Countdown with Keith Olbermann

• TRY AND STOP ME: THE NEW TRUMP 3RD TERM PLOT - 5.8.25

  SEASON 3 EPISODE 124: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:45) SPECIAL COMMENT: The new Trump plot to beg, borrow, or steal a third term has dropped (that makes four different) and it follows the others in that a) somebody besides Trump has suggested it AND b) they've made it seem harmless AND c) they've made it seem like Trump has nothing to do with it and probably won't do it anyway AND d) they'll leave it to the will of the people to decide to convince him to, reluctantly, violate the Constitution. The twist in this new one is, it's positioned as: "The Constitution is Unconstitutional!" - namely, that because only the presidency is term-limited among federal offices, this must be invalid and overturned. Not that Trump wants it to be overturned. No, YOU want it overturned. Not that HE wants to stay on. But YOU will want him to. People are still not taking it seriously and still see the 22nd Amendment as a bulwark against any possibility of it happening. I'll review the other three plots and the fact that they've been working on them since at least 2017, and why you should never ever keep your eye off their machinations, nor forget the Trump Political Mantra: I'm going to do it - TRY AND STOP ME. STATE SECRETS PRIVILEGE: Trump and Stephen Miller are so scared that they won't get away with renditioning Kilmar Abrego Garcia that they have now thrown up the "State Secrets" crap to further stall his return. And they're talking about kidnapping people off our streets and sending them to Libya or Ukraine. And Trump's craziness continues to double as we get the back story on the movie tariffs and a redux on windmills and it makes me mad enough to SING ABOUT THE WINDMILLS IN TRUMP'S MIND. B-Block (49:30) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: The far right's open racism is on display as a Minnesota woman calls a five-year old the N-word and a million dollars is raised to defend her. Laura Loomer employs one of Hitler's first catchphrases. And they so distrust the Deputy Secretary of State that they won't let him touch the thermostat in his office. C-Block (58:22) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: This time of year in 1997 I saw a ghost. I know who he was. I know why he was there. I know why he was silently laughing at me. And I did what he wanted me to do. His name was Glenn Corneliess and there's a reason the new facilities of WVBR-FM in Ithaca, N.Y. are the Olbermann-Corneliess studios.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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• THE CONTEMPT OF COURT TARGET HAS TO BE STEPHEN MILLER - 5.5.25

  SEASON 3 EPISODE 123: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:45) SPECIAL COMMENT: Don't be silly, Stephen Miller - you're taking the fall. For contempt of court in the Kilmar Abrego Garcia and Rogue Deportation Flight cases. The target to at least be fined, maybe jailed, for contempt of court has got to be Stephen Miller. The picture is clarifying slowly, the focus is sharpening painstakingly, but it seems evident now that contempt cases being built by District Judges Jeb Boasberg and Paula Xinis – the effort to get depositions about, and charge somebody with, contempt of court in the abduction of Mr. Abrego Garcia AND the renditioning of dozens of others to El Salvador after Boasberg ordered the plane to NOT take off – the slow, methodical attempt to finally, at long last, about damn time, hold SOMEBODY in the Trump Crime Administration responsible for SOMETHING… this whole move to put somebody behind bars, is, in both courts, targeting… Stephen Miller. Based on reporting by NBC, by the Akron Law Journal, by Brian Beutler in "Off Message" and otters: the finding by Judge Boasberg of probable cause for contempt citations against the Trump Gang, and these depositions scheduled by Judge XINIS are apparently designed to confirm what Miller and the other Trumpian monsters are boasting about in private – Miller is the architect of the deportation scheme and especially its baseline component of cruelty. The man who has allegedly hated Hispanics since a girl he asked out in high school turned him down, is also the architect of the scheme to disobey the District Court orders to bring Abrego Garcia home AND to disobey the Supreme Court in the process. The man who greets every warning from a court or an attorney or a human with a conscience to stop now before it is too late for him, by getting louder, and angrier, and more monstrous, the man behind whatever step towards Ethnic Cleansing is next, is Stephen Miller. And it sure looks like Judges Boasberg and Xinis want to put the man Beutler refers to as the "monstrous twerp-fascist" behind bars. AND TRUMP GETS CRAZIER: Literally wants 11-year olds to give up their dolls and pencils for the sake of his delusion, and doesn't know if he has to uphold the constitution and has just infuriated all the Veterans by re-naming Veterans Day "Victory In World War 1 Day" and creating a "Victory In World War 2 Day" on the anniversary of a day when... World War 2 wasn't won. B-Block (34:30) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Trump clowns Labor Secretary Lori DeRemer-Chavez and Secretary of Lies Karoline Leavitt tie with some whoppers. Jesse Watters goes into a cave with Elon Musk. And a pretend reporter named Myles gets told to Eff Off by Ilhan Omar. (41:17) SPORTSBALLCENTER: Tomorrow is the 71st anniversary of the day in 1954 when Roger Bannister became the first to ever run a mile in less than four minutes. Except that he WASN'T the first to ever run a mile in less than four minutes. He wasn't even the first in England, where it had been done 200 years earlier. Never mind, say, in Kenya. (59:30) SPORTSBALL CENTER, CONTINUED: The reason all Bannister's predecessors are unknown is: they were erased from the records by the self-appointed "Amateur Authorities" of the 19th Century who wanted to make sure only "Gentlemen" held the honors. Gentlemen - and White People.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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  1:08:29
• TRUMP IS LOSING ONE APPROVAL POINT EVERY FIVE DAYS - 5.1.25

  SEASON 3 EPISODE 122: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:45) SPECIAL COMMENT: Trump is the greatest president of all time... at losing public support! Almost overlooked in the typical maelstrom, analysis by the last King of 538: Trump's Net Approval Rating has fallen farther, faster, than any other president since they started keeping the statistic in 1953. On Inauguration Day he was at Net Plus 10. After 100 Days he's already at Net MINUS 10. At this rate, by August he'll be at NET MINUS 30. He is losing an approval point every FIVE DAYS. By itself, the Net Minus 10 is also a record. And that's just the start of Trump's polling crater. Internal Republican Congressional Campaign polling has him at a Net Minus Seven inside vulnerable swing House districts. He is collapsing faster than he is collapsing the economy! This sets up the prospect of a Democratic landslide next year, if only the Democrats will TRY. Chuck Schumer's response? More bipartisanship in spending bills! B-Block (33:00) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Minnesota Congressman Tom Emmer wants an ethics investigation of Minnesota Congresswoman Angie Craig because when he was too terrified to host a town hall in his district, she did. Their districts ADJOIN. DC US Attorney nominee Ed Martin sinks further into deceit over Hitler cosplayer Hale-Cusanelli. And Trump demands Penn apologize for letting transgender athletes compete or he'll withhold $175 million in funding. My suggestion? Penn should declare that Trump got his degree from Penn's Wharton School by deception and sue HIM FOR $175 MILLION. And new developments in Bill Maher's self-immolation. He did something ELSE about Trump - eight years ago - that he attacked Larry David for doing last week! C-Block (45:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: If I didn't actually invent the mobile phone, there is every chance I was the first to use one on the streets of New York City. It was this time of year, about 35 years ago, and it still shocks me that I actually stopped pedestrian traffic on 42nd Street just by answering a call.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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• NOLA D.A.: ARREST NOEM, HOMAN, FOR CHILD TRAFFICKING - 4.28.25

  SEASON 3 EPISODE 121: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:45) SPECIAL COMMENT: The District Attorney for New Orleans Jason Williams must indict and issue arrest warrants for Tom Homan, Kristi Noem (Now With 8 Action Adventure Dress-Up Outfits) and the other members of the ICE Gestapo who disappeared a two-year old New Orleans born girl and sent her to Honduras - possibly making up a story that her Honduran-born mother wanted to take her with her - AND also abducted and renditioned a four-year old US Citizen toddler with Stage 4 Medication and sent her and her mother to Honduras, too. The charges should be led by Child Trafficking, kidnapping, violation of 5th and 14th Amendment rights, and be predicated on the fact that ICE has degenerated into a violent gang threatening the safety of Americans. Throw the RICO act at the Brownshirts. The event was so egregious, so redolent of Moral Cannibalism, that the Trump Appointee judge who brought the case to public attention and tried to stop it referred in his writings to their plane being above "The Gulf of America." But he also voiced his "strong suspicion that the government just deported a U.S. citizen with no meaningful process." Indictments of Noem and the others may be fruitless. But it will at least symbolize that democracy will at least fight back against what Trump is doing: which is verging on Ethnic Cleansing. MEANWHILE IN WISCONSIN the ICE stormtroopers who arrested a judge in her courtroom for not collaborating with a raid should themselves be arrested. And unlike Trump, authorities there will not have to fabricate or pervert laws to do so. PLUS I'll analyze Trump's sudden pathetic pleadings to Putin, his bat guano crazy interview with Time, and most imperatively, his writing that he suspects Putin is "just tapping me along." There is no indication anywhere that this phrase "tapping me along" has ever been used by anybody else, ever. There is every indication Trump's mind may have now degenerated further into the stage where he is making up his own words and phrases. B-Block (36:00) Dedicated to Karoline Leavitt whose first and last names both contain the letters for the word "lie." Trump himself gets a bronze for boasting about spending $58,000 of his own money on behalf of the country while he syphons off millions daily. The runner-up is Ed Martin and his embrace, then disengagement, from the world's stupidest looking Hitler cosplayer. But the winner again is Bill Maher, who perpetuates his career-ending decision to go to the White House for dinner with Trump. He claims Larry David's soon-to-be-Pulitzer-Prize winning satire of the event has insulted "six million dead Jews" because of the comparison between Trump and Hitler: "I think the minute you play the ‘Hitler’ card, you’ve lost the argument." Ooops. It's a shame Bill's memory is so damaged. Guess who played the Hitler card, made the comparison to Trump, and thus presumably lost the argument? Twice? On his own show? IN 2015? C-Block (46:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Someone mentioned the great Cornell astronomer and planetary scientist and 26-time Tonight Show guest Carl Sagan and I was flashed back. Sure enough, it was 47 years ago last week that he won a Pulitzer Prize. Our Cornell radio station called him for an interview and he said yes, on one condition: "Is your sportscaster Keith there? I want him to do it. He gets it." This would be the first time I ever interviewed anybody famous, and he requested me, even though we'd never met. I'm as stunned now as I was then, and I'll explain why it happened. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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  1:05:09
• TRUMP WANTS TO CHARGE HIS AMERICAN CRITICS WITH TERRORISM - 4.24.25

  SEASON 3 EPISODE 120: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:45) SPECIAL COMMENT: We’ve all known it would come to this; we’ve all WARNED it would come to this; we’ve all PREDICTED they’d try to ease the knife in slowly, they’d take the boiling frog route, and here it comes. It’s in every piece of political science fiction from "1984" to "Brazil" to "V For Vendetta." And it is now real: if everything Trump does deserves criticism and gets criticism there is only one thing for Trump and his gang to do: prosecute criticism of Trump and claim those WHO criticize him are aiding and abetting terrorists. The ultimate Thought Crime was given voice by no less a figure than Trump's Counterterrorism Director, who, since Trump found the worst possible person to do each job (and bin Laden is dead) is Sebastian Gorka. The threat is connected to the push to send not just immigrants to rot in a For-Profit El Salvador Rendition Center, but American citizens too, especially those who standup to Trump's attempt to purge Hispanics from this country. Axios reports that one of the other potential new Orwellian crimes would be advising detainees of their rights. If that's not directed at AOC I don't know what could be. B-Block (25:20) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Derrick Van Orden attacks Wisconsin's governor because Van Orden thinks Milwaukee kids are stupid - and he misspells the word "how" in his post. Brian Kilmeade's Hegseth spoiler alert: he calls him "former secretary." And we are all very proud here that one of 'our own' has reduced Bill Maher to graffiti. Further details on "My Dinner With Adolf." C-Block (37:45) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: I had literally forgotten - until I literally worked through the neighborhood - that I made my Broadway singing and dancing debut seven years ago. I mean literally, on stage, during an actual Broadway show. If it made that much of an impression on me, imagine how bored the audience was! See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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