Countdown with Keith Olbermann

• BULLETIN: TRUMP "VOIDS" BIDEN PARDONS; SCHUMER CANCELS TOUR - 3.17.25

  BULLETIN SEASON 3 EPISODE 110: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:45) BULLETIN: Schumer follows his cowardice towards Trump with cowardice towards Democrats, cancels book tour the day it was to begin. Insane Dictator Trump decides Biden's pardons are "void, vacant, and of no future force of effect" because he questions Biden's mental awareness, raising three small problems: 1) this puts TRUMP's mental awareness on the table and at the center of all HIS legal decisions going forward; 2) it obviously didn't occur to him but if President 47 can invalidate the pardons of President 46 for any reason, then President 48 can invalidate the pardons of President 47 for any reason - and all those people doing potentially indictable things like Marco Rubio and Tom Homan and Pete Hegseth and Elon Musk can no longer be certain they will avoid legal exposure (DUH) just as Rubio (with the help of countless agents and with Karoline Leavitt joining the plot from the White House podium) add to evidence of a conspiracy to violate the rulings of federal courts; and 3) it means that all the pardons Trump has already issued (like of the January 6th terrorists, or Steve Bannon, or Charles Kushner) or the ones he's about to (like Pete Rose) are in doubt. Great work, Sparky. THE REST OF THIS BULLETIN IS A REPRISE OF TODAY'S REGULARLY SCHEDULED PODCAST (17:15) SPECIAL COMMENT: How do you remove a Senate Democratic Leader? CAN you remove a Senate Democratic Leader? Oh my, yes. You can do it before the top of the hour. Certainly before tomorrow. I'll lay it out for you. It can happen provided you note Schumer is having a book event tonight at the Enoch Pratt Central Library in Baltimore at 7 PM. It takes a little guts. Takes angry civilians. Takes the 36 Senate Democrats and one Independent whom Chuck Schumer betrayed to stick their necks out again. Takes the whole lot of them to run the minor risk of fracturing the Senate caucus or the Democratic Party - but why not? It's not like they're doing anything. Not when TWO new polls suggest Democrats are fed up with this group, that vast majorities demand RESISTANCE to Trump, not bipartisan crap, that the leader who best represents the ideals of the party is AOC (10%) as opposed to Obama (4%) and Schumer (2%) and worst of all - nobody (30%). We should be talking about resistance, about Trump being twelve points underwater on the economy, about Musk retweeting the claim that Hitler didn't commit the holocaust, his public sector workers did, about Trump beginning to defy court orders to illegally deport people to third-party strongman states. But we're not - because of Chuck Schumer. Time for him to GO. B-Block (38:15) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: The world is coming apart and Politico devoted its lead 26 paragraphs to a journalism party. Alina Habba is a moron, Part 9,763. And Marco Rubio and the "president" of El Salvador are mocking American law. See you at the World Court, boys. C-Block (49:15) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: I'm under the weather and that always flashes me back to the day I was 21 and my doctor since my childhood gave me some muscle relaxants without warning me of the side effects. Hilarity ensued.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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• HOW TO REMOVE A SENATE DEMOCRATIC LEADER - 3.17.25

  SEASON 3 EPISODE 109: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:45) SPECIAL COMMENT: How do you remove a Senate Democratic Leader? CAN you remove a Senate Democratic Leader? Oh my, yes. You can do it before the top of the hour. Certainly before tomorrow. I'll lay it out for you. It can happen provided you note Schumer is having a book event tonight at the Enoch Pratt Central Library in Baltimore at 7 PM. It takes a little guts. Takes angry civilians. Takes the 36 Senate Democrats and one Independent whom Chuck Schumer betrayed to stick their necks out again. Takes the whole lot of them to run the minor risk of fracturing the Senate caucus or the Democratic Party - but why not? It's not like they're doing anything. Not when TWO new polls suggest Democrats are fed up with this group, that vast majorities demand RESISTANCE to Trump, not bipartisan crap, that the leader who best represents the ideals of the party is AOC (10%) as opposed to Obama (4%) and Schumer (2%) and worst of all - nobody (30%). We should be talking about resistance, about Trump being twelve points underwater on the economy, about Musk retweeting the claim that Hitler didn't commit the holocaust, his public sector workers did, about Trump beginning to defy court orders to illegally deport people to third-party strongman states. But we're not - because of Chuck Schumer. Time for him to GO. B-Block (23:45) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: The world is coming apart and Politico devoted its lead 26 paragraphs to a journalism party. Alina Habba is a moron, Part 9,763. And Marco Rubio and the "president" of El Salvador are mocking American law. See you at the World Court, boys. C-Block (33:40) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: I'm under the weather and that always flashes me back to the day I was 21 and my doctor since my childhood gave me some muscle relaxants without warning me of the side effects. Hilarity ensued.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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• IF TRUMP WAS A FOREIGN AGENT, WHAT WOULD HE BE DOING DIFFERENTLY? - 3.13.25

  SEASON 3 EPISODE 108: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:45) SPECIAL COMMENT: If Donald Trump were a foreign agent trying to destroy the U-S from within… what would he be doing differently? Crash the stock market, bring on a recession, make it worldwide, with economic policies so insane that yesterday CNBC called them insane, not only get out of NATO but pit the US AGAINST NATO, sacrifice countries to the Russian dictator, push a cease fire in Ukraine that serves only to give Russia 30 days to re-fortify their troop positions, threaten our forever allies like Canada and Mexico, cut off humanitarian aid fast enough to start killing people via disease outbreaks in the same month, start dragging citizens and LEGAL immigrants off the streets and hold them incommunicado in distant concentration camps without trial prior to deportation, try to break the constitution to hold office to avoid prison, blackmail the owners of the major media companies to support him or at least destroy their news outlets, violate every law and make sure all the prosecutors and judges are loyal to you and NOT to the law, decapitate not the EXCESS in government but the people who know how to stop plane crashes and epidemics, turn the agencies over to every con man and idiot and loser and lunatic he could find, roll back human rights for minorities, burn all governmental records, base his decisions on the failed economic policy of 1894 that the professor must’ve been talking about the ONE day he didn’t cut class in college, give a line item veto to a compulsive liar drugged-up foreigner who literally blows up everything he touches, and finally take a 100 million dollar bribe (I’m sorry, contribution) in public during a live infomercial for the druggie’s self-driving self-detonating cars. AND WHY WOULD Democrats give these creatures what they want? Why would Chuck Schumer try to finesse the Continuing Resolution as it comes to the Senate, when it is really just a bill to let Musk continue to resolve to shut down the government. Amazingly, Democrats fear being blamed if they block the bill and... there is a COMPLETE shutdown of the government. It's madness. The Republicans celebrate what the Democrats fear. AND UPDATED FOR 2025 with unspoken references to Trump and a video montage spanning the hero's time to literally this month that ended with Elon Musk and the loudest booing I've ever heard, last night saw the first preview of George Clooney's Broadway version of "Good Night And Good Luck" in which he stars as Murrow. It's a technical masterpiece and the message is as ever timely and even urgent. And I had the privilege of being there. B-Block (27:50) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Baseball has more new crap caps, only among these is one that spells out a vulgar Hispanic term for women's breasts. One of Marco Rubio's top State Department employees turns out to have been an online troll aimed at... Marco Rubio. And The Guardian asks "Is Stephen A. Smith The Answer for the Democrats" and the answer is surprisingly simply: no damn way. C-Block (43:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL. Since Stephen A. is clearly part of an organized campaign to make us all stop breaking into laughter at the thought of him running for president, let me just tell the story of why moving from sports into politics may not be the best idea. I use as my example... myself. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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• REMOVE JEFFRIES AS HOUSE DEMOCRATIC LEADER - 3.10.25

  SEASON 3 EPISODE 107: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:45) SPECIAL COMMENT: He has to go. And Minority Whip Katherine Clark. And Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar. And for that matter, Gavin Newsom has to go. Because after these standard-issue moderate Democrats vanished on election night they have suddenly reappeared 125 days later to address the REAL issue: Democratic House members who actually DID something to protest Trump - even just something symbolic like Al Green did, or those who supported him did. Jeffries and the others called them to a "come to Jesus" meeting to warn them never to ignore his "Dear Colleague" letter again, that the way to stand up to Trump lighting the county and the world on fire is to hold up mincing little pickle ball paddles with mild words on them and especially to coordinate outfits while not clapping. Out. Jeffries, Clark, Aguilar. And anybody else who doesn't realize that the last people capable of piercing Trump's bubble are Democrats at his speeches to Congress, and the media which has failed at the task even more than the Dems have. We need civil disobedience and instead Jeffries is warning Democrats, and 10 Democrats are joining the fascists, in punishing Democrats. And Newsom? His comments about trans athletes are bad enough. That he did them during a podcast with Charlie Kirk, arranged by Newsom's ex-wife Kim Guilfoyle, is far worse. I mean Newsom's judgment was already in doubt (he married Kim Guilfoyle FFS), but this is insanity. The nation is ablaze and the Dems are sending strongly worded notes. The media continues to collapse.It believed Trump's lies about pressuring Russia while he was in fact increasing his demands of Ukraine to include Zelensky resigning. And when Trump told a reporter he couldn't ask a certain question the White House Correspondents Association continued its policy of not commenting. And golly why did Trump think he could publicly threaten Nicolle Wallace and Rachel Maddow? Well, because of Joe Scarborough, obvs. B-Block (38:00) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Stephen A. Smith is not running for president, but keep asking him. Happily he IS showing he doesn't understand the first thing about any of this. His newest political crush? Candace Owens. Meanwhile Musk doesn't understand sports or America. And the Prime Minister of New Zealand fired a diplomat for reminding Britain that Trump is simply doing now what they did to Czechoslovakia in 1938. C-Block (49:20) THURBER SPECIAL: Thurber House in Columbus, Ohio, needs about $200,000 to keep going. The least we can do is raise consciousness. So for the first time since the election here is not just one but two Thurber stories: my favorite ("A Box To Hide In") and my late father's ("I Went To Sullivant." See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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  1:06:18
• THE ATTEMPT TO MAKE IT ILLEGAL TO CRITICIZE TRUMP - 3.6.25

  SEASON 3 EPISODE 106: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:45) SPECIAL COMMENT: Hidden behind Trump’s complex multi-layered endless hallucination that his address to Congress shows he is beloved and the stock market isn’t crashing and Speaker Johnson’s Chief of Staff WASN’T arrested on a DUI right after the speech and the MAGGOTS aren’t furious at him and the newest polling doesn’t suggest he’s already lost nearly a fifth of the Trump Bros under 30… there is a much more real and much starker truth: he has already moving to make NOT LOVING HIM… illegal. The attempt is underway to make PROTESTING THE TRUMP DICTATORSHIP against the law. Early Tuesday, Trump posted what seemed like a warning against pro-Palestinian protests on American campuses. In fact it says nothing about what kind of protests he'd make illegal, so let me tell you what he really meant: Let me re-write this to reflect reality – the reality inside Trump’s plans to imprison you. 'All Federal Funding will STOP for any College, School, or University that allows illegal protests. Protests like ‘Black Lives Matter’ are now illegal. Protests to save Medicare are now illegal. Protests against your favorite president (me) are now illegal. Agitators will be imprisoned… American students will be permanently expelled or depending on the crime, arrested. NO MASKS! NO DEMOCRATS! Thank you for your attention to this matter.' He also dropped a second hint inside that test of human endurance in front of the House and Senate of how he will use the new anti-Deepfake law to prosecute you for sharing videos of him, whether they're real or they're not. Because therein lies the true danger of a deepfake law: claiming a REAL video is just a fake. And of course don't miss out on the attempt to censure Rep. Al Green, the true hero of Tuesday night. They will vote today on punishing him for doing nothing compared to the previous Karen-ing by Boebert and Greene, or the infamous Joe "You Lie" Wilson. WE should be voting on whether we want Al to be the Democratic nominee in '28. Or the head of the entire party. Or the mandatory role model behind whom all the Democrats should've walked out in solidarity. B-Block (31:00) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: Those Trump Bros? The under 30s who pushed Trump over the finish line? They have abandoned him. Poll numbers among them down 15-30% in the first MONTH. Ukraine and the peacekeepers explained. Which Trumper would you take first in the Moron Draft, JD Vance, Karoline Leavitt, or Alina Habba? And when Joni Ernst campaigned on going to Washington to get hog and make 'em squeal, little did we know! C-Block (44:00) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Jeff Shell, reportedly running CBS before he's legally allowed to? Well 15 years ago he tried to run NBC before he was legally allowed to, and I have the receipts. Appeaser Governor Polis of Colorado learns what you get for helping Trump: Trump wants to cut off funds to Colorado. And Nancy Mace has a Lion Gender Identity Crisis.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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