Countdown with Keith Olbermann

EPISODE 133: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:43) SPECIAL COMMENT: To try to score cheap political points about the downing of the Chinese Spy Balloon, Marjorie Taylor Greene stood before an Idaho Lincoln Day Dinner and defecated on the memory of the dead of 9/11 and the heroes of Flight 93. She actually claimed that the argument that shooting it down over the mainland was "bullshit" because "Do you guys remember on 9/11 when an airplane crashed in Pennsylvania? A jetliner? Remember that? It didn't kill anybody on the ground! It killed everyone on board! But it didn't kill anyone on the ground!" She must resign from Congress immediately, or be expelled, because even for her this is disgraceful and intolerable.

B-Block (15:17) IN SPORTS: The "temporary" Extra Innings Ghost Runner becomes permanent. Baseball has always survived the idiocy of those who run it, as evidenced by the new research of how the old Washington Senators preferred Jim Busby to some guy named Mickey Mantle (22:50) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Bono and U2 get in bed with a guy using illicit Facial Recognition technology; The College Board talks big, does nothing, to Ron DeFascist; The backlash over 'The Black National Anthem' at the Super Bowl. Moron Benny Johnson not only says it should be illegal, but asks what if there were a 'White National Anthem.' Have I got a surprise for Benny.

C-Block (29:45) EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: Daniel, in Texas (30:45) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: It is now exactly 43 years since the masters of UPI Radio got the rookie - me - drunk at the 1980 Olympics and then sent me to cover the Men's Downhill in the -50 wind chill of Whiteface Mountain. I somehow got myself there, but I did not get all my equipment with me and boy was THAT a surprise.

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SERIES 2 EPISODE 135: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

Haley was winning Vermont, Uncommitted was doing ok but Biden’s worst margin was about 60 points, and once again Super Tuesday is just a brand name.

But the HEADLINE is: the Supreme Court actually HAS left the door open to disqualify Trump from becoming president again. Seriously.

Turns out that many Constitutional Scholars and even some sitting members of the House, think that in its haste to make sure their pimp Trump got on to the ballot yesterday in Colorado, the Court ALSO left the door open to Democrats and disaffected Republicans challenging the validity of a Trump election if god forbid it plays out like that. There is now a debate over the consequences of the court ruling that the Constitution gives ENFORCEMENT of the 14th Amendment “to Congress.”

Practically speaking: Trump wins the electoral college, the Democrats hold the Senate (slightly unlikely) and take the House (very likely), and they are suddenly going to pass new legislation saying Trump is ineligible because he engaged in insurrection in 2021? Well they don’t HAVE to pass new legislation. They already did that, according to this reading, in 2022. It was “The Electoral Count Reform And Presidential Transition Act” designed to clarify the 1887 legislation through whose loopholes Trump tried to run his coup.

The 2022 clarification closed nearly all of those loopholes, limiting what kinds of challenges lawmakers could make to electoral slates already certified by the states. But they left two grounds for objections challenges and one of them reads “the vote of one or more electors has not been regularly given.” THAT phrase was in the 19th Century legislation and it means, any suspicion that an elector was BRIBED to vote, or was like kidnapped and the guy casting the vote wasn’t the REAL elector, or voted on the wrong day, or... the elector voted for somebody who wasn’t eligible.

Oops. Voted... for somebody who wasn’t elllllligggggggible, you say?

It’s not just a can of worms. It’s a FAMILY SIZED can of worms. Thank you Sam Alito!

ALSO: Trump just publicly contradicted his court filing in New York that he didn’t have the $465 million he owes. Asked about coming up with it on Fox, he answered: “I have a lot of money. I can do what I want to do...I don’t worry about money.”

MEANWHILE: It’s mortifying but it may be a quick fix. A Democratic pollster has analyzed the field of potential Biden voters in three swing states and figured out that only 31% of them had even heard Trump’s top ten worst statements about vermin and deportation and dictatorship, because voters are not immersed in politics and people do move on with their lives. The good news is that the moment they HEAR all of them, Trump’s unfavorable score jumps by five points and individual deficits grow from five to nine points. Solution? More ads reminding people Trump is an anti-dictatorial son of a bitch. Like, you know, one in every commercial break on every television channel and streamer every day until the election.

Oh – and emphasizing it in tomorrow’s State of the Union wouldn’t hurt. Did I mention I’ll be on, live, after it, for our Countdown post-game show, on YouTube and Twitch?

B-Block (23:14) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Roger Stone thinks Facebook conspired to stop his astroturf. Axios still hasn’t fixed its LOLworthy story about Trump pivoting. And the appointment of a Hong Kong native here legally on a pre-citizenship visa to the San Francisco Election Commission to help with translating voting materials into other languages has deranged a bunch of fascists who are treating this as if Mao Tse Dong was just named to the Supreme Court. Maria Bartiromo thinks the San Francisco Election Commission is also the Federal Election Commission. And Michigan House candidate Anthony Hudson says we must have laws saying if you don’t speak English you can’t vote. Which’ll be a problem for Anthony because he can barely SPELL English.

C-Block (33:10) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: We had a president of MSNBC, he had been the president of CNN, and among other things he didn’t have cable in his home and apparently hadn’t watched any night-time show on MSNBC for at least a year. He also lied about his height, and he was – legitimately – 6’4”. Who the hell DOES that?

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JEFF CLARK SPILLS THE BEANS

A BLOCK (1:45) SPECIAL COMMENT: The would-be Attorney General, Jeffrey Clark, inadvertently reveals the Justice Department is pursuing Obstruction of Justice, Conspiracy, and False Statement charges over the Eastman-Trump Fake Electors Scheme (3:30) NINE phones now seized, including Mike Lindell's. We'll get his nitwitted update on the worst crime since the crucifixion (7:30) It's confirmed: Monday's Trump "Golf Course Meeting" was actually...a golf course meeting, about sprucing it up for the Saudi Arabian Blood Money Golf Tour stop there next spring (9:00) Surprisingly, Trump declares himself Antifa (9:20) The Durham bull is over as the 'Deep State Investigation' ends in shallow waters (10:10) And in an unrelated headline: Queen Elizabeth is still dead. Seriously: British TV coverage gives one reason to worry about our UK cousins. PTSD seems to be settling in, and now they're claiming Elizabeth will be missed as much here in the US as there in the UK.

B BLOCK (16:50) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: The NBC News affiliate in Tampa kisses up to Ron DeSantis, Republicans attack Lindsey Graham for telling the truth about their secret abortion ban plan, and Etsy gets the message but a new sponsor steps up for Steve Bannon's Fascist Disco Party - and they compete for today's honors. (20:55) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL PART 1: The death of Ken Starr recalls his pollution of American news, especially cable TV, and I'll take you back to June 5, 1998, when I tried to quit as the anchor of MSNBC's top Clinton-Lewinsky-Starr show, two NBC News executives asked me to see an NBC official as part of a process to leave the network - except she turned out to be their leg-breaker and told me NBC versus me would be "David and Goliath" and NBC would crush me.

C BLOCK (34:30) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL PART 2: But it was even worse: she promised that if I quit, NBC would put my parents "out on the street." That's how closely Ken Starr forged the link between his live made-for-tv political reality show and the profits at all the networks.

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SERIES 2 EPISODE 36: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:30) BULLETIN:

Gag Order now. Jail, later. Jack Smith has asked Judge Tonya Chutkan to shut Trump up and there is the tantalizing possibility that he wants her to at least threaten him with revocation of his bail and the terms of his release and that would mean jail.

Smith leaves the penalty TO Judge Chutkan. But he writes “The court should ensure that public statements by the defendant and his agents do not prejudice these criminal proceedings. The defendant’s repeated, inflammatory public statements regarding the District of Columbia, the Court, prosecutors and potential witnesses are substantially likely to materially prejudice the jury pool, create fear among potential jurors, and result in threats or harassment to individuals he singles out...” That is strong language that Smith couches as if – to be blunt – it isn’t. Quote: “The Government proposes two narrowly tailored orders that impose modest, permissible restrictions on prejudicial extrajudicial conduct."

What Smith is accusing Trump of – and what Smith is asking Chutkan to DO – has bearings on Fani Willis’s prosecution of Trump there. You may recall that the Judge’s warnings to Trump about the terms of his release – the fact that he has been permitted to remain free on bail – are FAR more explicit than what Jack Smith has gotten so far in Florida or Washington: “The defendant shall make no direct or indirect threat of any nature against any witness...” and yet Smith’s document says Trump has threatened witnesses. “The above shall include, but are not limited to, posts on social media or reposts of posts made by another individual on social media.” Jack Smith’s motions doesn’t just quote the threats and intimidation in Trump’s “posts on social media or reposts of posts made by another individual” – it actually includes reproductions of images of TEN of them. If Judge Chutkan finds against Trump in Washington, Trump could be immediately found guilty of violating his bail in Georgia.

Trump replied by calling him quote “Deranged Jack Smith” again and referring to himself in the third person again and by mastering sophistry again by explaining that his poll numbers mean he can say anything he wants and claiming quote “I am not allowed to COMMENT? They leak, lie and sue and they won’t allow me to SPEAK? How else would I explain that Jack Smith is deranged...”

This is not about the 1st Amendment. This is not even about the most extreme theoretical example of the 1st Amendment: the cliché about yelling fire in a crowded theater. This is about a man who yells fire in a crowded theater, and then goes to every theater in the country and yells fire again. This is about a creature who believes himself omnipotent and untouchable. This is about a potential scenario in which – if not in response to THIS filing by Jack Smith, then by SOME filing by SOME prosecutor at SOME point after SOME high number of these violations in one of these cases – a judge has to send federal or state marshals to apprehend Trump and bring him to a jail or prison for detention. He is not going to stop – he does not understand the concept of having to stop. He will have to be forced to. You can insert your own thoughts about the implications if he resists arrest.

One thing that Trump and his lawyers and his apologists and his cultists cannot say, is that they have not been warned. “The fact that he’s running a political campaign has to yield to the orderly administration of justice,”Judge Chutkan told the Trump lawyer Lauro on the 11th of last month. “If that means he can’t say exactly what he wants to say about witnesses in this case, that’s how it has to be. Even arguably ambiguous statements from parties or their counsel, if they can be reasonably interpreted to intimidate witnesses or to prejudice potential jurors, can threaten the jurors,” Judge Chutkan continued, on August 11th. “I will take whatever measures are necessary to safeguard the integrity of these proceedings.”

Judge, he’s not going to stop. You’re going to have to lock him up. Do it now.

B-Block (19:02) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Lauren Boebert of the anti-drag party, is dating a bar owner who reportedly hosted a drag party. Drew Barrymore re-starts her talk show even though the writers are on strike. That makes her a SCAB. Bill Maher re-starts his "comedy" show even though the writers are on strike (and he insults the writers in the process) and he is a SCAB. (27:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: I didn't know until 2009 that Maher and I met at Cornell in 1978 and in less than a minute he'd been so obnoxious I was ready to sock him. In a terrific irony considering his scabbing for his corporate masters, way back then he called me a "corporate sellout."

C-Block (43:00) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: The immortal short story "The Night The Bed Fell."

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