Countdown with Keith Olbermann

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.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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."    See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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."See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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."See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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?    See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.