Countdown with Keith Olbermann

SERIES 2 EPISODE 92: BULLETIN EDITION/COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN BULLETIN: (1:40) In literally his last 24 hours in office, Donald Trump ordered a 10-inch thick binder of raw, ultra-secret intelligence about Russia interference, spying, and disinformation in this country - and American means of uncovering it - brought to the White House. He began to declassify it over the objection of every intelligence chief. His chief of staff Mark Meadows summoned disgraced ex-journalist John Solomon to the White House and handed him countless pages of the vital classified intelligence and a Solomon staffer "was even allowed to leave the White House with the declassified records in a paper bag.” The original unredacted binder, containing thousands of pages, has never been recovered in the nearly three years since it was last seen in Trump's hands. This comes from a new report this morning from CNN - startling even in the context of Trump's previously revealed treachery, treason, and intelligence theft. The implications of the report are obvious: Trump may still have the binder. Or he may have given it to someone else (the report implicates his former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows). Or he may have given it to a foreign country. Or sold it. And perhaps more importantly: WHAT did Trump hope to achieve by giving its contents to John Solomon the night before Joe Biden's 2021 inauguration? Solomon was literally stopped as he scanned the documents, presumably for publication, by White House lawyers who demanded he return what Trump had given him. Was Trump hoping that the small percentage of documents that pertained to "Operation Crossfire Hurricane" would serve as a pretext for him to act to STOP the Biden Inauguration by using the Insurrection Act, or by other pretext, and with the military's help? Is this nightmare of Trump stealing thousands of pages of intelligence about Russia's perfidy in our country - its violation of our national borders - its virtual invasion of our country, simply the preface for a darker plot in which Trump would have used the material as an excuse to illegally remain in power? Does he still have the binder? Does he still have the plan? (14:35) SPECIAL COMMENT: After spending their lives as bullies, Donald John Trump and Rudolph William Louis Giuliani will go out as cowards. Guess who did NOT testify yesterday as testimony ended in the Ruby Freeman/Shay Moss/Rudy Giuliani case? Yes, the defendant, who had promised after court Monday and Tuesday that he would testify, prove that he was telling the truth about them, and that they were lying about him. Instead, his lawyer was reduced to painting Giuliani as a pathetic "flat-earther" who could never process reality. Giuliani said nothing as the case concluded and the jury deliberated for three hours what he should make out the check for - and they didn't reach a conclusion. When it takes jurors more than one day to decide how much money you owe the people you lied about, guess what: you’re going to owe the people you lied about… eleventy billion dollars. It has been quite the week for Trumpian cowardice, led by Trump himself, because if the whole Giuliani "I'll prove I'm right" posturing sounds familiar, Trump did the SAME THING this week. He vowed to tell the truth – under oath - about the New York Business Fraud judge and the clerk and the attorney general and then suddenly, he vanished. Cowardice was on sale at popular prices in Trump-land this week. In ATLANTA yesterday the letters of apology required for the plea deals for Trump 19 confessed conspirators Sidney Powell and Kenneth Chesbro were obtained through a Public Records Act motion and combined they stretched to just 26 words. The importance of Giuliani and Trump wimping out is that it underscores that when the spit hits the fan, the bullies ARE the first to run. The lesson in this is simple: hit them. Hit them every day. Hit them with every lawsuit, every indictment, every protest, every public mockery, every embarrassment. Hit them with everything you have, every day, for the rest of their lives. Because what Trump proved by NOT being in a New York courtroom Monday, and what Giuliani proved by squirming at the defense table yesterday, is that you CAN break them. Both of them. Maybe not all at once, maybe not permanently. But they cannot bullshit their way out of EVERYTHING. ALSO: You'll never believe how bad Vivek Ramaswamy's CNN ratings were. Or Charles Barkley's. And guess what else is back? Cajun Congressman Clay Higgins' "Ghost Buses" delusion. Except now they're MISSING! Complete with an interview by delusional ex-reporter Lara Logan. And her show literally opens with video of Logan playing in traffic. B-Block (36:53) IN SPORTS: Gene Carr, "The New Kid In Town," and Ken MacKenzie of the 1962 Mets, in memoriam (42:24) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Elon Musk says an anti-fraud law is a violation of the 1st Amendment. Kevin McCarthy puts the artificial in Artificial Intelligence. And what kind of act could the New York GOP find to follow George Santos? How about a registered Democrat whose name is spelled Nazi - only with an "M." C-Block (48:05) EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: An extraordinary Minnesota rescue is in danger of losing everything: 9 dogs and 130 more animals from Emus to Silky Chickens. (49:10) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: Man versus machine, reduced to Man versus Medicine Cabinet: "Nine Needles." And man versus transportation, reduced to mice: "The Mouse Who Went To The Country."  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SEASON 2 EPISODE 91: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: After spending their lives as bullies, Donald John Trump and Rudolph William Louis Giuliani will go out as cowards. Guess who did NOT testify yesterday as testimony ended in the Ruby Freeman/Shay Moss/Rudy Giuliani case? Yes, the defendant, who had promised after court Monday and Tuesday that he would testify, prove that he was telling the truth about them, and that they were lying about him. Instead, his lawyer was reduced to painting Giuliani as a pathetic "flat-earther" who could never process reality. Giuliani said nothing as the case concluded and the jury deliberated for three hours what he should make out the check for - and they didn't reach a conclusion. When it takes jurors more than one day to decide how much money you owe the people you lied about, guess what: you’re going to owe the people you lied about… eleventy billion dollars. It has been quite the week for Trumpian cowardice, led by Trump himself, because if the whole Giuliani "I'll prove I'm right" posturing sounds familiar, Trump did the SAME THING this week. He vowed to tell the truth – under oath - about the New York Business Fraud judge and the clerk and the attorney general and then suddenly, he vanished. Cowardice was on sale at popular prices in Trump-land this week. In ATLANTA yesterday the letters of apology required for the plea deals for Trump 19 confessed conspirators Sidney Powell and Kenneth Chesbro were obtained through a Public Records Act motion and combined they stretched to just 26 words. The importance of Giuliani and Trump wimping out is that it underscores that when the spit hits the fan, the bullies ARE the first to run. The lesson in this is simple: hit them. Hit them every day. Hit them with every lawsuit, every indictment, every protest, every public mockery, every embarrassment. Hit them with everything you have, every day, for the rest of their lives. Because what Trump proved by NOT being in a New York courtroom Monday, and what Giuliani proved by squirming at the defense table yesterday, is that you CAN break them. Both of them. Maybe not all at once, maybe not permanently. But they cannot bullshit their way out of EVERYTHING. ALSO: You'll never believe how bad Vivek Ramaswamy's CNN ratings were. Or Charles Barkley's. And guess what else is back? Cajun Congressman Clay Higgins' "Ghost Buses" delusion. Except now they're MISSING! Complete with an interview by delusional ex-reporter Lara Logan. And her show literally opens with video of Logan playing in traffic. B-Block (23:48) IN SPORTS: Gene Carr, "The New Kid In Town," and Ken MacKenzie of the 1962 Mets, in memoriam (29:19) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Elon Musk says an anti-fraud law is a violation of the 1st Amendment. Kevin McCarthy puts the artificial in Artificial Intelligence. And what kind of act could the New York GOP find to follow George Santos? How about a registered Democrat whose name is spelled Nazi - only with an "M." C-Block (35:00) EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: An extraordinary Minnesota rescue is in danger of losing everything: 9 dogs and 130 more animals from Emus to Silky Chickens. (36:05) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: Man versus machine, reduced to Man versus Medicine Cabinet: "Nine Needles." And man versus transportation, reduced to mice: "The Mouse Who Went To The Country."See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SEASON 2 EPISODE 90: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Dementia J. Trump has really lived up to the name. Or - DOWN to it. In a jaw-dropping development, even for him, even for his declining acuity, even in the vast Fog of Trump, he has just endorsed TWO rival candidates in the same congressional Republican primary. Saturday, at the Young Republicans banquet, Trump endorses Bo Hines, hoping to be chosen as the Republican running for North Carolina’s 6th Congressional District. Then yesterday, Trump writes “Addison McDowell just announced he is running for North Carolina’s 6th Congressional District… has my Complete and Total endorsement." There are SIX Republicans in the primary. Plenty of time for Trump to endorse all six of them. The primary isn’t until the 5th of March. This should stop being a surprise.  The man is mentally impaired, declining fast, doesn’t know which number World War the NEXT World War would be, continually confuses Obama for Biden, doesn’t know what city he’s in, thinks Hungary’s Viktor Orban is the dictator of Turkey, and this is after he STARTED with any one (or more) of a dozen psychological and maybe physiological problems that could be summarized under the heading “his brain doesn’t work right.” It is not just a question of what Trump would do that he wanted to do but thought he couldn’t get away with the first time. It is also a question of what Trump would do that he would never know he was doing – out of sheer mental incapacitation. Like endorsing two candidates in the same race. Within 89 hours. Just to put a cherry on top of this cake of crazy, as I was recording the podcast Trump was speaking in Iowa. He was supposed to boast about the "U.S. Economy." But he didn't say that. He said the "Eunice Economy." Eunice. So good economic news for anybody named Eunice. Also: Hunter Biden humiliates Jim Comer and Jim Jordan, and the Republicans address the danger that Joe Biden is to America by launching a formal inquiry into impeaching him and then immediately going on vacation for the rest of the year. The show trial impeachment of Joe Biden is SO fraudulent that it has even by noticed by Chuck Todd, who has written 1,947 of the dumbest words imaginable on the topic, including the idea - as if he had dreamt it up - that the concept of impeachment has now been diluted. What Chuck did not mention but I will, is the role NBC News played on the day impeachment - and our original form of government - died. September 21, 1998, the day NBC and all the other networks prostituted themselves to the GOP and ran, unseen and unedited and without any context, Bill Clinton's Grand Jury testimony that had been illegally given to the Republican-run House Judiciary Committee and then illegally broadcast on all the networks while not one of tv's "journalists" made one complaint. It was before Chuck's time at NBC. It was NOT before mine. B-Block (27:21) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Running the gamut from Twitter-X to Tesla to putting his thumb on the finger for Republican politicians, Elon Musk wins all three medals. C-Block (34:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Any one, in any profession, can have a similar experience. But only in broadcasting does it signal the death of your youth. "Hey," your new colleague says. "I used to listen to you when I was a KID." I've been on both sides of the equation and I'll tell you those stories.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SEASON 2 EPISODE 89: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT:  The Republican Party, a wholly owned subsidiary of Vladimir Putin and the government of Russia, faced - to paraphrase Churchill - the bleak choice between war and shame. It has chosen shame. And it will get war thrown in, a little later. This, simply, is true: THE UNITED STATES is not helping UKRAINE… UKRAINE is helping the United States. It is fighting OUR war: at the cost of ITS lives, at the cost of ITS territory, at the cost of the existence through which its people must suffer. To protect US from Russia. And the Republicans are sending him home to, in all probability, watch his nation and his people die, because the Republicans are no longer connected, in any way, to reality. ALL issues are political machinations. ALL crises are opportunities. ALL good causes are to be held hostage so that fascism in America can take away a little more freedom and even more morality from the nation the Republican Party has raped. Once again, to re-purpose the infamous George W. Bush phrase – fighting them over there, so we don’t have to fight them over HERE. THEY are the Russians and THEIR fascist madman’s dreams are as non-secret as ours is. He wants to reestablish the size and composition of the Soviet Union. That’s all of Ukraine. Estonia. Georgia. Belarus, Latvia, half a dozen more. That’s control-by-proxy of what is now Czechia and Slovakia, Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, Albania, Poland, and half of Germany. Putin’s response? The Russians have already carpet-bombed Kiev this morning. And the Republican Party held THE DOOR OPEN FOR THEM, just as it tried to hold the door open for Adolf Hitler to subsume Europe 85 years ago. It will let him in and blame the Democrats about the Mexican border because the Republicans and the Republicans alone see a connection between a foreign dictator trying to absorb our allies and re-start the full-scale cold war, and immigration which the Republicans don’t actually want to SOLVE anyway because the point of the quote “border crisis” is to make sure there always IS a border crisis so the Republicans can scare their voters with it. And yet when Joe Biden says fine, we can couple these unrelated issues, let’s resolve everything, the Republicans say no. And we’re going on vacation. And Mike Johnson will need to see a detailed play script on exactly how Volodomir Zelensky is going to win and you think, man would I like to see Mike Johnson at the Ukrainian front and get to watch him break all land speed records while running away. PLUS: A Democratic Congressman finally nails down what the Republicans want to impeach Biden FOR. "High crimes and misdemeanors." But what EVENT? "That's why we're having an inquiry." But which ACT? "I don't have time to go into details." They're going to charge him with being WOKE. Or with illegally fathering Hunter Biden. Hell, that idiot Giuliani worked Hunter Biden into his latest paranoid theory about his trial for slandering the two Georgia Election Workers.   B-Block (22:45) IN SPORTS: It's the greatest bad clip of sports play-by-play ever. The punch line is, we don't know the NAME of the hockey announcer, just that he describes a goal with "Look at that, look at this look at that." Speaking of bad, Tony Romo called Taylor Swift WHAT? (26:50) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: The climate change conference that doesn't call for an end to fossil fuels; Morning Joe confuses everybody (how is this news?) and your own piece of the suit Trump was wearing when they arrested him - for only $4653. As the joke goes, good news for Trump's finances. There's a lot of fabric when you wear an XXXXXL C-Block (42:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: We are hovering near the 27th anniversary of the day I fell off a cliff shooting a Boston Market TV commercial. "Eat something," I said. And then - I did.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SEASON 2 EPISODE 88: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Jack Smith dares our corrupt Supreme Court to answer the decisive question right here, right now: If Dementia J. Trump is right and he didn't just make up this "Presidential Immunity" bullshit out of whole cloth, why did Ford pardon Nixon? Why did Nixon negotiate a pardon with Ford before he resigned? Why did Trump say just three months ago he was advised to pardon himself, and that if elected again he would consider a self-pardon?  Smith's bold move to get the Supreme Court to decide this ultimate question will, if nothing else, cut Trump's endless stalls off at the pass. But with Samuel Alito just yesterday issuing a dissent in another case that might as well have been pulled off one of Trump's insane ALL CAPS SOCIAL MEDIA WORDGASMS, might Alito lead SCOTUS into a disaster just horrific enough to destroy itself and the nation by siding with Trump's ahistorical, unconstitutional crap? ALSO: On Day One of their trial, Giuliani's lawyer assures us he knows he did wrong and shouldn't be punished for slandering the two Georgia poll workers. Then Rudy goes out and slanders them again. Trump's mental deterioration is so obvious it was noticed even by Megyn Kelly (who looks like she could star in a re-make of "Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS"). And his "dictator" remarks are so obviously dangerous that even Peter Baker and The New York Times noticed - and the Trump campaign is trying to get him to ix-nay the ictatorship-day. B-Block (20:00) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: Their political grandfathers wanted to appease Hitler and give him England and the Jews. Today's GOP is meeting with representatives of Hungarian strongman Orban to try to appease Putin and give him Ukraine and NATO. (24:37) IN SPORTS: Shohei Ohtani is both selfless and selfish. He will defer $68 million a year of his $70 million salary, giving his new Dodger employers a huge break in the baseball "luxury tax" - and himself on the real California state tax. And what happened to that Ohtani-To-Toronto story? My bet, from having seen it occur to another brilliant sports reporter, is that Jon Paul Morosi didn't screw up; his source did - or lied to him. I'll tell you the Jim Lampley/Larry Brown story. And I'll SING ABOUT MOROSI AND OHTANI. (34:31) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Vivek Ramaswamy's most cogent statement ever: leaves the mike on during a bathroom break. Climate deniers will get to watch another previously unconsidered disaster unfold. And Nancy Mace and her fiancé broke up? A class dame like her what talks about morning sex at a prayer breakfast? c-Block (39:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: You are welcome to skip this, but I found a cassette over the weekend. It is a bunch of sportscasts recorded the week of my 18th birthday. The voice is high, the predictions are startlingly good. As are the cameos.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SERIES 2 EPISODE 87: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Dictator-On-Day-One Trump continues to measure the windows for the new curtains in his White House, and I don’t know if that has been PROCESSED on the fascist side or if we have properly done so on the, you know, Non-Dictatorship Side but it is increasingly obvious that Trump is increasingly confident that he will seize power next year. That is the ONLY possible explanation for what he has now done: leaking, to the gullible and willing stenographers from Axios Mike Allen and Jim Vandehei for publication yesterday, a set of choices for his administration that would make Jair Bolsonaro blush: Vice President Tucker Carlson, Chief of Staff Steve Bannon, CIA Director Kash Patel, Attorney General Stephen Miller, or Attorney General Mike Davis, or Attorney General J.D. Vance, Secretary of Defense Tom Cotton, Secretary of Denial Kari Lake, Secretaries-of-to-be-announced Kristi Noem, Byron Donalds, Johnny McEntee, and of course Secretary of Lecterns Sarah Huckabee.  We will never fully now, not even after the autopsy, what PRECISELY is wrong with Trump’s brain but it seems clear that whatever it is one of its symptoms is that he must convince himself that he IS winning, WILL win, will ALWAYS win. Jack Smith is right and he IS a serial election denier but it’s deeper than that: at his advanced age and with his advanced diseases, if he ever believed he was defeated, he would die – figuratively or maybe literally. So the greatest relief he could possibly have would be to believe, 334 days before it happens, that he has already won the 2024 election and that is how he is behaving and I’m not sure WHAT to do with that but it HAS to make him sloppy and vulnerable and better minds than ours can problem figure out which soft spot on his head to PUSH. What VALUE is there in saying “here’s Tucker Carlson: psychopathic white supremacist whose career stability makes Keith Olbermann’s look like that of Bob Cratchit – I’m going to put him in government. Along with Kari Lake, whose highest elected office was weekend weather-girl in Rock Island.” It’s the kind of things you do NOT to rally your base and NOT to scare your opponents but because you really can’t STOP yourself from doing them, and suddenly you are more convinced than ever than you can get away with them. And if that isn’t a motto for the entire Trump Nazi Party I don’t know what is. PLUS: Matt Gaetz is about to get Robespierred, J.D. Vance wants to get a head start on prosecutor writers. And competing January 6 Truthers fight it out over whose bullshit is true. (17:35) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: MAGA Congresswoman McClain makes a fool of herself but not as much as would-be MAGA Congressman Philip Sean Grillo does. The NFL coach who really doesn't have to "hand it to" the 9/11 plotters. Poor Nick Fuentes and Vivek Ramaswamy pushing white supremacy without realizing that if the Trumpers run out of brown immigrants, the next people they'll purge will be... Fuentes and Ramaswamy. B-Block (33:31) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: Mr. Preble Gets Rid Of His Wife C-Block (43:32) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: A Box To Hide InSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SEASON 2 EPISODE 86: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: The seven justices of the Supreme Court have given no indication HOW they will rule on Trump’s disqualification under the 14th Amendment and they have given no indication WHEN they will rule but here’s a bigger issue: They have no RIGHT to rule. The 14th Amendment clearly, unquestionably, inarguably, and ETERNALLY states that an insurrectionist can’t serve in an elected federal or state office, or a lot of other offices, and it doesn’t allow anybody to overrule the Constitution because the 14th Amendment already HAS a means for disqualified traitors to appeal – the drafters OF the 14thAmendment BUILT THAT REMEDY IN - and they have already designated two bodies to overrule disqualification under special circumstances, and those bodies are the United States House of Representatives and the United States Senate and if they each vote by two-thirds to let Trump back on the ballot, he’s back on the ballot. That is, for all practical purposes, IN the Constitution! And if they DON’T, he's not. That is also, for all practical purposes, in the Constitution! And we KNOW this because it was written, principally, by Congressman John Bingham, a Radical Republican who not only was one of the House Managers for the IMPEACHMENT of President Johnson, but earlier Bingham had been the Assistant Judge Advocate General during the trial of the accomplices of the man who murdered Lincoln, John Wilkes Booth. And if John Bingham’s attitude towards insurrectionists wasn’t clear enough from the 14thAmendment and the completely justified slow roasting of President Andrew Johnson – just a reminder: the eight co-conspirators charged in the Lincoln Assassination that the co-author of the 14th Amendment PROSECUTED included Mrs. Mary Surratt who ran the boarding house where the conspirators met, and the stagehand at Ford’s Theater who did nothing more than hold Booth’s horse while he went in and murdered the president. They HANGED half of the defendants – including the woman who ran the boarding house. Three of the other four were given life sentences. The guy who held the horse got six years at hard labor. They DID make a concession to Mrs. Surratt. While they were preparing to hang her and the others they let her sit in a chair. The authors of the 14th Amendment weren’t EFFING AROUND. Plus: I've GOT it. I've GOT President Biden's version of the famous only-ran-once only-needed-to-run once Lyndon Johnson 1964 "Daisy" commercial. YOU'RE WELCOME. B-Block (24:46) IN SPORTS: After just 5-1/2 years of rumors: Juan Soto to the Yankees? The White Sox to Nashville? And why, yes, I did sell a 1914 Babe Ruth Baltimore Orioles rookie card for seven figures - why do you ask? (33:56) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: NYC Mayor Adams (appointed, he says, by God) has an approval rating of 28%. RFK Jr confesses to flying on Jeffrey Epstein's jet. Musk lets Carlson re-platform Jones on Twitter. C-Block (38:45) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: The fanciness of the British accent trips me up on my way to interviewing Mickey Mantle. Also the guy WITH the woman with the fancy British accent was wearing a CAPE.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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

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

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