Episodit
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SEASON 3 EPISODE 32: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: So the next North Carolina Poll will be, what, conducted by Morning Consult for NudeAfrica-dot-com?
Nobody's surprised but everybody's shocked? Trumpâs crazed choice for governor of North Carolina â and remember if heâs the nominee or presumptive nominee and you take him off, thatâs a coup, Trump says so â said he was a black Nazi, supported reinstating slavery, loved transgender porn, loved a porn site called Nude Africa, and declared he was a perv. And then according to CNN there was the GROSS stuff.
And almost nobody's surprised.
This kind of behavior (run for office and threaten all the people who do the things you have secretly enjoyed for decades) is more common than it seems. There is a reasonably straightforward psychological explanation. I'll do my best to translate it.
MEANWHILE: THE TEAMSTERS WON'T ENDORSE except a majority of the 1,300,000 Teamsters have already endorsed Kamala Harris via their local Teamster chapters. Curious. I wonder how much somebody like Trump would know about bribing a union boss.
AND THE POLLS: Once again, The New York Times is the outlier - but even its poll is in line with two hugely important throughlines: the momentum is all on Harris's side, and she is ahead in Pennsylvania. Oh and it probably won't last but Colln Allred is ahead of Ted Cruz in Texas.
B-BLOCK (27:28) THE BREAKING NEWS: At an anti-Antisemitism event at the American Israeli Council last night, Trump shortened the distance between him and Hitler still further. We already knew him as an antisemite who spread the trope that Jews were loyal first to Israel and then whatever country they were in. Now, he has blamed Jewish Americans - in advance - for his potential loss. It is staggering, and confirms every previous warning that the Hitler comparison is apt, and terrifying: "If I donât win this election, and the Jewish people would really have a lot to do with that if that happens because at 40%, that means 60% of the people are voting for the enemy."
C-BLOCK (34:43) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: His most famous story remains so famous that 85 years after it was published, the name of its hero remains in the dictionary as a verb: The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty.
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SERIES 3 EPISODE 31: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Quinnipiac Poll: Harris by five in Pennsylvania (include Stein and Oliver and it's SIX). Harris by five in Michigan. Harris 50-48 in the Fox News poll. Iâm beginning to suspect the Trump is this-close to offering anybody in a swing state who votes for him, a nude photo of Melania. I mean thatâs neither as gratuitous nor crazy as it sounds. I heard about the post on Twitter and I thought this was going to be a Sarah Cooper bit or the rebirth of Jib-Jab and then I clicked on it.
She says: "Why do I stand proudly between my nude modeling work?"
Thatâs where we are. Ex-prosecutor Vice President swapped in for the retiring President, versus insane proto-Nazi racist would-be-dictator adjudicated sex offender with the nude model first lady and her stepsons are both appearing with an Oklahoma religious crackpot who has called the Vice President a quote âlying whoreâ and their Dadâs campaign is about the scary illegal black people eating cats but the grotesque misogynist Russian-produced sexual memes are about the Vice President.
THE WHOLE OHIO STORY about the cats and the migrants in Springfield, the WHOLE raison-dâetre of Jayvee Vanceâs stochastic terrorism attack on the residents of his own STATE, has now been revealed as two LIES. The first was the woman who posted to Facebook about somebodyâs friendâs neighborâs auntâs uncleâs condom salesman seeing somebody eat a cat. Vanceâs campaign knew it wasnât true â it called the Springfield city hall on September 9th â and was TOLD it wasnât true. That didnât stop Vance. The SECOND lie turns out to be by the woman in Springfield who told the police HER cat Miss Sassy had been taken and killed â thatâs the story Vance keeps using as a fallback â oh thereâs a police report! My constituents insist there IS a missing cat! The woman is named Anna Kilgore and guess what, the cat is alive. Sweet Sassy Molassey, the cat is alive. The Wall Street Journal did something that Trump and Vance and their fellow scumbags would never do â they fact-checked Vance. And Kilgore. And Miss Sassy. Who was discovered safe and sound in Kilgore's basement.
But Vance is still out there lying.
B-Block (19:36) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Maria Bartiromo explains that the director of Homeland Security is using P. Diddy to get the world to stop talking about Trump. The University of South Carolina lets its campus be used for an event assaulting the Vice President's sexuality. Chris Cuomo apologizes to Trump because...I have no idea.
C-Block (29:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Oh like you don't have a story like this. I went past my first NYC apartment the other day. The one that somebody lit on fire. While I was inside.
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SERIES 3 EPISODE 30: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: The debate bounce is here. And maybe itâs more than that. Kamala Harris may â repeat MAY â caveat MAY â warning even if so keep your foot on the gasâŠMAY be beginning pulling away from Trump in the polls. She's up by six in Morning Consult, got a six-point swing in Mark Penn's Harris poll.
According to the 538 Average of Polls, yesterday, for the first time since July 2021, her net favorability moved into positive territory: 46-point-6 percent approval to 46-point-5 percent disapproval. Itâs about as NOT-a-landslide as you can get but it is an almost unprecedented turnaround. Vice President Harris, whose net approval is plus zero-point-one was on July 14th, -17.
There's also the 538 poll average where sheâs up by three and its electoral college model in which Harris wins 61 times out of 100⊠and the Economist Polling Average⊠which shows her up by four⊠and Nate Silverâs OK-Maybe-I-Did-Pull-This-Number-Out-Of-My-Ass model which he acknowledges went from last week giving Trump a two-thirds chance of winning to him saying to Axios that Harris is quote âmoving up in the polls enough that the model is converging back toward 50/50 in the Electoral College.â
JD VANCE IS A BLESSING - TO HARRIS: Insists Haitians are from "Haitia." Claims Robert F. Kennedy Junior was assassinated. Is doubling down on Springfield. May be dumber than Trump. And here's good news: the authorities are still investigating Trump's scandal at Arlington National Cemetery.
B-Block (21:35) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Megyn Kelly takes time from her bid to beat Kari Lake in the effort to corner the market in camera filters, to F-bomb Taylor Swift. Turns out at least one of the anti-Ukraine memes Elon Musk tweeted was made by the Kremlin's favorite disinformation creator. And Bill Ackman is so mad about the debate he's referring it to...a top college sports league?
C-Block (33:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: I just re-told this story Monday in real life so I thought I'd bring it up again. 15 years ago this summer Bill O'Reilly sent Jesse Watters to stalk the chairman of GE because I was criticizing Billo and Fox. The chairman's mother called him up and yelled at him, and he of course responded as any true businessman would: he threaten to turn off MSNBC and its $200,000,000 annual profit like a light bulb so Mommy wouldn't be upset.
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SERIES 3 EPISODE 29: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Trumpâs newest threat: quote: âthe bullets are flying, and it will only get worse!â There WERE no bullets on Sunday, other than those fired by the Secret Service. There was no line of sight for any shots. There are thus far no charges other than gun possession and the reality of the case suggests there may never be. The man who voted for Trump in 2016 and wanted to shoot or shoot at hm in 2024 didnât even make the slightest attempt to resist arrest. Trump knows he was never in real danger. In fact he was genuinely put out that they wouldnât let him finish the round of golf he was cheating through when the would-be almost sorta kinda assassination attempt didnât-actually-take-place.
JD Vance then followed with a tortured demand that America either let Trump do what he wants - including blaming the migrants for the security failures around him - including lying about the migrants - including destroying Springfield Ohio - or accept an America in which there's something wrong with falsely accusing beleaguered people with eating pets and those who make such accusations are subject to censorship and censorship inevitably leads to a bullet in the brain. Vance really said all this.
And it all comes back to those ten words: âthe bullets are flying, and it will only get worse!â Only getting worse, of course, is exactly what Trump wants. Any similarity between this madman and the president played by Martin Sheen in the Steven King film âThe Dead Zoneâ: âThe missiles are flying. Hallelujah, Hallelujah!â
PLUS: Inside the attempts to defend yourself against political violence and the awful truth that you really can't, and based on my experience during 2006 when I repeatedly received mailings of fake anthrax, much of what we assume is security is actually just security theater.
B-Block (35:10) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: The leader of a Trumpler Youth Group named Brilyn Hollyhand thinks Trump was endangered by a "riffle." Speaker Mike Johnson's thumb is fine but Trump seems to be suffering from thumb erectile dysfunction. And his swipe at Taylor Swift may have cost him the support of Patrick Mahomes' wife Brittany because hatred and racism is cool but insulting Tay Tay is a bridge too far.
C-Block (41:45) A SPECIAL SPORTSCENTRAL CENTER UPDATE: Baseball's annual suicide attempt. As the World Series TV audience shrinks to 10% of what it was fun 1978, what does the game need? Giant ADS on BOTH SIDES of every player's batting helmet! Along with a picture of an OSTRICH.
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SERIES 3 EPISODE 28: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
Republican candidate Domestic J. Terrorist has now broken the record for most sharks jumped in a single day â electric sharks, with frickin laser beams on their heads â and is claiming he was the target of another assassination attempt in which no shots were fired and none of it happened nearer than 400 yards away from him and thereâs no video and a preliminary ID shows a career criminal who was posting about his Republican dream ticket of Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy and within minutes Trump was fund-raising off it and trying to erase the memory of a post heâd made earlier in which he declared without context or rationality quote âI HATE TAYLOR SWIFT.â
Meanwhile his running mate Jayvee Vance confessed on national television that he âcreatesâ stories like this lie about a city in the state he represents in the Senate, a lie that has led to the evacuation of schools, a hospital and a university and city offices, and if he cannot be forced to resign his office, there must be at minimum on the Senate floor TODAY, a motion to expel or at LEAST censure him.
Oh and Kamala Harrisâs lead over this procession of train wrecks â so many train wrecks that some of them wrecked while still at the STATION, while still in the TRAIN SHEDS â Kamala Harrisâs lead has extended to SIX points among likely voters.
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SERIES 3 EPISODE 27: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Donald Ducks out of another debate â while inadvertently confirming he lost the last one. The self-destruction of the Trump campaign and fascist political machine â so thorough and unexpected that it looks intentional â has escalated. They used to be evil and clever; now they are evil and stupid. This happened moments after a little-noticed tweet resurfaced from one of his House Elves, Congressman Mike Collins of Georgia. As the debate ended Tuesday night Collins had written âYou want to know who won? Find out who refuses to do a second debate.â Literally within minutes⊠Trump refused to do a second debate.
So burnt out that he RE-USED a line from Wednesday, Trump posted at 3:08 eastern yesterday, âWhen a prizefighter loses a fight, the first words out of his mouth are âI want a rematch.â Polls clearly show that I won the debateâŠâ They didnât; but of course were Trump to admit this, I suspect he would die. I mean this literally; if he somehow acknowledged his utter failure, the violent self-destruction of his entire ecosystem would be so damaging that he could no longer exist. So blah blah; confuses political asylum with mental asylums again, again contradicts himself by noting that HE insisted on a second debate with Biden, tries to take the one glimmer of an impact he made during his closing statement about problems not solved during this presidency, then, in all caps so you know heâs especially crazy, quote, âTHERE WILL BE NO THIRD DEBATE!â
PLUS: Harris up by FIVE in Morning Consult polls and Nate Silver does something useful: explains why her Debate Bump may not happen for days or weeks. Panic and infighting in the Trump campaign as Lindsey Graham joins Marjorie Taylor Greene in the bid to break up Trump and his newest crush, Laura "Acting Melania" Loomer. A new journalistic outlet has the full backstory of the "Migrants Eating Cats" nonsense and surprisingly enough all the sources are fourth-hand. And how do you make another January 6th impossible? Make it as difficult to get around DC ON January 6th as it is to get around NYC during the UN General Assembly, and even Thump's thugs will give up in frustration and go the F home.
B-Block (21:03) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: The Trump lawyer who defended separating immigrant families at the border insists you can't separate families for the 35 seconds it takes to put the supermarket shopping cart back in the rack. Fox's Rachel Campos-Duffy assumes that because Linsey Davis and Kamala Harris were in the same sorority 14 years apart there's a conspiracy. And the mask falls off: Trump Bigot-In-Chief Stephen Miller gets eaten alive by an immigrant, who gets Miller to confirm he believes Venezuelan Dictator Nicolas Maduro.
C-Block (36:43) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: As brilliant and subtle an insight into a writer's mind as Thurber ever offered. You'd never notice unless I mentioned it, but watch how his imagination could turn a casual overheard remark into a marvelous, self-satirizing, comedic spy story in "The Lady On 142."
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SERIES 3 EPISODE 26: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: âIn the world of boxing or UFC," writes Trump between his chicken clucks, "when a fighter gets beaten or knocked out, they get up and scream âI demand a rematch, I demand a rematch!' Well itâs no different with a debate. She was beaen badly last night. Every poll has us winning â in one case 92-8 â so why would I do a Rematch?â
Actually in the world of boxing or UFC, Trumpâs campaign would be in Intensive Care at this hour and the only demand would be to pull it off life support and end its suffering. And actually in the world of debates, it was TRUMP who had demanded additional debates with Joe Biden and then the Vice President so by his own rules Trump just proclaimed he LOST the CNN debate to the President.
It took Trump surrogate and pretend professor Hugh Hewitt more than 19 hours to come up with this second day excuse, quote: âOpinions are settling⊠Trump was not at his best BUT was usually ok and at some points good, especially on the border and his closing statement.â 19 hours to think up some means of pulling his life-line meal-ticket out of the Burning Trumpster Dumpster and Hugh Hewitt comes up with âhe was usually ok.â
If you think that was bad, JD Vance then dismissed the Taylor Swift endorsement by encouraging voters to ignore billionaire celebrities who are out of touch with ordinary Americans.
And there was a cat eaten in Ohio. The woman - a native of the state (represented in the Senate by JD Vance) - the child of Ohio residents - was promptly arrested. She's not Haitian, but the right wing is trying to make her so.
It's going as well as Trump's debate night went.
B-Block (20:59) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Republican Virginia Senate hopeful Hung Cao decides to try a little play on words and has made medallions reading "I Want My Senator To Be Hung." A little moment behind the spin room curtain with the deplorable Tim Murtaugh and the despicable Byron York. And Russia Dave Rubin in a nice passive-aggressive threat against Taylor Swift because she had the nerve to disobey the right wing.
C-Block (27:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Maddow just celebrated her 16th anniversary. She almost didn't make it to her first. The day our corporate overlords threatened to fire her, fire me, and shut the damn network off!
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SERIES 3 EPISODE 25: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: From the time she reached out to shake his hand and he didnât seem to know how to do that, to his closing remarks where he basically threatened America with Russian nukes, the debate couldnât have gone worse for Donald Trump.
Oh â yeah â it could. Afterwards, Taylor Swift formally endorsed Kamala Harris.
The Vice Presidentâs control of the debate and the manipulation and baiting of Trump was so complete that very few fascists even feigned that heâd done well. The best they could do was insist that the moderators were âriggedâ against him because David Muir and Linsey Davis did the best job of fact-checking against Trump yet. I mean ever. When Trump repeated his nonsense that babies could be murdered after birth, Ms. Davis simply stated there was no state in the country in which this was legal and then without a breath cut Trump off by evenly saying, âVice President Harris, you have saidâŠâ
Every checklist box Harris had to mark, she aced. She introduced herself, she gave specific policy plans for subsidizing child care and small business, explained how Trump would lie and why â and that was just in the first answer. It was so thorough that I was genuinely surprised that when they came back from the first commercial, Trump was still there.
B-Block (30:30) SPECIAL COMMENT, PART 2: The Swift endorsement was one big accomplishment for the Vice President. The appearance of a bead of sweat above Trumpâs upper lip at an hour in â and its dogged determination to stay there â was the other. By then Trump was insisting that Harris would spend your taxpayer dollars to give free transgender care to undocumented immigrants who were eating your pet duck.
C-Block (50:00) SPECIAL COMMENT, PART 3: I answered your questions in the immediate aftermath of the debate. I mean, what kind of questions could there be after a debate about which the New York Times, the Associated Press and other paragons of bothsidesist nonsense had to acknowledge was a Harris romp? What do you ask? âDid she win by 100 points or 200?â
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SERIES 3 EPISODE 24: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Will Trump be insane mass murderer Trump at the debate tonight, or just STRATEGIC mass murderer Trump at the debate tonight?
Because the debate transpires against the backdrop of what SHOULD have been the lead story everywhere yesterday and today, the Rolling Stone âeffing kill them all story,â but nine years in, our political media STILL canât process it, STILL thinks â institutionally and individually â that in a reversal of the famous H-L Mencken if they pretend it isnât true often enough itâll stop BEING true â that no one could have become president of the United States or try to stay in office extra-constitutionally or eventually become so insane and so damaged that he would openly boast that not only will he imprison in concentration camps millions of immigrants and others he intends to deport but that quote âgetting them out will be a bloody storyââ and that he SAID that on Saturday only because the self-protective animal-cunning filter that used to STOP him from saying the Hitlerian mass murder âbloody storyâ part OUT LOUD is now breaking or broken and there is a chance â however small â that it could break a little more tonight and he could make it worse tonight, that if Kamala Harris has the courage to push this particular button she could not only win the debate and win the election but destroy Trump once and for all and maybe even present a scenario in which Joe Biden only becomes the candidate who dropped out merely the SECOND closest to the election.
Bloomberg's resident Trump expert (and victor in a lawsuit Trump filed against him) Tim O'Brien has seven pieces of advice for Vice President Harris. And a British newspaper claims she got Lee Strasberg to play Trump in the simulated debates. He died in 1982. If she can really pull that off, she should be elected unanimously.
Don't forget our live podcast on YouTube immediately following the Harris-Trump debate tonight at approximately 10:30 EDT.
B-Block (22:39) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: David Zaslav tops off his two years of humiliation by being caught seated next to Leon (Elon) Musk. The Russian Stooge scandal sideswipes Marsha Blackburn and Clay Travis. And as RFK Jr warns liberals that they're now on the same side as Dick Cheney, I must remind my former friend that he's now on the same side as our Proto-Hitler.
C-Block (36:51) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Tomorrow's podcast will be devoted entirely to tonight's debate, so I'll do my 9/11 reminiscences here. And instead of trying to recapture how I felt that day and on the days that followed, I will simply present the tapes of my radio reporting from 2001 for KFWB all-news radio in L.A., and the ABC Radio Network.
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SEASON 3 EPISODE 23: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (2:00) TRUMP TO "BLOODY" IMMIGRANTS - AND ARREST YOU (and reveals the conspiracy theory he will launch against Kamala Harris in tomorrow night's debate).
And next to none of this has been on front pages.
Our nation is dying of an utter, consuming, fatal lack of courage. For eight years I have been talking and writing about Trumpâs desire not just to purge America of immigrants â documented or otherwise â also he gets to decide whoâs an immigrant and if you try to defend one of his targets you become his NEW target â but to purge them with violence, Concentration camps, swat team raids, informants, military weaponry, bloodshed. And now even HE is saying it, that bluntly. He promises, out loud, that "it will be a bloody story."
If you are an American and you are asking any question about this besides âIs he an insane mass murderer, or a strategic mass murderer,â you are now a Trump enabler.
Yet, Congressman Ro Khanna actually said yesterday that heâs upset his fellow Democrats are calling the Republicans âweird.â âWe should lead with respect and make our case through persuasion of having a better vision for the nation.â Fine, Congressman, and when we do that and Trump regains power and he decides that all immigrants are illegal immigrants and anybody whose parents were not born in this country are immigrants, Iâll do what I can when Trump sends the National Guard to imprison you but by then I might already be in prison because of the OTHER thing Trump did over the weekend that nobody is taking seriously even though after Judge Merchan gutted the rule of law Friday here in New York, Trump has decided he can get away with - promising to threaten "lawyers, political operatives, donors, illegal voters, corrupt election officials" and anybody else who opposes him in this election.
And where is our courage? The New York Times' publisher thinks he's being impartial by not acting against Trump. The most vulnerable voting bloc - young women - will have the lowest turnout. George W. Bush won't endorse Harris because he's "retired." And worst of all, Judge Merchan folds in New York and pretends he's avoiding election interference by making sure the electorate doesn't know whether or not one of the candidates is going to be sentenced to prison.
Thus all of this falls to Kamala Harris to prosecute, tomorrow night.
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SERIES 3 EPISODE 22: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Plot twist!
Judge Tanya Chutkan's rulings on a "mini-trial" regarding the impact of Trump's Concierge SCOTUS ruling on 'presidential immunity' will not only place some of Jack Smith's evidence before the American public before the election, but it may put Mike Pence in the delicious position of getting to testify against Trump for his attempt to foment a violent overthrow of the government of the United States.
Pence's testimony (or at least his sworn past statements) are at the center of a string of October Surprise hearings and deadlines Chutkan put in place yesterday. The first is three weeks from yesterday. She should take her free time to go and pose for the statue now.
I ASK AGAIN: IS TRUMP DYING OR SOMETHING? His performance at a New York speech was so halting, indistinct, moronic, that I continue to believe there is a physical crisis in progress. Plus, he was nice enough to invoke his Arlington National Cemetery scandal, the one he insisted never happened and was entirely made up by Kamala Harris, and now NPR has identified the TWO Trump campaign officials who abused the Arlington staffer - Justin Caporale is now a Trump campaign Deputy Manager and Michel Picard an advance man who was a contact point on January 6.
They both abused the staffer and then Picard shoved her - per Pentagon officials quoted by NPR.
Insert GIF of Sir Patrick Stewart on Star Trek face-palming here.
MORE FROM RUSSIA WITH CASH: So the co-founder of Tenet Media of Stooge-Gate infamy was fired by Glenn Beck, the assumption is she flipped, there may be others to come (a noted Russian disinformation expert has a list) and golly what a shock, Elon Musk amplified one of Tenet Media's tweets as recently as last week.
AND THE SULZBERGER CRIS-DE-COEUR: The New York Times publisher writes an Op-Ed for The Washington Post (what? The Times rejected it?) about the dangers of Trump and the perils of free press and how... he's not going to do a goddamned thing about any of it. Meet A.G. Sulzberger, gutless bastard.
B-Block (28:50) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: MSNBC dayside ignores the entire Russia Stooge-Gate story to cover the irrelevancy that the Hunter Biden case has become. Senator Ron Johnson is so stupid he is not only promulgating a conspiracy theory about the Great Depression being planned but he admits he doesn't understand how the theory works. And Jesse Watters bashes Tim Walz for drinking milk shakes even though Watters' old boss Bill O'Reilly sat there at Yankee Stadium night after night drinking milk shakes with... Donald Trump.
C-Block (41:00) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: I canât be sure who wrote the first comedic bit about âWell of course when Iwas a kid we had it TOUGHâ but it might have been Thurber. This was my fatherâs favorite Thurber story and it is the definition of subtle hyperbole. The different approach to kids and school in the year 1903, when, as you will hear, Thurber, some of his fourth grade classmates had reputedly REPEATED the fourth grade⊠every year⊠since 1883.
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SERIES 3 EPISODE 21: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN ALL-TIME SERIES EPISODE 500
A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: "Follow the money," said Deep Throat about Watergate.
Except he didn't..
My friend, the screenwriter of "All The President's Men," Bill Goldman - HE said it. Because they paid him to. The real "Deep Throat," Deputy FBI Director Mark Felt, never said anything like it. Goldman added he threw it in because it sounded more memorable. And it was. Now everybody remembers it as having happened, when it didn't.
Which is kind of the point about what Mark Felt's institutional descendants at the Department of Justice did yesterday about Stooge-Gate: In their indictment of two Russian propagandists THEY never say the Tennessee company through which they funneled money into the American right wing echo chamber is called Tenet Media and THEY never say that Tenet Media was founded by Lauren Chen who also happens to work for Glenn Beck and Blaze-TV and THEY never say that Tenet Mediaâs YouTube channel got ten million dollars from Putinâs propaganda arm, R-T, to grow and distribute videos about how America started the Russian war in Ukraine, and how it was all Bidenâs fault, and vote Trump or die, and how America shouldnât get trapped in forever wars and how terrorists were coming into the country across the southern border. And they didnât say that through Tenet the Russians washed large sums of money to scumbags like Tim Pool, Benny Johnson, Dave Rubin, and others to unwittingly do Putinâs work for him.
Some of those folks say they're unwitting victims. I actually believe it. Because if there was an Unwitting Fantasy League, Jesse Watters would be my first choice but I'd certainly be satisfied if I could get Pool or Johnson or Rubin.
My question is: Russia only had a handful of stooges here? I doubt that.
TRUMP GOES SILENT ON ARLINGTON: Possibly after reading polling showing that his standing with veterans, active service members, and their families is vanishing - he's in a virtual dead heat with Vice President Harris among the families.
AND THE RATS ARE LEAVING THE SINKING SHIP and boasting about it to Politico. Eighteen paragraphs about Republicans who are preparing a bunch of different songs to whistle past a bunch of different graveyards, but the lyrics are identical: we WANT Trump to lose, it's the GOP's only chance!
B-Block (25:22) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Mark Robinson allegedly owed the porn guy money, and then his wife owed the Girl Scouts money! The "Tim Walz Family Hates Tim Walz" campaign falls flat when it turns out the terrible story his brother had to tell was about Tim barfing in the car as a kid. And on Joe Scarborough's show, Mike Barnicle asked the fitting question: how did the Republicans get here, nominating a lunatic Trump for a third time? The answer - in part anyway - IS Joe Scarborough.
C-Block (42:37) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: The NFL season opens tonight. Why not look back at the day I had to call in sick as co-host of NBC's "Football Night In America" because I had unknowingly blown out my appendix! Surprise!
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SERIES 3 EPISODE 20: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Bliock (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Trump completely changes his Arlington Cemetery Scandal story. He had already single-handedly reignited his Arlington National Cemetery scandal by implying the Veterans Administration and the Department of Defense are LYING about it, when Fox News doubled down on his lie, and basically put the entirety of the military establishment in the same position Senator Joe McCarthy tried to put it in, in 1954. The mistake â deciding you and your lies are more important than the militaryâs truth â destroyed McCarthy. And it could conceivably destroy Trump.
If one day your spokesclowns insist there WAS an event at the cemetery, only it was the fault of an unprincipled woman having a mental health episode, and that you have an exculpatory video proving so, and then you suddenly change the story and insist instead that "there was no conflict or 'fighting'...It was a made up story" by Vice President Harris, you give Senate Democrats and cemetery officials and the entirety of the Defense Department only one option: to investigate it fully.
You would've thought Trump would've remembered not to take on the military with lies. The man who led McCarthy to his doom was none other than McCarthy's chief counsel - future Trump mentor Roy Cohn.
And by the way: why is anybody - especially Trump - assuming that there is no security video from that day at Arlington National Cemetery that the military could release immediately? Why aren't news organizations demanding confirmation or denials that it exists, and copies of it if it does?
POLLING: Harris by six nationally and closing gaps on Trump in all issue categories, per USA Today. A Harris three-tenths of a point lead in Michigan turns into a Trump 1.2 point lead (but the pollster is one-and-a-half stars).
AND A DIFFERENT KIND OF POLLING: A North Carolina news outlet quotes six employees and customers of the city's video porn stores of a quarter century ago as saying current Republican candidate for governor Mark Robinson was a five-nights-a-week customer.
B-Block (26:35) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Elon Musk advocates for the world to be run only by elite males. Why would he exclude himself like that? The newest participant in the Activote "poll" is Abbot Gregor Mendel (Died, 1884). And Timmy Tammy Tomi Lahren doesn't know that airbuds aren't secure and Vice Presidents can't use them.
C-Bloc (31:18) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Continuing our preview of the National Football League season, let's flash back to the one that started and suddenly stopped. The 1982 NFL strike and how I - as a 23-year old rookie reporter - somehow became the confidant of the union leaders, to the point of going drinking with them!
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SEASON 3 EPISODE 19: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Once again, American political media is broken in a new way. Trump has now blamed the families of the dead servicemen he was supposedly honoring at Arlington for his campaign illegally filming and illegally using that video for political purposes. The female victim of physical abuse by Trump staff is afraid to escalate her complaint and so is the military - and the media is doing its best to cover it all up like they cover up everything else Trump does.
TRUMP filmed a commercial while standing on top of the graves of dead American war heroes. Iâm surprised he didnât try to sell us sneakers or bitcoin or the rest of his crap. And his staffers assaulted a woman employee at Arlington National Cemetery. And he blamed the families of the dead because his campaign broke the law. And his fascist gang of thugs is running wild with this as if Kamala Harris has anything to do with it. And eight days later there STILL isnât a Senate investigation or a Defense Department investigation and one of them better be started goddamned immediately.
The media is ALSO covering up Trump's Egypt bribe, his mental condition, whatever was in the emails hacked from his campaign, and the nonexistent Wille Brown Flight Logs. Because between its own failures, its own loss of moral compass, and its own fear of retribution, it is a de facto arm of the Trump campaign.
THERE IS GOOD POLLING NEWS: Not only is Harris up by 6 in ABC-Ipsos but the Times' battleground data suggests the number one issue for women in swing states has changed from the economy to abortion. And private polling for Trump in New Hampshire is so bad they're punting the state - and punting the guy whose memo about the polling somehow got to the Boston Globe.
B-Block (30:41) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Peter Hasson of Free Beacon and the implication that because Kamala Harris never put her summer job on her resume, it didn't happen (I will tell you of my summer job climbing into Hostess Thrift Store Dumpsters with an exacto knife). Harris has "puppet masters" says Tulsi Gabbard, who evidently doesn't know about antisemitic tropes. And Erick Erickson says her career began on her knees in front of Willie Brown, as if Erick Erickson could ever get up off his own knees.
C-Block (43:40) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: If fall college semesters have started and the National Football League starts Thursday that means only one thing for me: the day my college professor nearly failed all of us, because of one of the most infamous meatheaded plays in NFL history. Of Joe Pisarcik and Cornell History.
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SERIES 3 EPISODE 18: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Trump has doubled down on his defiling of Arlington National Cemetery. Title 32, Part 553, Subpart C: Memorial Services and Ceremonies at Army National Military Ceremonies will not include partisan political activities. Trumpâs team exploited a memorial service at Arlington on Monday, broke the law by privately photographing and filming it, physically assaulted Arlington National Cemetery staff who asked him to stop, he gave a thumbs up and smiled idiotically while literally standing on the graves of dead U-S military heroes, and now they have turned it into an online campaign advertisement â by definition, a partisan political activity. This couldâve been trivial. It couldâve been âthere was a miscommunication.â Not even an apology â like anybody in the Trump campaign were human enough, or honest enough, or RESPECTFUL OF OUR WAR DEAD ENOUGH to apologize. Just âmisunderstanding.â
No. They blamed the Cemetery staffer, they blamed the media, they blamed Vice President Harris for not being there to commemorate the sad anniversary of deaths in Afghanistan â the commemoration Trump has illegally turned into a campaign AD â the commemoration Trump skipped last year and the year before. Because to Trump, and to this robot JV Vance, those buried AT Arlington are just another product, just another SELL, just another gimmick, just another BRAND NAME.
And they got the brand name wrong. Trump thug Chris LaCivita wrote that Arlington "most hollowed" ground. Corrupted news outlets like The New York Times covered for it by claiming he wrote "hallowed." Hallowed, is Arlington. Hollowed, is Trump's brain.
TRUMP IS NOW MORE DANGEROUS THAN EVER. Another new round of polls underscores: he's losing, and dragging down the down-ballot MAGA GOP: a total swing in four states of 25 points to Harris. She leads by one in Arizona, two in Georgia and Nevada, and has cut it to one in North Carolina. The Fox poll in Arizona scores the Senate as Ruben Gallego 56, Kari Lake 41. How is Kari lake going to be able to afford to buy 900 more camera filters THIS late in the race? The Fox poll in North Carolina scores the Governorâs race as Josh Stein 54 Mark Robinson 43. The Fox poll in Nevada scores the Senate race as Jacky Rosen 55 Sam Brown 41.
TO LEAVEN THE MOOD A LITTLE: A comedian named Dan Wilbur has done a spot-on impression of JD Vance trying to be a human for 9 minutes at a donut shop. It's better if you go watch it. It's not bad if you listen to it here.
B-Block (25:31) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Texas political hitman Ken Paxton sends nine armed troops to 87-year old Democratic woman's home because she registered voters. CNN/Gary Tuchman "Uncommitted Voter" scandal worsens: the guy is now selling t-shirts. And asked about phones for kids during emergencies at school Jesse The Idiot Watters thinks that means HIS emergency when he has to call them in math class.
C-Block (36:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: I was talking about Bill Clinton yesterday and I think it's time to tell the entire story of how NBC tried to blackmail me into NOT quitting the Clinton-Lewinsky MSNBC show in 1998 because it made them too much money. An emissary from then NBC News President Andy Lack threatened to sue me and get me blacklisted from television AND make sure my parents wound up homeless.
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SERIES 3 EPISODE 17: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Trump is now claiming that the White House rigged the presidential election in 2020.
HE was president in 2020.
HE was in the White House.
"Zuckerberg admits the White House pushed to suppress Hunter Biden laptop story, in other words the 2020 presidential election was rigged," Trump writes. I'm telling you: Mijni-strokes.
SPEAKING OF WHICH: There's way more to Trump exploiting Arlington National Cemetery on Monday to take smiling thumbs-up selfies while literally standing on the graves of American heroes. An Arlington official tried to stop the photography; a Trumpist allegedly shoved him; the Trump Campaign decided the correct response was to claim the Arlington official was "suffering from a mental health episode."
JACK SMITH OUTWITS THE SUPREME COURT: This one weird trick actually works. He filed his superseding indictment in the Insurrection case in Washington. It's a little more complicated than this, but basically he got around SCOTUS by changing every reference to "President Trump" to "Candidate Trump" and calling the 1/6 Call To Arms a "campaign speech."
RAGE IN THE MACHINE: Thousands of newspaper columns were deleted (hundreds at The New York Times alone) when Kamala Harris agreed to her first sit-down interview. It's with Dana Bash on CNN so she still hasn't scheduled one anybody will SEE. The Cook Political Report has moved two more states from "Lean Democrat" to "Likely" and moved North Carolina from "Lean Republican" to "Toss-up." Maybe that's why Trump has agreed to the September 10th debate - or seemed to. The actual words in his acceptance never says he'll actually be there. And we have the first polling on weirdness by party and while the GOP is accurately seen as more weird, the lead is hardly big enough.
B-Block (23:55) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: RW troll blasts Democrats for "not being interested" in the Trump assassination attempt. Turns out all the Democrats on the House committee went to the site survey Monday. Only three of the seven Republicans bothered to. Trump makes the list too after what HR McMaster revealed about the Taliban Trump ordered released. And somebody who made this list in 2007 for indiscretions as a tv reporter is back for mocking Gus Walz while not merely a right wing media nut but also the volleyball coach at a high school with a praised and cherished program for learning-challenged kids.
C-Block (33:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: 43 years ago now, my television career starts because the late Lou Dobbs had issues keeping his pants on. It's still amazing.
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SERIES 3 EPISODE 16: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: The full Reichstag-Fire-level propaganda site Red State may have commissioned, certainly got first access, to a poll showing Kamala Harris leading Trump 52 to 45 among LIKELY voters, and 50 to 46 percent among REGISTERED voters. Itâs OUTSIDE the margin of error according to the head of the firm, which is SO right wing that the pollsterâs pinned tweet is about how in 2011 he predicted a Trump presidency. They also did favorability scores and claim Harris is at 50-50 and Trump only eleven points underwater. âThe biggest factor helping Harris is how she has neutralized the immigration issue. In both polls, immigration was the fourth most important issue, or rather â only 10 percent told us it was their number one.â
Also on polling, the weekly update from Morning Consult has shown no Convention Bump for Harris, or maybe just a continuation of the previous bumps â unchanged at Harris 48 Trump 44. But there ARE signs of⊠a Tim Walz bump. His favorability was at 39 percent and plus three before the convention; it is 42 percent and now plus SIX after it.
SOLUTION: MUTE HIS MIC THROUGHOUT THE DEBATE: Trump is back to trying to back out of the presidential debate and heâs not even doing it well and the American political media is, as always, astonished. As soon as Harris replaced Biden he claimed all agreements were off, now he is enraged she wants the mikes always open not muted, not because he objects to the mikes not being muted, but because she wants it. Let me summarize this: he is trying to back out of the debate. He is hoping to be able to back out and blame her. He did this with Biden too. He is using as an excuse an objection to something he agrees with. What is Harris doing? Harris, bluntly, is EFFING with him. The Harris team has already proven to be the most successful anti-Trump entity in the fertile field of EFFING with him.
MORE MEDIA MADNESS: CNN interviews eight "undecided" voters after Harris's acceptance speech. Except one of them told them in advance he was voting for Trump. Chris Cillizza tops himself. And the Times' latest self-destructive Op-Ed? "Trump Can Win On Character," written by the guy who followed the 2008 Vice Presidential Debate with the infamous masturbatory column about Sarah Palin.
B-Block (25:33) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: The Covfefe of 2024 as DonOld shows more evidence of mini-strokes. Andrea Tantaros compares Harris's appearance to...Hitler's "manscaping." And Jason Miller mocks a Kamala TV political surrogate as so old he should be in a rest home. The guy is 18 months YOUNGER than Trump.
C-Block (32:25) SPORTS FOR PEOPLE WHO DON'T LIKE SPORTS/THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: The former ESPN Big Show SportsCenter producer who went on to run ESPN, is succeeded by the guy who succeeded him AS the ESPN Big Show SportsCenter producer. Turns out the death of WCBS NewsRadio in New York was largely my fault. And I've found another cassette, so if you want to hear the day I was first paid to do the news (July 25, 1980, WNEW Radio, New York) you're in luck.
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SERIES 3 EPISODE 15: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: The special guest was the next President of the United States.
Kamala Harris nailed the speech. It could not have been better. Not a sour note, not a space for complaint, not an issue avoided.
Plus: Harris has cut Trumpâs lead from nine points to five points⊠in TEXAS. Harris is now AHEAD in North Carolina by a point.
There is the RFK Junior thing coming today.
There is leaked audio of Trump pledging fealty to the families of the January 6th traitors and hosting an event for them two weeks from now, and more blatant Trump antisemitism hinting at a nightmare scenario in which he merges the streams: where the conspiracy theories about rigged elections and immigrant voting gets fully crossed with racism and anti-semitism (and the advanced kind, where there are âgoodâ Trump-supporting Jewish people, and âbadâ Trump-hating Jewish people.
There is also the increasing evidence that Trump is, at least accidentally, giving up on winning the election and instead trying to raise the temperature so much among his fascists that they can run a coup from behind in the legislatures and the House and try to force a Contingent Election. Again from Yale historian Timothy Snyder via The New York Times: âTrump is in the classic dictatorial position: He needs to die in bed holding all executive power to stay out of prison. This means that he will do whatever he can to gain power, and once in power will do all that he can to never let it go. This is a basic incentive structure which underlies everything else. It is entirely inconsistent with democracy.â
And time to make the donuts: JV Vance actually manages to fail at the simple buy-food photo-op.
B-Block (24:55) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Megyn Kellyâs stupidity mixes with her racism: she doesnât realize HBCUâs exist because so many black students were excluded from other colleges. And Trumpsucker Mike Crispi and the one famous Cornell alumna whom the university does not recognize tie for pure inhumanity when it comes to Tim Walzâs son Gus.
C-Block (37:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: For everybody whoâs ever asked âOlbermann? Did you hit your HEAD or something?â the answer is yes and the 45th anniversary is tomorrow. Donât worry, Iâll be getting better any day now.
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SERIES 3 EPISODE 14: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: You heard that right. RFK Junior will drop out of the presidential race tomorrow. Whether or not he then endorses Trump reportedly depends on when his wife, Curb Your Enthusiasm actress Cheryl Hines, relents on her opposition to Trump.
Of course it may not matter. There is no reliable polling on what Kennedy's remaining support thinks of Trump or Harris or anybody else. And despite what individual state polls suggest, national polling suggests he's been taking 2% or 3% support from both Kamala and Psychotrump.
The other wild card is what position in his cabinet Trump is willing to offer. I'm thinking "Secretary of Bears."
THE OTHER NEW POLLING IS SO ASTONISHING that the whole thing may be irrelevant. Rasmussen Republican polling has her up by one in Wisconsin. University of New Hampshire polling has her having gone from four behind Trump in the conservative Maine 2nd District to five points AHEAD of him. And Politico analyzed ten quality polls and suggests that the data suggests the snowball is forming.
MEANWHILE TRUMP'S GREATEST FREUDIAN SLIP EVER: His antisemitic trope about Democrats and Jews is well known by now. "If Jewish people vote for her they ought to go out and get their heads examined." And yet on the Hugh Hewitt show yesterday he forgot the back half of it. He stopped after "go out" and started talking about something out. The part he left out was "get their heads examined."
Trump also made up a story about Harris meeting with Putin before the Ukraine invasion. This also sounds crazy but may be less insanity and more an indicator that the Trump campaign is giving up on actually winning at the ballot box and just amping up the conspiracy theories so its minions in state legislatures and the House can try to steal the election by coup after Harris wins.
B-Block (21:05) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: How could you misspell Bruce Springsteen's name? A Philly hotel managed to do it! Rudy Giuliani says Steve Bannon is being "tortured" in prison (I wish), and should the FBI or Secret Service be visiting Hulk Hogan and asking him why he threatened the Vice President of the United States?
C-Block (29:30) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: A non-broadcasting friend of mine brought up the name the other day and I was surprised he knew him. Meet the former president of MSNBC who threatened - while his screams were audible in the background live on the air - to destroy and kill me. Fun place to work!
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SERIES 3 EPISODE 13: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Did you HEAR Trump yesterday? Did you HEAR HIM TALK? Heâs in Howell, Michigan, where it might as well be Alabama in the year 1855, where they marched chanting âWe Love Hitler, We Love Trumpâ a MONTH ago, and he came out at the County Sheriffâs Office, and behind him with the cops as the props and if he had had ten times the energy and ten times the focus you would have said: whatâs wrong with Trump? Is he DYING or something? I mean I donât THINK heâs dying, I think there are intermediate stages between having every single thing in a presidential campaign turn against you in a matter of two weeks and actually dying, but look if this mumble thing continues, at this rate theyâre going to have start putting live captions over him.
Trump responded to the overture from the RFK Junior camp about dropping out if Trump would give him a role in his cabinet. âI didnât know he was thinking about getting out, but if he is thinking about getting out, certainly Iâd be open to it.â RFK's running mate Nicole Shanahan appears to be doing the bargaining. Even she has figured it out: "We run the risk of a Kamala Harris and Walz presidency, as we draw votes from Trump. We draw, somehow, more votes from Trump. Or we walk away, right now, and join forces with Donald TrumpâŠâ Translation: bribe us and weâll go away. Looks like what they want is Secretary of Health and Human Services.
THE SELF-DEFENESTRATION OF THE POLITICAL MEDIA: The Times really did it yesterday, with no sense of irony, no meta self-reflection: âKamala Harrisâs tan suit was a surprising choice, our fashion critic writes.â The Post, meantime, did a DNC factcheck and got half a dozen things wrong: the Post insisted that there was no evidence that Trump ever sent love letters to dictators with Kessler writing âwe do not know what Trump wrote to Kim Jong Un,â Media Matters went appropriately nuts. Of course we know. Trump showed them to⊠Bob Woodward of the Post. The factcheck now has its own factcheck.
I recommend to you and will quote extensively from a masterpiece on this topic in The New Republic. Meredith Shiner writes: "after years of watching Morning Joe and searching for their birthdays in the Politico Playbook, they do not see their role as speaking to us, but rather speaking to themselves."
Ex-effing-actly.
B-Block (26:47) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Jesse Watters has rebirthed birtherism. He's sending "Johnny" to Hawaii to get the real story about Barack Obama's birth certificate because Harris. Amy Kremer, a GOP Committeewoman from Georgia, is the sucker born every minute. A liberal trolls the idiot Jack Posobiec by saying she'll have an abortion and a vasectomy onstage at the DNC and Kremer believes her. And Stephen L. Miller - the "other" Stephen Miller - uses the c-word about Mallory McMorrow with no self-awareness that it's used about him.
C-Block (37:10) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: It was a lovely day in Fun City yesterday so I was out all day and I walked right past it: the bar out of which George Steinbrenner stepped one night in 1981 after I had spent the day trying to find... George Steinbrenner.
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- Näytä enemmän
