Countdown with Keith Olbermann

SERIES 3 EPISODE 45: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: It is safe to extrapolate that Donald Trump killed at least one American in order to instead send the Covid testing machine that might have saved them to Vladimir Putin. Bob Woodward’s book says Trump "secretly sent Putin what were then rare Abbott Point of Care test MACHINES for the Russian’s personal use.” From the supply meant for American citizens then faced with a rapidly-spreading virus for which there was no vaccine, no cure, and next to no treatment. To save Putin and his fellow scumbags, even if it killed Americans. May Donald Trump burn in hell – and the sooner the better. We know with certainty that Trump stole American testing machines from American hospitals and other crisis health facilities to give to Russia’s dictator between March 31st 2020 and May 7th 2020. The earlier date is when Abbott says was “we began distributing our rapid point-of-care Covid-19 tests for our ID NOW system.” On May 7th officials in Russia and Russia’s branch office at the Trump White House said “some (Covid) testing equipment as well as ventilators” had been sent to Russia. March 31st. That was the day Doctors Fauci and Birx tried to warn the country that the best case scenario was between 100 thousand and 240 thousand American dead. By April 10th there were more than 18 thousand Americans dead and more than half a million cases – 160,00 of them here in New York state. Our outside date on this window of infamy is May 7, by which point there were 72-thousand dead. 10-thousand more Americans would die in the next week… the latest possible date that someone could not get a test because Trump prioritized Putin’s life over yours. AS TO THE OTHER BIG WOODWARD HEADLINE: We know Trump is STILL Putin’s asset. Woodward quotes an unidentified Trump aide as saying the two creatures have spoken at least seven times since Trump was exiled from Washington. “In early 2024,” the Washington Post writes, “the former president ordered an aide away from his office at Mar-a-Lago… so he could conduct a private phone call with Russian leader." It got lost at the time, but at the debate against Biden in June, Trump confirmed that he talked to Putin between our exit from Afghanistan (August 2021) and Putin's invasion of Ukraine (February 2022). He has been in contact with an enemy dictator. Were Trump an FBI or CIA agent with such contacts he and his lawyers could at this moment be negotiating a plea deal so he could avoid the death penalty. B-Block (24:00) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Who's the worst person to speak to the future of legacy news media at The New York Press Club? No - none of my ex-girlfriends. Guess again. Joe Kernen is big mad at me, at Andrew Ross Sorkin, at Frank Luntz, at his own ferret toupees. And news chiefs Cesar Conde and Rebecca Blumenstein at NBC - Nothing But Cowards - now move into Catch-and-Kill mode, burying a movie critical of Trump until AFTER the election. C-Block (33:15) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Of all the politicians I've met since I first went into the field in 1997 one stands head and shoulders above the others in terms of the ability to take a joke at his own expense. I thought I'd heard him at the high point of his self-deprecation. Then, last week, he topped himself, making such a joke HIMSELF.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SERIES 3 EPISODE 44: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: We are now at the eugenics stage of Trump morphing into Hitler. We are now at the they-murder-white-people-because-it’s-in-their-genes stage. I’m not exaggerating and I am just barely paraphrasing. Trump has now moved one step closer to eugenics, to classifying entire races and nationalities as genetically criminal, to fully embracing the nightmare insanity of Adolf Hitler, to ethnic cleansing and persecution of immigrants because he thinks they WILL commit murder. As Politico described it, a “blood libel,” in an interview with the conservative bobble-head doll of commentators, Hugh Hewitt. Trump quoted his fabricated number of 13,000 murderers migrating across the border, insisting murder is in "the genes" and "we got a lot of bad genes in our country right now.” Later with Laura Ingraham Trump didn’t get quite as literal about eugenics but he did say quote “I will keep you safe. I’m not going to allow prisoners to come out from Venezuela… the Congo… the Middle East… Yemen. I’m going to keep you safe. I’m not going to let them help you.” I don’t know how much more he has to tell this country before even the coalition of the stupid and the hateful realize that sooner rather than later, a Trump returned to power will attempt to STAY in power beyond his expiration date, by killing somebody they LIKE. Even a tech bro. Or an Aryan with not enough Aryan blood. Or Nick Fuentes because, oops, Fuentes is the same name as some of them immigrants. Or JD Vance because Trump has a really bad loyalty record with Vice Presidents. ALSO: If Republicans keep insisting Democrats are controlling the weather doesn't that imply that Trump was unable to? Musk is now bribing people $47 to sign up for his Trump PAC. He's going to campaign for Trump in Pennsylvania (his favorability is worse than Vance's). And an explanation from Nate Silver as to what kind of Popular Vote victory translates into what kind of Electoral College victory. B-Block (26:30) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Anybody remember the JD Vance/Trump/GOP lie about Haitian immigrants killing and eating geese and pets in Springfield, Ohio? They've convicted the geese guy. His name is Brian and he ain't from Haiti. Jake Tapper opens himself up to fact-checking, or the lack thereof. And the hockey writer who dilutes the Johnny Gaudreau tragedy for a cute line in a season preview. C-Block (34:30) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Howard Stern interviewing Vice President Kamala Harris? I wonder if they'll bring up what they were both doing half a century ago today. Because the odds are pretty good that half a century ago today, Howard was...meeting me. And if the anniversary isn't today, it's dang soon.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SERIES 3 EPISODE 43: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: It is time to cancel or suspend all of Elon Musk’s government contracts and subsidies. SpaceX, NASA, StarLink, Teslas, all of it. Musk and Trump are interfering in FEMA recovery efforts post-Hurricane Helene by spreading life-threatening disinformation, and are coordinating a political campaign with Trump which at its heart Trump advocates for the overthrow of the duly-elected government of the United States of America – by violence if necessary. And if all of that is insufficient to re-investigate and/or change his immigration status here in order to deport him back to South Africa or Canada, if it is insufficient to take ALL of his money from him, it is NOT insufficient to tie him up in court cases for the rest of his life. He's also immorally transforming the Twitter-X platform he owns into a massive donation-in-kind to Trump’s campaign of lies, antisemitism, Islamophobia, misogyny, hatred, and fascism. A donation-in-kind which the government should value at 44 billion, not the current number Musk has driven it down to which I haven’t actually checked lately but is probably down to about 50, 60 bucks. Oh and President Biden? The Starlink equipment and the network behind it and the rockets and the satellite access and the actual platform hosting X or what’s left of it? Seize it. If he wants it back, let him go to court. If he tries to shut it off, arrest him for tampering with evidence in a criminal case. Remember: Presidential immuuuuuuuuuuuunity! By the way his buddy Trump? Trump doesn’t know what Starlink is. TRUMP IS SO GONE EVEN THE NEW YORK TIMES NOTICED: "Trump’s Speeches, Increasingly Angry and Rambling, Reignite the Question of Age." They gingerly refer to computer analyses and the uncertainties of others, but given the number of other news outlets that think the Times is infallible, this could open a floodgate of coverage. NOT THAT EVERYBODY GETS IT: Andrea Mitchell stopped herself midway through finishing the word "miscegenation" while whining about Vice President Harris not doing enough interviews. Politico thinks 60 Minutes, an Univision Town Hall, Howard Stern, and especially the "Call Her Daddy" podcast aren't real interviews. It also implied Harris shouldn't be appearing on a podcast that has included sexual content. That's pretty funny given that the editor of Politico Playbook - once fired by The New Yorker over sexual misconduct, is now on leave, accused of trying to blackmail his fiancee into more sex and when she refused, hacking her phone and leaking her sex life. So Politico, does "Call Her Daddy" have too MUCH sex, or just not as much as "Politico Playbook"? B-Block (26:16) SPECIAL COMMENT NUMBER 2: Did "working the refs" work with The New York Times? Did all our complaining finally pierce the walls of the paper? Let me tell you a story from my past in which years of complaining to the Los Angeles Times not only got my complaint listened to, but corrected - and with the admission that the editor in charge never read anything written by the guy I was complaining about. C-Block (43:40) GOOD NIGHT AND GOOD LUCK.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SERIES 3 EPISODE 42: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Go and look for Jack Smith’s evidence against Trump on the front pages of America’s newspapers and the top of America’s newscasts. Go and look for the stories about the evidence he produced that there were not TWO coup attempts by Trump and his whores on January 6th, but three. Go. I'll wait. Not even 48 hours since the most damning document ever composed about an American president, makes the Watergate testimony look like the comedian’s script at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, and it’s already virtually disappeared from our American media because whether its leaders know it or not American media is not just in the tank for Trump but its leaders have already drowned there and there are only a few journalists left. But her emails. ALSO: Trump bleating about "Election Interference" and an "ironclad" DOJ rule that doesn't even exist, in any way shape or form. Trump insisting that the delays he caused make him the proverbial guy who wants to be treated as an orphan even though he killed his parents. Trump uttering a sound like "Wally." Mike Lawler in blackface, saying it doesn't count because he was simply pretending to be Michael Jackson. And the greatest story of the day: Melania Trump's publisher demanding $250,000 from CNN for an interview about her book (I mean, consider what kind of discount that represents!) B-Block (22:41) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Conservative commentator Kurt Schlichter insists the Democrats have never "excepted" a presidential loss. Because he's a moron. Congressman Tim Burchett does an antisemitism against George Soros. And Chris Cillizza quite seriously reveals something he has just calculated: that the election will be decided based on WHO GETS MORE VOTES IN THE BATTLEGROUND STATES! (Chris is a genius). C-Block (32:57) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: In an all-new episode, a story I haven't read you before, that rarest of Thurbers in which he is not the hero nor the lovable loser but the guy who has to leave town in embarrassment: the Zeph Leggin story: A Friend Of The Earth.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SERIES 3 EPISODE 41: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:45) SPECIAL COMMENT: “Make them riot,” a man described by Jack Smith as a Trump campaign employee, agent, and co-conspirator, his identity redacted, replaced by the ID number “P-5,” informs a colleague on the ground at the vote counting on Election Night 2020 in Detroit. “Do it!!!" Trump Campaign knowledge that they had lost the election on November 4, 2020. Certainty from his campaign team that without vote triumphs and court orders, it was over on November 7. Withdrawal of the campaign's litigation in Arizona on November 13. 165 pages of this in Jack Smith's filing revealed by Judge Tonya Chutkan yesterday, all of it supporting what I suggested last week would be his core point: that everything Trump did after mid-November at the latest was in his private capacity of candidate, politician, fraud, traitor - and none of it was him just being a good president working his ass off to investigate a dubious election. In a just world it would put Trump in jail until he dies there. WE only have a chance at a just world if Trump loses November 5. SPEAKING OF WHICH: Did JD Vance reveal a side hustle in the VP debate? Is he potentially running a coup against Trump? Did he play nice so it'll be Vance who takes over the Trump cult if Trump is beaten, takes it over if Trump really meant what he said about not running again if he loses, takes it over by force even if Trump DIDN’T mean it. And if Trump wins, do you think Vance would hesitate to lead a palace revolt? To invoke the 25th Amendment the moment Trump starts speaking in tongues or falls over during a speech? THE POLLING IS BIZARRE: the debate was a tie but Tim Walz won all the internal numbers from who was more prepared to be president to who got the favorability bump. Vance got above water, but in one poll Walz is now +25 and in another +37. In short, he is now the most popular national politician in the country. B-Block (29:15) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: On the second day of the Playoff Telecasts, Baseball is surprised in court: the company that carries eight of its teams' games suddenly cancels the telecasts. Fox's David Asman confuses author Mark Helprin for pantsless ex-pundit Mark Halperin. And Chris Cuomo is so desperate to stay on television that he sides with JD Vance's lies and against journalism at the VP debate. C-Block (43:10) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: I swear somebody mentioned to me yesterday that she used to go skiing with his family. And I saw the woman involved in the story on TV over the weekend. On the SAME day, I knew the first guy - the head of CurrentTV - was going to end my TV news career, and that Uma Thurman and I would NOT be going out on a date!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SERIES 3 EPISODE 40: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:46) SPECIAL COMMENT: JD Vance blew an otherwise substantial debate with one remark that will echo through the history of presidential campaigns the way the spoofing of Gerald Ford in 1976 by Chevy Chase did ("It was my understanding there would be no math.") Fact-checked once and only once by moderators Norah O'Donnell and Margaret Brennan about the fact that the immigrants of Springfield, Ohio, are there legally, Vance seemingly summarized the entire premise of Trumpism - deceit and using it to hamstring a cowering media. He was terrified of fact-checking, enraged by fact-checking, and finally had his mike cut because he was angry and tried to dress down the moderators by saying: "The rules were you guys weren't gonna fact check." Vance did a surprisingly smooth if not always effective job of sane-washing Trump but he could have won a debate in which Tim Walz was so nervous at the beginning that I had a brief spell of 1st Debate PTSD. But Vance ultimately had only one product to sell - Trump - and only so much lipstick to put on it, or eyeliner to put on himself. As Walz regained himself, he was practical, eloquent, and managed to pull quotes out of the Bible and the Hardware Store ("my pro-tip for today is...") He warned Trump talking about crowd sizes was not what the country would need right now in the Middle East crisis (Vance barely answered; he chose instead to introduce himself; it was a tactical disaster). And he gave the top two answers of the night, insisting that Mike Pence's decision to be a "firewall" against Trump on January 6th was why Pence "isn't on this stage tonight" and then a moving, personal story about gun violence and its myriad causes that ended with "Sometimes, it's just the guns. It's just the guns." IS IT BAD THAT KELLYANNE CONWAY THINKS HER VP CANDIDATE IS NAMED “JD WALTZ?” Is she mistaking Vance for Walz? Vance for actor J.D. Walsh? The late actor J.T. Walsh? Maybe for The Last Waltz? MEANWHILE, TRUMP SEEMS TO ACCUSE KAMALA OF MURDER EXCEPT HE SCREWS UP THE PRONOUNS: He says she might as well have held a gun in a murder case. Except he says Harris let HER in and murdered HIM. He’s also continuing to take credit for “being first” on the scene in the post-Helene chaos even though nobody wanted him there and all he did was start a GoFundMe, take credit for money that other people gave – and he didn’t. AND IN NUZZI NUDES NEWS: NUZZI DOOZY – COURT GETS UP IN LIZZA’S BIZZA – OVER RFK RIZZ(a). CNN reports that the latest in the RFK Junior/Olivia Nuzzi story is: she has sued, and in the filing, says that the source of the leaks that got her suspended by New York Magazine for an undisclosed personal relationship with the perviest of the Kennedys was her former fiancee Ryan Lizza of Politico. When Olivia and I lived together and she still worked for The Daily Beast she frequently traveled to DCC on stories and whenever come back she’d give me a big hug and say she was sorry she took me for granted because there was the creepy guy who stalked her every time she went to Washington. ‘Do you know him,’ she’d ask? ‘His name is Lizza.’ Gotta run. Gotta check I have enough popcorn B-Block (25:00) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: The WNBA players association and executive director Terry Carmichael Jackson has attacked one of the reporters who might be on the Mount Rushmore of Women’s Sports in this country, Christine Brennan. And over nothing. They’ve slandered her and tried to get her fired. We need to boycott the WNBA until there is an apology and the executive director is fired. There’s Elon Musk, who has decided that a barely intelligible video by somebody who’s never heard of Roe-V-Wade “proves” Trump cares more about women. And then there’s Rob Schneider, who decided to turn the heartbreaking loss of 58-year old hoops immortal Dikembe Mutumbo to brain cancer into an anti-vax point. Maybe he meant it like a joke, since none of his jokes have ever been funny. C-Block (36:15) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: I spent years arguing against Pete Rose being admitted to baseball’s Hall of Fame. Then I campaigned IN FAVOR of putting him in baseball’s Hall of Fame. And then in 2017 the OTHER thing happened and that’s when I started campaigning again for NEVER putting him in baseball’s Hall of Fame. And all Monday night and all day yesterday, otherwise intelligent people explained that Pete Rose will go into the Hall of Fame because it was a lifetime ban and no – they put him on the “permanently ineligible list.” His life is over; his place on the list is not. And everybody has FORGOTTEN what the other thing was in 2017 - in the middle of his comeback, when he had gotten far along enough in his comeback that he was a regular on the Fox Baseball pre-game show I used to anchor – Pete Rose sued the investigator whose work led to his banishment from baseball in 1989 and in the discovery up popped a sworn deposition from a woman who, to quote Th

SERIES 3 EPISODE 39: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:48) SPECIAL COMMENT: CBS must either agree to fact-check the Vice Presidential candidates in tonight's debate, or cancel it. Its entire history and reputation is at stake and so is much of the chance of saving the democracy, even for the amoral cowards like CBS ownership. But of course CBS won't cancel the debate: they've already spent more than $100 on it. So, to Plan B: Tim Walz must politely acknowledge the first question, ignore it, and take the debate over. Immediately tell the television audience that J.D. Vance is a compulsive and pathological liar. Tell them that he is Trump’s deputy liar. Tell them as forcefully and as non-Midwesternly as possible, that this man is personally and indelibly responsible for death threats against white, Republican, small businessmen in Springfield Ohio because it is he, J.D. Vance, who personally and completely fabricated the Haitian immigrant story. Tell them about Jamie McGregor of McGregor Metal, Trump voter. Tell them that all Jamie McGregor did was say that his thirty Haitian-born employees “come to work every day, they don’t cause drama, they’re on time” and within hours the death threats started. Tell them that Jamie McGregor got so many death threats that they had to have a lockdown at his factory. Tell them that there are MAGA posters around town calling him, a MAGA guy, a traitor. Tell them that Jamie McGregor had vowed to never have guns in his house and now the family is taking firearms training and he just bought a Glock and it’s for his daughter - his 14-YEAR OLD daughter. Tell them, Tim, that MAGA isn’t just a threat to immigrants or people of color or Democrats. Tell them, that MAGA is a threat to the people IN MAGA because MAGA isn’t about making ANYTHING great – it’s about hatred and violence and cruelty. Tell them that Jamie McGregor’s wife said “we’re being hunted like animals.” TELL THEM that the latest person to be threatened with death is Jamie McGregor’s 80-year old mother. And TELL THEM that this is all – all of it – the fault of, the personal responsibility of, the creation of, the goal of, this scumbag J.D. Vance. Point at him and tell him to get down on his knees and pray to his creator for forgiveness because he isn’t getting any from Jamie McGregor or America. Put him on the floor in a pool of his own urine, and then metaphorically… gut him like a fish. B-Block (24:22) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Hey, Derrick Anderson, Republican nominee for Congress from the Virginia 7th, In your campaign photos! Great looking wife and kids! Whose are they? Annie Linskey, the same reporter who mocked Biden going to the family graveyard, now creates a new fascist talking point by falsely accusing Biden of being "testy" with a fool reporter Biden didn't suffer gladly. And it's the anniversary of the most patriotic idea John Roberts ever had and the one he never acted on. C-Block (37:10) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Hours before the death of Pete Rose, Baseball had one of its greatest meaningful games in history yesterday. 3-0 Braves in the 8th, ends 8-7 Mets and they go to the playoffs where they only need to win...eleven more games to win the World Series? We are destroying a sport to create a 90-second highlight package. It flashed me back to when the long season sent teams almost directly to the ultimate sporting event: the Mets and the 1969 World Series.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SERIES 3 EPISODE 38: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:50) SPECIAL COMMENT: I have existential doubts about hell. But truly, I now hope there is one and I hope if there isn't one I hope they make one, just for Trump. He did it Saturday in Wisconsin and then just in case you missed it he did it again yesterday in Pennsylvania and guess what? America’s news media - when it is has never been more urgently needed, failing, collapsing, cowardly protecting only its own money - America’s news media, in its death rattle before Trump extinguishes it, or with its own near-complete lack of courage, it extinguishes itself Trump did it again yesterday in Pennsylvania and the media MISSED IT. This psychopathic, criminally insane narcissist; this damaged, malignant, diseased, dysfunctional, hallucinatory, drooling, demented, reptile-brained, and ultimately and perhaps most importantly, this STUPID slime slandered the mental capacities of the President and Vice President of the United States. And how was that covered by our bleeding, bankrupt, almost dying news media? Like they hoped to be covering Trump in hell. Bloomberg said Trump "sharpened his criticism on border security." The Guardian called these "Harris barbs." Reuters said Trump "escalates harsh rhetoric." On and on and on. I cannot say this more clearly to the political journalists of this nation. The English language is full of… words. Words that actually DESCRIBE what JD Vance once aptly called Trump peddling quote “cultural heroin.” Words that MEASURE his deceit. Words that QUANTIFY his inhumanity. Words that will NOT get you fired and words that will not get your cowering bosses sued. Learn them. Use them. Because if you don’t, you will die with me in the Trump camps. ALL of the bleak histories of the dictators of this world include that same chapter. If you cannot summon courage on behalf of your nation or your profession, summon it on behalf of saving yourselves. AND NOW WE MOVE TO CBS NEWS which says no, it will not fact-check the candidates at its Vice Presidential debate tomorrow. Even as Vance devolves into a compulsive or perhaps congenital liar. I have a piece of advice for my old MSNBC colleague and professional friend of 25 years, Co-Moderator Norah O'Donnell. You have nothing to lose and a country to save. Ignore your bosses. Fact-check anyway. Emulate Edward R. Murrow - not Jake F'ing Tapper. B-Block (26:18) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: I think I have some insight into the RFK Junior story that everybody else understandably missed. There has been a throwaway line in one account that refers to the contemplation of a "medical leave" for Olivia Nuzzi. I think that's the key to everything. But more importantly, I can finally explain my gratitude to her, and celebrate the great thing she did for me: (34:34) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Because it's Stevie Day - the anniversary of the day I got my first dog, Stevie (more correctly - the day she adopted me). And finally, FINALLY, I can tell the story without pulling any punches because of course the girlfriend who led me into the world of dogs - Stevie's Mom - is Olivia. C-Block (54:00) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS, PART II: The saga of the arrival of Stevie rather improbably includes... Rudy Giuliani? And the small matter of the remodeling of my mind and life.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SERIES 3 EPISODE 37: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: I am only reading tea leaves here but Trump's panicked post yesterday about how HE did everything right on January 6th but the "deep state" let him down, followed by his afternoon lie about how Nancy Pelosi ignored his offers of troops MAY imply that he's gotten some sense of the evidentiary brief Jack Smith filed to Judge Chutkan before yesterday's deadline. I'm guessing that Smith is going to try to start by proving that long before January 6th Trump knew damn well that he had lost the election and thus no act he took to get a recount or challenge it was an "official act" and thus immune but simply a personal one for which he'll have to face charges. Smith's filing remains under seal. MEANWHILE BACK AT THE RANCH: So New York Mayor Eric Adams allegedly sold himself to Turkey's dictator for only about $17,000 a year? Adams is a messianic idiot and his "I'm not resigning" press conference began with him being shouted down by a critic with a bullhorn, and his defense seems to have been damaged by his niece telling everybody to stop criticizing the Mayor because Jesus put him there. AND LIKE I SAID: They published the "Iran Trump Hack" yesterday and it wasn't a big deal but the newspapers all made a big show over martyring themselves for supposed journalistic principles when in fact they weren't even sacrificing one good story. ALSO: Brian Ray has done a new version of the theme! We'll premiere it Monday but there's a quick tease here, just for you. B-Block (28:00) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: NYC Mayor doubleheader! Adams indicted, Giuliani disbarred. Media management suck up Dylan Byers accuses me of "rushing" to reveal something I actually stayed quiet about for more than a decade. And Clay Higgins managed to both try to walk back his racist, stochastic terror comments about Haitians AND double down on them at the same time! C-Block (35:13) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: Muggs isn't the sweetest dog Thurber ever wrote about. But he may be the most memorable: "The Dog That Bit People."See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SERIES 3 EPISODE 36: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: White Trash Congressman Clay Higgins (R-Louisiana) has now targeted stochastic terrorism against the legal Haitian migrants in Ohio and elsewhere: "Lol. These Haitians are wild. Eating pets, vudu, nastiest country in the western hemisphere, cults, slapstick gangsters, but damned if they don’t feel all sophisticated now, filing charges against our President and VP. All these thugs better get their mind right and their ass out of our country before January 20th." His enabler, Speaker Mike Johnson, has blocked efforts to censure Higgins - the idiot who believes "Ghost Buses" transported somebody to January 6th - and insisted that Higgins prayed over his tweet and then deleted it. This raises the question obvious to everybody but the world's smallest politician: Why didn't Higgins pray BEFORE he virtually dropped the N-word on a bunch of legal residents in Ohio? If at any point between now and the election you stop being angry that Donald Trump and his fellow peddler of cultural heroin JD Vance have let creatures like Clay Higgins crawl out of the woodwork, suck it up. The election of November 5th is as existential for this nation as was the Civil War – and many of the issues are identical. And the results must be. TRUMP ALSO AGAIN ADMITS HE LOST "BY A WHISKER" IN 2020. He apparently forgot he previously used the same analogy, then denied it and said he was being sarcastic, and has now said it again. He also says Iran is trying to kill him because he's trying to restore the furniture industry in North Carolina and "they only kill consequential presidents." This psychopath is PRE-BRAGGING ON HIS OWN POSSIBLE ASSASSINATION. There's extraordinary news out of polling for the Senate race in Nebraska and it IS Jack Smith day and there was a blooper on Fox yesterday so grotesque as to be hilarious. B-Block (20:11) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: A brief Nuzzi update featuring my ex-girlfriend’s ex-fiancee’s because of my ex-friend’s sexts’ ex-wife. The medalists? Sheriff Bruce Zuchowski threatens Harris voters in Ohio. Jamie Dimon spits on all immigrants, like the grave of his immigrant grandfather. And Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema are too stupid to understand that the Republicans will ban abortion whether the Democrats get rid of the filibuster or not. C-Block (28:40) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: 20 years ago Nicolle Wallace was one of the Bush White House thugs trying to kill MSNBC, the Democrats, me - and especially the man who caught Bush lying about Saddam and uranium, Ambassador Joe Wilson. The Bushes were convinced I was on their side in the story, so they kept emailing me talking points, But because Nicolle and the others were too lazy to look up the correct spelling of my name, I never got the emails directly - only forwarded from the people within NBC whom the Bushies knew would carry their water for them.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SERIES 3 EPISODE 35: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:44) I wish these were metaphors. In his latest fugue-state multi-hour you-know-how-old-he-is-he's-206 campaign speech at Savannah, Trump first literally drooled on himself in the middle of a sibilant "S" and a scant 45 minutes later revealed that he just found out that Russia beat Napoleon AND Hitler and suddenly he's the director in "The Producers" who says "I never knew the Third Reich meant Germany! I mean the play is drenched with historical goodies like that!” CNN's coverage of this latest evidence that Trump's cheese has slid off his Ritz Cracker? “Trump focuses on economy at stop in battleground Georgia.” The term is sane-washing. If Biden had done this the replays would still be running on a loop on CNN. And this doesn't even get to his insanity on issues of substance: the stalker language towards women. The first oblique promise to jail people who criticize the Supreme Court. The continued insistence he will send the legal migrants in Ohio who are from Haiti "back" to Venezuela because he evidently thinks that's where Haiti IS. The stuff about the courts will re-surge in the next two days because Judge Tanya Chutkan has ruled Jack Smith can submit the phone book as his preliminary briefing in his revised Insurrection Case against Trump. 180 pages, probably, filled with evidence. Chutkan smacked Trump's lawyers around, too. Stand by for fun. There's been more hacking of Trump campaign stuff and it won't be published either but the recipient at least characterizes it. The auteur of Project 2025 reportedly told colleagues he killed a dog with a shovel because he barked too loudly. And just for laughs, what the Prime Minister of the U.K. meant to say was "return of the HOSTAGES" but he must have been hungry. B-Block (28:58) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: CNN's Abby Phillip is the Maggie Haberman of Chuck Todds. She beat up Harris for not going to the border. She is now beating up Harris FOR going to the border. Hers is the lowest rated prime time show in cable news and this podcast is approaching audience comparisons with it. Mike Lindell just dropped his pillow price and just accidentally picked a number that attracts Hitler Stans. And there are some Nuzzi updates: Ben Smith of Semafor says journalists SHOULD sleep with their sources. And even better, the New York Post has printed the funniest thing I've ever seen and I'm only going to reveal it reads "SHE ALSO DATED OLBERMANN." C-Block (46:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: In the recent spirit of confession, I will reveal that 46 years ago while Sports Director and Vice President of Cornell's student-owned radio station I went on the air and lied and said that a local semi-pro hockey team had suddenly gone out of business. But I had damn good reasons and it turned out I was actually just off on my timing - they would, 16 months later. The saga of The Ithaca Stars.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SERIES 3 EPISODE 34: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:44) Yeah, the Nuzzi Nudes News Network stuff is included. But the ACTUAL lead story is: There are heroes among us and even in politics and even in the Republican Party and no, their motives do not have to be absolutely pure, they don’t even have to be a little bit pure and such a man is Republican State Senator Mike McDonnell of Nebraska, and what he has now done, quoting a proponent “kind of closes the casket… kind of closes the lid” on the Trump bid to reshape the Electoral College just six weeks before the election by changing how Nebraska CASTS its five electoral votes from a split-them-by-district method that will probably give Kamala Harris ONE electoral vote and Trump FOUR, to winner take all which would give him all FIVE. He has killed it. He won't vote for it. "It is clear to me that right now, 43 days from Election Day, is not the moment to make this change.” And in things I promised not to tell and boy is THAT true this time. When the RFK Junior/Olivia Nuzzi relationship story broke, I thought, oh here we go. Eventually and inevitably this story will get around to me because long ago she and I lived together. We had dogs and tattoos and rings. And when this story broke I decided: if nobody asks, I’m not volunteering this. It’s difficult to be even the most marginal public figure and keep any part of your life private. And nobody knows that better now, than does Olivia. On the other hand, if I’m asked about this by the media, if somebody is going to write it, I’m not lying. I’m also not giving THEM the story. Especially not The New York Post, which called yesterday. I confirmed we dated and said I thought it was pretty general knowledge that we had dated but that nobody cared and that if they didn’t know this, well, to paraphrase Arthur Conan Doyle writing Sherlock Holmes’ lines for him: “I am not retained by the gossip columnists to supply their deficiencies.” In other words, I am not the Nuzzi Nudes News Network over here, giving away free stories! So I've put a few details in this podcast. And they are stunningly normal. Did she do anything right here journalistically? No. But the bottom line: Olivia is responsible for me being born again in dogs. She will always have my support if she needs it. B-Block (26:32) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: His career died seven years ago, but when a reporter asked him about the cause of death last week, Bill O'Reilly stormed out of the interview and threatened to sue her for, I dunno, telling the truth. The New York Times' newest bothsideist nonsense has taken a natural disaster bent, in which fascism sought by Trump has "erupted" along "fault lines." And the leading bothsidesist of the paper, Maggie Haberman, has helpfully revealed that there is a Left Wing Industry devoted to trying to tear her and her colleagues down. Which raises a vital question: WHERE IS MY MONEY, VAST LEFT WING INDUSTRY? C-Block (38:30) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Since O'Reilly's name has come up in this All-New edition, I actually answer the FAQ about Billo (and Sean Hannity, and Rush Limbaugh). Do they believe the poison they sell or are they just pimps? I have some evidence suggesting the answer is they started one way and ended drinking their own poison.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SEASON 3 EPISODE 33: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN The good news? Trump says if he loses, he won't run again in 2028. The bad news? Trump lies about everything. Strong polling numbers nationally and in the swings including a 16-point surge in Vice President Harris's approval score, and polling on how popular Project 2025 is (it isn't, and it isn't by 57% to 4%). Huge fundraising numbers. Mark Robinson's entire campaign leadership team quit to save their own skin, so he tried to frame it as "staff changes" (yeah, the rest of the race, I'm changing from having a staff to not having one). The Robert F. Kennedy Junior/Olivia Nuzzi story first gets more hilarious by the moment (like the fireworks explosion scene in 'Naked Gun') and then Kennedy reverts to being the Eternal Scumbag with a proxy saying on the record that he hopes to sue Nuzzi and then make "criminal referrals" because that's how you deal with a problem the proxy describes as Kennedy being "chased by porn." You don't, you know, warn the person, then call her employers and tell them to make it stop.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SEASON 3 EPISODE 32: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: So the next North Carolina Poll will be, what, conducted by Morning Consult for NudeAfrica-dot-com? Nobody's surprised but everybody's shocked? Trump’s crazed choice for governor of North Carolina – and remember if he’s the nominee or presumptive nominee and you take him off, that’s a coup, Trump says so – said he was a black Nazi, supported reinstating slavery, loved transgender porn, loved a porn site called Nude Africa, and declared he was a perv. And then according to CNN there was the GROSS stuff. And almost nobody's surprised. This kind of behavior (run for office and threaten all the people who do the things you have secretly enjoyed for decades) is more common than it seems. There is a reasonably straightforward psychological explanation. I'll do my best to translate it. MEANWHILE: THE TEAMSTERS WON'T ENDORSE except a majority of the 1,300,000 Teamsters have already endorsed Kamala Harris via their local Teamster chapters. Curious. I wonder how much somebody like Trump would know about bribing a union boss. AND THE POLLS: Once again, The New York Times is the outlier - but even its poll is in line with two hugely important throughlines: the momentum is all on Harris's side, and she is ahead in Pennsylvania. Oh and it probably won't last but Colln Allred is ahead of Ted Cruz in Texas. B-BLOCK (27:28) THE BREAKING NEWS: At an anti-Antisemitism event at the American Israeli Council last night, Trump shortened the distance between him and Hitler still further. We already knew him as an antisemite who spread the trope that Jews were loyal first to Israel and then whatever country they were in. Now, he has blamed Jewish Americans - in advance - for his potential loss. It is staggering, and confirms every previous warning that the Hitler comparison is apt, and terrifying: "If I don’t win this election, and the Jewish people would really have a lot to do with that if that happens because at 40%, that means 60% of the people are voting for the enemy." C-BLOCK (34:43) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: His most famous story remains so famous that 85 years after it was published, the name of its hero remains in the dictionary as a verb: The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SERIES 3 EPISODE 31: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Quinnipiac Poll: Harris by five in Pennsylvania (include Stein and Oliver and it's SIX). Harris by five in Michigan. Harris 50-48 in the Fox News poll. I’m beginning to suspect the Trump is this-close to offering anybody in a swing state who votes for him, a nude photo of Melania. I mean that’s neither as gratuitous nor crazy as it sounds. I heard about the post on Twitter and I thought this was going to be a Sarah Cooper bit or the rebirth of Jib-Jab and then I clicked on it. She says: "Why do I stand proudly between my nude modeling work?" That’s where we are. Ex-prosecutor Vice President swapped in for the retiring President, versus insane proto-Nazi racist would-be-dictator adjudicated sex offender with the nude model first lady and her stepsons are both appearing with an Oklahoma religious crackpot who has called the Vice President a quote “lying whore” and their Dad’s campaign is about the scary illegal black people eating cats but the grotesque misogynist Russian-produced sexual memes are about the Vice President. THE WHOLE OHIO STORY about the cats and the migrants in Springfield, the WHOLE raison-d’etre of Jayvee Vance’s stochastic terrorism attack on the residents of his own STATE, has now been revealed as two LIES. The first was the woman who posted to Facebook about somebody’s friend’s neighbor’s aunt’s uncle’s condom salesman seeing somebody eat a cat. Vance’s campaign knew it wasn’t true – it called the Springfield city hall on September 9th – and was TOLD it wasn’t true. That didn’t stop Vance. The SECOND lie turns out to be by the woman in Springfield who told the police HER cat Miss Sassy had been taken and killed – that’s the story Vance keeps using as a fallback – oh there’s a police report! My constituents insist there IS a missing cat! The woman is named Anna Kilgore and guess what, the cat is alive. Sweet Sassy Molassey, the cat is alive. The Wall Street Journal did something that Trump and Vance and their fellow scumbags would never do – they fact-checked Vance. And Kilgore. And Miss Sassy. Who was discovered safe and sound in Kilgore's basement. But Vance is still out there lying. B-Block (19:36) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Maria Bartiromo explains that the director of Homeland Security is using P. Diddy to get the world to stop talking about Trump. The University of South Carolina lets its campus be used for an event assaulting the Vice President's sexuality. Chris Cuomo apologizes to Trump because...I have no idea. C-Block (29:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Oh like you don't have a story like this. I went past my first NYC apartment the other day. The one that somebody lit on fire. While I was inside. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SERIES 3 EPISODE 30: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: The debate bounce is here. And maybe it’s more than that. Kamala Harris may – repeat MAY – caveat MAY – warning even if so keep your foot on the gas…MAY be beginning pulling away from Trump in the polls. She's up by six in Morning Consult, got a six-point swing in Mark Penn's Harris poll. According to the 538 Average of Polls, yesterday, for the first time since July 2021, her net favorability moved into positive territory: 46-point-6 percent approval to 46-point-5 percent disapproval. It’s about as NOT-a-landslide as you can get but it is an almost unprecedented turnaround. Vice President Harris, whose net approval is plus zero-point-one was on July 14th, -17. There's also the 538 poll average where she’s up by three and its electoral college model in which Harris wins 61 times out of 100… and the Economist Polling Average… which shows her up by four… and Nate Silver’s OK-Maybe-I-Did-Pull-This-Number-Out-Of-My-Ass model which he acknowledges went from last week giving Trump a two-thirds chance of winning to him saying to Axios that Harris is quote “moving up in the polls enough that the model is converging back toward 50/50 in the Electoral College.” JD VANCE IS A BLESSING - TO HARRIS: Insists Haitians are from "Haitia." Claims Robert F. Kennedy Junior was assassinated. Is doubling down on Springfield. May be dumber than Trump. And here's good news: the authorities are still investigating Trump's scandal at Arlington National Cemetery. B-Block (21:35) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Megyn Kelly takes time from her bid to beat Kari Lake in the effort to corner the market in camera filters, to F-bomb Taylor Swift. Turns out at least one of the anti-Ukraine memes Elon Musk tweeted was made by the Kremlin's favorite disinformation creator. And Bill Ackman is so mad about the debate he's referring it to...a top college sports league? C-Block (33:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: I just re-told this story Monday in real life so I thought I'd bring it up again. 15 years ago this summer Bill O'Reilly sent Jesse Watters to stalk the chairman of GE because I was criticizing Billo and Fox. The chairman's mother called him up and yelled at him, and he of course responded as any true businessman would: he threaten to turn off MSNBC and its $200,000,000 annual profit like a light bulb so Mommy wouldn't be upset.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SERIES 3 EPISODE 29: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Trump’s newest threat: quote: “the bullets are flying, and it will only get worse!” There WERE no bullets on Sunday, other than those fired by the Secret Service. There was no line of sight for any shots. There are thus far no charges other than gun possession and the reality of the case suggests there may never be. The man who voted for Trump in 2016 and wanted to shoot or shoot at hm in 2024 didn’t even make the slightest attempt to resist arrest. Trump knows he was never in real danger. In fact he was genuinely put out that they wouldn’t let him finish the round of golf he was cheating through when the would-be almost sorta kinda assassination attempt didn’t-actually-take-place. JD Vance then followed with a tortured demand that America either let Trump do what he wants - including blaming the migrants for the security failures around him - including lying about the migrants - including destroying Springfield Ohio - or accept an America in which there's something wrong with falsely accusing beleaguered people with eating pets and those who make such accusations are subject to censorship and censorship inevitably leads to a bullet in the brain. Vance really said all this. And it all comes back to those ten words: “the bullets are flying, and it will only get worse!” Only getting worse, of course, is exactly what Trump wants. Any similarity between this madman and the president played by Martin Sheen in the Steven King film “The Dead Zone”: “The missiles are flying. Hallelujah, Hallelujah!” PLUS: Inside the attempts to defend yourself against political violence and the awful truth that you really can't, and based on my experience during 2006 when I repeatedly received mailings of fake anthrax, much of what we assume is security is actually just security theater. B-Block (35:10) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: The leader of a Trumpler Youth Group named Brilyn Hollyhand thinks Trump was endangered by a "riffle." Speaker Mike Johnson's thumb is fine but Trump seems to be suffering from thumb erectile dysfunction. And his swipe at Taylor Swift may have cost him the support of Patrick Mahomes' wife Brittany because hatred and racism is cool but insulting Tay Tay is a bridge too far. C-Block (41:45) A SPECIAL SPORTSCENTRAL CENTER UPDATE: Baseball's annual suicide attempt. As the World Series TV audience shrinks to 10% of what it was fun 1978, what does the game need? Giant ADS on BOTH SIDES of every player's batting helmet! Along with a picture of an OSTRICH.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SERIES 3 EPISODE 28: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN Republican candidate Domestic J. Terrorist has now broken the record for most sharks jumped in a single day – electric sharks, with frickin laser beams on their heads – and is claiming he was the target of another assassination attempt in which no shots were fired and none of it happened nearer than 400 yards away from him and there’s no video and a preliminary ID shows a career criminal who was posting about his Republican dream ticket of Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy and within minutes Trump was fund-raising off it and trying to erase the memory of a post he’d made earlier in which he declared without context or rationality quote “I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT.” Meanwhile his running mate Jayvee Vance confessed on national television that he “creates” stories like this lie about a city in the state he represents in the Senate, a lie that has led to the evacuation of schools, a hospital and a university and city offices, and if he cannot be forced to resign his office, there must be at minimum on the Senate floor TODAY, a motion to expel or at LEAST censure him. Oh and Kamala Harris’s lead over this procession of train wrecks – so many train wrecks that some of them wrecked while still at the STATION, while still in the TRAIN SHEDS – Kamala Harris’s lead has extended to SIX points among likely voters.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SERIES 3 EPISODE 27: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Donald Ducks out of another debate – while inadvertently confirming he lost the last one. The self-destruction of the Trump campaign and fascist political machine – so thorough and unexpected that it looks intentional – has escalated. They used to be evil and clever; now they are evil and stupid. This happened moments after a little-noticed tweet resurfaced from one of his House Elves, Congressman Mike Collins of Georgia. As the debate ended Tuesday night Collins had written “You want to know who won? Find out who refuses to do a second debate.” Literally within minutes… Trump refused to do a second debate. So burnt out that he RE-USED a line from Wednesday, Trump posted at 3:08 eastern yesterday, “When a prizefighter loses a fight, the first words out of his mouth are ‘I want a rematch.’ Polls clearly show that I won the debate…” They didn’t; but of course were Trump to admit this, I suspect he would die. I mean this literally; if he somehow acknowledged his utter failure, the violent self-destruction of his entire ecosystem would be so damaging that he could no longer exist. So blah blah; confuses political asylum with mental asylums again, again contradicts himself by noting that HE insisted on a second debate with Biden, tries to take the one glimmer of an impact he made during his closing statement about problems not solved during this presidency, then, in all caps so you know he’s especially crazy, quote, “THERE WILL BE NO THIRD DEBATE!” PLUS: Harris up by FIVE in Morning Consult polls and Nate Silver does something useful: explains why her Debate Bump may not happen for days or weeks. Panic and infighting in the Trump campaign as Lindsey Graham joins Marjorie Taylor Greene in the bid to break up Trump and his newest crush, Laura "Acting Melania" Loomer. A new journalistic outlet has the full backstory of the "Migrants Eating Cats" nonsense and surprisingly enough all the sources are fourth-hand. And how do you make another January 6th impossible? Make it as difficult to get around DC ON January 6th as it is to get around NYC during the UN General Assembly, and even Thump's thugs will give up in frustration and go the F home. B-Block (21:03) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: The Trump lawyer who defended separating immigrant families at the border insists you can't separate families for the 35 seconds it takes to put the supermarket shopping cart back in the rack. Fox's Rachel Campos-Duffy assumes that because Linsey Davis and Kamala Harris were in the same sorority 14 years apart there's a conspiracy. And the mask falls off: Trump Bigot-In-Chief Stephen Miller gets eaten alive by an immigrant, who gets Miller to confirm he believes Venezuelan Dictator Nicolas Maduro. C-Block (36:43) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: As brilliant and subtle an insight into a writer's mind as Thurber ever offered. You'd never notice unless I mentioned it, but watch how his imagination could turn a casual overheard remark into a marvelous, self-satirizing, comedic spy story in "The Lady On 142." See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SERIES 3 EPISODE 26: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: “In the world of boxing or UFC," writes Trump between his chicken clucks, "when a fighter gets beaten or knocked out, they get up and scream ‘I demand a rematch, I demand a rematch!' Well it’s no different with a debate. She was beaen badly last night. Every poll has us winning – in one case 92-8 – so why would I do a Rematch?” Actually in the world of boxing or UFC, Trump’s campaign would be in Intensive Care at this hour and the only demand would be to pull it off life support and end its suffering. And actually in the world of debates, it was TRUMP who had demanded additional debates with Joe Biden and then the Vice President so by his own rules Trump just proclaimed he LOST the CNN debate to the President. It took Trump surrogate and pretend professor Hugh Hewitt more than 19 hours to come up with this second day excuse, quote: “Opinions are settling… Trump was not at his best BUT was usually ok and at some points good, especially on the border and his closing statement.” 19 hours to think up some means of pulling his life-line meal-ticket out of the Burning Trumpster Dumpster and Hugh Hewitt comes up with “he was usually ok.” If you think that was bad, JD Vance then dismissed the Taylor Swift endorsement by encouraging voters to ignore billionaire celebrities who are out of touch with ordinary Americans. And there was a cat eaten in Ohio. The woman - a native of the state (represented in the Senate by JD Vance) - the child of Ohio residents - was promptly arrested. She's not Haitian, but the right wing is trying to make her so. It's going as well as Trump's debate night went. B-Block (20:59) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Republican Virginia Senate hopeful Hung Cao decides to try a little play on words and has made medallions reading "I Want My Senator To Be Hung." A little moment behind the spin room curtain with the deplorable Tim Murtaugh and the despicable Byron York. And Russia Dave Rubin in a nice passive-aggressive threat against Taylor Swift because she had the nerve to disobey the right wing. C-Block (27:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Maddow just celebrated her 16th anniversary. She almost didn't make it to her first. The day our corporate overlords threatened to fire her, fire me, and shut the damn network off! See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SERIES 3 EPISODE 25: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: From the time she reached out to shake his hand and he didn’t seem to know how to do that, to his closing remarks where he basically threatened America with Russian nukes, the debate couldn’t have gone worse for Donald Trump. Oh – yeah – it could. Afterwards, Taylor Swift formally endorsed Kamala Harris. The Vice President’s control of the debate and the manipulation and baiting of Trump was so complete that very few fascists even feigned that he’d done well. The best they could do was insist that the moderators were “rigged” against him because David Muir and Linsey Davis did the best job of fact-checking against Trump yet. I mean ever. When Trump repeated his nonsense that babies could be murdered after birth, Ms. Davis simply stated there was no state in the country in which this was legal and then without a breath cut Trump off by evenly saying, “Vice President Harris, you have said…” Every checklist box Harris had to mark, she aced. She introduced herself, she gave specific policy plans for subsidizing child care and small business, explained how Trump would lie and why – and that was just in the first answer. It was so thorough that I was genuinely surprised that when they came back from the first commercial, Trump was still there. B-Block (30:30) SPECIAL COMMENT, PART 2: The Swift endorsement was one big accomplishment for the Vice President. The appearance of a bead of sweat above Trump’s upper lip at an hour in – and its dogged determination to stay there – was the other. By then Trump was insisting that Harris would spend your taxpayer dollars to give free transgender care to undocumented immigrants who were eating your pet duck. C-Block (50:00) SPECIAL COMMENT, PART 3: I answered your questions in the immediate aftermath of the debate. I mean, what kind of questions could there be after a debate about which the New York Times, the Associated Press and other paragons of bothsidesist nonsense had to acknowledge was a Harris romp? What do you ask? “Did she win by 100 points or 200?”See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SERIES 3 EPISODE 24: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Will Trump be insane mass murderer Trump at the debate tonight, or just STRATEGIC mass murderer Trump at the debate tonight? Because the debate transpires against the backdrop of what SHOULD have been the lead story everywhere yesterday and today, the Rolling Stone “effing kill them all story,” but nine years in, our political media STILL can’t process it, STILL thinks – institutionally and individually – that in a reversal of the famous H-L Mencken if they pretend it isn’t true often enough it’ll stop BEING true – that no one could have become president of the United States or try to stay in office extra-constitutionally or eventually become so insane and so damaged that he would openly boast that not only will he imprison in concentration camps millions of immigrants and others he intends to deport but that quote “getting them out will be a bloody story”– and that he SAID that on Saturday only because the self-protective animal-cunning filter that used to STOP him from saying the Hitlerian mass murder “bloody story” part OUT LOUD is now breaking or broken and there is a chance – however small – that it could break a little more tonight and he could make it worse tonight, that if Kamala Harris has the courage to push this particular button she could not only win the debate and win the election but destroy Trump once and for all and maybe even present a scenario in which Joe Biden only becomes the candidate who dropped out merely the SECOND closest to the election. Bloomberg's resident Trump expert (and victor in a lawsuit Trump filed against him) Tim O'Brien has seven pieces of advice for Vice President Harris. And a British newspaper claims she got Lee Strasberg to play Trump in the simulated debates. He died in 1982. If she can really pull that off, she should be elected unanimously. Don't forget our live podcast on YouTube immediately following the Harris-Trump debate tonight at approximately 10:30 EDT. B-Block (22:39) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: David Zaslav tops off his two years of humiliation by being caught seated next to Leon (Elon) Musk. The Russian Stooge scandal sideswipes Marsha Blackburn and Clay Travis. And as RFK Jr warns liberals that they're now on the same side as Dick Cheney, I must remind my former friend that he's now on the same side as our Proto-Hitler. C-Block (36:51) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Tomorrow's podcast will be devoted entirely to tonight's debate, so I'll do my 9/11 reminiscences here. And instead of trying to recapture how I felt that day and on the days that followed, I will simply present the tapes of my radio reporting from 2001 for KFWB all-news radio in L.A., and the ABC Radio Network.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SEASON 3 EPISODE 23: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (2:00) TRUMP TO "BLOODY" IMMIGRANTS - AND ARREST YOU (and reveals the conspiracy theory he will launch against Kamala Harris in tomorrow night's debate). And next to none of this has been on front pages. Our nation is dying of an utter, consuming, fatal lack of courage. For eight years I have been talking and writing about Trump’s desire not just to purge America of immigrants – documented or otherwise – also he gets to decide who’s an immigrant and if you try to defend one of his targets you become his NEW target – but to purge them with violence, Concentration camps, swat team raids, informants, military weaponry, bloodshed. And now even HE is saying it, that bluntly. He promises, out loud, that "it will be a bloody story." If you are an American and you are asking any question about this besides “Is he an insane mass murderer, or a strategic mass murderer,” you are now a Trump enabler. Yet, Congressman Ro Khanna actually said yesterday that he’s upset his fellow Democrats are calling the Republicans “weird.” “We should lead with respect and make our case through persuasion of having a better vision for the nation.” Fine, Congressman, and when we do that and Trump regains power and he decides that all immigrants are illegal immigrants and anybody whose parents were not born in this country are immigrants, I’ll do what I can when Trump sends the National Guard to imprison you but by then I might already be in prison because of the OTHER thing Trump did over the weekend that nobody is taking seriously even though after Judge Merchan gutted the rule of law Friday here in New York, Trump has decided he can get away with - promising to threaten "lawyers, political operatives, donors, illegal voters, corrupt election officials" and anybody else who opposes him in this election. And where is our courage? The New York Times' publisher thinks he's being impartial by not acting against Trump. The most vulnerable voting bloc - young women - will have the lowest turnout. George W. Bush won't endorse Harris because he's "retired." And worst of all, Judge Merchan folds in New York and pretends he's avoiding election interference by making sure the electorate doesn't know whether or not one of the candidates is going to be sentenced to prison. Thus all of this falls to Kamala Harris to prosecute, tomorrow night. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SERIES 3 EPISODE 22: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Plot twist! Judge Tanya Chutkan's rulings on a "mini-trial" regarding the impact of Trump's Concierge SCOTUS ruling on 'presidential immunity' will not only place some of Jack Smith's evidence before the American public before the election, but it may put Mike Pence in the delicious position of getting to testify against Trump for his attempt to foment a violent overthrow of the government of the United States. Pence's testimony (or at least his sworn past statements) are at the center of a string of October Surprise hearings and deadlines Chutkan put in place yesterday. The first is three weeks from yesterday. She should take her free time to go and pose for the statue now. I ASK AGAIN: IS TRUMP DYING OR SOMETHING? His performance at a New York speech was so halting, indistinct, moronic, that I continue to believe there is a physical crisis in progress. Plus, he was nice enough to invoke his Arlington National Cemetery scandal, the one he insisted never happened and was entirely made up by Kamala Harris, and now NPR has identified the TWO Trump campaign officials who abused the Arlington staffer - Justin Caporale is now a Trump campaign Deputy Manager and Michel Picard an advance man who was a contact point on January 6. They both abused the staffer and then Picard shoved her - per Pentagon officials quoted by NPR. Insert GIF of Sir Patrick Stewart on Star Trek face-palming here. MORE FROM RUSSIA WITH CASH: So the co-founder of Tenet Media of Stooge-Gate infamy was fired by Glenn Beck, the assumption is she flipped, there may be others to come (a noted Russian disinformation expert has a list) and golly what a shock, Elon Musk amplified one of Tenet Media's tweets as recently as last week. AND THE SULZBERGER CRIS-DE-COEUR: The New York Times publisher writes an Op-Ed for The Washington Post (what? The Times rejected it?) about the dangers of Trump and the perils of free press and how... he's not going to do a goddamned thing about any of it. Meet A.G. Sulzberger, gutless bastard. B-Block (28:50) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: MSNBC dayside ignores the entire Russia Stooge-Gate story to cover the irrelevancy that the Hunter Biden case has become. Senator Ron Johnson is so stupid he is not only promulgating a conspiracy theory about the Great Depression being planned but he admits he doesn't understand how the theory works. And Jesse Watters bashes Tim Walz for drinking milk shakes even though Watters' old boss Bill O'Reilly sat there at Yankee Stadium night after night drinking milk shakes with... Donald Trump. C-Block (41:00) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: I can’t be sure who wrote the first comedic bit about “Well of course when Iwas a kid we had it TOUGH” but it might have been Thurber. This was my father’s favorite Thurber story and it is the definition of subtle hyperbole. The different approach to kids and school in the year 1903, when, as you will hear, Thurber, some of his fourth grade classmates had reputedly REPEATED the fourth grade… every year… since 1883.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SERIES 3 EPISODE 21: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN ALL-TIME SERIES EPISODE 500 A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: "Follow the money," said Deep Throat about Watergate. Except he didn't.. My friend, the screenwriter of "All The President's Men," Bill Goldman - HE said it. Because they paid him to. The real "Deep Throat," Deputy FBI Director Mark Felt, never said anything like it. Goldman added he threw it in because it sounded more memorable. And it was. Now everybody remembers it as having happened, when it didn't. Which is kind of the point about what Mark Felt's institutional descendants at the Department of Justice did yesterday about Stooge-Gate: In their indictment of two Russian propagandists THEY never say the Tennessee company through which they funneled money into the American right wing echo chamber is called Tenet Media and THEY never say that Tenet Media was founded by Lauren Chen who also happens to work for Glenn Beck and Blaze-TV and THEY never say that Tenet Media’s YouTube channel got ten million dollars from Putin’s propaganda arm, R-T, to grow and distribute videos about how America started the Russian war in Ukraine, and how it was all Biden’s fault, and vote Trump or die, and how America shouldn’t get trapped in forever wars and how terrorists were coming into the country across the southern border. And they didn’t say that through Tenet the Russians washed large sums of money to scumbags like Tim Pool, Benny Johnson, Dave Rubin, and others to unwittingly do Putin’s work for him. Some of those folks say they're unwitting victims. I actually believe it. Because if there was an Unwitting Fantasy League, Jesse Watters would be my first choice but I'd certainly be satisfied if I could get Pool or Johnson or Rubin. My question is: Russia only had a handful of stooges here? I doubt that. TRUMP GOES SILENT ON ARLINGTON: Possibly after reading polling showing that his standing with veterans, active service members, and their families is vanishing - he's in a virtual dead heat with Vice President Harris among the families. AND THE RATS ARE LEAVING THE SINKING SHIP and boasting about it to Politico. Eighteen paragraphs about Republicans who are preparing a bunch of different songs to whistle past a bunch of different graveyards, but the lyrics are identical: we WANT Trump to lose, it's the GOP's only chance! B-Block (25:22) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Mark Robinson allegedly owed the porn guy money, and then his wife owed the Girl Scouts money! The "Tim Walz Family Hates Tim Walz" campaign falls flat when it turns out the terrible story his brother had to tell was about Tim barfing in the car as a kid. And on Joe Scarborough's show, Mike Barnicle asked the fitting question: how did the Republicans get here, nominating a lunatic Trump for a third time? The answer - in part anyway - IS Joe Scarborough. C-Block (42:37) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: The NFL season opens tonight. Why not look back at the day I had to call in sick as co-host of NBC's "Football Night In America" because I had unknowingly blown out my appendix! Surprise!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SERIES 3 EPISODE 20: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Bliock (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Trump completely changes his Arlington Cemetery Scandal story. He had already single-handedly reignited his Arlington National Cemetery scandal by implying the Veterans Administration and the Department of Defense are LYING about it, when Fox News doubled down on his lie, and basically put the entirety of the military establishment in the same position Senator Joe McCarthy tried to put it in, in 1954. The mistake – deciding you and your lies are more important than the military’s truth – destroyed McCarthy. And it could conceivably destroy Trump. If one day your spokesclowns insist there WAS an event at the cemetery, only it was the fault of an unprincipled woman having a mental health episode, and that you have an exculpatory video proving so, and then you suddenly change the story and insist instead that "there was no conflict or 'fighting'...It was a made up story" by Vice President Harris, you give Senate Democrats and cemetery officials and the entirety of the Defense Department only one option: to investigate it fully. You would've thought Trump would've remembered not to take on the military with lies. The man who led McCarthy to his doom was none other than McCarthy's chief counsel - future Trump mentor Roy Cohn. And by the way: why is anybody - especially Trump - assuming that there is no security video from that day at Arlington National Cemetery that the military could release immediately? Why aren't news organizations demanding confirmation or denials that it exists, and copies of it if it does? POLLING: Harris by six nationally and closing gaps on Trump in all issue categories, per USA Today. A Harris three-tenths of a point lead in Michigan turns into a Trump 1.2 point lead (but the pollster is one-and-a-half stars). AND A DIFFERENT KIND OF POLLING: A North Carolina news outlet quotes six employees and customers of the city's video porn stores of a quarter century ago as saying current Republican candidate for governor Mark Robinson was a five-nights-a-week customer. B-Block (26:35) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Elon Musk advocates for the world to be run only by elite males. Why would he exclude himself like that? The newest participant in the Activote "poll" is Abbot Gregor Mendel (Died, 1884). And Timmy Tammy Tomi Lahren doesn't know that airbuds aren't secure and Vice Presidents can't use them. C-Bloc (31:18) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Continuing our preview of the National Football League season, let's flash back to the one that started and suddenly stopped. The 1982 NFL strike and how I - as a 23-year old rookie reporter - somehow became the confidant of the union leaders, to the point of going drinking with them! See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SEASON 3 EPISODE 19: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Once again, American political media is broken in a new way. Trump has now blamed the families of the dead servicemen he was supposedly honoring at Arlington for his campaign illegally filming and illegally using that video for political purposes. The female victim of physical abuse by Trump staff is afraid to escalate her complaint and so is the military - and the media is doing its best to cover it all up like they cover up everything else Trump does. TRUMP filmed a commercial while standing on top of the graves of dead American war heroes. I’m surprised he didn’t try to sell us sneakers or bitcoin or the rest of his crap. And his staffers assaulted a woman employee at Arlington National Cemetery. And he blamed the families of the dead because his campaign broke the law. And his fascist gang of thugs is running wild with this as if Kamala Harris has anything to do with it. And eight days later there STILL isn’t a Senate investigation or a Defense Department investigation and one of them better be started goddamned immediately. The media is ALSO covering up Trump's Egypt bribe, his mental condition, whatever was in the emails hacked from his campaign, and the nonexistent Wille Brown Flight Logs. Because between its own failures, its own loss of moral compass, and its own fear of retribution, it is a de facto arm of the Trump campaign. THERE IS GOOD POLLING NEWS: Not only is Harris up by 6 in ABC-Ipsos but the Times' battleground data suggests the number one issue for women in swing states has changed from the economy to abortion. And private polling for Trump in New Hampshire is so bad they're punting the state - and punting the guy whose memo about the polling somehow got to the Boston Globe. B-Block (30:41) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Peter Hasson of Free Beacon and the implication that because Kamala Harris never put her summer job on her resume, it didn't happen (I will tell you of my summer job climbing into Hostess Thrift Store Dumpsters with an exacto knife). Harris has "puppet masters" says Tulsi Gabbard, who evidently doesn't know about antisemitic tropes. And Erick Erickson says her career began on her knees in front of Willie Brown, as if Erick Erickson could ever get up off his own knees. C-Block (43:40) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: If fall college semesters have started and the National Football League starts Thursday that means only one thing for me: the day my college professor nearly failed all of us, because of one of the most infamous meatheaded plays in NFL history. Of Joe Pisarcik and Cornell History.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SERIES 3 EPISODE 18: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Trump has doubled down on his defiling of Arlington National Cemetery. Title 32, Part 553, Subpart C: Memorial Services and Ceremonies at Army National Military Ceremonies will not include partisan political activities. Trump’s team exploited a memorial service at Arlington on Monday, broke the law by privately photographing and filming it, physically assaulted Arlington National Cemetery staff who asked him to stop, he gave a thumbs up and smiled idiotically while literally standing on the graves of dead U-S military heroes, and now they have turned it into an online campaign advertisement – by definition, a partisan political activity. This could’ve been trivial. It could’ve been “there was a miscommunication.” Not even an apology – like anybody in the Trump campaign were human enough, or honest enough, or RESPECTFUL OF OUR WAR DEAD ENOUGH to apologize. Just “misunderstanding.” No. They blamed the Cemetery staffer, they blamed the media, they blamed Vice President Harris for not being there to commemorate the sad anniversary of deaths in Afghanistan – the commemoration Trump has illegally turned into a campaign AD – the commemoration Trump skipped last year and the year before. Because to Trump, and to this robot JV Vance, those buried AT Arlington are just another product, just another SELL, just another gimmick, just another BRAND NAME. And they got the brand name wrong. Trump thug Chris LaCivita wrote that Arlington "most hollowed" ground. Corrupted news outlets like The New York Times covered for it by claiming he wrote "hallowed." Hallowed, is Arlington. Hollowed, is Trump's brain. TRUMP IS NOW MORE DANGEROUS THAN EVER. Another new round of polls underscores: he's losing, and dragging down the down-ballot MAGA GOP: a total swing in four states of 25 points to Harris. She leads by one in Arizona, two in Georgia and Nevada, and has cut it to one in North Carolina. The Fox poll in Arizona scores the Senate as Ruben Gallego 56, Kari Lake 41. How is Kari lake going to be able to afford to buy 900 more camera filters THIS late in the race? The Fox poll in North Carolina scores the Governor’s race as Josh Stein 54 Mark Robinson 43. The Fox poll in Nevada scores the Senate race as Jacky Rosen 55 Sam Brown 41. TO LEAVEN THE MOOD A LITTLE: A comedian named Dan Wilbur has done a spot-on impression of JD Vance trying to be a human for 9 minutes at a donut shop. It's better if you go watch it. It's not bad if you listen to it here. B-Block (25:31) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Texas political hitman Ken Paxton sends nine armed troops to 87-year old Democratic woman's home because she registered voters. CNN/Gary Tuchman "Uncommitted Voter" scandal worsens: the guy is now selling t-shirts. And asked about phones for kids during emergencies at school Jesse The Idiot Watters thinks that means HIS emergency when he has to call them in math class. C-Block (36:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: I was talking about Bill Clinton yesterday and I think it's time to tell the entire story of how NBC tried to blackmail me into NOT quitting the Clinton-Lewinsky MSNBC show in 1998 because it made them too much money. An emissary from then NBC News President Andy Lack threatened to sue me and get me blacklisted from television AND make sure my parents wound up homeless.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SERIES 3 EPISODE 17: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Trump is now claiming that the White House rigged the presidential election in 2020. HE was president in 2020. HE was in the White House. "Zuckerberg admits the White House pushed to suppress Hunter Biden laptop story, in other words the 2020 presidential election was rigged," Trump writes. I'm telling you: Mijni-strokes. SPEAKING OF WHICH: There's way more to Trump exploiting Arlington National Cemetery on Monday to take smiling thumbs-up selfies while literally standing on the graves of American heroes. An Arlington official tried to stop the photography; a Trumpist allegedly shoved him; the Trump Campaign decided the correct response was to claim the Arlington official was "suffering from a mental health episode." JACK SMITH OUTWITS THE SUPREME COURT: This one weird trick actually works. He filed his superseding indictment in the Insurrection case in Washington. It's a little more complicated than this, but basically he got around SCOTUS by changing every reference to "President Trump" to "Candidate Trump" and calling the 1/6 Call To Arms a "campaign speech." RAGE IN THE MACHINE: Thousands of newspaper columns were deleted (hundreds at The New York Times alone) when Kamala Harris agreed to her first sit-down interview. It's with Dana Bash on CNN so she still hasn't scheduled one anybody will SEE. The Cook Political Report has moved two more states from "Lean Democrat" to "Likely" and moved North Carolina from "Lean Republican" to "Toss-up." Maybe that's why Trump has agreed to the September 10th debate - or seemed to. The actual words in his acceptance never says he'll actually be there. And we have the first polling on weirdness by party and while the GOP is accurately seen as more weird, the lead is hardly big enough. B-Block (23:55) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: RW troll blasts Democrats for "not being interested" in the Trump assassination attempt. Turns out all the Democrats on the House committee went to the site survey Monday. Only three of the seven Republicans bothered to. Trump makes the list too after what HR McMaster revealed about the Taliban Trump ordered released. And somebody who made this list in 2007 for indiscretions as a tv reporter is back for mocking Gus Walz while not merely a right wing media nut but also the volleyball coach at a high school with a praised and cherished program for learning-challenged kids. C-Block (33:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: 43 years ago now, my television career starts because the late Lou Dobbs had issues keeping his pants on. It's still amazing.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SERIES 3 EPISODE 16: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: The full Reichstag-Fire-level propaganda site Red State may have commissioned, certainly got first access, to a poll showing Kamala Harris leading Trump 52 to 45 among LIKELY voters, and 50 to 46 percent among REGISTERED voters. It’s OUTSIDE the margin of error according to the head of the firm, which is SO right wing that the pollster’s pinned tweet is about how in 2011 he predicted a Trump presidency. They also did favorability scores and claim Harris is at 50-50 and Trump only eleven points underwater. “The biggest factor helping Harris is how she has neutralized the immigration issue. In both polls, immigration was the fourth most important issue, or rather – only 10 percent told us it was their number one.” Also on polling, the weekly update from Morning Consult has shown no Convention Bump for Harris, or maybe just a continuation of the previous bumps – unchanged at Harris 48 Trump 44. But there ARE signs of… a Tim Walz bump. His favorability was at 39 percent and plus three before the convention; it is 42 percent and now plus SIX after it. SOLUTION: MUTE HIS MIC THROUGHOUT THE DEBATE: Trump is back to trying to back out of the presidential debate and he’s not even doing it well and the American political media is, as always, astonished. As soon as Harris replaced Biden he claimed all agreements were off, now he is enraged she wants the mikes always open not muted, not because he objects to the mikes not being muted, but because she wants it. Let me summarize this: he is trying to back out of the debate. He is hoping to be able to back out and blame her. He did this with Biden too. He is using as an excuse an objection to something he agrees with. What is Harris doing? Harris, bluntly, is EFFING with him. The Harris team has already proven to be the most successful anti-Trump entity in the fertile field of EFFING with him. MORE MEDIA MADNESS: CNN interviews eight "undecided" voters after Harris's acceptance speech. Except one of them told them in advance he was voting for Trump. Chris Cillizza tops himself. And the Times' latest self-destructive Op-Ed? "Trump Can Win On Character," written by the guy who followed the 2008 Vice Presidential Debate with the infamous masturbatory column about Sarah Palin. B-Block (25:33) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: The Covfefe of 2024 as DonOld shows more evidence of mini-strokes. Andrea Tantaros compares Harris's appearance to...Hitler's "manscaping." And Jason Miller mocks a Kamala TV political surrogate as so old he should be in a rest home. The guy is 18 months YOUNGER than Trump. C-Block (32:25) SPORTS FOR PEOPLE WHO DON'T LIKE SPORTS/THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: The former ESPN Big Show SportsCenter producer who went on to run ESPN, is succeeded by the guy who succeeded him AS the ESPN Big Show SportsCenter producer. Turns out the death of WCBS NewsRadio in New York was largely my fault. And I've found another cassette, so if you want to hear the day I was first paid to do the news (July 25, 1980, WNEW Radio, New York) you're in luck.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SERIES 3 EPISODE 15: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: The special guest was the next President of the United States. Kamala Harris nailed the speech. It could not have been better. Not a sour note, not a space for complaint, not an issue avoided. Plus: Harris has cut Trump’s lead from nine points to five points… in TEXAS. Harris is now AHEAD in North Carolina by a point. There is the RFK Junior thing coming today. There is leaked audio of Trump pledging fealty to the families of the January 6th traitors and hosting an event for them two weeks from now, and more blatant Trump antisemitism hinting at a nightmare scenario in which he merges the streams: where the conspiracy theories about rigged elections and immigrant voting gets fully crossed with racism and anti-semitism (and the advanced kind, where there are “good” Trump-supporting Jewish people, and “bad” Trump-hating Jewish people. There is also the increasing evidence that Trump is, at least accidentally, giving up on winning the election and instead trying to raise the temperature so much among his fascists that they can run a coup from behind in the legislatures and the House and try to force a Contingent Election. Again from Yale historian Timothy Snyder via The New York Times: “Trump is in the classic dictatorial position: He needs to die in bed holding all executive power to stay out of prison. This means that he will do whatever he can to gain power, and once in power will do all that he can to never let it go. This is a basic incentive structure which underlies everything else. It is entirely inconsistent with democracy.” And time to make the donuts: JV Vance actually manages to fail at the simple buy-food photo-op. B-Block (24:55) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Megyn Kelly’s stupidity mixes with her racism: she doesn’t realize HBCU’s exist because so many black students were excluded from other colleges. And Trumpsucker Mike Crispi and the one famous Cornell alumna whom the university does not recognize tie for pure inhumanity when it comes to Tim Walz’s son Gus. C-Block (37:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: For everybody who’s ever asked “Olbermann? Did you hit your HEAD or something?” the answer is yes and the 45th anniversary is tomorrow. Don’t worry, I’ll be getting better any day now. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SERIES 3 EPISODE 14: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: You heard that right. RFK Junior will drop out of the presidential race tomorrow. Whether or not he then endorses Trump reportedly depends on when his wife, Curb Your Enthusiasm actress Cheryl Hines, relents on her opposition to Trump. Of course it may not matter. There is no reliable polling on what Kennedy's remaining support thinks of Trump or Harris or anybody else. And despite what individual state polls suggest, national polling suggests he's been taking 2% or 3% support from both Kamala and Psychotrump. The other wild card is what position in his cabinet Trump is willing to offer. I'm thinking "Secretary of Bears." THE OTHER NEW POLLING IS SO ASTONISHING that the whole thing may be irrelevant. Rasmussen Republican polling has her up by one in Wisconsin. University of New Hampshire polling has her having gone from four behind Trump in the conservative Maine 2nd District to five points AHEAD of him. And Politico analyzed ten quality polls and suggests that the data suggests the snowball is forming. MEANWHILE TRUMP'S GREATEST FREUDIAN SLIP EVER: His antisemitic trope about Democrats and Jews is well known by now. "If Jewish people vote for her they ought to go out and get their heads examined." And yet on the Hugh Hewitt show yesterday he forgot the back half of it. He stopped after "go out" and started talking about something out. The part he left out was "get their heads examined." Trump also made up a story about Harris meeting with Putin before the Ukraine invasion. This also sounds crazy but may be less insanity and more an indicator that the Trump campaign is giving up on actually winning at the ballot box and just amping up the conspiracy theories so its minions in state legislatures and the House can try to steal the election by coup after Harris wins. B-Block (21:05) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: How could you misspell Bruce Springsteen's name? A Philly hotel managed to do it! Rudy Giuliani says Steve Bannon is being "tortured" in prison (I wish), and should the FBI or Secret Service be visiting Hulk Hogan and asking him why he threatened the Vice President of the United States? C-Block (29:30) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: A non-broadcasting friend of mine brought up the name the other day and I was surprised he knew him. Meet the former president of MSNBC who threatened - while his screams were audible in the background live on the air - to destroy and kill me. Fun place to work!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SERIES 3 EPISODE 13: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Did you HEAR Trump yesterday? Did you HEAR HIM TALK? He’s in Howell, Michigan, where it might as well be Alabama in the year 1855, where they marched chanting “We Love Hitler, We Love Trump” a MONTH ago, and he came out at the County Sheriff’s Office, and behind him with the cops as the props and if he had had ten times the energy and ten times the focus you would have said: what’s wrong with Trump? Is he DYING or something? I mean I don’t THINK he’s dying, I think there are intermediate stages between having every single thing in a presidential campaign turn against you in a matter of two weeks and actually dying, but look if this mumble thing continues, at this rate they’re going to have start putting live captions over him. Trump responded to the overture from the RFK Junior camp about dropping out if Trump would give him a role in his cabinet. “I didn’t know he was thinking about getting out, but if he is thinking about getting out, certainly I’d be open to it.” RFK's running mate Nicole Shanahan appears to be doing the bargaining. Even she has figured it out: "We run the risk of a Kamala Harris and Walz presidency, as we draw votes from Trump. We draw, somehow, more votes from Trump. Or we walk away, right now, and join forces with Donald Trump…” Translation: bribe us and we’ll go away. Looks like what they want is Secretary of Health and Human Services. THE SELF-DEFENESTRATION OF THE POLITICAL MEDIA: The Times really did it yesterday, with no sense of irony, no meta self-reflection: “Kamala Harris’s tan suit was a surprising choice, our fashion critic writes.” The Post, meantime, did a DNC factcheck and got half a dozen things wrong: the Post insisted that there was no evidence that Trump ever sent love letters to dictators with Kessler writing “we do not know what Trump wrote to Kim Jong Un,” Media Matters went appropriately nuts. Of course we know. Trump showed them to… Bob Woodward of the Post. The factcheck now has its own factcheck. I recommend to you and will quote extensively from a masterpiece on this topic in The New Republic. Meredith Shiner writes: "after years of watching Morning Joe and searching for their birthdays in the Politico Playbook, they do not see their role as speaking to us, but rather speaking to themselves." Ex-effing-actly. B-Block (26:47) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Jesse Watters has rebirthed birtherism. He's sending "Johnny" to Hawaii to get the real story about Barack Obama's birth certificate because Harris. Amy Kremer, a GOP Committeewoman from Georgia, is the sucker born every minute. A liberal trolls the idiot Jack Posobiec by saying she'll have an abortion and a vasectomy onstage at the DNC and Kremer believes her. And Stephen L. Miller - the "other" Stephen Miller - uses the c-word about Mallory McMorrow with no self-awareness that it's used about him. C-Block (37:10) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: It was a lovely day in Fun City yesterday so I was out all day and I walked right past it: the bar out of which George Steinbrenner stepped one night in 1981 after I had spent the day trying to find... George Steinbrenner.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SERIES 3 EPISODE 12: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Trump has doubled down on his smearing of military heroes, of Medal of Honor recipients, by comparing them to the likes of Miriam Adelson and her late husband Sheldon. To a local news reporter in Pennsylvania, he insisted veterans are not enraged, that he has not done untold damage to his supposedly-ultra-patriotic base, and naturally he made it worse because now he had to clarify that what he meant was that Miriam Adelson LOOKS better than Medal of Honor winners because the Medal of Honor winners are often horribly wounded or dead and who wants to look horribly wounded or dead. The polls continue to be so good, so uniformly, that it’s now hard to keep up with them and probably not worth doing so. As you already know, Sunday CBS News polling put her up THREE but ABC and the Washington Post pegged it at SIX. Morning Consult not only saying its tracking poll has her now up 48-44. It was THREE points last week. She’s also above water on favorability, 50 to 45… so plus-five-favorable, her high water mark and something Trump has never approached J.V. VANCE, MEANWHILE figuratively stumbled over the ordering of a cheese steak in Philadelphia. And if he brings "his" new dog Atlas back on th campaign trail, dog-walking experts predict he literally stumble over him. OH THE CONVENTION? From deep in their souls you can hear the disappointment forcing its way out like a primal scream: the primal scream of reporters who were promised tear gas and got only their own tears, the reporters – nationwide on Fox, internationally on BBC – heart-broken, stunned, disbelieving: There were no riots at the Opening Day of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Not one goddamned canister of tear gas. And the number of protesters turned out to be overestimated by perhaps 90%. And yes I'll be damned if I know why they still hold conventions. Your time is much better spent listening to a guy from NewsMax explain that Trump is in a slump and needs to reintroduce himself to the electorate by going retail. Drop the hour-long speeches. Give golf tips. Bring his grandchildren to supermarket parking lots. No, I'm not kidding, and no, I cannot sufficiently convey how hilarious it is. B-Block (23:50) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Laura Ingraham - who once turned the Republican National Convention into a Hitler Salute To Trump - complains there's too much "show" at the DNC. Sure Nancy Mace is an idiot, but if Abby Phillip and CNN wouldn't platform her, we wouldn't have to listen to the idiocy. And Marcel Teloma has a foolproof plan for Trump Victory but I have a better one: why settle for JUST the Republican nomination? C-Block (32:59) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: The television world - and the liberal world - rightly mourn Phil Donahue, who died Sunday. But it must be said and it must be said now: the final act of the Donahue TV story, in which he claimed MSNBC fired him for opposing the Iraq War even though he had the network's highest ratings. Almost none of the story is true, and I know this not merely because I was there as it happened as what was an initially disinterested uninvolved bystander, but more importantly, why would they have fired him for opposing Bush and Iraq when the show that replaced him was called "Countdown With Keith Olbermann"?See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

BULLETIN: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-BLOCK (1:44) Trump, “honoring” Miriam Adelson, a wealthy widow trying to help him buy the election and the government, has denigrated and insulted our nation's greatest military heroes by saying that the PRESIDENTIAL medal of freedom he gave her was quote “better” than the Congressional Medal of Honor because the recipients of the latter were usually deceased or injured. "When we gave Miriam the Presidential Medal of Freedom," Trump said at an event Thursday night at his ramshackle golf course in New Jersey, "that’s the highest award you can get as a civilian. It’s the equivalent of the Congressional Medal of Honor. But civilian version, it’s actually much better because everyone [who] gets the Congressional Medal of Honor, they're soldiers. They’re either in very bad shape because they’ve been hit so many times by bullets or they’re dead, She gets it, and she’s a healthy, beautiful woman, and they’re rated equal." at any other point in our nation’s history a presidential candidate who said what Donald Trump has now said about winners of the Congressional Medal of Honor, would not only have had had his nomination rescinded by his party, but its leaders would have expelled him, and probably chased him out of the country or at least into hiding. This latest in a series of Trump blasphemies against American war dead and wounded comes in the middle of an attempt by his campaign to ride the limited military service of his vice presidential pick, Senator Vance, as an indicator of patriotism and bravery, and the attempt to swift-boat his Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz because there are nuanced details of the end of his TWENTY-FOUR year career in the military – a career which he resumed, coming out of retirement after 9/11. Vance has accused Walz of "stolen valor" and just yesterday in Pennsylvania a campaign surrogate called Walz a "coward." Lastly, there is Trump’s own original sin in this area: he somehow obtained five deferments from service in Vietnam in the 1960’s using “bone spurs” that mysteriously ended at the same time the military draft did.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SERIES 3 EPISODE 10: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: First he held a news conference where the reporters didn't have microphones. Then he held a news conference where the reporters basically didn't get to ask questions. What's next? A Trump News Conference without Trump? Sounds like a good idea. Incredibly, CNN ran the whole nonsensical non-news conference rant live. As somebody who was hired by CNN as its first year ended in 1981 I have a secret for them – the acronym stands for “Cable NEWS Network.” You’re no longer news. Cut to a test pattern, fire everybody, and start from scratch. Which also applies to Trump’s running mate. I’m beginning to think J.D. Vance is actually a Democratic plant. New Kensington, Pennsylvania. At VFW Post 92. That’s Veterans of Foreign Wars, the post number is 92, and there is still the Sarah Palin rule. Vance called it "VFA," forgot the number, had to fish into his pocket for a card that had the number written on it, and forgot the Palin rule (if you're an idiot running for Vice President, and you have to remember something, just write it on your hand). There are more polls and Kamalapalooza continues. She's pulled off a nine-point swing in Pennsylvania and a ten-point swing nationally. So naturally Politico led with 28 paragraphs on Vivek Ramaswamy insisting Trump was listening to his advice to focus on the issues and not attack her. This is while the Republican campaign is imploding so quickly that now Frank Luntz is wondering if Trump is trying to lose. And as the Trump campaign continues to try to insist it has nothing to do with Project 2025, Media Matters uncovers the implausible. There's a Project 2025 training video starring Karoline Leavitt, who is now Trump's Campaign spokesperson. As the video ends she tells Project 2025 trainees that if they need any help to just contact her. B-Block (23:57) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: The Republican House Candidate accused, as a cop, of handcuffing an infant. RFK Junior hires somebody to program political ads to you based on data on your phone. And baseball's new low: the Mets' ceremonial first pitch was thrown out by the Hawk Tuah woman. I presume she threw a spitball. C-Block (33:10) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: It's got everything: Suspense, Baseball, Red Barber, a story that was turned into a movie with Peter Sellers. It's "The Catbird Set."See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SERIES 3 EPISODE 9: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Yesterday I said that the USA Today poll that had Vice President Harris down by five Florida was a great indicator of the Democratic tsunami that could be gathering but it’s not like she’s actually going to WIN Florida, and literally hours later in comes a new poll and she may actually WIN Florida. She's ahead in all but one of the Cook Political Report swing state polls. There are three new national polls (including Monmouth's) in which she's ahead. She's grown the Democratic lead among Latinos from 5% to 19%. Democratic enthusiasm has shot through the roof. She's cut Trump's lead among non-college-educated white people almost in half. It's such a torrent that even Frank Luntz has noticed, says it will soon be time to start figuring out if her coattails will win the House and Senate for the Democrats and “The people who were undecided have all collapsed towards Harris. The entire electoral pool has changed. Kamala Harris has got an intensity advantage, and I haven’t seen anything like this happen – in 30 days – in my lifetime.” AND REMARKABLY I'M GOING TO DEFEND TRUMP: Not his campaign, not his hate, not WHAT he said while he was on with Elon Musk. But his claim that the equipment gave him that lisp/slurred words/sibilant 'S'? He's right. Anybody who's ever worked with audio processors designed to improve phone signals knows exactly what happened here. We used to call it 1979 Comrex Martian Disease. I'll explain. B-Block (23:50) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Internet trolls "Gunther Eagleman" and "End Wokeness" complain that the Ilhan Omar primary count didn't go fast enough, then went too fast, then they didn't like the outcome. Laura Ingraham complains Kamala likes curse words when Laura swears like a stevedore. And they play a prank on Liz Truss and she doesn't like it. C-Block (37:10) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Last weekend somebody told me their career was over and asked if anybody ever told me that and I said yeah, in 2016. And 2001. And 1984. Oh and 1977. Haven't gotten me yet.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SERIES 2 EPISODE 8: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: ActiVote, completely its survey in Texas yesterday: Trump 53.3% Harris 46.7% In Texas. The lead is Trump +6.6; the margin of error is 5 points. Their last poll was July 19th, it was Trump by NINE points. So she cut the lead by nearly a third in three weeks. She is ostensibly within the margin of error. In Florida, in polling led by USA Today: Trump 47 Harris 42, so Trump is ahead by 5. IMargin of error is 4.5 points so Kamala Harris IS within the margin of error. All previous polls, from the one by the University of North Florida Research Lab to the one by a Trump pollster, McLaughlin, had it Trump by eight. As recently as last Thursday. Is she going to WIN Florida or Texas or both? I don’t think so. Registered Republicans outnumber registered Democrats in Florida by a MILLION. Trump won Texas in 2016 by nine points. Five-and-a-half in 2020. But that the FACT of Kamala Harris, before the convention, before the campaign has really even begun, has cut Trump’s lead by nearly a third in Texas and nearly forty percent in Florida tells you just how bad things were and just how much better they have already gotten in Florida and Texas – and Michigan and Pennsylvania – and America. I have this urgent request of the Trump campaign: please continue to do EVERYTHING exactly the way you are doing it now. Thank you. You are Kamala Harris’s primary asset. You are her ROCK. MEANWHILE, THERE'S ELECTION INTERFERENCE by Politico, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. The Post is explaining WHY the Post cannot publish nor even IDENTIFY internal documents and computer traffic STOLEN from a presidential campaigns - THIS time. There's some lofty bull about pausing and considering motives and outside actors and then the Executive Editor of the Post tells the truth."In the end," says Matt Murray, "it didn’t seem fresh or new enough." Of course there is a clip on YouTube from 2016 in which the Post's Wikileaks reporters explain that's why they published then and yeah they were sure it'd happen again. So they knew this would happen again and they knew they were setting the precedent and they knew they wouldn’t do better next time and now they’re pretending that it HASN’T happened again and they’re pretending NO precedent was set and they’re confirming they AREN’T doing better next time and they haven’t learned a damn thing. Lastly, Trump's campaign has been slammed by an unlikely source, the man who might be his only friend in the world: Bill O'Reilly. It's hilarious. And the quotes let me do my Bill O'Reilly voice again. B-Block (26:56) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: He's back and badder than ever, suggesting Kamala Harris hasn't done enough interviews. It's Chris Cillizza (two Z's and an endless number of L's); Trump War Room goes full racist and shows you the future and in one the houses everything is neat and clean and evidently all the people are dead; and why Elon Musk's Eleventy Billion views for Trump turns out to imply that the average viewer stayed for ONLY FOUR MINUTES. C-Block (39:35) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Sam Rosen retired yesterday - effective at the end of the next season - as the Hall of Fame play-by-play announcer of hockey's New York Rangers. Sam just happens to have succeeded so well AFTER he was my boss when I was 20 and 21 years old! The saga of Sam, who I know so long I wrote a paper about him in college.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SERIES 2 EPISODE 7: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Trump. Friday, Microsoft said the Iranians would try to meddle in the election. SATURDAY… YOUR campaign computers get hacked - you say. By the Iranians – you say. And you didn't report it to the FBII. Even though it’s by Iran and part of your whole campaign scam, Trump, is that Iran is the root of all evil. And you didn’t report it to the F-B-I, and you didn’t provide any evidence. Only yesterday, the FBI issued another anonymous, not even a spokesman’s name attached to it, just like that No-He-Was-Too-Hit-By-A-Bullet announcement – gave a clear and compelling picture of the vast team that has fanned out across the country, across the internet, across the world to track down this evil. Quote: “We can confirm the FBI is investigating this matter.” Investigating… who? Investigating… what? Whether they were really hacked? Whether they were really hacked by the Iranians? Whether Trump made it all up? Whether the Trump campaign fell for some sort of phishing by a porn site? Also the material was supposed to hurt Trump? And was leaked to The Washington Post and Politico, which have repeatedly been helping Trump in this campaign? What's hurting Trump, and which the media is under-reporting, is that his polls are now cratering. Last week The New York Times had Kamala Harris ahead by 4 in each of the Rust Belt States. Now, Bullfinch Group for a site supposedly servicing independent voters: Harris by FOUR in Pennsylvania, by FIVE in Michigan, by NINE in Wisconsin. There's a tie in North Carolina. There's a lead of nearly three points at 538 and of more than half a point at the right-poisoned RCP poll of polls. And most staggeringly - and most undercovered - from The New York Times: “Two private polls conducted in Ohio recently by Republican poillsters – which Mr. Trump carried in 2020 with 53 percent of the vote – showed him receiving less than 50 percent of the vote against Ms. Harris in the state, according to a person with direct knowledge of the data.” Holy crap. B-Block (31:40) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: The unaided ease by which that Turkish guy won a shooting medal at the Olympics has the inevitable side effect. 27% of Brits tell pollsters that if they started now THEY could make the 2028 British Olympic team. The aforementioned LaCivita gets blown up by Matt Dowd over Swift Boating. And the tape CNN found from January 6th from the North Carolina candidate to run schools there, Michele Morrow. All it is is a demand that Trump conduct a military coup against then President-elect Biden. (41:50) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: In memory of WCBS Radio, the day its news director validated my entire existence as an aspiring 20-year old broadcaster. The saga of The Adler Letter. C-Block (50:30) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: The Adler Letter and MY legacy of WCBS Radio, Part TwoSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SERIES 3 EPISODE 6: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: There's no other word for it. Collapsed. Trump's poll numbers have collapsed. Poll numbers collapse all the time – relatively speaking; measured across the arc of American political history. If they had had them in 1864, ABE LINCOLN’S poll numbers would have collapsed. But I do not think that any other presidential candidate’s poll numbers have collapsed, this late, this fast, after this much of a twin honeymoon of a convention and a failed assassination attempt. Ipsos Polling: Harris by FIVE, 42-37, last surveys taken Wednesday. In the July 23rd Ipsos poll it was Harris by three, 37-34. Ipsos Repeat Polling (same respondents as last poll) of the Big Seven Swing States: Harris by TWO, 50 to 48… that’s Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The LAST Ipsos poll of the SAME voters in these states, also concluded July 23rd it was Trump by THREE. MARQUETTE LAW SCHOOL also released its national results very early Thursday Morning and among likely voters it’s Harris 50 Trump 42 – Harris by EIGHT. Everybody has their own criteria for “likely voters” so if you drop to just registered voters it’s still Harris by SIX. Most intriguing: among independent voters where Marquette has her head by 60 to 40. TWENTY points among Independents. What we are seeing as of THIS moment is exactly why this unprecedented move: changing horses not mid-stream but mid-tightrope was attempted. To get these results. And nobody, NOBODY, expected them this fast. NOBODY. Which leads me into the second thing I mentioned previously and I mentioned it on Wednesday July 24th and before I mentioned it I took a deep breath and asked myself do you really want to mention this already but I did and I repeat it: I have been thinking since no later than (hours after President Biden dropped out) that there will come a point, this year, this election, maybe this MONTH, where we will all be saying “Can you believe we came THIS CLOSE to not making Vice President Harris the nominee?” I’m not building the Joe Saved Democracy Again statues quite yet. But I am beginning to think of maybe what they kinda could LOOK like. AND IS ANYBODY GOING TO DO OR WRITE ANYTHING about Trump's Health Crisis? His “news conference” was, objectively, twice as bad, FOUR times as bad, as the President’s performance at the debate. Throughout, it bordered on – and often crossed the line INTO – fugue state. And this got no headlines. Trump always SOUNDS like he doesn’t know where he was. This time he also LOOKED like he didn’t know where he was. Can’t convey that on a podcast: when a question came from the right side of the room he looked frightened as if he had just discovered there WAS a right side of the room. He looked lost. More shockingly, perhaps, he looked pale. The New York Times, Washington Post, Politico, Axios, ABC, NBC and CBS had NO front page stories about the demented nature of his performance yesterday. Within an hour of its conclusion. Each hid behind his vague commitment to debates. Axios, incredibly, LED with “Vice President Harris still hasn’t given an interview or taken questions from voters since she became a presidential candidate…” B-Block (24:00) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: A former mediocre football player named Marcellus Wiley claims Democrats are trying to bribe celebrities like him to support them (like him?) Trump makes up a story about Biden trying to seize back the nomination; his social media whore Dan Scavino posts 'I hear Biden is trying to seize back the nomination.' Elon Musk posts a fake London newspaper headline claiming there are going to be internment camps for conservatives (I WISH). Dear UK: what is the point of HAVING a Tower of London if you're not gonna use it? C-Block (34:50) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: The most amount of action in the smallest amount of space in any Thurber story. His impeccable tale of one hour of confusion in his childhood home: "The Night The Bed Fell."See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SERIES 3 EPISODE 5: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Thank the lord for J.D. (J.V.) Vance. Even if you're atheist or agnostic, thank somebody. It is a given that they should have Tim Walz make ten speeches a week, every warehouse, farmhouse, henhouse, outhouse, and doghouse. But Democrats should also anonymously flood the Trump campaign with the succinct and anonymous message: SEND MORE JD VANCE! Vance has launched, twenty years after, a new version of the anti-John Kerry Swiftboat Campaign against Walz, a man who served in the military for 24 years. Falsely accused him of "stolen valor" because he retired before his unit was ordered to Iraq. And he’s not only done so while being the running mate of a draft dodger. He's done so when his own role in the military was: Marine Correspondent. Brian Williams in uniform. As late as 2010 he was publicly supporting Iraq, now says he fell for George W. Bush’s propaganda about Iraq. Means that Public Affairs Colonel J.D. Vance was a propagandist. By his own definition. Brian Williams in a uniform. After that disaster, and a clumsy stunt in which he portrayed himself as a creepy weirdo trying to get on the Vice President's plane, they gave Vance the chance to push back on the thing that allowed Tim Walz to burst out of the gate Monday: that he's happy and voters want at least some happy. Asked what makes him happy, he was asked. He promptly berated the reporter and said he was angry. Never change, Dude. You're the worst. ALSO of note: more polls, from Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, showing an eight point swing from Trump to Harris in a little over two weeks. Eight. Points. B-Block (25:33) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Critics of the Paris Olympics, please meet Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo. She has a lovely bouquet of F-Bombs for you. Philly radio man Howard Eskin hasn't been fired after "unwanted kiss" and I haven't gotten over something he did to me in 1980. And Valentina "Gun Moll" Gomez didn't win the Fascist Primary for Secretary of State in Missouri. In fact she didn't even finish Top Five! C-Block (36:52) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: It was such a dumb move that the other executives at MSNBC actually thought it was a practical joke. And then they found out the only joke was on them. NBC is known for its ability to erase people from its past but nobody has been erased more than the ex-host who was inexplicably promoted to General Manager in 2006 (and then stripped of power about a week later).See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SEASON 3 EPISODE 4: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: People. Like. Him. In a time when 50% approval is a landslide of support, when the very few most earnest and most honest politicians are still tolerated, when we have had a decade of one of the most disliked humans on the planet hating everything and everybody, the idea that the Democrats are running not one but TWO likeable candidates is staggeringly important – and simple – and novel. Tim Walz is HAPPY to be living here, and fighting to help other people become happy, and now to join Kamala Harris, who is ALSO happy and smiles – like a person. Trump isn’t HAPPY! At every moment of what should be success he’s degrading someone, he’s embittered, he’s angry, he’s the victim, he’s shortchanged, he’s threatening revenge. As shown on his spectacular first day as her running mate, Walz and Vice President Harris recognize what Trump does not: America is so worn out by and done with, unhappy weirdos. THE POLLS CONTINUE TO BE ALL KAMALA: Marist for PBS: Harris 51 Trump 48. Harris by three. Previous poll: Trump by one. Marist for PBS: Who do you trust more on abortion? Harris… 56-to-41. Who do you trust more on preserving democracy? Harris 53-46. Who do you trust more on the economy? Trump… but only by three. Who do you trust more on immigration – this is the killer, right? Trump’s real chance to survive the tsunami? Yes, poll says Trump but only by six. And some very pro-conservative swing state polling were also all positive. And all conducted before Tim Walz. B-Block (26:40) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Jim Vandehei of Axios not only fires ten percent of his staff, but he makes them read about it in a memo written in the impenetrable Axios 'style.' Bloomberg editors' response to their decision to break the embargo on the trade for Evan Gershkovich? Fire the reporter! And a member of Code Pink who was already ahead of Congressman Derrick Van PTSD Orden is delayed slightly, he yells at her to move, as she moves she brushes past him, he is now demanding she be charged with "assault on a member of Congress." C-Block (37:25) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: I was supposed to anchor NBC’s cable coverage of the Summer Olympics in 2000 in Sydney. But I quit the job in 1998. Then I was supposed to anchor NBC’s cable coverage of the Summer Olympics in 2004 in Athens. But I told them – no, I think I’d prefer to stay in New Jersey and try to grow this new news show Countdown and there are still executives at NBC who think I am insane. And I am proud to tell you that I have not watched ONE minute, not ONE highlight, from the 2024 Olympics. I'm beginning to think I might not LIKE the Olympics. If this is true it dates to 1980 and my experience as part of a two-and-a-half man team that covered the ENTIRE WINTER Olympics at Lake Placid, New York – just the two-and-a-half of us. It was rewarding, it was challenging, it was a once-in-a-lifetime experience and I have done everything since then to make SURE it WAS just once-in-a-lifetime, especially after the other one-and-a-half guys – my boss and my boss’s boss – got me drunk one night and then sent me to cover the skiing at sunrise and I almost didn’t survive.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SERIES 3 EPISODE 3: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: The selection of Kamala Harris's Vice President is a big story and I'm really interested and it could be Joe Biden and I'd go "Whatever You Want, Queen." The lead story today is ANOTHER poll explosion She’s ahead in the Morning Consult poll 48-44. A week ago she was ahead by ONE point. Two weeks ago TRUMP was ahead by TWO points. That's a seven point swing since President Biden bowed out. They polled on six key attributes in seven swing states: she wins not too old in a landslide. She wins "mentally fit" in a landslide. She wins "less dangerous" in a landslide. She wins "cares about me" by as much as ten. She's tied with him on "more presidential." She's up. by three in SurveyUSA. CBS (which never had Biden ahead) has her up by one. Decision Desk HQ shows her improved in nine of its ten battleground states (the only one she didn't improve on? Virginia, where she and Biden were each up by three). For the first time even Nate Silver's projection says she has the better chance of winning the electoral college – 53% – and winning it by 282 votes to 255 for Trump – and has her up in the polls by one and nine tenths points, largely because HIS average of the polls in Pennsylvania has her up by a point and in Michigan by just under three. Nate Silver has Kamala Harris within six points of leading in… Florida. ALSO THERE'S THE VP THING. Reuters reported Tim Walz and Josh Shapiro are the finalists. It might be Mark Kelly in the mix, too. Sure great fine get Walz new younger glasses. End advice. AND NOW WE KNOW WHY RFK MADE THE BEAR VIDEO: Yes, sometimes you eat the bear and sometimes the bear eats you and sometimes when you try to get ahead of The New Yorker story about you dumping in Central Park the dead carcass of a bear cub you say another motorist killed, it turns out there were stories the bear had stab wounds, and oh yeah the magazine has a PHOTO of you mocking the dead bear and in it your fly is unzipped. B-Block (29:45) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: TWO Supreme Court Justices. Gorsuch threatens Biden. Thomas takes more trip courtesy Harlan Crow Travel Agency. Elon Musk warns of civil war in Europe - for at least the fifth time in ten months. Does he own a civil war distributorship or something? C-Block (38:30) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: The anniversary looms: my greatest scoop proves you can accomplish great things by doing nothing and just letting everybody else do all the work for you. I broke the trade of Wayne Gretzky to the L-A Kings – as important a moment as there has been in the history of the development of hockey in this country – by just answering the phone a couple times. I mean I didn’t even have to leave my office. The Gretzky Trade And My Absolutely Unnecessary Role in Breaking It.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SERIES 3 EPISODE 2: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Don’t look now but I think a certain Russian dictator has stopped betting on Trump. In fact, he’s started humiliating him. Whatever the deal between Trump and Putin was on Gershkovich – and there is every chance it existed only in that great, amorphous, bug-filled attic that is Trump’s mind – it’s gone now. On June 5 Trump insisted only he could get him home. Only he would be the recipient of Putin’s trust and agreement. He even put a date on it. Not when he was back in the White House but as soon as he was president-elect. Instead Putin just kicked Trump in the balls. Whatever happened, Trump was no longer worth enough to Putin for Putin to let Trump lie to cover his own useless ass. He just let Trump step on that rake. He just LEFT Trump to post impotently on social media about whether we got more prisoners then they did, like he was talking about getting 13 burgers for five bucks at McDonald’s instead of just a dozen. TRUMP DOUBLES DOWN ON 'KAMALA IS NOT BLACK, SHE'S JAMAICAN.' Since he thinks immigrants are from asylums because he doesn't know the word has multiple meanings, there's every chance he thinks the "Jamaica" is the part of his home borough, Queens. The stupidity of The New York Times and Washington Post may have helped convince him he's got the winning campaign theme here but his claim she's not really black really cut through - and cut him. THERE'S VP NEWS: JD Vance says nobody's trying to get him off the ticket, everybody's been treated like this. Mike Pence was treated like this (JD? A word, please?) But everybody says the Dump-Vance movement is coming from Kellyanne Conway. On the other side, the tea leaves suggest Josh Shapiro may be Kamala's choice. AND ONE WEIRD TRICK: Imagine being born in 1946, living through Korea and the Cold War and JFK and Vietnam and the Swinging 60s and Watergate and Reagan and The Tech Boom and 9/11 and Obama and every day of your life since you learned how to talk, somebody has called you weird and apparently you’d never heard this… until last week. Happily, Trump has the perfect response to this: I’m not weird, you’re weird. B-Block (24:30) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: As Mike Trout loses another season to injury and entropy, Angels' owner Arte Moreno must move him, or the team. The editor of the Cook Political Report thinks if the election is about the issues and not Trump, Trump will win. And Musk says he and Maduro will fight. Ever heard of the boxing matches where the two guys score simultaneous knockouts? C-Block (34:50) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: From his great near-novel "My Life And Hard Times" it's just another kid from another century trying to get through the bewildering bureaucracy that is a major American college: "University Days."See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SERIES 3 EPISODE 1: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: After his demented, prejudiced paroxysm at the National Association of Black Journalists, as he signaled the start of his full-on, hateful, disgusting, apartheid-and-slavery-level-appalling campaign of birtherism and racism, Donald Trump must withdraw from the presidential election and commit to psychiatric institutionalization. There is no longer any room in the political discourse of the United States of America for anyone both so deeply disturbed AND so deeply possessed by a hate of people of color that it reaches the levels of insanity and prejudice Trump not only DISPLAYED in Chicago yesterday but gloried in. More over, there is no room in American SOCIETY for anyone with such an immeasurably dysfunctional and dangerous mental illness as that which Trump showed again and again at the NABJ event. This country is not safe if Donald Trump is free to walk on its streets. This country is not safe if those who have mistaken him for sane, or rational, or patriotic, or just American, are not shown in no uncertain terms that what he radiated yesterday on that stage is a disease At the National Association of Black Journalists event in Chicago he went full birther, again. He went full racist, again. He not only questioned the ethnic history of the Vice President of the United States, but he accused her of either CHANGING that history or changing her STATEMENTS ABOUT that history – Trump’s insanity permitted him to be vague even in his apartheid-level racist accusation. As he did so his stooges like Jesse Watters were going on Fox claiming Vice President Harris is quote “not African-American, technically” and Laura Loomer was disseminating a Harris birth certificate and the gutter trash congresswoman from Colorado Lauren Boebert wrote quote “she switched” and the Trump parking lot attorney Alina Habba said quote “Unlike you Kamala, I know who my roots are and where I come from." Not again. We must - using the law and the ballot box - destroy this man's evil and metaphorically bury his campaign and those who support under the rubble of birtherism. B-BLOCK (24:50) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Mar-a-Lago insiders selling info to supplicants about when Trump is in a good mood. Musk and Ramaswamy say America needs more people (but not immigrants like their own parents) and the Oklahoma school nazi wants to fire any teacher who wasn't worried enough about Trump's ear-piercing. C-BLOCK (35:38) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Ah for the simpler times of 46 years ago when the big issue was: will I get my seersucker suit dirty on the subway as I travel up to my internship at Channel 5 News. The story of Keith The Intern and Bill Mazer, See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SERIES 2 EPISODE 222: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: As reports mount that she'll select her Vice Presidential running mate next Monday or Tuesday, Kamala Harris - ten days into her campaign - surges into the lead in the swing states: Michigan: Kamala Harris 53 Trump 42 Arizona: Harris 49 Trump 47 Wisconsin: Harris 49 Trump 47 Nevada: Harris 47 Trump 45 Georgia: Harris 47 Trump 47 North Carolina: Trump 48 Harris 46 Pennsylvania: Trump 50 Harris 46 Seven Swing States Combined in these polls by Morning Consult for BLOOMBERG News: Harris 48 Trump 47 or as they headlined it “Harris erases Trump’s Swing State Lead.” But Nate Silver told me Harris only has a 38 percent chance of winning, the New York Times told me this is just a "honeymoon" period (a term for the time AFTER a VP is chosen and a convention is held) and Axios told me Trump is selecting his cabinet. Explaining the polls, and the media's inability to believe anything that never happened before is happening now. B-Block (30:38) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Honorary mention, me, for coughing on the podcast yesterday. So now Matt Gaetz is OPPOSED to electoral losers insisting they really had won? Laura Loomer makes up a story no crazier than the other stories she's made up and got mad at all of us for taking her seriously. And the National Association of Black Journalists is entitled to host Trump for an interview at its convention. It is NOT allowed to let him bring his own pet propagandist with him to "interview" him. C-Block (44:33) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: In those days there was no internet, no ESPN, no CNN, and no weekday national sportscasts. So when the captain of the New York Yankees crashed his private plane 45 years ago this Friday, it was left to eight or so network radio sports guys to cover the nightmare in real time. And one of them was a rookie with about eight days' experience in the business: Me.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SERIES 2 EPISODE 221: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT (NOW! WITH LESS COUGHING!): Looks like you can build a couple new towers and an extra moat at Kamalot: Morning Consult poll, which Trump still led a week ago today 47 to 45, now shows Vice President Harris AHEAD 47 to 46 and yes it is all within the margin of error; nevertheless it is a 3-point swing in ONE WEEK. Just as importantly: FIFTY PERCENT of voters in that poll view her favorably, 46 percent unfavorably, that’s a net of +4 and in our fractured landscape that is landslide territory and nothing Biden OR Trump achieved. As Morning Consult notes her popularity score swung by twelve points since last week, driven mostly by… INDEPENDENTS. A week ago 31 percent of INDEPENDENTS viewed her favorably and now it’s 48% percent. Kamala Harris is also killing it in the stodgier polls. FOX surveyed four swing states. Harris up by six in Minnesota. They’re TIED in Michigan and Pennsylvania. She trails by a point in Wisconsin. The new Wall Street Journal Poll: she's cut Trump's lead from six to two Harris 47. In short, there’s simply not a more CONGENIAL spot. For happily-ever-after-ing than here in Camelot. MEANWHILE TRUMP (WITH A NET FAVORABLE OF -16)? Of COURSE he meant if Christians voted for him now they wouldn’t have to vote again in 2028 BECAUSE he meant there wouldn’t BE elections - or maybe even more likely, there wouldn’t be elections in 2028 that HE COULD LOSE. There are a lot of reasons we can be certain of this, the easiest of which is that we all UNDERSTAND that he is running because if he doesn’t win the 2024 election and go to the WHITE HOUSE, he instead WILL go to prison, and he WILL die there. And if that is true in 2024 – guess what – it would ALSO be TRUE in 2028. B-Block (26:40) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: RFK says he was rambunctious so yeah there may be more sexual assault charges. A woman named Amy Vandersteel thinks 0.4% is forty percent. And right wing nut job Bill Mitchell explains there's a replacement Joe Biden who is four inches taller and deliberately tanked the debate so the Democrats could complete their intricate scheme to get him out and Kamala in I WISH. C-Block (36:20) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: MSNBC didn't make a big deal about it but they just hit their 28th anniversary on the air, and what I believe is the 19th anniversary of the day they fired Rachel Maddow, before I hired her back out of my own pocket.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SERIES 2 EPISODE 220: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Finally somebody has said SOMETHING confirming we don't have any idea whether Trump was hit by a bullet or a piece of bubble gum during what was - unquestionably - the assassination attempt, now nearly two weeks ago. And the doubt is from no less a figure than the head of the FBI, in Congressional testimony day before yesterday that got almost no attention for hours after he gave it. This led to considerable umbrage from Ex-Doctor Congressman Ronny Glug Glug Jackson of Texas who insists he saw the wound (of course it was the next day) even as video emerges of him explaining his own nephew was near Trump and suffered minor superficial injuries from... debris evidently thrown up by a bullet hitting something. Something that is ever more certainly NOT Trump. ALSO: Superb polling numbers for Kamala Harris from The New York Times (Biden was behind by six; she is behind by one), Morning Consult (she is now ahead by one) and Change Polls (It was Trump by four over Biden. It is now Harris by one over Trump). The Times had to find some disaffected Democrat and somehow found a confidence trickster (literally, she went to prison over a fake finger-in-the-chili thing) and quoted her. The Times has jumped the shark. I AM BEGINNING TO THINK TRUMP WILL DUMP JD VANCE. It's not just the couch embarrassment (So-fa, so-good) or the horrible approval numbers. This video of him complaining that Harris has 'no skin in the game' because she's not a biological parent? So - Lindsey Graham has no skin the game? Tim Scott? George Washington? And maybe best of all, there is a new nickname for Vice President Harris and the momentum she's building: Kamalot. It's courtesy Trump's second worst press secretary, the imbecilic Kayleigh McEnany, who is convinced it's an insult. This person has had one good idea in her life - this is it - and she's disowning it.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SERIES 2 EPISODE 219: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Trump’s nephew Fred III – the one who likes him – says Trump told him, in the oval office, in May 2020, that the disabled, quote, “these people…the shape they’re in, all the expenses, maybe those kinds of people should just die.” It is somehow worse than it seems. Fred Trump III has a son William who has spent the whole of his 25 years on this planet fighting illness after illness and complication after complication. When the medical fund the family set up for William began to run dry in 2020, William called his uncle and asked for more help. “I don’t know,”Fred Trump quotes Donald Trump. “He doesn’t recognize you. Maybe you should just let him die and move down to Florida.” There are lots of words for this: euthanasia, mercy killing, assisted suicide, quietus; for the elderly senicide or geroniticide, the Nazis called it Akt-zone T-4. We all have our differing moral north stars but for most of us I think there are at least some circumstances in which it is valid and justifiable. You and I both knew Trump was this kind of monster. What we must realize is that while others might see individually justifiable acts of assisted suicide, with Trump we are talking forced euthanasia - mass murder. I have asserted here before that we saw of Trump during Covid suggested this was at the heart of his attitude towards people: that they were just another commodity. Kill a few… kill a few thousand… so what. Just let them die and move down to Florida. Round them up by the millions in camps before deporting them, leaving lord knows how many to DIE in those camps. "These people. The shape they’re in, all the expenses, maybe those kinds of people should just die." It's kind of amazing that in Fred Trump III's upcoming book he quotes his uncle using the N-word to blame damage to his car and that's barely an afterthought here. Which circles back to the campaign against Harris. Brian Kilmeade of Fox may have said the Vice President was going to a "college sorority" and he may have said "colored sorority" but two weeks ago Trump flunky Sebastian Gorka proudly called Harris "colored" - and the birtherism has started again. This while Biden gave a moving and eloquent farewell address, Kim Jong Un told Trump to stuff his friendship, CBS reported there are a dozen potential VP candidates, and the next round of polls shows her - in a wildly conservative poll - just a point back in Pennsylvania, and cutting Trump's lead in half in the CNN poll while improving 5 points on Biden's last numbers among female voters and 11 among young voters and 16 points among black voters B-Block (27:46) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: To analyze how the fascists are NOT running a misogynistic campaign against Kamala Harris, NewsMax brings on Mark Halperin and Ed Henry - both fired for harassment and worse. If you think Trump has been screwed up by Biden bowing out, The New York Times is down to criticizing HOW he bowed out and the astonished headline "The Most Ruthless Political Operator in the Country Is a WOMAN." And Russell Brand, super-genius, thinks melatonin controls skin color. C-Block (42:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: The old joke about this hated baseball figure was: you're in a boat with this guy, Hitler and Mussolini. You have a gun and two bullets. What do you do? Answer: shoot this guy, then throw Hitler overboard, then throw Mussolini overboard, then shoot this guy again just to make sure. The saga of how the Los Angeles Dodgers "lost" several million dollars in 1964 while making a huge profit.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SERIES 2 EPISODE 218: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:44) I have been thinking for awhile now that there will come a point, this year, this election, maybe this MONTH, where we will all be saying “Can you believe we came THIS CLOSE to not making Vice President Harris the nominee?” You have heard about THE poll: Ipsos for Reuters (Harris 42 Trump 38 Kennedy 8 third-party race; Harris 44 Trump 42 head-to-head) that's a four point shift TO Kamala Harris… in a week. But have you heard the OTHER polls? Marist for NPR and the PBS News Hour? Harris 42 Trump 42 Kennedy 7 / Trump 46 Harris 45.YouGov for Yahoo News? Harris 46 Trump 46. These numbers are from the FIRST FULL DAY of the Harris campaign and she is already in a statistical tie. Harris's favorables are at a net -2, sounds meh. Biden's? A net -18. Trump's? Net -19. More jaw-dropping still? The top Republican internal pollster in Georgia has Harris starting off there, trailing just 48-47. And best of all: Do you agree or disagree: at 78 years old Trump is too old to work in government? Agree – 53%. Disagree – 43%. Trump's pollster issued a panicked memo lowering the bar just as the Reuters poll was coming out. Funny he never mentioned the age issue! Polling, polling, polling. Plus it's hard to tell what the Fascists are freaking out about the most: the polls, Kamala declaring war on their suddenly oldest-ever candidate, or their leadership's insistence that they can't call her "colored" (like Sebastian Gorka did a week ago) or use racial epithets and especially not call her "DEI." Which, of course, is what they immediately called her. Or maybe it's J.D. Vance. There's instant buyers' remorse because he's so bad on stage that they can't tell if he's inflated or stuffed - or both. B-Block (35:00) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Colombian emigre Valentina Gomez is running for Secretary of State in Missouri on an anti-immigration platform and now she's illegally used the balcony of the Speaker of the House on which to film an ad. An Ohio State Senator becomes the last Republican to threaten Civil War, and the New York Post and Senator Mike Lee both fall for the worst fake announcement of the fake death of the fake Jimmy Carter on fake stationery imaginable. C-Block (47:10) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: I mentioned Aaron Sorkin yesterday. Time to explain the story of the day I was watching one of his TV shows and suddenly my father's favorite saying was coming out of the mouth of Aaron's lead character because Aaron had gotten in the habit of borrowing my life. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.