SEASON 4 EPISODE 25: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (2:30) SPECIAL COMMENT: Is Trump Bombing Boats off Venezuela to test to see if he can get away with Bombing Americans in America? I mean now he says he’s going to try to get away with Bombing Venezuelans in Venezuela.

If, 72 hours before Saturday’s No Kings protests around the country, we are at the stage – (and we are AT the stage) that Trump is threatening to invade Boston and San Francisco, and where Trump’s lackeys are calling everybody who disagrees with him “Antifa” and Trump has declared “Antifa” a quote “Domestic Terrorist Organization” – acronym DTO, and we’re at the stage where Trump has again this week – Tuesday morning – had the Secretary of Brylcreem blow up a probable sardine fishing boat in the Caribbean after declaring it was “affiliated with a “DESIGNATED Terrorist Organization” – acronym ALSO DTO… if we are blowing up people Trump and Trump alone gets to decide were in DESIGNATED DTO’s and in the process destroying ALL evidence for-or-against, how far in his madness and Stephen Miller’s evil are we from Trump blowing up people Trump and Trump alone gets to decide were in DOMESTIC D-T-O’s and in the process destroying ALL evidence for-or-against?

The huge leap from bombing DTO’s to bombing… DTO’s.

It's a big step. But it’s one even Trump, as his body disintegrates, can still manage.

Plus my ex Olivia Nuzzi has reportedly written a new book. So now you know what to get me for Christmas. I have title suggestions. They are not cordial ones.

B-Block (34:00) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Fox's Emily Compagno assumes anybody criticizing the appointment of Bari Weiss is an antisemite. Including critics who are Jewish. There is a MAGA celebrity chef named Andrew Gruel, from "Gravy Concepts" and he's one of Fox's Antifa experts. And then there is Governor Janet Mills of Maine who is trying to bigfoot Graham Platner and actually make Susan Collins the youngster in the race.

C-Block (46:25) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: The actual anniversary was two weeks ago, but whenever the leaves start to fall I think of the 1993 launch of ESPN2. The inside saga of the night I achieved immortality by announcing "Good Evening And Welcome To The End Of Our Careers."

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SEASON 4 EPISODE 24: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (2:30) SPECIAL COMMENT: If Trump didn’t have much time left as president, how would his cabinet behave?

If Trump didn’t have much time left as president, how would his henchmen behave?

If Trump didn’t have much time left as president, how would his Stephen Millers behave?

If Trump didn’t have much time left as president, how would HE behave?

Would he have a straight-up public delusion that 1448 days into his first presidency it was Joe Biden’s FBI even though Joe Biden hadn’t BEEN president yet? Ending with the panicked, plaintive cry to the universe: “DO SOMETHING?” Would he have hallucinations about Watergate being a hoax? Would he start accidentally posting private messages to his attorney general demanding prosecutions of those who prosecuted him? NOW NOW NOW! DO SOMETHING! Would he be unable to close his umbrella?

I’m not saying he’s DYING, I’m not saying he’s IRRETRIEVABLY SICK, I’m not saying he’s being raptured, I’m not saying he’s resigning, I’m not saying he’s fleeing… I’m not talking about cause, just EFFECT.  If Trump didn’t have much time left as president… if he were getting a PROMOTION to something, how would they all BEHAVE?

I think the answer is they’d all behave as they are behaving now.

They’d panic.

And, they are panicking.

They’d panic because they know, there is NOBODY to take over for him. Junior? Eric? Bannon? Miller? Vance? WHAT? VANCE? After Stephanopoulos stuffed him in a locker yesterday? What do they think they know about Trump’s longevity, that we don’t? Why is Stephen Miller panicking? Why is Mike Johnson panicking over the Epstein Files and more importantly what could his end game be here? What? He's just never bringing the House back into session?

And this all ties in to the indefensible Charlie Kirk assassination because all of this could be explained if you recognize that the Right thought Kirk was a future president, maybe THE future president.

MEDIA OBEYING IN ADVANCE: Trump attacks Politico's Dasha Burns to her face and instead of accepting the Orange Badge of Courage she tells him Karolyin Leavitt will vouch for her. That's disqualifying. And I'd like to read you only about one fifth of one of the best media essays I've read this year, written by Elizabeth Lopatto at The Verge. It completely changed my mind about Bari Weiss going to CBS. Weiss is no less evil, but Lopatto brilliantly argues she is not going to destroy CBS - CBS is going to destroy her. And they should televise it.

B-Block (35:05) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Milwaukee Brewers win, then humiliate themselves and their guiding light Bob Uecker, by taunting the losers. Governor Greg Abbott makes a joke about somebody else's physical incapacity. Trump's Beauty Pageant Miss Uncongeniality Prosecutor Lindsey Halligan makes another amazing typo. And a Kristi Noem twofer, performed with the Benny Hill Yakety Sax Theme playing in the background.

C-Block (46:22) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: The ACTUAL writer of The Washington Post's first Watergate story, Bart Barnes, has died. He pulled together the first-day work of Woodward, Bernstein and the crime reporter the day the thing broke in June 1972 and had a 50-year career that probably hit its nadir a decade later when he wound up covering the same story as...me. For months he and I and a couple of others were the core beat reporters on the 1982 NFL Strike. He was wonderful, and he was the final straight man in an intricate, fantastic practical joke we played on the New York Times' guy. The story of Bart Barnes - and The Janofsky Maneuver.

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SEASON 4 EPISODE 23: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (2:30) SPECIAL COMMENT: Here we go again.

Trump is talking about his own mortality or career mortality or heaven or all of the above… AGAIN at the same time he’s talking about declaring insurrections and jailing more political opponents, like Mayor Johnson and Governor Pritzker and any one of a dozen judges including at least one he appointed – not prosecuting them, just jailing them - and, as if it could GET any worse, he specifically segued from the issue of wanting to prove to God that he’s been good to how great all those weapons are at his naval base.

The missiles are flying, hallelujah, hallelujah.

Plus he's written: “Chicago Mayor should be in jail for failing to protect Ice Officers! Governor Pritzker also." Look, you and I know it should be TRUMP in jail because he’s not only broken laws, he’s nearly COLLECTED THE COMPLETE SET of broken laws. But the process of convincing Trump that he's not crazy, that his predictions are coming true, that Portland is ablaze, is how Stephen Miller and the others manipulate him into eroding American democracy a little more every damn day. And this has worked since at least 2016 and I was told about it by Ed Rollins in 2017. It's the Trump personal feedback loop.

And when the interruptors in that loop get in the way, they get bought out and destroyed. CNN first, The Washington Post, and now CBS News and the "B" stands for "Bari Weiss" who once told The Federalist Society that it was ok if it didn't believe her and her wife's marriage was legal because they all shared what really mattered: a desire for lower taxes. Let me expand upon the death of CBS News and her disastrous debut at its helm by retelling the story of the miniature version enacted at the CBS flagship station in LA when I worked there in 1991: The Mystery Of The Broken Number 3 CBS Pencils.

B-Block (37:00) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: What is wrong with these dweeb MAGAs? Ken Paxton can't keep his pants on, every other day there's some new story causing his wife to again decide to divorce him, and he's just announced "undercover operations" against leftists. Hey, Pal, if you did anything BESIDES undercover operations you wouldn't be dismissed as a sex pest. Poor Derrick Van Orden continues his descent: now he's yelling at people for not learning how the Senate votes the way he learned about it in the 4th Grade (all of what he learned was wrong). And the Bad Bunny Super Bowl blowback reaches Marjorie Taylor Greene who demands a law making English the official language which is going to be trouble for her since she doesn't speak it.

C-Block (45:00) THURSDAYS WITH THURBER: It's one of those weeks, plus my back is gone, one of my eyes is fighting me: it's time to bring back the first Thurber story I ever read aloud to an audience, the oddly soothing "A Box To Hide In."

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A-BLOCK (2:30) SPECIAL COMMENT: TRUMP SUDDENLY SPECULATES ABOUT LIFE WITHOUT HIM: From anybody else it would be trivia. From Trump this is startling. Buried in an ordinary narcissistic flight: "It'll be very unfair in the future when they (Republicans) don't have Trump to fight for them."

That quote, might be the biggest headline Trump has made this year and it sailed RIGHT past the American news media yesterday. What in the HELL did he mean by that and more importantly why did he suddenly acknowledge there is an end, maybe soon?

After being MIA for five days – no live public viewing of him, just one video that according to White House time stamps took more than two hours to produce even though it only required him to try to speak for a minute-ten… he EMERGED with what was, even for him, such an utterly bizarre and especially vulnerable admission. 

He was out of view for FIVE DAYS. FIVE. From that bizarre “please clap” speech before the Generals at Quantico on Tuesday – the Pete Hegseth International Day of Military Hair Care Symposium and Product Sampling – through yesterday morning when he managed to stagger out of the White House, blast a series of non sequitirs at the press pool, and then go to another military celebration for which we have the money even in the middle of his shutdown of the government.

Nobody asked: HOW have you been, WHERE have you been, WHAT are they treating you for, WHAT does that "when they don't have (you) to fight for them" quote mean? Because again, as in the week he went MIA at the beginning of LAST month, nobody had a clue what would take a man with compulsive talking disease and an ego so large it has own it zip code, from appearing in front of crowds and cameras for FIVE DAYS. 

And THEN Trump went in front of the Navy and said he warned about Osama Bin Laden last year, and told Pete Hegseth about it a year before 9/11, and claimed he was president in 2016 but they fixed the 2016 election, but they ran it again and he "got 250."

What. In The Hell. Is Wrong. With Trump’s Health?

B-Block (27:44) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: A $1 Trump coin? Ten cents per chin? Ian Miles Cheong doesn't think they'll eat his face. Noem and Lewandowski think they'll find undocumented immigrants attending the Super Bowl. And Kristi really has to go to the toilet. THIS IS OFFICIAL BUSINESS!

C-Block (38:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Well, here we are. Fifty years ago Tuesday night, at 11:15 PM, I did my first broadcast on an actual radio station with advertisers and listeners. I was 16 and it's not bad for 16 and for the fact that my much older colleagues at WVBR-FM did a superb job of hazing me. And yes, that first broadcast is still extant, as you'll hear.

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SEASON 4 EPISODE 21: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (2:30) COULD TRUMP PASS A SANITY TEST? Warning: this is a PARTIAL RE-RUN. If you heard Thursday's episode, don't bother. But I got such a great response to re-reading and annotating and updating my July 2016 piece for Vanity Fair Magazine on this topic that I wanted to post this as a stand-alone segment in case you skipped it and had time to listen now. The Thursday news-of-the-day stuff has gotten slightly outdated so I've stripped it off. As you know, I don't make a habit of re-posting episodes and I'm not going to start. Again: if you listened to the whole thing Thursday, this is NOT going to be new to you. Don't listen - unless you're trying to memorize it.

SO... COULD TRUMP PASS A SANITY TEST? I have grown old talking about Trump's sanity. As I wrote then: short answer? Probably not. This is a layman using professional tools: an actual kind of "triage" test used by working psychology professionals to assess if somebody is injured, tripping, or psychopathic. I had an active therapist walk through the examination and assign the points per topic. It's an important time to review what we knew - or should have known - nine long years ago. Because he was unwell then, too.

B-Block (24:31) PART TWO OF "CAN TRUMP PASS A SANITY TEST": We conclude the annotated 2016 piece on Trump's already provable mental distress with the disturbing reality that takes us back to where we began on Thursday with Representative Madeleine Dean's lament: "The president is unwell."

C-Block (45:00) THIS IS JUST THE SIGN-OFF: Honestly, there is no reason to listen to this. It's just the credits.

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SEASON 4 EPISODE 20: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:45) SPECIAL COMMENT:  “The President is unhinged. He is Unwell. The President is Unwell.”

Representative Madeleine Dean of Pennsylvania with perhaps the most important eleven words in the past decade, perhaps the most important eleven words in the history of this country, CERTAINLY the most important eleven words for the FUTURE of this country.

“The President is Unwell.”

We have at LEAST one – probably TWO – presidential health crises in full flower at the same time: And near as I can tell, only Representative Dean is talking about it (and directly to Speaker Mike Johnson, in what was not intended to be a public conversation) along with Governor Pritzker of Illinois, whose diagnosis was SIXTEEN words long and just as important. Quote: "There is something genuinely wrong with this man, and the 25th Amendment ought to be invoked."

The two crises are obvious: at his insane speech to the Generals Tuesday, Trump sounded as if his charger had been left unplugged for three weeks, his voice husky, indistinct, words slurred. And what he DID say made next to no sense. Pritzker suggests dementia which could explain both the rapidly declining mental capacity AND the audible collapse AND why Trump was invisible yesterday and had to send Vance to ride Day One of the government shutdown Trump orchestrated. It would all ALSO explain that missing week around Labor Day and the cabinet meeting – the LAST televised cabinet meeting – in which his Departmental Slaves shoveled twice as much laudatory BS as usual, as if it were a going-away roast for Trump.

Maybe it was.

“The President is unwell.”

CAN TRUMP PASS A SANITY TEST? I have grown old talking about Trump's sanity. I first did it publicly in June, 2016, and a month later Vanity Fair published my article "Can Trump Pass A Sanity Test?" As I wrote then: short answer? Probably not. This is a layman using professional tools: an actual kind of "triage" test used by working psychology professionals to assess if somebody is injured, tripping, or psychopathic. I had an active therapist walk through the examination and assign the points per topic. It's an important time to review what we knew - or should have known - nine long years ago. Because he was unwell then, too.

B-Block (35:23) PART TWO OF "CAN TRUMP PASS A SANITY TEST": We conclude the annotated 2016 piece on Trump's already provable mental distress with the disturbing reality that takes us back to where we began with Madeleine Dean's lament: "The president is unwell."

C-Block (56:00) GOOD NIGHT AND GOOD LUCK

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SEASON 4 EPISODE 19: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (2:30) SPECIAL COMMENT: Trump is escalating his terror campaign against you. If you oppose him, if you criticize him, if you even question him, he will try to call YOU a terrorist, put YOU on a terrorism BLACKLIST. And if that doesn’t work, ARREST you, and if THAT doesn’t work, invade your state and terrorize IT.

On the other hand, he has apparently TACO’d out on his terrorist invasion of Portland now saying “well I mean we’re certainly LOOKING AT IT.” But on the OTHER OTHER hand National Security Presidential Memorandum Seven is not on hold; in it Trump claims the right to prosecute you for domestic terrorist if you express quote “anti-Christianity” or oppose the government in any way. 

Get you indicted when there is literally no case, like James Comey. Or reenact the McCarthy Era blacklist and try to get you fired, as with Lisa Monaco. Or just label you a domestic terrorist because you called Stephen Miller a "fascist." When Stephen Miller has called 150 million Democrats "fascists." That'll be quite the indictment against Miller. Which reminds me: Fox's Jesse Watters calls Miller a "sexual matador." Which I presume means he winds up getting gored in the groin.

And just to bring this up a notch, Trump's insanity is growing and it certainly looks like over the weekend, he wanted his social media followers to believe he can bestow upon them the gift of immortality. 

Not IMMORALITY, "immortality." The saga of Trump's Med Beds and RFK jr's face.

B-Block (34:20) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Isabel Vincent writes the weakest New York Post hit job on me in the history of New York Post hit jobs. The breaking news? An anonymous source says I may have been rude to a waiter in 1997. Marco Rubio bans the president of Colombia, tags him on twitter, tags the wrong guy. And Newt Gingrich complains about Abby Spanberger not voting for a particular bill in the House this month. Maybe because she hasn't been a member of the house since January?

(45:47) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: It's Stevie Week! Thirteen years ago tomorrow since I was born again in dogs, when Olivia Nuzzi and I were adopted by a tiny Maltese who opened up a new world to me.

C-Block (1:06:00) PART TWO OF STEVIE WEEK: The adventures of Stevie and the five dogs who have followed her, including a cameo appearance from the Gotcha Day Girl herself.

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A-Block (2:30) SPECIAL COMMENT: After perhaps the most hapless 96 hours of his presidency, the worst 96 hours of the worst presidency of ALL TIME, the most FAIL in the shortest span… the mentally-deteriorating, untethered-from-reality Trump… must RESIGN. And take his idiot sycophants with him.

The last 96 hours:

His U.N. speech, sounding like an escapee from a psych ward.

His Tylenol news conference, sounding like an escapee from a psych ward who’s been living on the street for a month.

His suggestion NATO countries shoot down Russian jets.

His sudden embrace of Zelensky, either another stall or a stupid dare to Putin.

MAGA’s RAGE AT his sudden embrace of Zelensky.

The cover of a London right wing daily: his picture and in 72-point type, the word “DERANGED.”

The ICE shooting in Dallas; his sadistic Homeland chief pretending the victims were agents when they were detainees; his idiot simpering Vice President pretending the victims were agents when they were detainees; his corrupt venal FBI director pretending the victims were agents when they were detainees.

His ICE chief not denying he took $50,000 in a paper bag.

His staff THEN denying he took $50,000 in a paper bag.

His cancellation of a meeting with Democrats making sure if there’s a government shutdown it’s all his fault.

His crackpot pal Milei crashing the Venezuelan economy and needing us to bail him out.

His paranoia over the stopped teleprompter at the U-N that was his White House staff’s fault.

His paranoia over the stopped escalator at the U-N that was his own vanity videographer’s fault.

His desire to arrest the U.N. escalator technician or the U-N escalator button pusher.

His desire to arrest the escalator AND James Comey.

The election of Raul Grijalva’s daughter to Congress.

The fact that Adelita Grijalva will be the last Representative needed to force a vote on releasing the Trump Epstein Files.

His self-humiliation at the Kirk Memorial.

ABC reinstating Jimmy Kimmel.

Meaning Disney told him to eff off.

Meaning the National Football League told him to eff off.

Meaning they all told his propagandists at Sinclair to eff off.

Kimmel then shoving him in a locker using only a monologue.

Kimmel getting a record 6 million viewers and 22 more online in the first TWENTY hours.

Kimmel and his show getting new life and maybe a new contract.

His self-owning confession that HE and his goons used threats to get Kimmel cancelled.

The fact that Kimmel, and ABC, and Bob Iger, and Disney, and America told Trump to SHOVE HIS THREATS.

And that’s just since Sunday night.

You lost to an escalator. Resign. Take Vance with you. Take Noem with you. Take Ho-man with you. Take Milei with you.

LEAVE the Epstein Files.

B-Block (32:53) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Jason Whitlock says eff everybody, this is Christ-land and he won't be brainwashed any more (no brain, no pain). Derrick Van Orden says Kirk was Jesus and you don't F with the Jesus so defund The Mayo Clinic (he should go there and get CT scanned) and Kristi Noem says a tweet saying she'd have a bad day was terrifying for her. This is a piece of crap who in her spare time murders puppies.

C-Block (42:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: The New York Post BS firehose points at a couple of liberals at a time, then it rotates away, but eventually it makes a full circle and comes back to you. For me this has been going on since the mid-1990's and it's just started again. If you'll permit, here's a brief history.

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SEASON 4 EPISODE 17: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (2:30) SPECIAL COMMENT: How about this for a plot twist? I'll believe it when I see it - it still depends on television executives doing the moral, right, professional thing AND tacitly admitting they are correcting a mistake, but multiple sources insist that at least at this moment the ABC people expect Jimmy Kimmel to not only not be fired but to return, on the air, in late night, probably before the end of the month. Maybe even this week.

Yep. The fascist FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr may have delivered Liberals the biggest gift of the year. The blowback towards ABC is untenable (even polling: the Carr threat was "unacceptable" is above water by 17%; the Kimmel monologue was acceptable, 43%-36%) and the desire to keep Kimmel and maybe now even extend his contract has only grown since last week.

And that's in large part because so many key right wingers from Ted Cruz and Rand Paul to Scott Dilbert Adams and Ben Shapiro are enraged by Carr's bullying and rightly recognize that if Trump can do this to ABC, what could a Democratic president do to Murdoch and NewsMax and... THEM. I mean, two out of three MAGAs have podcasts, right?

My sources pointed to seven landmarks. First: they HAVEN’T fired him. Second: they actually haven’t said ANYTHING about him since the one sentence announcement about taking him off. Third: HE hasn’t said ANYTHING about ABC, good bad or indifferent. Fourth: remember the Sinclair owned local stations that started all the trouble? The ones who were bribing Trump and FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr by DEMANDING Kimmel be sidelined, so Trump and Carr would waive the rules and let Sinclair buy more than the legal limit OF local stations? Remember their plan to run a Charlie Kirk tribute last Friday night in Kimmel’s time slot? They didn’t run it. They put it on YouTube. No other explanation. Fifth: what happened to the Sinclair demand that Kimmel apologize and pay a bribe, uh, make a donation to Kirk’s scam Turning Point Company? Sixth: how much grief did ABC take for folding to Trump AND for not defending Kimmel as the entire right wing misquoted him? So much that no human can estimate it. And Seventh: how could you possibly put all the Kimmel and Kirk toothpaste back in the tube? As Eric Idle said: All You Need Is Cash.

ALSO: Grandpa posts a self-incriminating note to Pam Bondi that he must have thought was being printed or emailed or lord knows what. He is running out of prosecutors who'll prosecute innocent opponents about whom there's no evidence. The Tom Homan $50,000 scandal also involves Emil Bove (and how in the hell did we not see that coming? He literally has the word "HO" in his name). And a self-proclaimed prophetess says she saw Charlie Kirk get his reward in Heaven: a large ice cream cone.

B-Block (40:20) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Congressman Randy Fine sets a new high in low. Stephen A. Smith thinks the Kimmel-Kirk controversy is over a joke. And Vanity Fair's hiring of Olivia Nuzzi is not sitting well with journalists (as one put it, all of them who DON'T sext their sources).

C-Block (52:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Hard to understand anything she says or writes but I'm pretty sure Nancy Mace threatened to end my career over Charlie Kirk. Thus I need to review the efforts to end my career, which professionally date back only to 1984 but if you count my semi-pro days in college actually stretch back to late 1977. Virtually everybody who declared me done is out of the business, or deceased. Take a number, Nance.

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BULLETIN: SEASON 4 EPISODE 16, COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

In an Oval Office news briefing crazy even by his standards, Trump answered a question about the FCC blackmailing of ABC over Charlie Kirk by changing the topic to himself, making up a statistic that "94, 95, 96, or 97 percent" of all network television stories about him are critical of him, and declaring of such criticism: "That's really illegal, in my opinion."

In Trump's damaged condition he could forget this by morning. But after this week's mafioso style shakedown of ABC by the FCC and the owners of Sinclair to force Jimmy Kimmel off the air by FCC Commissioner, Brendan Carr, the real question is - what if he doesn't? What if somebody like Carr in his administration decides to curry favor with Trump by trying to enforce an "it's illegal to criticize Trump" declaration"?

Taking the two stories together, and perhaps adding in Trump's threat to declare something that doesn't really exist (Antifa) a "terrorist organization" (which could just as easily lead to him declaring you a member of Antifa and thus a "terrorist") the FCC's action is so bad that it provoked serious, well-thought-out, sober yet angry condemnation Friday afternoon from the unlikeliest of sources: Senator Ted Cruz, who warned Republicans that the government needed to stay out of the bullying media business.

Whether that will register with Trump remains to be seen. For now the gist is: Trump says criticizing him (or in the best possible interpretation, criticizing him a LOT) is illegal. He cannot remain president under such circumstances.

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