Episodios
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SERIES 2 EPISODE 206: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: “I wasn’t very smart. I decided to travel around the world shortly before the debate,” the President has now said at a fundraiser in Virginia. He then described his arduous travel through 15 Time Zone changes for the G7 and D-Day, and how it affected him at the debate: “I didn’t listen to my staff and then I came home and nearly fell asleep on stage.” The debate was June 27. He returned from his travels on June SIXTEENTH.
This followed by only a few hours a suggestion from Nancy Pelosi that Biden (and Trump) takes an acuity test: "Both candidates owe whatever test you want to put them to, in terms of their mental acuity and their health — both of them. I think it's a legitimate question to say, is this an episode or is this a condition? When people ask that question, it's completely legitimate — of both candidates."
Pelosi thinks Biden has an episode? Or a condition? If there were anything Pelosi could have said that would do LESS to contain all of this, I am hard pressed to guess what it could have been.
And there are disastrous new internal polling numbers leaked from Democratic pollsters OpenLabs to Puck News. Since the debate, New Hampshire has now become Trump by three, Virginia is Trump by one and a half; that the president now has leads of half a point or less in New Mexico, Maine, and Minnesota; that Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Arizona, George, North Carolina and the Nebraska Second are all Trump by four or more and it’s seven in Michigan and Pennsylvania. Biden’s support dropped by roughly two percentage points in all twelve of these states and in Colorado and Minnesota. If he cannot recover all of this, the Democrats are looking at a loss of at least 100 electoral votes.
The profound moments of American political history – secession, Watergate, Teapot Dome, the retirement of Lyndon Johnson, all the rest – share one commonality. These stories have each taken on a momentum of their own; they have each reached a tipping point when – whether quickly or imperceptibly – the other option began to disappear. The momentum in the Biden Re-Election story changed yesterday. And the tipping point may have been reached.
The good news could be that suddenly the only candidate with the age problem, would be Trump. The only candidate with the uncertain grip on reality, would be Trump. The only candidate to be called feeble or gaffe-prone or lost, would be Trump. And if Biden really were convinced to retire from the ticket and the office in order to send Kamala Harris into the campaign with the incumbency, she would be the first woman president of the United States asking the voters to validate her with a full term of office – and doing so when a primary plank of the Democratic campaign is the Republicans’ assault on the rights of every woman in this country.
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SERIES 2 EPISODE 205: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:44) BULLETIN: I now believe the President is going to stand aside and Kamala Harris will replace him as the nominee, and I think there is as much as a 50-50 chance he will also resign his office before the election.
This is NOT based on sourced reporting or inside information but merely an accumulation of new developments during the course of Tuesday, and I take no pleasure in making any of these conclusions, and I haven't even thought long enough about them to be certain if I concur or am opposed to this outcome.But
After Nancy Pelosi's comments today about President Biden and how "I think it's a legitimate question to say, is this an episode or is this a condition? When people ask that question, it's completely legitimate" and how nothing she could have said would do less to tamp down speculation or debate, and especially after today's report of leaked internal swing state Democratic polling, I think - as my friend of half a century Will Bunch put it, "it feels like an energy shift in the force."
The polling is described in detail. The bottom line is that in the 72 hours after the debate, Democratic internal pollsters OpenLabs reported that the six swing states had become twelve swing states and Biden had lost about two points in both of them and was now trailing Trump in Michigan and Pennsylvania by seven.
It's not sustainable.
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SERIES 2 EPISODE 204: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: If Joe Biden had been pulling his punches in fighting back against the Trump/Supreme Court conspiracy to subvert democracy, he stopped doing so last night. To my mind he should take the Court's unprecedented decision to transform our form of government into a monarchy by the fabrication of something called 'presidential immunity' by showing how it works, announcing he was adding six seats to the Court by Executive Order, and daring SCOTUS to stop him.
But as a start, Biden took off the gloves, insisting the American people should join him and Justice Sotomayor in dissenting from the Court immunity decision. Biden attacked Trump by name, said that because the Supreme Court had done “a terrible disservice to this nation” by preventing a Trump trial on January 6th before the election, that therefore the people “must decide” on Trump, and acknowledged “there are virtually no limits to what a president can do."
It was a clear declaration of war on the Supreme Court; it was a clear re-positioning of Trump from an unprincipled political opponent to a menace to our form of government. “Any president will be free to ignore the law.”He closed with “may god help preserve our democracy.”
The Supreme Court has thrown out 248 years of American history – more really – at the start of the week in which we CELEBRATE that 248thbirthday. As Sotomayor also noted, Alexander Hamilton was specific about the necessity to have a FORMER president be subject to possible prosecution for any crimes he committed, IN OFFICE, because THAT would be one of the key differences between the new United States and the Kingdom of Great Britain, from which we had to stage a revolution to free ourselves. THEIR king was “sacred and inviolable.” OUR president would be subject to “personal punishment and disgrace.”
As to the nomination uncertainty: the polls continue to be inconclusive and the tightrope just gets longer. I remain agnostic on the outcome (I want whatever wins). But I want to suggest that the logical extension of calling for Biden to drop off the ticket because you don't think he's sharp enough to win re-election and/or serve another term, is to say he's not sharp enough to be president NOW - and should resign. If you're going to be cynical enough to force him out of office later, why not now, when you could still offer new president Kamala Harris as the incumbent on Election Day?
B-Block (31:40) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Ken Dilanian of NBC, Matthew Belloni of Puck, and Ben Smith of Semafor all miss the point of the Biden candidacy story. Ralph Nader blames Hillary for the Chief Justice appointed the president who is Nader's fault. Worst Persons Hall of Famer Bill O'Reilly makes up a story about Biden quitting (but it must be true! It's from the Bill-O'Reilly-Dot-Com-News-Headquarters!)
C-Block (42:10) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Another 4th of July falling in the middle of another week, just like it did the year I started my professional career in network radio simply because... the 4th of July was falling in the middle of another week and they needed somebody unemployed, cheap, and immediately.
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SERIES 2 EPISODE 203: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:40) BULLETIN: The New York Times has called for a candidate to drop out of the presidential race after his performance in a debate - a debate which has IMPROVED his standing against his opponent in several polls.
No, President Biden is not dropping out. And that wasn't a family oligarchy intervention Sunday at Camp David to tell him to. It was an offing photo shoot.
There are no indications (and let's not fully exhale; we don't know if the impacts might appear long-term) that the debate had any significant impact on the presidential race. CBS-YouGov polling released Sunday says even in the wake of the understandable blunt-force trauma we all went through as we watched, 55% of the Democrats have NO interest in changing horses while after the same debate 54% percent of EVERYBODY says TRUMP should drop out. “I am finishing my second battleground state poll post-debate,” writes the Democratic pollster Geoff Garin, “and both surveys show the same thing: the debate had no effect on the vote choice. The election was extremely close and competitive before the debate, and it is still extremely close and competitive today.” Morning Consult and Data For Progress polled right after the debate, the percentages of those who think Biden should drop out went up like four points, but the Biden-versus-Trump match-up… Biden went UP a point. In Survey USA he went UP THREE points. Translation: yeah, maybe he should drop out but if he doesn’t, I’m still voting for him.
The almost negligible impact on Biden’s poll numbers may be as transitory as whatever it was that impaired the president during the debate, because his health and age is baked-in to the voters’ perception of him. There was nothing before the debate, nothing in his grueling international travels to the G7 and Normandy and elsewhere that was as bad as what he did during the debate. He was clear the day before and the next morning. And there is a plausible and intuitively satisfactory possible explanation for what CAUSES something like that in an 81-year old man. If the President had a cold – and I don’t know about you, but I’ll admit it: I’VE had colds in my life, and his hoarseness, it sounded to me like a cold – if he had a cold, did he take cold medicine? You know, like just Tylenol. Cold medicine.
The Yale School of medicine professor, cardiologist and head of outcomes evaluation at Yale New Haven Hospital Center Dr. Harlan Krumholz wrote a piece for Newsweek: “Biden's symptoms are consistent with someone suffering from temporary drug-induced cognitive impairment. Most people believe common over-the-counter cold medications such as Dayquil, Tylenol, or Advil to be harmless. While generally well tolerated, these medications have well-documented side effects and can cause reduced alertness, diminished attention, poor memory, and reduced reaction time, especially in older individuals. These impairments are transitory but can appear consequential and alarming. Every experienced clinician has seen this effect thousands of times…"
The real illness right now may be in our media. NBC News got the Camp David thing utterly wrong. The Times made fools of its editorial board and top columnists and based on something a staffer wrote there is every reason to suspect that it acted as it did because if Biden were to drop out it would prove the Times wasn't a fatally broken organization that put its thumb on the scale because he wouldn't give them a one-on-one interview.
Regardless: the breaking news is - nothing's broken.
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A-Block (1:40) SPECIAL COMMENT: As I reported in our live video version of this podcast on YouTube and Twitch right after the "debate," there were three participants in the CNN event last night, not just two. President Biden was competing against the tag team of Trump and CNN.
I warned here on Wednesday that CNN's abrogation of the primary responsibility of any journalistic effort anywhere and at any time in the history of the world (when the guy urinates on your leg and tells you it's raining, you're supposed to SAY something) had the potential to render the first Biden-Trump "debate" into a repeat of the network's disastrous live Town Hall with Trump last year.
But in that one, and though she failed, Kaitlin Collins at least tried to push back against Trump's firehouse of lies. Last night, Jake Tapper and Dana Bash disgraced themselves and disqualified themselves from any future reportorial credibility (under the guidance of CNN political director David Chalian and new chief Mark Thompson). CNN gave Trump 45 minutes in front of an audience that may have topped 100,000,000 to lie about everything from January 6th to his own golf performance. I documented 40 of the lies. I think I missed two-thirds of them, or more. CNN pushed back against exactly none.
The network had promised to at least not abide Trump's lies about the 2020 election and having set the truth bar as low as it could have gone, failed to reach even that.
It's not just that Bash and Tapper should be fired (and Chalian and Thompson and anybody else in management responsible for this utter, corrupt pandering to Trump). If I had done what they did, I would have resigned and fled the country by now. And probably changed my name.In a just world, CNN would be forced off the air and out of business, today, and its offices evacuated and the empty buildings leveled. The operation where I began my TV career in 1981 and resumed my news career in 2002 is dead and its credibility is now marked with the NewsMaxes and RSNs of this world.
As to Biden's halting and hoarse performance, he is bloodied but unbowed. More on that in the third segment of this podcast.
B-BLOCK (17:01) MORE SPECIAL COMMENT: We'll review some of the key clips from the Trump Town Ha--- I'm sorry "CNN Presidential Debate" including the remarkable truth that while one of the candidates is seeking the office to avoid prison and will do anything to anybody to win - as he tried to do in 2020 - Tapper and Bash did not even bring up the topic of democracy until the 39th minute of the "debate," and waited even longer to question Trump about his status as the worst criminal in our nation's history.
C-BLOCK (40:28) QUESTIONS FROM YOU: Observations from viewers of the debate and the live podcast and my replies - including the three or four different components to one obvious question: "Is it too late to replace Biden?" There are three answers, the most important of which is: if you do, you trade a still likely victory over evil for certain defeat. No would-be replacement comes within 10 points of Trump in polling. It's that simple.
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SERIES 2 EPISODE 201: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: As debate day arrives there could not be a more potent nor ominous metaphor for our political crisis than the one in DC. There, a 3000-pound replica of the Lincoln Memorial is… at this hour… melting in the hot sun.
As Trump tries to destroy democracy and Biden tries to destroy Trump, the climate disaster that has already begun and on which Trump would apply the finishing touches, has so imperiled the six-foot tall wax statue of Lincoln outside a Washington elementary school, that the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities has removed Lincoln’s head “to prevent it from falling and breaking.”
Can you think of worse imagery?
Polling indicates more than half of voters expect to watch tonight, and that a rather startling 11% actually expect to have their opinion of who to vote for changed by the results. The three groups produce the most voters who feel that way are the ones in which Trump has had the most unlikely growth: voters under 35, African-Americans, and Hispanics. If Trump actually blows that growth tonight he's cooked.
And we will either have a debate right after the Supreme Court rules on this Trumpian "Presidential Immunity" nonsense, or the night before it. It becomes a simple, tangible truth that if the Court invents this immunity and declares this nation a monarchy, the king won't be Trump but Biden and he can take any steps he wants without fear of consequence. It's kind of hard to believe but it is literally true that if SCOTUS creates immunity today, Biden could have arrest Trump tonight - during the debate.
B-Block (17:22) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Jamaal Bowman didn't lose because a Nevada Republican called him names, or because AIPAC spent millions, or because progressives are in retreat. He lost because of Jamaal Bowman. The sports TV world is in such trouble a Major League Baseball team is now in essence PAYING its fans to watch its game broadcasts. And Hung Cao, the nut job GOP candidate for Senate in Virginia, tries to get out in front of a huge scandal by blaming a USA Today story that he may have padded his military resume on... the font their reporter used in their email.
C-Block (30:35) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: He should've been one of the greatest of all-time in the news business. But bad luck and bad survival skills combined to lay Will Spens low: The Most Talented Man I Ever Worked With.
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SERIES 2 EPISODE 200: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT:
With the news that tomorrow night, debate moderators Danna Bash and Jake Tapper will NOT fact-check Trump in real time, CNN has abrogated yet another journalistic imperative at yet another Trump event offering him yet another step towards imposing a dictatorship on this nation.
Oh, ok, says CNN: on the 2020 election, yeah, they’ll push back. But otherwise?The moderators “are not participants in the debate. They are facilitators,” said a CNN spokesman. CNN’s woeful political director David Chalian – largely responsible for the Trump Town Hall debacle last year – told the New York Times that a live debate “is not the ideal arena for live fact-checking”even as that spokesperson who refused to give their NAME to Axios said that there WOULD be SOME fact-checking of major falsehoods and smaller details on secondary CNN platforms. So they’re going to do it, they’re just not going to do it where it matters or when it matters. Just to further confess that the decision to NOT fact check Trump’s firehose of lies as he makes them, WHERE he makes them, is another principle thrown away to make sure Trump shows up or doesn’t batter the network, or both, that SAME spokesman said that Trump's lies about 2020 are “inaccuracies.”
WHAT SHOULD BIDEN DO? When Trump says something crazy – about sharks OR the economy OR anything in between – START by saying “Donald Trump is insane. And he’s wrong. Here’s why.”
This is especially true if Trump tries the “are you better off now than you were four years ago?” Emphasize Trump’s criminal culpability about Covid. The million dead. The bleach. The putting light in your body. The economic collapse. The fact that in February Trump knew it was airborne and lied to the public for months as Americans died. Say it, Mr. President, say it bluntly: Trump killed a million Americans. There are American millions HE killed for whom there is no question – they ain’t better off now than they were four years ago.
AND bluntly say that he killed the economy. That the inflation we are finally stopping now is TRUMP Inflation. It’s TRUMP COVID inflation. That the president with the worst job records since Herbert Hoover was Trump. That violent crime exploded under Trump. That there were two kinds of criminals under Trump: muggers and murderers on the street… and ex-presidents who tried to overthrow the government.
And the most important truth to hit him with – the most important truth to dispel what Brian Beutler dubbed “Trump-Stalgia and Trump-Nesia” – the most important truth to enrage Trump – is the truth that he lost. That he lost the election. That he’s a loser. And that instead of taking it like a man, he had other people try to overthrow the government, he didn’t even have the guts to go to the Capitol during the coup.
B-Block (21:30) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Troy Nehls has been wearing a combat medal he never deserved. The military took it back. He says it's the establishment trying to punish him. Vivek Ramaswamy praises the Julian Assange deal, rips the Julian Assange deal, blames Biden, even though he was indicted by Trump. And Missouri's Attorney General sues New York State to somehow impact Trump's 34 Felony Convictions here and says there would be no way some rogue D.A. would have taken Abe Lincoln off the campaign trail in South Carolina in 1860 for being anti-slavery when, of course, Abe Lincoln was taken off the BALLOT in South Carolina in 1860 for being anti-slavery.
C-Block (33:44) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: I did an interview about my doctor and friend Renée Richards over the weekend so it's time to tell how I met her - and more importantly why - when she treated me after I slammed my head on the front of the 7 Train at Shea Stadium in New York in 1980.
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SERIES 2 EPISODE 199: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Trump and his henchmen opened not one but two emergency exits for him to bail out of Thursday's debate against The President and blame it on Biden. And in doing so, his dumbest press secretary yet went on CNN and called Adolf Hitler "HILTER." H-I-L-T-E-R, Hilter.
I don't know if she should be fired for invoking HItler, or if she WILL be fired for getting the name of Trump's role model wrong.
It's Karoline Leavitt, the former centerfielder of the St. Anselm College softball team and the idiot who previously insisted the word 'damning' is correctly pronounced 'dammaning,' tried to filibuster CNN's Katie Hunt about how biased debate hosts Jake Tapper and Dana Bash really are. As Hunt cut first the answer and then the interview off, Leavitt insisted anybody could spend five minutes googling how many times Tapper had compared Trump to "Adolf Hilter." Bypassing the whole Hitler/Hilter stuff, "Damaning Hilter" Leavitt adopted the traditional pose of the Martyred Trump Huckster and did the rounds of the fascist media outlets. When she went on Steve Bannon’s outlet he said either CNN apologizes to her, or Trump should cancel the debate.
Hours later, Trump opened a second emergency chute, again demanding drug tests before the debate, as his personal quack Congressman Physician Prescribe Thyself Ronny Jackson wrote a long letter to the White House requesting such tests (and saying nothing about any stashes he may have left there).
Who knows if Trump really will bail. But he's got FOLAD (Fear Of Losing A Debate) all covered.
MEANWHILE: it's a long shot but I'm beginning to wonder if somebody on Jack Smith's side is laying the groundwork for indicting Trump anew - in New Jersey. There has been a second news leak in just three business days, about Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Espionage Scandal. Yesterday’s leak via ABC News did not resonate among American news media which can generally only BARELY handle one thing at a time – like the debate. The story itself – about Trump making an almost-secret special trip to Florida in July 2022 to make sure nobody had touched the documents he stole from the White House and hid from his own attorney - may not be much more than another one of those threads that you pull on and maybe it just comes off in your hand – or maybe it unravels the entirety of Trump’s size 62 suit. I don’t even think prosecutors know what they have here.
But he went down there two weeks after he had bankers' boxes shipped from Mar-a-Lago to the Bedminster Golf Course. They didn't contain Ivana.
B-Block (20:35) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: I have somehow forgotten, for years, maybe 35 years, the first and arguably the best joke I ever made about Trump. I'll correct that here. Not only are the British Conservatives on track for a historic loss in the July 4 election but two candidates, a party official, and a security guard have been caught allegedly wagering on which day their prime minister would select for Election Day! And the rare two-wins-in-a-row for Puck media guy Dylan Byers, carrying still more management water as he turns gutsy Washington Post reporting on the paper's ongoing management scandal into “a plan to dig for unflattering information.”
C-Block (27:20) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: How did I forget to tell you this one through the first 500 episodes of this podcast? How could I have missed the 24th anniversary last week? I'll just mention the principals: my mother, me, a former New York Yankees infielder named Chuck Knoblauch - and Babe Ruth.
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SERIES 2 EPISODE 198: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: The New York Times' sourced story - that a year ago first a senior federal judge in Florida phoned Judge Aileen Cannon and urged her to hand off the Trump Espionage/Stolen Classified Documents case to some other judge, and when Cannon ignored the idea, the CHIEF federal judge in Florida phoned Cannon and warned her that the optics of ruling on the president who appointed her with disastrous - is not just a great bit of reporting.
It's a clear shot across the bow of Cannon. It's an indicator that this is her last chance to voluntarily recuse from a case she has so mishandled that even when both Trump and Jack Smith said they were ready to start the trial, SHE refused. I think it's a legitimate inference that if she again ignores it, a real move will be made against her (maybe even against her fitness to continue as a judge). The chief judge who issued the warning was appointed by Governor Bush and then President Bush and to me it's clear this was a planned leak. Let's hope it works.
MEANWHILE IT'S TIME FOR RFK JUNIOR TO DROP OUT. The nephew of a martyred President and son of a man who easily could've won the office has now threatened to jail Dana Bash and Jake Tapper of CNN - and the whole network management and production staff - because the network has excluded him from the debate next week.
Kennedy's farcical, dangerous, insane Trump stalking horse campaign has to end. He isn't a victim and he isn't being persecuted. He's nuts.
AND DONALD SUTHERLAND HAS DIED. This spectacularly talented man was, I am proud to say, my friend. He appointed himself my "acting father" after my Dad died. He was supportive, insightful, hilarious, and I think I can tell you something you may not know about him: he was as good a writer as I've ever read. I will read you one of the dozens of emails he sent me. I will restrain myself and chose one about baseball, not one about...Jane Fonda.
B-Block (27:55) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: What if a Tucker Carlson fell over in Australia and nobody was there to hear it? His speaking tour? Plenty of good seats available. Jeff Bezos still won't do the obvious: Will Lewis has to be fired before he crashes The Washington Post. And Dylan Byers trots out words like "hero" and "great" for my late friend Howard Fineman. 14 months ago he gratuitously and painfully insulted him in a story that gad nothing to do with Howard just because he felt like taking a shot at somebody. Byers, a management-jock-sniffing jackass, might meet the same fate 30 years from now - except nobody will remember his work.
C-Block (40:02) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: One of the existential premises of his work was: everything in the world could be reduced to a husband and wife arguing over the dumbest of things. This week he has her insisting that he is murdering her wrong in "Mr. Preble Gets Rid Of His Wife."
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SERIES 2 EPISODE 197: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Joe Biden, five points behind Trump in the Fox News poll in MARCH, a point behind him last month, is now two points AHEAD of Trump in the Fox News poll in JUNE. .
There are also some remarkable internal numbers in the poll. Doesn’t sound like much, but Fox says 32 percent of its respondents now believe the economy is in excellent or good shape - and that is the HIGH WATERMARK for the entire Biden Presidency. Fox also says voter CONFIDENCE in Biden on the economy has swung wildly towards Biden. They favor Trump by FIVE points, but that last month it was Trump over Biden by THIRTEEN.
Also: A top midwestern political reporter says the Trump Campaign is now warning LOCAL media that it will VET all questions for Trump at the Republican Convention and only give access TO Trump to local outlets whose questions have been APPROVED in advance.
And a week before the debate, as rumors continue to swirl that Trump will back out as soon as he can find some way to blame it on Biden, it is not only a certainty that Robert Kennedy Junior will NOT be at the debate, but it’s beginning to look like he is on FAR fewer state ballots than his campaign has been claiming.
And is Trump going to bail out of the debate? Why? Just because he told a reporter Joan Rivers voted for him in 2016 - when she died in 2014?
B-Block (20:10) SPORTSCENTRAL CENTER NEWSDESK TONIGHT: The day Willie Mays deliberately turned a double into a single - and why it's testament to his genius as a baseball player. And Justin Turner's pretty smart but his new World Series idea is really, really dumb. (31:04) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Georgetown University celebrated the late New York Times writer David Carr as a great man, which he was. But they also celebrated him as a great journalist, which he most decidedly was NOT. ETTD: Everyteam Trump Touches, Dies. And Greg Gutfeld explains Fox doesn't make crap up which means I guess that they gave Dominion Voting $787,500,000 because Rupert has too much money?
C-Block (47:45) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Just started to get hot here and whenever that it happens I remember the day I went to work at 3 AM after spending the previous day drinking roughly 40 beers. DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME.
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SERIES 2 EPISODE 196: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Yesterday in Milwaukee the melting of Trump's brain reached - or at least neared - its completion.
He called the President of the United States and the obsession of his life "Joe Bride." He had lots of other episodes, but this is the all-time new high in low. JOE. BRIDE.
No - he’s fine. Ask Dr. Johnson. Dr. Jackson. Dr. Johnson. Dr. Jackson. My sister. My daughter. Joe Bride.
Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita, who are in essence running the Trump CAMPAIGN, are reportedly “worried” about Trump – specifically about his deteriorating mental condition. Can’t imagine why (JOE BRIDE).
And this is coming from two former Republicans still plugged into THAT side of the ball. Wiles and LaCivita, per Rick Wilson, are going to friendly journalists and, quoting Wilson, “are starting to whisper that ‘no one can control (Trump)’.” Former Republican Senate aide Tom Nichols meanwhile put his finger to the wind and said that the FLOOD of Trump campaign efforts to make it look like the no one can control PRESIDENT BIDEN are making HIM suspicious. Nichols now writes quote: “Republicans and their media ecosystem seem to be in a panic about their candidate… if Trump is doing so well, why is his campaign and its support system in right-wing media resorting to easily disproved lies?”
Trump also stepped into it AGAIN not IN Milwaukee but ABOUT it. His campaign had to deny a heavily-sourced report from the ABC Television station in Chicago that during the convention – in Milwaukee – the place he called HORRIBLE last week – he won’t even stay in a hotel there; that he will stay in his building in Chicago and COMMUTE.
MEANWHILE: Roger Stone may conceivably have cost Judge Aileen Cannon her job.
In the latest undercover audio released by my friend the investigative journalist Lauren Windsor and her colleague Ally Sammarco, Stone – at a Catholics for Catholics event AT Mar-a-Lago – made the mistake of hinting that the fix is IN in Trump’s trial for stealing and keeping classified documents and other espionage act crimes… that when the Trump-appointed Cannon conducts a hearing day after tomorrow on the Trump motions to DISMISS all or most of the charges on the fabricated premise that the Special Counsel was unlawfully appointed, Stone seems – even for him – unusually confident Cannon really WILL throw the case.
AND TRUMP JUNIOR tweeted a photo of CNN’s Jim Acosta and wrote “LOL. Looks like CNN Fake News loser Acosta got an embarrassingly bad hair dye job.” Talk about “embarrassingly.” Bad hair dye job? Remember that among other living hells, Don Jr. is the guy who on a regular basis mounts that gargoyle Kimberly Guilfoyle who at age 55 trying to look 35 now has SO much make-up and SO much hair dye that she looks like Bette Davis in the movie “Whatever Happened To Baby Jane?”
B-Block (21:19) Willie Mays, two days before he and the Negro Leagues in which he played, are to be honored with a San Francisco Giants' game at Rickwood Field where Mays' first team the Birmingham Black Barons played, has died at the age of 93. (32:17) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Josh Hawley spreads the "Biden wants to sit during the debate" lie. The BBC's unfortunate typo about self-identification for job applicants and what it did to the word "deaf." And Jeff Bezos sends an email to his Washington Post staff about the building being on fire and stuff and talk about getting a roll of stamps and e-mailing it in!
C-Block (42:05) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Since Bezos is in the news, let me tell you of when I worked with his fiancé Lauren Sanchez, blackmail victim, and when I worked with David Letterman's future blackmailer.
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SERIES 2 EPISODE 195: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Trump is losing his mind.
If Joe Biden gave a speech in which he claimed everybody agreed he was in full robust mental health because he’d passed a test administered by Doctor Anthony… Hopkins. Or Anthony Bourdain… or Anthony Michael Hall – any Anthony except the doctor who gave him the theoretical test, Doctor Anthony FAUCI. If that had happened to Joe Biden there would be nothing else on television or the internet.
But Trump has gotten away with it in part because he is so crazy, so loudly, so often, that it all runs together and, perversely, each Trump mental disaster stops seeming like it’s part OF a sequence. Each Trump mental disaster REPLACES the one before it. I have a thought experiment about that to underscore how that’s even MORE true than you or I might assume it is.
But the second half of the headline? That he's losing his mind AND the election?New Ipsos poll for Politico yesterday: ONE THIRD of all voters say they are now LESS likely to support Trump. Among independents, same number, a third, less likely to vote for him; only 12% of independents say MORE likely to vote for him.Ipsos also dug a little deeper. Are the convictions IMPORTANT in your decision whether or not to vote for Trump? 22% say the convictions ARE important AND make them less likely to vote for him.
He's losing. And Biden has dfinally called him a "convicted criminal" in an official campaign ad. Next? The President saying it himself. I think that is also coming.
B-Block (41:47) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Another GOP flag scandal: Newt Gingrich is back because his eyesight is almost as weak as his intelligence. The Michigan Republican who posts, disavows, then embraces an AI endorsement from Martin Luther King. The Associated Press puts out a transparent ad for Trump. And Royce White, would be Republican Senator from Minnesota, would have you believe that there is a crime wave there caused by... water fountains?
C-Block (50:02) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: The almost certainty that Turner Sports is about to lose the NBA reminds me of the summer Ted Turner almost got the rights to the NFL. Not the games - the entire league.
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SERIES 2 EPISODE 194: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:44) Trump and Mike Johnson are plotting for House Republicans to somehow "overturn" Trump's convictions in the Stormy Daniels Election Interference trial.
That was what they were SUPPOSED to talk about when Trump met with the House GOP yesterday but amid all the threats and terrorism and dictatorship and violence we forget that at his core, Trump is a moron. Whether he and Johnson actually got around to conceive some extra-constitutional scheme to enact ex post facto measure, before or after the election, who knows. All we do know is that Trump wound up insulting and enrages Milwaukee, a month and a day before the Republican Convention is supposed to open there.
The blowback was a welcome respite. Three different Wisconsin Congressmen made up four different excuses for Trump calling Milwaukee "horrible." One of them, Bryan Steil, first said Trump said no such thing, then in a local TV interview contradicted himself and said Trump did say it, but was referring to "specific things."
The upshot of all of this - and Trump's word salads - and Trump's manic blinking at his news conference where he couldn't handle any questions - is the ever-increasingly obvious reality that Trump is currently losing his mind. And that means for all its bravado and fealty the Republican Party is shackled to a corpse.
B-Block (24:30) TRUMPDATE: Late breaking news about Trump's fear of going to prison and the likelihood that if he goes it'll be in a place that is halfway between New York City and ESPN (huh?) (26:14) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Rishi Sunak explains he grew up deprived because he didn't have the British equivalent of HBO. The downward spiral of ex-human being Mark Penn gets worse. And Lauren Boebert is caught vaping in public again and you know WHAT HAPPENED LAST TIME!
C-Block (34:00) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: For the first time, a chapter from Thurber's only non-fiction book "The Years With Ross." It includes a quote from a New Yorker Magazine writer that to me is one of the five or ten greatest things uttered by anybody in the history of the world.
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SEASON 2 EPISODE 193: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: I have no use for Merrick Garland, in large part because he is one of those people who would never think to do this, and never realize that his Republican counterpart would do it in a heartbeat. Found in Contempt of Congress for ignoring a subpoena, as rammed through by Jim Jordan, who BEGAN to ignore a Congressional subpoena two years and a month ago? Garland should get a grand jury to indict Jordan TODAY.
LET THE ASS-KISSING BEGIN: Trump goes to Capitol Hill for the first time since his attempted coup. Just to ratchet up the imagery, he'll be at the Capitol Hill Club, which is where the still undiscovered terrorist left one of his/her pipe bombs the night before.
COULD SCOTUS DECIDE TODAY? It is to issue decisions today and tomorrow. One of them may be about Trump's imaginary "Presidential Immunity." Or not. Or maybe they'll keep it a secret. Or run it up a flag poll to see who'll salute. Another bid to make them follow SOME rules has been vetoed by Lindsey Graham.
AND IN MEMORY OF MY FRIEND HOWARD FINEMAN: There is a tiny silver lining in Howard's story, which he honored me by sharing with me since his diagnosis and prognosis 18 months ago. He was with me from literally the HOUR my political career began through last Wednesday when his "intro" to the B-Block last ran. He was brilliant, supportive, honest, indefatigable, funny, beloved, and I will tell you why his fight made our sadness just a little easier to endure.
B-Block (25:14) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: So she felt she had to tell everybody to stop calling Jill Biden "Hunter Biden's mother" because she wasn't his biological mother. Someone wrote - and I could not find a clip to confirm this - that she then implied that when the President referred to his wife, and to Hunter as "their son" it was a sign of dementia.
So we need to talk about what's wrong with Katy Tur.
We'll start with the fact that Katy is herself the step-mother to two children. I have known that families and motherhood have been issues for her since we met in 2006, even before we lived together. But to drag this onto the air - onto news coverage - is unforgivable. It's time for MSNBC to find somebody else.
C-Block (45:02) GOOD NIGHT AND GOOD LUCK
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SERIES 2 EPISODE 192: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT:
Trump has now floated reinstating the Military Draft.
He put the words in the mouth of the last of his Secretaries of Defense and that guy – Christopher Miller who sat back and watched January 6th unfold nearly as much as Trump did – dressed the draft up as “A National Service Requirement.” It seems to be targeted at 18, 19, and 20-year old American boys and girls (and maybe 17-year olds) and it would start with a mandatory military aptitude test administered BY the Pentagon IN your local high school and any kid who refused to take it might be prevented from graduating and any school that hesitated to go along with this would lose ALL federal funding.
Trump breaking precedent and using the American army domestically to suppress protests and conceivably kill civilians is not the bottom of the plan for the military-dictatorship part of his dictatorship. Those army soldiers, and marines, and whoever else, firing on other Americans – many of them or most of them or maybe all of them, would be draftees.
And when The Washington Post reported it, and the story got no traction and no pick-up at all, and even though the paper reported Trump had not expressly endorsed the draft, within six hours Trump posted an enraged denial reading “In fact, I never even thought of that idea” which even for him is a disastrously transparent non-denial denial. Of course HE never thought of that idea: when has Donald Trump ever thought anything about a military draft – except how to dodge it.
Somebody ELSE thought of that idea. The somebody else is that former Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller. The Post interviewed Miller and he said a national service requirement should be “strongly considered. He described the concept as a common “rite of passage,” one that would create a sense of “shared sacrifice” among America’s youth."
The impact this Washington Post story, could have on Trump’s campaign would be nothing short of fatal – if only it were to be handled correctly by BIDEN’S campaign:
Trump wants to reinstate the draft.
The. DRAFT.
Is there a more powerful campaign message than “Trump wants to draft your kids”? “Trump Wants To Force Your Kids To Kill Or Be Killed?” Actually there is. Because the voting age is not what it was in the ‘60s. The 18-year olds vote. There IS a more powerful campaign message and it is “Trump wants to draft YOU. Trump Wants To Force YOU to Kill or Be Killed.”
ALSO: Trump's felony conviction means he can't own a gun in Florida. So why has he had one longer than Hunter Biden had his? And what about Washington State's law allowing any voter to challenge any candidate's ballot position if he's been convicted of a felony? And why is Alvin Bragg voluntarily appearing at Jim Jordan's hearing - the day after Trump will be sentenced?
B-Block (25:20) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: A Twitter follower of mine puts Chris Cillizza and Nate Silver in the same tweet just to mess with me. Jonathan Martin, who has spent a year talking about nothing but Joe Biden's age, complains that nobody has talked about Joe Biden's age (and works Aaron Sorkin into it, somehow) and the Republican who wants to be Senator from Minnesota, Royce White, explains the campaign funds may have been spent AT the all-nude strip club but that doesn't mean they were spent on STRIPPERS since they serve FOOD at all-nude strip clubs.
C-Block (34:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: As I read of Stephen A. Smith demanding that ESPN pay him more than it pays Pat McAfee, I flashed back to the days when the studio-show audiences there were way more profitable than they are now and ESPN was make $60 million a year from SportsCenter and they were paying me $300,000 and I asked for $3,000,000. Oh the look on their faces delights me to this day. How I Quit SportsCenter...
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SERIES 2 EPISODE 191: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: The polls continue to underscore it. Trump's conviction, just twelve days ago, is already half as important in voters' decision-making process as where the candidates stand on immigration. 28% tell CBS the convictions are a "major factor" for them, yet this number is dismissed because it isn't by itself decisive. A separate Morning Consult poll says Trump's net favorability is now four points below that of Biden's - because of the trial.
And yet the President, and his advisors, and the old men of the Democratic Party continue to contrive to keep Joe Biden from saying the truth in public. He says the impact of the convictions is for the public to decide. No! That’s for the public to decide? This isn’t an American Idol vote. This isn’t Coke versus Pepsi. This is democracy or dictatorship and most people don’t know and YOU, Mr. President, have to make the case. You don’t have to sink to Trump’s brain-damaged rhetorical level but “that’s for the public to decide?” HELP THEM DECIDE. TELL THEM THE TRUTH.
Part of the problem is: the campaign seems to be incapable of realizing it can do multiple attacks on Trump - from criminality to dictatorship to the price of orange juice. I'll give some examples of the variety of ads they could run.
MEANWHILE: KNOTTED BY WINDSOR. Justice Alito makes a fool of himself as my friend the investigative journalist Lauren Windsor records him agreeing that either the right or left will "win" - and he had a much better visit with her than did his wife. Martha-Ann Alito promises to get revenge against everybody, fly an anti-LGBTQ flag, and sue the bunch of them. It turns out everything we thought about them was comparatively positive.
AND JUST FOR LAUGHS: Jonathan Turley has declared Trump "elderly."
B-Block (34:44) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Alleged Democratic governor Hochul of New York, after freezing NYC congestion prices, apparently bails out on fundraiser hosted by auto dealers. Marge Barney Rubble Greene thinks electric cars run on gasoline. Politico with the typo of the year, about a fabulous "head of head."
C-Block (40:21) FROM THE SPORTS CENTRAL CENTER NEWSDESK TONIGHT: I moved this last in case you are NOT a baseball fan of 57 seasons' duration whom the game is losing. The Athletic publishes its survey of current players and guess what! Turns out they all invented the game, and anybody who played before about 2010 was incompetent and irrelevant. Worse yet, somebody grabs my personal third rail, insulting Babe Ruth. Which means I have to go through mediocre reliever Adam Ottavino's 2018 contention that he would strike Babe Ruth out every time he faced him. If you brought Babe Ruth into baseball 2024 and gave him its tiny ballparks and elaborate video scouting and training regimens, he would hit 255 homers.
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SERIES 2 EPISODE 190: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Timing is everything, and for once the timing was perfect. Steve Bannon has been ordered to go to prison. Ordered on June 6th. Ordered on the anniversary of D-Day, when we destroyed everything his predecessors stood for. He doesn’t get it yet. We will destroy HIM and what HE stands for. And all who stand with him. And Trump.
And as he stood outside court - jailed by a Trump-appointed judge who once clerked for Clarence Thomas - he was boasting to the vapid press that, no, he will destroy us and his fascism will subsume America, as he insisted no jail would ever shut him up, a protestor behind him drowned him out with shouts of "Lock Him Up!" because when all you have is noise and threats, you tend to forget that there is always somebody else with more noise and bigger threats.
THERE IS ALSO NEW POLLING on what happens if Trump joins him in the slammer. The Reuters-Ipsos Poll says actual jail time could cost Trump 23% of his voters. That could be as much as 17,000,000 votes. Even as time and timidity wear that number down, it's a remarkable game-changer.
PLUS: Trump glitched again at a Word Salad Rally in Phoenix, while the Democratic National Committee is actually putting up billboards near his events emphasizing "CONVICTED FELON DONALD TRUMP." And there's more from The Supreme Court: a watchdog group says Clarence Thomas may have gotten as much as $4,000,000 in gifts in the last 20 years. And Brett Kavanaugh is writing a book! Hey! Is it a book about assault?
B-Block (24:00) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: There's a name-that-hockey-team contest in Salt Lake City and the six final choices are all nightmarishly bad. So, Marco Rubio, Tim Scott, J.D. Vance, Doug Burgum, Ben Carson, Byron Donalds, and Elise Stefanik. You're being vetted to run with Trump? When he encouraged them to HANG the last guy? And your daily reason to fire Merrick Garland: there may be videotape of Carlson, Hannity, Ingraham and others at Fox vivisecting Trump and saying his 2020 Election claims are crap, and you are working to RETURN THESE TAPES TO FOX?
C-Block (33:25) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: Any time the news is full of Trump-driven drivel and MAGA conspiracies, is a good time to remember Thurber's account of the day in 1913 that the dam outside his home of Columbus, Ohio, broke and everybody fled. Only it hadn't broken - and they were running in the wrong direction anyway. "The Day The Damn Broke."
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SERIES 2 EPISODE 189: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: The New York Times tried to minimize it but late yesterday it re-surveyed 2,000 voters its previously polled who had Trump up by three. It asked them their opinions after the convictions. The new number is Trump by just ONE.
That translates to a loss of SEVEN PERCENT OF TRUMP VOTERS, three percent of which says it will vote for Biden with the other four destined for him or somebody else who isn't Trump. And a quarter of Trump's support among disaffected Biden-2020 voters is gone. And a fifth of double-haters.
The convictions CONTINUE to have an impact. And so does calling him "Convicted Felon Donald Trump."
MEANWHILE: Has Convicted Felon Donald Trump completed a quid pro quo with Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal? Is he THAT low to trade the life of an American hostage for a big anti-Biden newspaper story?
What would the editors of The Wall Street Journal do if Convicted Felon Donald Trump went to them and said I can get Putin to send home his American hostage, your reporter Evan Gershkovich?
What would the editors then do if Trump paused and added: "I would like you to do us a favor, though."
And what would the editors do if Trump then paused again and said ‘you need to help get me elected. i need you to join our Biden Age Plot. I need you to write a piece that restarts this Biden Age thing. I'm a convict. I need to change the topic immediately. I need you to publish this by Wednesday.’At 9 PM Eastern Tuesday Night The Wall Street Journal's genuinely unbelievable attempt to reignite what even Politico termed "The Republicans' Biden-Age-Plot" - for whom editors on my high school newspaper would've been fired and probably expelled - dropped like excrement from Rupert Murdoch's soul. And WHAT had happened EARLIER Tuesday? WHAT had happened at 11:22 A-M Eastern, involving Trump and The Wall Street Journal? A video in which Trump, out of the blue, for the first time in two weeks, again promised that Putin would return the WSJ's Gershkovich to Trump - and Trump alone.
Is it possible it was a quid pro quo? You know, like the other time Trump offered to save somebody from Putin's evil, if they did his dirty work?
Well the writers quoted Kevin McCarthy while dismissing his quotes about Biden's sharpness as "tactical" lying, never thinking maybe he was tactically lying to them. They also interviewed at least three Democrats who said on-the-record that Biden is fine (Pelosi, Patty Murray, Jack Reed) and used not one quote from any of them. Why use quotes that bust your narrative? Or Trump's narrative.
Plus the careers of the writers makes the prospect of a Trump/WSJ deal realistic. One was the idiot who mocked Biden's 2021 trip to the cemetery in which his son, daughter, and wife are buried, and who put a front page piece on Hillary Clinton's "coldness" on the front page of The Boston Globe in 2016. The other? Assigned to get reaction to Obama's 2013 SOTU address, she interviewed Ted Nugent.
It's the worst thing I've ever even half-believed of any American news organization. But I think The Wall Street Journal may have really whored itself out for Trump.
B-BLOCK (32:29) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Mike Johnson misunderstands what "The House Intelligence Committee" means and names to it two of his least intelligent members. Speaking of members, Matt Schlapp with an all-time Freudian slip about Trump's slipping polls. And first Byron Daniels gets nostalgic for Jim Crow, and then he says Biden has taken away black men's... spears.
C-BLOCK (39:50) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Since I've attested to the corruption of all Rupert Murdoch news organizations, I might as well tell you of the day I was fired by Rupert - personally - for doing exactly what he told me to do.
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SERIES 2 EPISODE 188: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: The words weren’t out of my mouth before they came out of President Biden’s mouth. “A former president that is a convicted felon is now seeking the office of the presidency,” he said at a fundraiser 10 minutes from my HIGH SCHOOL. He added that after the 2020 election, “Something snapped in this guy for real, it’s literally driving him crazy.”
1) Call Crazy Donald Trump a convicted felon – mission accomplished.
2) Call Convicted Felon Donald Trump literally crazy – now do it on camera.
Because now there’s MORE evidence it works and it cannot be said too often and it cannot be said by too many different leaders and it needs to be said by the President of the United States loudly and confidently and repeatedly: he’s Convicted Felon Donald Trump and he is literally insane. I am not betting the democracy on one poll, it’s conducted by a Canadian firm called Leger, but it IS an indicator: one out of three Republicans wishes they had nominated somebody else. Among Republicans under age 35 its nearly HALF.
Say it. Keep saying it. ON CAMERA, Mr. President.
MEANWHILE: The Wisconsin Fake Electors Scheme draws felony indictments and the whole thing sideswipes Senator Ron Johnson. And if like me you constantly wonder WHY these people sell out the nation and reality and themselves for Trump, the Pulitzer-Prize winning journalistic non-profit Pro Publica may have an answer based on promotions, new jobs, and other emoluments eight pro-Trump witnesses have received: Cash.
B-Block (27:00) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: The Republicans literally could not tell the difference between Milwaukee and Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam. ESPN's Ticking Time Bomb Pat McAfee somehow makes his use of the "b-word" about a Women's Basketball star even more of a disaster. And why on earth would a baseball player get banned for life for gambling on baseball oh right half the ads on baseball broadcasts tell you to gamble on baseball
C-Block (38:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: I brought him up in the A-Block..Why not tell you ALL my Frank Luntz stories? From the one where he inadvertently got me the job anchoring Countdown on MSNBC to the one where he inadvertently got the president of CNN fired.
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SERIES 2 EPISODE 187: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: The light bulbs may have finally gone off over the heads of the Biden Campaign at 2:03 P-M Eastern yesterday. They had USED the phrase before and they had said the phrase before but it was at THAT moment that they sent it out into the world alone: a Twitter-X post reading simply “Convicted Felon” and under it the close-up, sweating, mottled-face, golf picture of Convicted Felon Donald Trump that looks it was the before shot in a before-and-after about your grandpa’s risk of having a stroke. Elections are not decided by social media posts and they are not decided by nicknames and they are not decided by bad photos but you can probably decide ONE PERCENTAGE POINT in an election with them. Or two. Or five. We may hate it, but we live in America where the name “Crooked Hillary” stuck, and the phrase “Lock Her Up” stuck, and the acronym “MAGA” – one of the stupidest and discordant acronyms of all time – stuck.
And here Joe Biden has an answer to every insult and every meme and every catchphrase used by Trump and his cult and it’s not only a GREAT answer but it has the added benefit of being entirely true and it has the even GREATER benefit of utterly deranging Trump’s whores. They have spent every day since the conviction screaming, shouting, whining, crying “don’t say that” like you did the day the kids gave you your first mean nickname in the 3rd or 4th Grade.
Now they have to make it show up in the polling. In the newest poll, CBS/You Gov, the number of Republicans saying he’s not fit to be president is up to 10 percent and the number of Independents saying he’s not fit to be president is FIFTY percent. Echelon Insights, run by the conservative Kristen Soltis Andersen, went back to 477 people it previously polled who had had it 47-47 and after the verdict asked them again and they came back 49-47 for Biden.
So keep calling him “Convicted Felon Donald Trump.” Every time. Like he legally changed his name to it. And that means Joe Biden, personally. Say it. Put it in campaign ads. Can you imagine the political media freakout? It would be indelibly attached to Trump.
MEANWHILE: The Supreme Court is coming apart at the seams: The civilian victim in the Alito Flag Scandal now says that both IN late 2020/early 2021 AND two weeks ago, a black S-U-V from the Alito security detail parked in front of her mother’s home in Alexandria Virginia. “I couldn’t say who was in the car because of the tinted glass,” Emily Baden told The Guardian, “and nobody ever said anything. I took it as a general threat. The message was, we could do terrible things to you, and nobody would be able to do anything about it. When it comes to justices at the supreme court, they make the laws, but the laws don’t apply to them.” But Congressman Jamie Raskin has a solution, if only Merrick Garland will get off the dime.
B-Block (27:20) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: The publishers and distributors of "2000 Mules" repudiated the film, apologized to one of the people they slandered, and blamed it all on Dinesh D'Souza (who would now be meat). Josh Hawley either made up a story about an illicit use of American troops abroad, or he revealed military secrets - prosecute him! And once again the right wingers explain how they'll show us, they'll avenge Trump by shooting everybody. Why does it never occur to them that they may have lots of guns but who has all the tanks and military bases again? Meet Carl Higbie of NewsMax. Carl's bonkers.
C-Block (35:06) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO COME: With the 80th Anniversary of D-Day looming I flashed back to the 60th Anniversary and the then-new MSNBC president who pulled out all the stops and went wall-to-wall live from Normandy and with all his big stars working a Saturday to impress his bosses...and then breaking news cancelled all of it!
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