Countdown with Keith Olbermann

SEASON 4 EPISODE 82: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (3:00) SPECIAL COMMENT: Call me a cynic but I am beginning to get a sense that you may have some doubts about this Not-An-Assassination Attempt at The White House Correspondents Dinner.
Well - that's what it was. Or in this case, what it wasn't. The acting attorney general says the alleged perp quote “was stopped before he got anywhere near the President.” So, NOT an assassination attempt, per the attorney general. But of course the White House is still trying to sell it as one (its 'protocol director' insists it was "the hand of God" again; its deputy chief of staff tried to start another 'USA!' chant after the incident). Even though proximity is the definition of such a nightmare scenario. Saturday Night? Obama had 15 of those.
Still, among my fellow Americans who are NOT in the Trump Mass Hypnosis Cult, I may be in the minority because I DON’T think it was staged. Why are you so cynical? Just because an hour beforehand Karoline Leavitt told Fox quote “There will be some shots fired tonight!” That’s a coincidence. Just because Trump has gone insane about his quote “militarily top secret ballroom” and the next thing you know he’s GOING to a ballroom and after that the Secret Service screws up security AT the ballroom and after THAT he’s holding a press conference saying this is WHY he needs that ballroom and all his sock puppets are tweeting about the ballroom. Coincidence!
Just because Trump and his filth have lied to you about every THING, every DAY, for 11 years… that’s no reason for you to think that was STAGED. It’s a coincidence! It’s all a coincidence.
ALSO: for God's sake stop saying there's no room for violence in American politics and we don't resolve our differences this way! Certainly we all wish that were true. But in point of fact there's room for almost nothing BUT violence in American politics! Ask JFK, Reagan, Teddy Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, Garfield, Lincoln, McKinley, dozens of others! What was the Civil War if not political violence?
B-Block (28:00) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: The Staten Island cop who has reportedly amassed more than 500 speeding tickets, and last year averaged one every other day. Jeff Bezos' Washington Post will only print a letter to the editor responding to its editorial if the authors take out the references TO Jeff Bezos. And Tom Cotton makes a hilarious mistake: Iran will meet its match not on the battlefield but at the bargaining table because it's never faced the author of "Art Of The Deal." Who's gonna tell him?
C-Block (41:00) MONDAYS WITH THURBER: We need a break from media people talking about themselves so let's drop "Things I Promised Not To Tell" and instead read you his wonderful, weird, slightly spooky "The Black Magic Of Barney Haller."

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SEASON 4 EPISODE 81: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (3:00) SPECIAL COMMENT: "Donald Trump Is Losing His Mind."
It's the headline on a column in perhaps the most prominent MAGA magazine headline. It's not me saying it this time. Not Jimmy Kimmel. Not George Conway. Not a psychiatrist. The Washington Examiner: “Donald Trump Is Losing His Mind.”
Why? Just because he’s also losing IRAN? Just because he’s COMPARING Iran to Vietnam (which he dodged)? Just because he threatened to go General Sherman on Teheran? Just because he's just announced you are no longer ALLOWED to CRITICIZE him ABOUT Iran?
“Donald Trump Is Losing His Mind” writes The Washington Examiner - guess that makes it unanimous (and there is now polling on this!)
ALSO: House Democrats want Kash Patel to take an alcoholism screening test. His choices amount to: a) ARE you an alcoholic? b) Are you so FULL of alcohol you’re at risk of bursting into flames, or c) are you J. Edgar Boozer.
AND about the White House Correspondents Dinner Saturday. The Correspondents Association is obeying in advance to Trump, calling him an "honoree" and welcoming his rats like Brendan Carr and Stephen Miller. If you’re attending this dinner, and you are not planning to storm out or otherwise using this rare opportunity to protest Trump’s presence, you’re not only a traitor to JOURNALISM, you’re a traitor to America.
B-Block (36:00) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Trump's "National Garden Of Heroes" with 250 statues of everybody from Elvis to Whittaker Chambers is dumb enough. What happens when they forget to order the statues? Interior Secretary Burgum wants Theodore Roosevelt in the pro football Hall of Fame even though there wasn't pro football while T.R. was alive. And new Congressman Clay Fuller says he was only joking when he said Georgia was named after George Washington.
C-Block (45:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Talking about dinner in DC Saturday (The White House Correspondents) led me to mention my disastrous dates last century with Laura Ingraham on social media and there was considerable disbelief so it's time to tell that story.


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SEASON 4 EPISODE 80: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (3:00) SPECIAL COMMENT: Nobody is at the wheel of Trump's war in Iran.
Is the Strait of Hormuz open or is it closed? Are there peace talks with Iran in Pakistan TOMORROW… or nah? Is Jayvee Vance going? Is Iran going? Has Trump scheduled peace talks where we’re the only ones there? Will it make any difference if we’re the only ones there? Doesn’t “blowing a hole in the engine room” of an Iranian cargo ship yesterday mean we aren’t honoring Trump’s own ceasefire he boasted about? Are we paying 20 billion dollars for the Iranian uranium and hostages? The same uranium and hostages Obama bought for 400 million and Trump called him a traitor? Or is that a no?
Don’t ask Trump – he doesn’t know. But that won’t stop him from answering anyway. Yes. Then Nope. Then Yes again. Then: All of the Above. in 48 hours he went from 13 posts congratulating himself on winning, to insisting he would stop being “Mr. Nice Guy” and blow up all of Iran. By the way, eactly when was he “Mr. Nice Guy”?
We are LOSING the war in Iran and as of today a total idiot is still president and commander-in-chief. He gets questions about the pointless war he started to divert attention from Epstein and the economy he crashed, so he orders the reporters out of the Oval Office, and sits there with hapless munchkin Little Joe Rogan standing behind him, the shine off his cueball noggin blinding cameras and journalists alike. Trump has set off a chain of events over which he no longer has any control – except to withdraw and flee – and to withdraw and flee is to acknowledge he screwed up. And this man would jump off the roof of the White House before admitting he screwed up.
The Trump “Administration” has so UTTERLY jumped the shark, that the truthers are coming out from inside MAGA: Alex Jones now insists Trump has done all this DELIBERATELY, because he has made a “deal with the deep state to throw the election to the Democrats." Marjorie Taylor Greene has joined the Trump Assassination Truthers and Trump himself has floated a kind of conspiracy theory ABOUT himself… he wrote ‘Praise Be To Allah’ on Easter morning to “seem as unstable and insulting as possible.”
He wanted to seem as unstable as possible? MISSION ACCOMPLISHED, Trump! You’ve finally done something you promised!
B-Block (28:30) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Before the year is out, Major League Baseball will threaten to lock the players out and cancel the season in 2027 because the smaller market teams can't make enough money to compete. One of those teams just sold for $3.1 billion more than it did in 2012. New York's hockey teams support a) Trump putting his name on public buildings or b) legal funds for cops convicted of killing unarmed civilians. Vivek Ramaswamy dismisses his opponent talking about being raped as a child as her "complaining." And Lauren Boebert thinks Congress is too horny and she won't remain, uh, hands off.
C-Block (45:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Netflix stock took a huge hit, supposedly after the co-founder Reed Hastings announced he was bowing out. But I think it might've been another announcement that did it. They are going into news podcasts with - Brian Williams? The story of how he imploded at NBC, while I was literally an eyewitness to his public self-destruction, and the advice I gave his bosses that could have saved him (and them) if they hadn't ignored it.
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SEASON 4 EPISODE 79: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (2:30) SPECIAL COMMENT: Trump doubles down on bashing the Pope and appropriating Jesus.
This time it’s not him pretending to be Dr. Jesus or whoever. It's, it's, it's...well the image he posted looks like he’s about to make out with him. I mean this isn’t one of my areas of expertise but JC is fondling Trump's chest. It’s so bad even Speaker Mike Johnson noticed.
The Republicans aren’t mad about the other part, slamming Pope Leo, because right wing governments have been attacking the Catholic Church since King Henry the 8th. But some of the comments do underscore that if they want the Pope to "stay in his lane," the MAGA evangelical squad needs to stay in its.
This also underscores how MANY wars can Trump start at the same time? War against the Pope, War against European governments, War against Iran, War against Reality. He again insists he’s blockading the Strait of Hormuz when the American navy is clearly NOT blockading the Strait of Hormuz. He again insists he’s already beaten Iran, when Iran now says IT may also halt shipping in the RED SEA.
Does Trump even KNOW how bad it’s going for America in the Gulf? In world capitals? Or is this like Germany 1942 where citizens – and many government officials – were actually told the Luftwaffe had totally destroyed New York City. Let me tell you the story of what happened when German POW’s actually SAW New York City…
Plus: watch where you put your hands, J.
B-Block (26:30) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Is naming a large pothole on the Moon in honor of the late wife of one of the astronauts an "act of colonialism"? One anti-colonialism commenter thinks so. When you OD and that isn't the worst thing you did all week - the story of Clavicular. And the Swalwell Disaster prompts one Congressman (Andy Ogles) to propose hanging rapists (who's going to tell him?) and one Fox host (Jesse Watters) to pontificate on the proper time to "whip it out."
C-Block (39:15) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: She was a five-hour a week camerawoman who had already survived several years on Capitol Hill. He, owned the network and invited her to the best French restaurant in Georgetown. And she - as she told me back in '82 or '83 - wound up saying good night, by standing up in the middle of that restaurant and slapping him.
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SEASON 4 EPISODE 78: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (2:30) BREAKING: Trump attacks and threatens Pope Leo in insane online rant, criticizing him for being opposed to Nuclear Weapons. Then in an in-person interview upon his return to Joint Base Andrews tonight insists Pope Leo was wrong to SUPPORT Nuclear Weapons. Trump then posts an image of himself dressed in Jesus-like attire apparently healing a hospital patient. No comment yet from the world's 1,200,000,000 Catholics. (8:30) SPECIAL COMMENT: I know, I know, lots of stuff just happened: Orban topples in Hungary, Vance beclowns himself there and in talks with Iran, Trump basically ends the ceasefire and threatens war against EVERY country in the world if they send a ship through the strait of Hormuz, the Houthis are trying to blockade the OTHER shipping bottle-neck there, Trump caught staring at cleavage at the cage fighting in Miami, Swalwell self-defenestrating.
But I'll stick to this: The Melania Trump speech about Epstein was the single most important public statement by anybody connected to Trump in the last decade. She, personally, out of nowhere, moved the Epstein story back to center stage. A month of world-shaking cataclysm by her husband to bury the Epstein story and HIS COVER-UP OF IT and in 535 words she undid all that.
And the thing that will keep this story alive for months: NONE of her words were in defense of her husband. She never said WE are innocent. She said I am innocent. She said it TWENTY FOUR TIMES. Her speech could’ve been only FIVE words long. Five words that may end the Trump presidency:
I’M not taking the fall.
PLUS: No, Swalwell isn't the victim and the allegations aren't anonymous and this isn't a Roger Stone set-up. He just knew there was a story, the way in 2017 I knew there was a story that would end up getting Matt Lauer fired from NBC and I knew it six days before Lauer knew it. That "B" follows "A" does not mean "A" caused "B."
B-Block (42:00) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Chuck Todd blames Trump's pardons on Biden because Chuck Todd Disease. The Financial Times with one of the great corrections of our time. The banner if not the roof falls in on Gov. Shapiro. And what exactly are Kalshi, pro golf, and golfer Bryson deChambeau trying to sell in a commercial that ends with deChambeau evidently moving to a crashed UFO to beat an injured extraterrestrial to death with some golf clubs?
C-Block (56:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: My greatest sports record fell last night. It was 21 years and two months between episodes of ESPN's SportsCenter that I anchored. My old friend Rich Eisen has now made it 23 years. A good time to describe the Rip Van Winkle effect, and the bizarre stories about my goin' back to Bristol, Bristol, Bristol, in 2005, 2013, and 2018.
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