Countdown with Keith Olbermann

EPISODE 210: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:41) SPECIAL COMMENT: Though they've paid him $900,000 for lawyers and another $500,000 from their "think tank," Trump's team has not heard from his former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and does not know if he has stayed silent, is a target of Special Counsel Jack Smith, or has FLIPPED ON TRUMP AND IS SMITH'S PRIMARY WITNESS. Even Jim Jordan, conspiracist-in-chief, says he talks to Meadows weekly but never brings up, you know, conspiracies. This could be why the Special Counsel's office is wrapping up - and leaking - everything. Plus: Ron DeSantis should have used Fax, not Twitter. That unparalleled disaster is all he'll be remembered for, firmly eliminates Musk and Twitter as threats to Fox and others, and may make even Tucker Carlson think twice. CNN does schedule another Town Hall, because the first one went so well. And to Marjorie Taylor Greene's credit at least she knew which end of the gavel to bang against the table. Humiliation in the House. B-Block (17:16) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: Briefly it looked like Tom Hanks had gotten into a fight on the Red Carpet at the Cannes Film Festival. I immediately flashed back to the day in 1999 when it briefly looked like Tom Hanks had gotten into a fight on the Red Carpet at the Oscars... with ME. C-Block (36:00) EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: Poor Chelsea, on death row AGAIN in New York (37:05) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: In an LA-nostalgic mood, I must recount the day I got the scoop of the year in LA sports - maybe in all of sports - and then the cameraman said "wait - I may not have recorded that."See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

EPISODE 209: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:43) SPECIAL COMMENT: The Special Counsel is at the End Game. From The Wall Street Journal: “Some of Trump’s close associates are bracing for his indictment and anticipate being able to fundraise off a prosecution, people in the former president’s circle said...Jack Smith has all but finished obtaining testimony and other evidence” (about the classified documents Trump stole and stashed). What's more: Trump knows this is it. His attorneys John Rowley and Jim Trusty last night wrote a “Dear Attorney General Garland” letter that Trump clearly composed. I don’t know exactly where this lands on the scale from Panic, to Desperately Trying To Gain Public Pity, to Lawyers Desperately Trying To Please Their Crazy Client. But it's desperate and childish and revelatory: “Dear Attorney General Garland: "We represent Donald J. Trump, the 45th President of the United States, in the investigation currently being conducted by the Special Counsel’s Office. Unlike President Biden, his son Hunter, and the Biden family, President Trump is being treated unfairly. No President of the United States has ever, in the history of our country, been baselessly investigated in such an outrageous and unlawful fashion. We request a meeting at your earliest convenience to discuss the ongoing injustice that is being perpetrated by your Special Counsel and his prosecutors. "Thank you for your attention to this matter." I understand Garland has composed his reply “Dear Mr. Rowley and Mr. Trusty, happy to meet you and your client, please come to my office at 123 Trump Pooped His Pants Didn’t He? Avenue, Washington D.C." I know we all have Mueller Derangement Syndrome. But when the WSJ says it's over - it's over. B-Block (15:19) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: Ron DeSantis will announce something everybody already knows. He'll announce it on Twitter, which will make all the Trump cultists hate Musk. And he'll announce it instead of something he just mentioned in passing the other day which is the first good reason he's given for supporting him over Trump. How would Trumpy try for a 3rd Term? And just when the CNN Town Hall thing seemed to be dying, its PR person sets it ablaze anew. (21:25) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Martin Shrkeli is back and weirder than ever; the Youth Poet Laureate's poem is banned in Florida because of one crazy parent; Matt Gaetz confesses the Republicans think of the Democrats as their "hostages" in the debt discussion. C-Block (27:45) EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: Layla's Heart and Rescue in Texas needs your help (28:45) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Lauren Sanchez and Jeff Bezos are reportedly engaged. Engaged in WHAT?See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

EPISODE 208: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Special Counsel Jack Smith is clearly pursuing a theory of Donald Trump’s stolen classified documents conspiracy in which Trump ignored a subpoena to return every classified document, committed Obstruction of Justice and violated the Espionage Act by hiding them from his own attorney’s search in order to retain them, and then somehow utilized them in post-presidency business deals with one of seven countries, including China and Saudi Arabia. AND as evidence: Jack Smith has nothing less than the real time hand-written notes from Trump’s own attorney. The real-time record (one analyst describes it as “Special Counsel Smith strikes gold”) could be enough to put Trump in prison for ten years PER COUNT for not just willfully retaining classified documents, but deliberately HIDING THEM to keep his own lawyer from finding them and giving them back to the authorities – a brazen violation of a key part of the Espionage Act. And from a separate sourced story and even more astonishingly, it’s clear the Special Counsel is ALSO pursuing evidence that Trump may have given, or traded, or SOLD classified documents to China, France, Kuwait, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and/or the United Arab Emitates. Whether the evidence can be obtained – whether it even exists – isn’t clear. On the other hand, Jack Smith didn’t pick the names of seven countries out of a hat. B-Block (19:23) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: Congratulations, Anderson Cooper, you've escaped 4th Place! Chris Wallace? Not so much. SOMETHING good came from that network-ending Trump Town Hall: E. Jean Carroll IS suing Trump again. And the real nightmare of the fake AI of the "explosions" that never happened at the Pentagon and White House? The AI will only get more convincing (22:40) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Marjorie Taylor Greene's boyfriend claims Brittney Griner is a "man;" the GOP wants a NATIONAL stand-your-ground right to murder law; and what does it profit a man to run for president if he loses his face? C-Block (27:50) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: My God, it's 23 years since I quit SportsCenter to go try my hand at news at NBC. The story's been told a dozen times in a dozen ways, none of them accurately. Especially the part of how an unexpected development after I quit - the arrival of a letter from the father of an autistic boy - caused me to go back to my bosses and say I was willing to stay, at least for one show a week.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

EPISODE 207: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: If we do not harden our stances and fight now and convince our less adamantine cohorts to do the same, we are going to lose this democracy. “Should the Democrats hold fast (on the debt ceiling) and not negotiate, or should they negotiate spending constraints with the Republicans,” reads the question in the new Harvard Harris Poll. 82 percent of Republicans say the Democrats should negotiate with Republicans. AND 41 PERCENT OF DEMOCRATS SAY DEMOCRATS SHOULD NEGOTIATE WITH THE REPUBLICANS. Are you KIDDING? Are you INSANE? Are you SUICIDAL? NEGOTIATE. You do not negotiate with terrorists. You metaphorically shoot terrorists in the head. “I’m looking at the 14th Amendment. I think we have the authority. The question is, could it be done in time,” said the President from Hiroshima. “We have not come up with unilateral action that could succeed in a matter of two weeks or three weeks. That’s the issue. So it’s up to lawmakers.” With respect, Mr. President, it is NOT. Stop caving in to these fascists. They are NOT negotiating. They are NOT operating from any position of good faith or coherent philosophy except to try to destroy the economy and blame you and run against you on it and you have stated as much and you are still standing there with another metaphorical gun pointed against YOUR head hoping that you will find some middle road with the people who have spent the last 30 years dynamiting and jack-hammering all the middle roads. I mean this is so obvious even POLITICO noticed it. POLITICO. Official stenographers of the 17th Century. Its LEAD story summarized where the quote “negotiations” unquote are, how Democrats have already caved and Republicans have gotten more intransigent. And even AXIOS noticed how determined Trump is to be elected Dictator, and how he is openly campaigning on eliminating democracy. We need no more negotiations with Republicans. We need leaders who will fight and defeat them. COMIC RELIEF: The boss of CNN's Chris Licht got one of the great thrills of life: the opportunity to give the commencement address at his alma mater. And he was booed and interrupted throughout by Boston University students angry over his Hollywood Studio's stance in the Writers' Strike. Or maybe they weren't booing and were just chanting "Zaz." Back at the ranch, a Trump social post over the weekend confirms my reporting from last week: that CNN is at minimum discussing a 2nd Trump Town Hall. And Anderson Cooper's viewers have left the silo and his show has now settled into 4th Place behind NewsMax - because obviously CNN is tanking to get the first draft choice. B-Block (20:20) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: It is the greatest bad political soundbite of all time: greater than Herschel Walker's "erection," greater than Adlai Stevenson, greater than Sarah Palin's 117 entries. Also: never endorse somebody you can't be certain won't vote to overturn Roe v Wade later. And the Mississippi school forcing a trans girl to dress as a boy for graduation. (25:46) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Texas book banning affects Texas's poet laureate, Marge Greene denies she's a white supremacist so that must be somebody else's Confederate Flag. And George W. Bush makes a comeback. C-Block (31:00) EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: One By One Animal Advocates, a group which has saved about 30,000 animals in West Virginia in a decade, itself needs our rescue help (32:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: As we move towards the two-week mark of the CNN crisis, a look back at the worst management decision in TV history, so bad that after a week they told the poor guy he still had the title but he wasn't permitted to actually DO anything.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

EPISODE 206: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:44): SPECIAL COMMENT: “Republicans are back on the air,” Chris Licht’s boss said yesterday, 24 hours after Christiane Amanpour had politely vivisected Licht in front of all those new Columbia J-School grads.”Republicans weren’t on the air. During the McCarthy hearings, for those four days, we had 75 Republicans on the air. 41 went on us before they went on Fox. And the reason is…they are not going to get one more vote on Fox." And Trump is quote “the front-runner. He has to be on our network. We’re happy he’s coming on our network.” And after spelling out CNN's new role as an advocacy network Republicans can use to find new votes, David Zaslav then says "advertisers...don't want to be part of an advocacy network,." Zaslav doubles down on his metaphorical suicide pact with Licht as their CNN strategy becomes clear: Increase advertising by decreasing viewership! Plus the latest from inside the network on CNN In Crisis: Day 10. No retribution planned against Amanpour (yet); talks ongoing with Trump for a second event, maybe a second Town Hall; Erin Burnett and Anderson Cooper have officially fallen into fourth place behind NewsMax; and a new factor in this disaster. A week ago nearly 50% of stockholders voted AGAINST Zaslav's CEO compensation. B-Block (21:41) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: The Republican plan to...defund the Air Force? Dianne Feinstein's health, and the urgency for her to resign, both grow. And Wednesday Marjorie Taylor Scumbag Greene was joking in public with Jamaal Bowman and yesterday she was claiming his body language threatened her and she fell right into the "That Black Man was looking at me." (26:15) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: As we commemorate the anniversary of the Mt. St. Helens volcano, a tribute to the fill-in newscaster who insisted it killed a former president. Elon Musk makes an offer we can't refuse. And Ron DeSantis sure showed Disney! He owned the libs, and the libs now own $1,000,000,000. C-Block (31:30) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: Back to the first story of James Thurber I ever read aloud in front of people. Hilarious and deeply disturbing at the same time: "A Box To Hide In."See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

EPISODE 205: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:44) CNN's Chief International Correspondent Christiane Amanpour has become the first on-air CNN journalist to openly criticize CNN's televising of last week's Trump Town Hall - and she did it in no less a venue than the Commencement Speech at Columbia's Journalism School. She was polite and diplomatic but still left little pieces of CEO Chris Licht spread all over the campus as she stealthily apologized for CNN, and one casual remark about how she "would have dropped the mike at 'nasty person'" completely erased the hapless moderator Kaitlan Collins  Full coverage and recorded excerpts of Amanpour's speech to Columbia J-School grads. B-Block (17:20) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: Jamaal Bowman, evokers of the 14th Amendment, the National Archives and the DA in NY are among those who are reminding Democrats: THROW THE FIRST PUNCH. C-Block (31:12) EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: Venice - who you helped save when he was still named "Venom" again pleads for your help (32:10) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: The day I fell off a cliff making a Boston Market TV commercial: Eat Something! Well, I sure did.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

EPISODE 204: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:43) SPECIAL COMMENT: Chris Licht or somebody close to him has inadvertently confessed that the network did, as accused, illicitly pack the live crowd at the Trump Town Hall with Trump Supporters, and lied to the public when it insisted the crowd would represent the entire voting mix for the New Hampshire GOP Primary.  A CNBC story (and it has all the ear-marks of a cable network public relations department clean-up operation) says Licht has defended the concept of the Town Hall ad insisted "history will look kindly" on his decisions but that CNN could've done some things better, including introducing the live crowd to the TV audience so viewers would know WHY THE LIVE CROWD SUPPORTED TRUMP. Licht or the Licht-adjacent leaker never stopped to think that they were admitting that the audience WAS stacked, hat the crowd was full of Trump plants. Furthermore they never stopped to think that saying that in retrospect they should have talked to some of the room full of Trump cultists before they started booing Kaitlan Collins and before Trump started to egg them on, supports the accusations by the Republican Governor OF New Hampsher Chris Sununu, and the former Republican Governor OF New Jersey Chris Christie, that virtually everybody they saw in that studio at St. Anselm’s College was a Trump supporter they recognized by sight. It also supports the accusation by Chris Christie that CNN let Trump choose who would be in the crowd. In one fell swoop, CNN has just admitted it was an almost-entirely pro-Trump crowd, and they shouldn’t have deceived the viewers into thinking anything else, but that they DID, and Licht wishes they hadn’t done that. Lie. To the viewers. To the nation. This elevates this disaster from mere television and journalistic malfeasance, into a literal kind of deception, a three-card Monte game, in which a bluntly, nakedly, unforgivably biased, slanted, fully-loaded fascist political rally was televised by a network whose executives and announcers lied that it was some kind of news or public events broadcast. Lastly, and maybe worst of all, the CNBC piece hints that a network may be considering another Trump Town Hall. Read the tea leaves in the article and it's pretty clear that the network thinking about a Trump Town Hall 2 - that's leaking what it would do to improve on the first one...is CNN. B-Block (19:54) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: Yesterday's lead? About the shocker inside the Rudy Giuliani sex story? That he was offering pardons for $2,000,000 apiece and splitting the money with Trump? Turns out the exact same story - Giuliani offering pardons for $2M/per - was reported in real time; The bid to expel George Santos and why a vote is imminent; and the good news is, Dianne Feinstein talked to a couple of reporters yesterday. The bad news is, she doesn't know where she's been the last three months. (25:13) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: DeSantis joins the chorus of people who never read the Bible but are still calling NYC's alleged Subway Strangler "A Good Samaritan;" a Trump shill Congresswoman insists she's NOT a Trump shill; and Lauren Boebert is divorcing her husband and he is reportedly furious. God! Why? C-Block (30:00) EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: Shiloh, thrown from a car in Atlanta (30:50) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: This scenario playing out at CNN? Turning it into a right-wing propaganda network while pretending you're just making sure "all voices are heard?" The reason I keep talking about it, and feel so strongly about it, is that 20 years ago this spring MSNBC tried the exact same thing. Even put on a fascist commentator - literally wearing a Brownshirt on the air - named Michael Savage. And not only did ratings vanish but Savage embarrassed the company so badly he had to be fired. Then went all the producers. Then the executives. Finally the president of MSNBC, and the head of NBC News. It does not end well - as it won't end well for Licht and CNN.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

EPISODE 203: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:44) FOUR DIFFERENT LEAD STORIES:  FIRST LEAD STORY: Allegation from lurid sex abuse lawsuit against Rudy Giuliani: Rudy said Trump presidential pardons were available for purchase - as of February 16th, 2019 - $2,000,000 each, half to him, half to Rudy Giuliani. And on February 7th, 2019, Giuliani revealed that if Trump lost the following year’s election there was a plan in place to claim quote “voter fraud” and he repeatedly discussed the plan with his business associate Lev Parnas. Jack Smith needs to talk to this woman and get the tapes she claims she has. because if there is a CHANCE that ANY of this is true, Rudy Giuliani will flip like a cheeseburger. Paragraph 109: “Throughout the employment and attorney-client relationship, Giuliani forced Ms. Dunphy to perform oral sex on him. He often demanded oral sex while he took phone calls on speaker phone from high-profile friends and clients, including then-President Trump. Giuliani told Ms. Dunphy that he enjoyed engaging in this conduct while on the telephone because it made him quote ‘feel like Bill Clinton’ unquote.” SECOND LEAD STORY: Republicans appear to have lost or misplaced (or, hint hint, never had) the Biden "whistleblower" or "informant" they think will end a presidency. The problem is, Chairman James Comer apparently uses the terms interchangeably. He doesn't know his informing from his whistleblowing. He may need to ask Giuliani.  THIRD LEAD STORY: The Durham Report is out and it consists of… nothing. No indictments, no litigation, no calls for punishments. It concludes the FBI shouldn’t have investigated any of it. Just like that. The FBI Inspector General said some of the initial evidence that jump-started the investigation was dubious, but that the investigation was ENTIRELY justified. Durham’s report consists of him basically saying: no it wasn’t. I mean, remember what right wing media, especially Fox News, ESPECIALLY Sean Hannity – remember who they told their addicts were going to be exposed and indicted and revealed by Lord God Almighty John Durham. You ready? James Baker, John Brennan, James Clapper, Hillary Clinton, James Comey, Loretta Lynch, Andrew McCabe, Bruce Ohr, Nellie Ohr, Lisa Page, Samantha Power, Rod Rosenstein, Peter Struck, Sally Yale and of course, evil mastermind Barack Obama. Or as it turns out… None of the Above. The Durham Investigation indicted… none of them. The Durham Investigation blamed… none of them. B-Block (19:03) THE FOURTH LEAD STORY: What did Chris Licht get himself out of prostituting Trump for the Town Hall a week ago tomorrow? He got himself fourth place. On Friday night, Vichy CNN fell to FOURTH in a three-team league. An average of 335-thousand total viewers. That's 1.1 million behind behind Fox, three quarters of a million behind MSNBC, and 22,000 behind… NewsMax? Honest to God. NewsMax. And Anderson Cooper, after he condescendingly scolded his viewers and claimed they were living in silos? Most cable news shows drop Thursday to Friday. Cooper? He dropped 28 percent. And there is no indication that Licht and CNN have finished rock-bottom yet, neither in the ratings nor the public revulsion. The Daily Beast last night not only quoted a CNN source who called the event “our Chernobyl”but added that Licht is fawning over a reporter from the magazine The Atlantic who is writing a profile of Licht and that somehow CNN and Licht think it’s going to be “a glowing profile of the boss.” (29:22) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: The unusual resume of the man who says you can't have a Congestion Pricing Scheme like London's in New York - because they drive on the other side in London. Plus Roger Ailes' widow attacks Murdoch. And his new book is out, but Josh Hawley's "Manhood" turns out to be a little short. C-Block (34:40) EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: Duke and Simba, on the death list at Devore, CA (35:40) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Well, why not? Since it's Rudy Giuliani Day, how about the story from nearly 30 years ago of when I emceed a baseball events on the steps of City Hall while he was Mayor and a) when it came time to introduce me he didn't know who the hell I was and b) more importantly all day he didn't know where the hell HE WAS.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

EPISODE 202: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:43) SPECIAL COMMENT: Evidence mounts that CNN really did pack the audience at the Trump Town Hall, really did seed the crowd with almost nothing but Trump supporters. And it mounts that CNN let Trump choose the moderator (or at least veto other options to BE the moderator). And it mounts that CNN let Trump pick which pro-Trump talking heads appeared on CNN after the fixed Trump Rally ended. And it also mounts that CNN Chairman Chris Licht has intensified his criticism of the ONLY CNN front-facing talent to dare to even LIGHTLY criticize the decision to prostitute the network, Oliver Darcy, and that Darcy is deciding whether or not to quit before he gets fired. Chris Christie has now joined New Hampshire governor John Sununu in asserting that the 400 "Republican and independent primary voters" were not just random people with a variety of favored candidates. Christie: "CNN went in the tank to get Trump on there. They allowed him to negotiate who was going to be in that audience. And those were all Trump supporters. That was a negotiation deal that Trump did with CNN" Governor Sununu: "I knew pretty much everybody in that audience. They're all Trump supporters." CNN is already in "Quiz Show" territory. 60 years ago corruption like this led to Congressional hearings and Grand Juries. It should lead that way again. Semafor News ids now reported new details of the Licht "fear of God" meeting with his lone on-the-record in-house critic, Oliver Darcy - and potentially a far more dire outcome. Quoting Max Tani’s piece “In the aftermath of the meeting and coverage, Darcy has wondered to colleagues whether he should resign, or if he will be fired by the network...A particularly bitter pill for some CNN employees, was an anonymous comment from a Licht ally to Fox News,”unquote. That comment? Quoting the Fox report, a “source said Licht received a quote ‘ton’ of messages from CNN staffers appalled by Darcy’s newsletter… the messages, according to the source, were like quote ‘what the eff…’” So now instead of bullying and threatening Darcy, Licht instead had a quote “ally” leak to Fox, of all places, that CNN employees were all on Licht’s said and not Darcy’s. B-Block (20:04) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Troy Nehls complains about the open border. And the guy on the terrorist watch list they arrested at the open border. Which ain't open. It turns out Elon Musk's "free speech absolutism" means he's absolutely NOT going to pay for a lawyer to protect free speech in Turkey. And the Jamie Comer investigation of the Bidens is going great. Except they don't have any charges or evidence just an informant and a whistleblower and apparently they've LOST THE INFORMANT. (24:30) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: Kevin Ettinger (1933-2023) C-Block (36:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: There's nothing new about a major television news operation making illicit, inappropriate deals with Republican presidential campaigns. Not only is it looking more and more like Trump did this with Licht's CNN, but I know from experience that in 2008, John McCain's campaign and the RNC demanded my head as the price of McCain showing up for the presidential debate Tom Brokaw was to moderate. Brokaw was more than happy to help them blackmail NBC. And he would later boast about it.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

EPISODE 201: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN This is a new, full, 20-minute segment of the news breaking Friday night about CNN's Trump Town Hall. The closing two blocks of this podcast are repeated from Episode 200 from 5.12.23. A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: CNN's amoral anti-journalistic thug chairman Chris Licht reportedly called the network's only internal on-the-record critic of its telecast of the Trump Nuremberg rally into his office and with at least three other senior executives present, "Put The Fear Of God" into media reporter Oliver Darcy. Additional reporting indicates Licht and CNN manipulated crowd reaction at the "Town Hall" site by telling the audience how it could and could not react. Trump reportedly agreed to do the CNN event because it knew it could manipulate moderator Kaitlan Collins. The numbers don't lie: CNN primetime ratings drop 8% from pre-Trump levels. And Anderson Cooper's snide "living in a silo" remark is disproved by data: Since 2010 CNN has mentioned Trump supporters twice as much as those of all other presidential nominees and presidents combined. And Anderson is boiled alive by his friend and former CNN colleague Sunny Hostin on "The View": she says he's gaslighting us - and she's right. And most importantly: The decisions and the deciders who inflicted upon us the Trump Town Hall reflected journalistic malpractice and citizenship betrayal. Anderson Cooper’s maudlin and condescending attack on his own audience, and the silence of Wolf Blitzer and Jake Tapper and Erin Burnett and ALL of CNN’s reporters and commentators are MORAL failings. Ladies and gentlemen of CNN, do you STAND for anything? Does the organization MEAN anything to you? I wasn’t there on Day One but I WAS there at the end of YEAR ONE and I’m damn proud of it, and I grieve what Chris Licht has done by prostituting it. YOU are the ones, Wolf Blitzer, Jake Tapper, Erin Burnett, even Anderson Cooper up there on your high horse, YOU are the ones keeping the original noble idea – news unrestrained by the need to put on ‘The Beverly Hillbillies’ at 8 PM, while making money – YOU are the ones charged by history, and your own ambitions and principals, with PROTECTING the idea of CNN, and in a broader sense, with PROTECTING journalism and in a broader sense STILL, with protecting DEMOCRACY. Are you going to DO it? Are you going to RISK something? Have you really all been working there for decades and NOT yet made enough money for the rest of your lives? Is there ANYONE at CNN willing to place their craft and their responsibility ahead of their paycheck, or… nah, let’s just let the media critic do it, by himself. Shouldn’t you go in there WITH him and say enough? Because guess what? Staying out of the fray and protecting your paycheck may work short term. May work for years. Or then again, it may not. There are a lot of ambitious anchors without any standards out there. Maybe it’d be better if you took a risk now in defense of, you know, the United States of America – even if Chris Licht DID get you fired. I mean which would you rather HAVE on your tombstone? I got fired because I protested when my network’s new paste-easting boss Chris Licht sold us out to Donald Trump? Or I got fired because they wanted to expand Kaitlan Collins Tonight… to FIVE HOURS? B-Block (24:11) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: Biden really does seem poised to spring the 14th Amendment on Republican Debt Ceiling Hostage-Takers; Why is every news report calling the white man who choked another man to death on the NYC subway a "Navy veteran" rather than what they would call a person of color, something like "Crazed Subway Strangler"?  THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: There is ONE political boss still backing George Santos. There is one presidential campaign running on a promise to disenfranchise some of the people who would elect him. There is one CNN on-air person praising Kaitlan Collins' persistent impotence. C-Block (33:30 EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: The brindle mix on the kill list in New York is named, in sad irony, "Free." (34:35) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: It's his story that best fits the saga of Trump and degeneracy mistaken for power: "The Greatest Man In The World."See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.