's completely legitimate — of both candidates." Pelosi thinks Biden has an episode? Or a condition?  If there were anything Pelosi could have said that would do LESS to contain all of this, I am hard pressed to guess what it could have been. And there are disastrous new internal polling numbers leaked from Democratic pollsters OpenLabs to Puck News. Since the debate, New Hampshire has now become Trump by three, Virginia is Trump by one and a half; that the president now has leads of half a point or less in New Mexico, Maine, and Minnesota; that Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Arizona, George, North Carolina and the Nebraska Second are all Trump by four or more and it’s seven in Michigan and Pennsylvania. Biden’s support dropped by roughly two percentage points in all twelve of these states and in Colorado and Minnesota. If he cannot recover all of this, the Democrats are looking at a loss of at least 100 electoral votes. The profound moments of American political history – secession, Watergate, Teapot Dome, the retirement of Lyndon Johnson, all the rest – share one commonality. These stories have each taken on a momentum of their own; they have each reached a tipping point when – whether quickly or imperceptibly – the other option began to disappear. The momentum in the Biden Re-Election story changed yesterday. And the tipping point may have been reached. The good news could be that suddenly the only candidate with the age problem, would be Trump. The only candidate with the uncertain grip on reality, would be Trump. The only candidate to be called feeble or gaffe-prone or lost, would be Trump. And if Biden really were convinced to retire from the ticket and the office in order to send Kamala Harris into the campaign with the incumbency, she would be the first woman president of the United States asking the voters to validate her with a full term of office – and doing so when a primary plank of the Democratic campaign is the Republicans’ assault on the rights of every woman in this country.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speculation on President Biden possibly resigning before the election, Kamala Harris potentially replacing him, and internal swing state polls indicating a shift in support. Nancy Pelosi's comments adding to the speculation. Analysis of the impact of a Biden withdrawal on the Democratic Party and potential outcomes. Reflective discussion on Biden's decision and the evolving political landscape.

SERIES 2 EPISODE 204: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: If Joe Biden had been pulling his punches in fighting back against the Trump/Supreme Court conspiracy to subvert democracy, he stopped doing so last night. To my mind he should take the Court's unprecedented decision to transform our form of government into a monarchy by the fabrication of something called 'presidential immunity' by showing how it works, announcing he was adding six seats to the Court by Executive Order, and daring SCOTUS to stop him. But as a start, Biden took off the gloves, insisting the American people should join him and Justice Sotomayor in dissenting from the Court immunity decision. Biden attacked Trump by name, said that because the Supreme Court had done “a terrible disservice to this nation” by preventing a Trump trial on January 6th before the election, that therefore the people “must decide” on Trump, and acknowledged “there are virtually no limits to what a president can do." It was a clear declaration of war on the Supreme Court; it was a clear re-positioning of Trump from an unprincipled political opponent to a menace to our form of government. “Any president will be free to ignore the law.”He closed with “may god help preserve our democracy.” The Supreme Court has thrown out 248 years of American history – more really – at the start of the week in which we CELEBRATE that 248thbirthday. As Sotomayor also noted, Alexander Hamilton was specific about the necessity to have a FORMER president be subject to possible prosecution for any crimes he committed, IN OFFICE, because THAT would be one of the key differences between the new United States and the Kingdom of Great Britain, from which we had to stage a revolution to free ourselves. THEIR king was “sacred and inviolable.” OUR president would be subject to “personal punishment and disgrace.” As to the nomination uncertainty: the polls continue to be inconclusive and the tightrope just gets longer. I remain agnostic on the outcome (I want whatever wins). But I want to suggest that the logical extension of calling for Biden to drop off the ticket because you don't think he's sharp enough to win re-election and/or serve another term, is to say he's not sharp enough to be president NOW - and should resign. If you're going to be cynical enough to force him out of office later, why not now, when you could still offer new president Kamala Harris as the incumbent on Election Day? B-Block (31:40) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Ken Dilanian of NBC, Matthew Belloni of Puck, and Ben Smith of Semafor all miss the point of the Biden candidacy story. Ralph Nader blames Hillary for the Chief Justice appointed the president who is Nader's fault. Worst Persons Hall of Famer Bill O'Reilly makes up a story about Biden quitting (but it must be true! It's from the Bill-O'Reilly-Dot-Com-News-Headquarters!) C-Block (42:10) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Another 4th of July falling in the middle of another week, just like it did the year I started my professional career in network radio simply because... the 4th of July was falling in the middle of another week and they needed somebody unemployed, cheap, and immediately.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SERIES 2 EPISODE 203: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:40) BULLETIN: The New York Times has called for a candidate to drop out of the presidential race after his performance in a debate - a debate which has IMPROVED his standing against his opponent in several polls. No, President Biden is not dropping out. And that wasn't a family oligarchy intervention Sunday at Camp David to tell him to. It was an offing photo shoot. There are no indications (and let's not fully exhale; we don't know if the impacts might appear long-term) that the debate had any significant impact on the presidential race. CBS-YouGov polling released Sunday says even in the wake of the understandable blunt-force trauma we all went through as we watched, 55% of the Democrats have NO interest in changing horses while after the same debate 54% percent of EVERYBODY says TRUMP should drop out. “I am finishing my second battleground state poll post-debate,” writes the Democratic pollster Geoff Garin, “and both surveys show the same thing: the debate had no effect on the vote choice. The election was extremely close and competitive before the debate, and it is still extremely close and competitive today.” Morning Consult and Data For Progress polled right after the debate, the percentages of those who think Biden should drop out went up like four points, but the Biden-versus-Trump match-up… Biden went UP a point. In Survey USA he went UP THREE points. Translation: yeah, maybe he should drop out but if he doesn’t, I’m still voting for him. The almost negligible impact on Biden’s poll numbers may be as transitory as whatever it was that impaired the president during the debate, because his health and age is baked-in to the voters’ perception of him. There was nothing before the debate, nothing in his grueling international travels to the G7 and Normandy and elsewhere that was as bad as what he did during the debate. He was clear the day before and the next morning. And there is a plausible and intuitively satisfactory possible explanation for what CAUSES something like that in an 81-year old man. If the President had a cold – and I don’t know about you, but I’ll admit it: I’VE had colds in my life, and his hoarseness, it sounded to me like a cold – if he had a cold, did he take cold medicine? You know, like just Tylenol. Cold medicine. The Yale School of medicine professor, cardiologist and head of outcomes evaluation at Yale New Haven Hospital Center Dr. Harlan Krumholz wrote a piece for Newsweek: “Biden's symptoms are consistent with someone suffering from temporary drug-induced cognitive impairment. Most people believe common over-the-counter cold medications such as Dayquil, Tylenol, or Advil to be harmless. While generally well tolerated, these medications have well-documented side effects and can cause reduced alertness, diminished attention, poor memory, and reduced reaction time, especially in older individuals. These impairments are transitory but can appear consequential and alarming. Every experienced clinician has seen this effect thousands of times…" The real illness right now may be in our media. NBC News got the Camp David thing utterly wrong. The Times made fools of its editorial board and top columnists and based on something a staffer wrote there is every reason to suspect that it acted as it did because if Biden were to drop out it would prove the Times wasn't a fatally broken organization that put its thumb on the scale because he wouldn't give them a one-on-one interview. Regardless: the breaking news is - nothing's broken.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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

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

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