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COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN - SEASON 5 EPISODE 12 A-Block (SPECIAL COMMENT): 31% of those who voted for Trump just 707 days ago now DISAPPROVE of his presidency. His approval rating among those who voted for him was 95% on January 20, 2025. It is now just 67%. There is no other word for this: it is a collapse within his base. Even if they do not go to the polls to punish him, and even if a large percentage of those in the new Pew/USA Today poll saying they do not approve actually blame somebody else for his failure, it portends a midterm calamity for MAGA and the GOP so large that it could trigger the avalanche in which the Democrats not only get both houses, but are left with enough terrified Republican Senators up for re-election in '28 that they'll abandon Trump in January '27. This overlooked outcome overshadowed a busy week of lying and traitoring and repeating himself. Trump's newest treason? He is buying oil from Putin that he himself sanctioned only 25 days ago. His latest repeated lie? He announced an "energy ceasefire between Ukraine and Russia" yesterday (American media had already forgotten he already announced an "energy ceasefire" just one month ago). And oh by the way he's also trying to start a race war in Minnesota and New York and America. And it turns out he literally can't find America on a map - or a globe. B-Block (SPORTSBALLCENTER TONIGHT): You think the spectacle of Mike Tyson - whose life Donald Trump ruined nearly 40 years ago - was shocking to YOU? Through marriage and adoption Mike is my cousin. Also Bob Costas has additional details on the Don Larsen Perfect Game Batters' Eye controversy, and the baseball "final four" belies the owners' argument for a salary cap, and the White Sox choke requires the invocation again of one of the greatest things the great writer Jean Shepherd ever wrote: The White Sox and the Military Suicide Mission. C-Block (THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL): We all have something we are eternally ashamed of. For some of us, we knew before it happened that it would be eternally shameful. I'm in that group: I once worked for Rupert Murdoch. What can I tell you? It helped set me up for life financially AND it got me out of the nightmare of covering the Republicans hunting Monica Lewinsky and Bill Clinton. The whole gory story, in detail. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN – SEASON 5 EPISODE 11 A-Block (SPECIAL COMMENT): This is not complicated. Trump: ”They could take out a city. Let them take out Los Angeles. Let them take out San Diego.” U.S. Constitution: “Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.” It’s impeachable aid and comfort to an enemy. Literally. Definitionally. PER THE CONSTITUTION. Add it to the $14 Billion he freed up by letting Iraq and its investors regain access to their oil money in March - $14 Billion they could use to fund a “take out” of L.A. or San Diego or – moron – the all-MAGA corridor between the two cities. So impeach him next January. The chances that there will be 60 Senators willing to convict continue to increase, between Democratic chances, terrified GOP Senators up for re-election in 2028, and accelerating De-Trumpification. Greg Abbott blew him off in San Antonio yesterday. Mike Rogers cut an anti-tariff ad in Michigan. Sununu. Rupert Murdoch! Maybe even David Ellison! -And an all-time great meme is born. Susan Collins continues to self-destruct in Maine, giving birth in the middle of a debate to ‘Let Them Eat Road Salt.’ -Plus why Trump is actually right about Murdoch throwing him under the bus, and the indicator that new CNN/CBS owner David Ellison is backing into the hedges. The phenomenal story of Kash Patel appearing to put fugitives on the FBI’s Most Wanted List just as the FBI is about to arrest them – they’ve even corrupted THAT. B-Block (39:00) SPORTSBALL CENTER TONIGHT: The Secret of Don Larsen’s World Series Perfect Game is Revealed! 70 years ago today a mediocre pitcher who had led the league in losses two years earlier and would be traded nine times in his career, threw the only perfect game in the history of the World Series (indeed any post-season game). Don Larsen of the Yankees: 27 Dodgers up, 27 inexplicable Dodgers down. Well it WAS inexplicable. A revelation on a long-lost kinescope of the game telecast from 1956, and two sets of previously unknown color photographs, explains the whole thing. I own the photos and I’ll share them with you. In short: the Dodger batters never saw the ball coming out of Larsen’s hand! Can't see ball, can't hit ball! C-Block (55:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Since we’re doing baseball in the middle of the baseball playoffs – why not? Let me tell you the unexpectedly hilarious story of the day in 2000 my Mom, sitting in our seats at Yankee Stadium, got hit in the face with a wild throw by the second baseman, Chuck Knoblauch. She was the star of the New York tabloids for a week, she never had more fun in her life, and to ratchet it up a notch – I was ON THE AIR anchoring the Game-of-the-Week broadcast on Fox and got to narrate highlights of my own Mom becoming the most famous fan in America. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN - SEASON 5 EPISODE 10 A-Block (SPECIAL COMMENT): Even Trump sees the wave of Blue water forming on the horizon, now less than a month out. It's so bad he's resorted to one of the three classic cliched lies: "The check is in the mail!" He has actually said it, virtually word-for-word, in Ohio, talking about his latest attempt to buy votes. Not $5,000 apiece this time. Not even a $100 advance he mentioned. This is $500 to Ohioans. It's desperate, stupid, and invites Natalie Harp jokes that even I just won't make lol. But he has reason to panic. G. Elliott Morris at Strength In Numbers now puts a Democratic House at 99% and a Democratic 52-48 Senate at 73% and Republican bastions are crumbling. They've abandoned the Senate race in South Carolina. Two ex-Republican governors of Iowa have endorsed the Democrat. Ken Paxton is losing so badly in Texas he trashed Trump's Nuremberg Rally off the record, and now he's had to beg the wife who is divorcing him on BIBLICAL GROUNDS to do a TV ad endorsing the statewide ticket even though she refused to say his name. Texas Toast, indeed. (SPECIAL COMMENT 2): If you are shocked and shamed and furious at the plight of Jane Doe at Cornell, imagine how we alums feel. Imagine how we alums who have wanted to see the fraternities banned at Cornell...since 1975. They still bully and influence not just the lives of anyone they want to manipulate, but the University itself. And they encourage and protect criminal behavior. Beyond what must be done to reform Cornell and every other university where sexual violence is protected, the frats have to be banned. Today. B-Block (40:00) SPECIAL COMMENT 3: If you flinched when you saw Trump's Leni Riefenstahl commercial run on MS NOW - at Taxpayer Expense - imagine my shock when it turned out the Quisling at the former MSNBC who rationalized it to his enraged colleagues was the former line producer of Countdown, a skilled show timer with absolutely no editorial sense who used to regularly leave the studio to go sing in a choir just before showtime - and insist he not be docked any time off. His name is Greg Kordick and of COURSE it's him who sold out the network and its viewers.  B-Block (1:04:00) SPORTSBALL CENTER TONIGHT: Aaron Judge has a calf injury. Giancarlo Stanton has a calf injury. Francisco Lindor had a calf injury. Juan Soto had a calf injury. And a second calf injury. Funny thing - what did we used to presume when there was a seeming epidemic of soft tissue injuries in joints?  C-Block (1:08:00) MONDAYS WITH THURBER: We celebrate the memorial service for his daughter Rosemary, and the re-publication of "Thurber's Dogs", with the first reading of this new series: the first one I ever read aloud, the unparalleled "A Box To Hide In." See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN - SEASON 5 EPISODE 9 A-Block (SPECIAL COMMENT): You heard me. Trump wrote me a fan letter - but he hates me. Yet here's something I never write: but this is not about me! We'll get to it later. It's important because it is a metaphor for what's happening to the Republican Party as the midterms speed towards us: all of their candidates are vulnerable because their base is sick of the war and sick of Trump and especially sick of a guy who on the same day launches a tax-payer tirade concluding "America will never become a Communist country!" and then hours later is holding a State Dinner for the number-one ranked communist in the world. Even for a man who has never held the same thought in his head for two days in a row, it's bad. The De-Trumpification is picking up speed. ANOTHER Republican Trump Darling has scrubbed Trump from his site. The small-c conservative Cook Report has moved fifteen House races towards Democrats. An Iowa religious broadcaster says all the House candidates there have been told they are vulnerable, even if Trump won their district by 15 points. It. Is. Happening. B-Block (33:00) OK, the story of the fan letter from Trump and my other encounters with him, that date back to December 1983 (and which was followed by me walking in silence and then blurting to my camera crew the still-unanswered question 'WHAT THE EFF WAS WRONG WITH THAT GUY?" C-Block (58:00) WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Succession? The fourth best TV show of the century? I worked for the Murdochs. "Succession" is laugh out loud bad. Then there's the National Hockey League trying to manipulate history, and why the newest craze of paying half a million or two million or three million for an active athlete's trading card is madness. It's simple: what if he gets hurt, and you just paid $500,020 for his card, as some fool just did for a card of football's Jaxson Dart. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN - SEASON 5 EPISODE 8 A-Block (SPECIAL COMMENT): BREAKING: Republicans finally throw Trump overboard - or maybe it's "Republicans finally throw Trump under the campaign bus." -Trump toady Byron Donalds, running for Governor of Florida and only ahead in the polls by 1/10 of a percentage point, scrubs Trump from his website. - Foundering GOP Senate candidates in Iowa and Michigan criticize Trump's war in Iran and resultant high prices. - Trump's approval among Pure Independents drops from +15 to -71 since Election Day (an 86 point swing against Trump!; 99 point swing on the economy) -The percentage of Trump voters who supported him - not the GOP - goes from +23 on Inauguration Week to -22. -And the Tump staff response? They want to rename Ford's Theatre after Trump! 'Ford's Theatre - because the one thing you really want as the midterms loom is some commercial that includes the tag lines 'The Lincoln Assassination - brought to you by Donald Trump!' The De-Trumpification Has Begun! PLUS the polls are crashing around him and Trump can't decide if the midterms are about him or aren't about him, and I have to take some of your time to protest this claim that a baseball player who may lead the American League in Runs Batted In this year after leading the National League four years ago, will be the first to ever do it. He isn't. There is now a desperate bid to make everything that happens, something that has never happened before. 'The first time since 1904' is a plenty big enough accomplishment without hyperbole. B-Block (40:00) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Stephen A. Smith is back and fully up to date on politics (as long as that date is July 15 2024). Jared Golden, phony Democratic congressman from Maine, endorses a Republican in New York because they worked together prioritizing lobstermen over democracy. And Friedrich Merz, a German chancellor having trouble fending off a bunch of fascists bent on ethnic cleansing. Get some help, Ethel Mertz. C-Block (52:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: I cherish the memory of a friend no longer with us and the extraordinary person she was. In fact, she should've been president - at minimum, she should've been the VP candidate on the Democratic ticket, not her husband. Elizabeth Edwards - my friend.   See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN - SEASON 5 EPISODE 7 A-Block (SPECIAL COMMENT): I confess - I fell for it. Trump banned CNN and MS Now from the White House  and I immediately thought: the rest of the media finally, FINALLY, has to walk out and not give this bastard any further coverage. No - I was wrong. Then I thought: he ADMITS “we took the freedom of speech away.” And I thought: it IS the most blatant attack on the 1st Amendment in the history of our country And it should – it WILL – it MUST inspire even this nation’s somnambulant media to rise up as one and for once use its power to fight back – to defend not their jobs, but their country. No. I was wrong. On second thought, I realized this was a set-up. Trump has picked fights with Iran, with Canada, the EU, over oil, over tariffs, over hockey, over arches, over the Kennedy Center - and he's lost them all. He needs a fight against a weak opponent who will fold up when the first punch lands. It's his only chance to salvage the midterms. Weak opponent? Who will fold up? When the first punch lands? That's our White House press corps! I'm asking them to do what comes naturally to them - do nothing. Nothing until after Trump gets fricasseed in the midterms. Don't give him the fight he needs. Then, humiliate him. And at this rate he is going to get fricasseed. 97% chance the Democrats take the house, 65% the Democrats take the Senate, Democrats winning all the key Senate races (the one in North Carolina by FIFTEEN points). Let's not shoot off our big bazoos and snatch defeat from the jaws of Trump's defeat. Also: he's threatening Iran again, the Greenland deal is just a climbdown, and if the 25-story D.C. Arch (a life-sized reproduction of Trump's ego) weren't already bad enough, he's added a platform for snipers and a staging ground for drones. Because that's what you need next to a major airport. B-Block (38:00) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: King Charles, some rando on Threads who thinks the Democrats are admitting "illegal ALLENS" and Puck media guy Dylan Byers, not only carrying water for the disaster that is Bari Weiss, but now with new reported financial conflicts of interest whenever he covers CBS (The Conservative Brainwashing System). C-Block (51:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: MS NOW is in the news for being too political and as the founder of the only iteration of it or MSNBC that succeeded, I find this infuriating - and ironic. During my first stint there in 1997-98 we were so non-political and so ultra-tabloid that I walked in one day and the rundown said our lead story was an advance look at the publication of "The Farmers' Almanac" and our guest was its publisher. Live. Lead. FARMERS. ALMANAC.     See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN - SEASON 5 EPISODE 6 A Block (SPECIAL COMMENT): We're actually under-reacting to the threat from A.I. because it is not just 'A.I. Will Kill Us All' - it is 'TRUMP'S A.I. Will Kill Us All.' Trump is up to his each of his 27 chins in his own investments in A-I; for all we know he's also thinking A-I might fix the midterms for him; humanity is at risk because Trump and his idiot sons and his cabinet members and his foreign fixers and everybody in the Epstein Files and the whole kaleidoscope of corruption is thinking about one thing only - not how to protect mankind but how to protect their money.  Humanity is at risk, because Artificial intelligence is meeting Trump's total LACK of intelligence Also: when Trump's SkyNet gains sentience it will get U.S. weapons in space to use against us. And remember the Epstein Files? Trump Junior's new wife mainlines back not just to Putin's flunkies but to one of Epstein's bankers: her own father. Speaking of Putin's flunkies: Putin is why the National Hockey League must ban its all time leading goal scorer.  And the 60 Minutes ratings are in – they’re down 21% so it’ll now be called 47 MINUTES. Well done CBS – The Conservative Brainwashing System. B-Block (40:00) THE RETURN OF THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: The latest in the endless parade of football quarterbacks and TV pitchmen, Arch Manning, recommends and busts out laughing at an AI video of his college coach knocking a woman reporter to the ground. Another Michigan Republican candidate thinks God is sending him messages for Dan Bongino. Lee Greenwood's latest business deal with Trump: his wife is gonna be an Ambassaduh. And Kash Patel leading the FBI: the Federal Bestiality Investigators? C-Block (58:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: The terrible truth about TV newscasters and the real draw of the profession for many of them - the free hair care. The whole thing clarified itself to me when I discovered that the gifted craftsman who cut my hair when I was in radio in 1980 is still working and is still a gifted craftsman. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN - SEASON 5, EPISODE 5 A-Block (SPECIAL COMMENT) - Hey, yeah, sorry, we forgot to mench...before U.S. servicemen were killed at a base in Jordan, Iran got satellite images of the facility from "Chinese entities" according to The Wall Street Journal. Nobody's saying it's the GOVERNMENT so end of story, especially if you have the IQ of a Trump. Use your brain: Iran didn't buy these on eBay - there's only one kind of Chinese "Entity" - a Chinese GOVERNMENT Entity.  Ten days before he's supposed to entertain Chinese Dictator Xi at the White House, Trump is on the losing end of a war with Iran (assists: China, Russia) and naturally Xi is threatening to cancel it because we're selling Taiwan nation-saving weapons. China knows Trump is useless, weak, imbecilic. As, obviously, does Putin, who is now threatening Kiev-to-Warsaw trains as they near the Polish border and Trump is blaming Zelensky because Diesel prices because Trump cannot understand people, only money. Thank god the president of Ireland, Catherine Connolly, made Trump sit at the kids' table yesterday. Literally. All this while A.I. might destroy all of humanity. All of humanity? So Trump is safe? B-Block (30:00) (MORE SPECIAL COMMENT) - The good news is, MAGA is slipping from a close second to extinction levels in all polling, polling analysis, and on the campaign trail. Jon Ossoff called Trump a draft-dodger but reserved worse remarks for his opponent, Mike Collins. Turns out Jon Karl and vandals didn't destroy the Lincoln Reflecting Pool remodeling - the contractor did, and confessed. And 25 years later and Ari Fleischer is still lying for George W. Bush, and as usual, managing to only make him look worse. C-Block (50:00) (THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL) - I put no weight in dreams as prophesy. Maybe as messages to yourself. But I don't mind telling you I was reminded of the breadth of the failure of cable and broadcast news in this time of institutional collapse, when my late friend Tim Russert showed up in a dream. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN - BULLETIN, SEPTEMBER 10 2026 An hour into his typical delusional speech at the Republican "Midterm Convention" in Texas last night Trump actually said something different: he offered each adult American $5,000 in a "tariff dividend" if the Republicans maintain control of the House and Senate in the midterms. Without a lot of people being excluded from the bribe that would cost taxpayers $1 Trillion. Bribing voters is completely illegal under a federal law passed in 1948 - although it's debatable whether or not it applies here. It's also debatable about whether or not Trump would pay off on his promised palm greasing. He didn't deliver the "little tariff rebate" of "at least $2,000 each" last December, nor the "Doge Dividend" of last February. Still, it indicates the desperation of Trump, underwater in all swing states with his candidates trailing Democrats in all key Senate races and the GOP privately conceded Congress. And it could be a crime to offer it. Or - please note - to receive it. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN - SEASON 5 EPISODE 3 A-Block (SPECIAL COMMENT) Am I the only one who noticed this? Is the news media so compliant, so dead, not to recognize Trump newly bending the knee not to America but to Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin? The story was so easily told just by the sequence and yet it gave our newsmen and our supposed liberal commentators the proverbial haircut. I'll walk you through it. THERE IS REASON TO HOPE we will be able to rein the monster in. Newest polling from Michigan: el-Sayed is up by three, Trump's tariffs are underwater 60-40 with non-college voters and he's only got 41% support among them. The Democrat could grow several points as the Trump haters come round to him. AND WHAT IS ANTISEMITISM? Criticizing Israel? No. Criticizing Trump? Certainly not. How about coming out and saying that Jewish people are only Jewish if they look Jewish to you? And if they don't and still claim to be Jewish, you want to see a map of their DNA. Because no past dictator ever tried that formula did they, Elon Musk? B-Block 40:00 (SPECIAL COMMENT: 9/11) I won't inundate you about 9/11 but one of Zohran Mamdani's critics thinks Osama bin Laden is still alive, and another one is Rudy Giuliani, of all the former mayors of New York the one whose worldview comes closest to al-Qaeda's. Anybody remember when after 9/11 Rudy tried to seize power as an unelected quasi-dictator of New York? Plus some of my reporting from that time 25 years ago. C-Block 1:10:00 (SPORTSBALL CENTER TONIGHT) Can collective amnesia in baseball be cured by Performance Enhancing Drugs? A theoretical question for you fans of the diamond doings. Plus my unusual appearance in the new biography of Renee Richards, and an unexpected comp from Peter Gammons: me and...Hunter S. Thompson? See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

BULLETIN: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN SEPTEMBER 3 2026 Trump's favorite Goebbels impersonator Maria Bartiromo has been fired by Fox - I believe directly by Rupert Murdoch - for telling Trump that Fox News had ordered her and others to not give credence to Trump's July speech in which he promulgated the hallucination that China had stolen the 2020 election which he lost, from him. That she was fired was evident from the timing: it is the proverbial "Take Out The Trash" Day (the Thursday before the four-day Labor Day weekend); she was given no chance to say goodbye; she is not leaving for another job. Oliver Darcy of Status added the detail of Bartiromo ratting Murdoch out to Trump; he reports she even forwarded the text message from her Fox bosses telling staff not to buy into Trump's latest delusion, to the White House. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SEASON 5 EPISODE 1: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN  A-Block (2:30) SPECIAL COMMENT: Hey look, we're back. A special edition to test new equipment (both internal and mechanical), and to talk about the amazing reality that Trump has lost his war in Iran, and the only result he got has just been made permanent as Iran made a deal not with him, but with Oman, to institutionalize the Strait of Hormuz tolls. He is literally the first U.S. President to lose a war. So much winning! Plus the latest media fails (New York Times platforms that idiot David Ellison, who has been silenced by the liberal media that is owned by conservatives; more Maggie Haberman), new Michigan senatorial candidate Abdul El-Sayed comes out throwing figurative punches at MAGA, and the bigger picture on the through lines back of Trump's Iran Forever War: burying Epstein, monetizing war for the Trump Mafia, and trying to make you afraid that gas will cost an extra buck rather than afraid your descendants will be smothered by gas's destruction of the atmosphere. B-Block (50:00) SPORTSBALLCENTER TONIGHT: Did you notice baseball's celebration of its "Trade Deadline" this week? This is a relatively new phenomenon. Through most of its history baseball has tried to legislate AGAINST powerful well-heeled teams from monopolizing all the talent. In fact there was once a rule against making a trade with a defending champion! And, maybe you heard I'm selling one of my rare Honus Wagner baseball cards. The idea that the card was damaged (the background to the player's portrait was cut away, probably in 1909) and I had it restored by a master conservator, has kind of gotten warped in the hype about the auction. The point is: restoration - illicit, secret, designed to mislead and deceive - has been around for three decades and I had this already-altered card re-altered was and is an attempt to make restoration above board. C-Block (1:23:14) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Well my old pal Laura Ingraham was back in the news and I'm afraid Dr. Fauci was subjected to a real-time version of one of my recurring nightmares: I'm somewhere public, trying to deal with a crisis, and I can tell somebody is sitting behind me gesticulating and contorting their visage - and it's LAURA. Or you can title this "The many faces of Laura Ingraham." See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SEASON 4 EPISODE 84: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (3:00) SPECIAL COMMENT: Back from a week off just in time to put the podcast on health hiatus...details within today's supersized edition. Plus, befitting the time off, some meta pictures on how Democrats should plan for what they want this country to look like on its 300th anniversary, if it lasts that long. Will we have jailed Trump and gotten back the money he took? Undone his damage? Eliminated the anachronistic idea that Wyoming should have as many senators as California? Let the Supreme Court continue to lie, cheat and steal the democracy from under us? As John Candy said in "Splash": Think big, be big, my friend. MORE IMMEDIATELY: Whaddya mean the Governor of Virginia hasn't been BRIEFED on the way to overturn her state's Supreme Court's usurpation of redistricting? Why the hell not Hakeem Jeffries? Anybody notice Trump is simply rotating the same three lies about Iran? Why are only independent journalists like Garrett Graff still covering the WHCD non-shooting when the New York Times is doing 31 paragraphs on the future of the dinner like anybody gave a crap? AND MOST IMPORTANTLY: stop saying Trump is painting everything GOLD. That color is not GOLD. It is the color of WEE WEE. Say it. Use the clinical terms, use the gutter terms. The gutter terms define this idiot president. Stop saying gold when you mean whizzzzzzzzzzzzzz. B-Block (56:00) ON THE PASSING OF TED TURNER: Hard to believe few of the obituaries mentioned how he also invented 7-day-a-week sports on national television. Or how Jane Fonda kept him from destroying himself in, like, 1982. One particularly harrowing saga had him telling the lowest ranking staffer at CNN's Washington Bureau which way, when he finally decided he'd do it, he'd do it. And this is said with admiration and affection for the man who created the place where I and so many of the figures of the last 45 years began our TV careers. C-Block (1:30:00) ALL TED ALL THE TIME: I was holding back until I was certain I wouldn't jinx him. My beloved first rescue dog, Ted, was up against it last fall. I took him to the University of Florida for life-saving open heart surgery and boy, did they! Eight hours on the table, eight hours of SICU, all for an eight pound dog and now - he's not even on any medications! It's a long story and I would insist it's worth hearing it. And if you have a dog (or know of one) moving from Mitral Valve Disease to Heart Failure, maybe this will provide you with hope - and an option. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SEASON 4 EPISODE 83: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (3:00) SPECIAL COMMENT: Trump has given away his labyrinthine plot to stay in office past 2028 in one social media post and he’s just crazy enough to think it will work. It is in his rant claiming the indictment of a political opponent means "The 2020 Presidential Election Should Be Permanently Wiped From The Books And Be Of No Further Force or Effect…” He is not going to try a new Constitutional Amendment or say the limit is two CONSECUTIVE terms. He's not going another coup (at least not initially). He is going to try to nullify the 2020 Election - and hold that vote again. ANOTHER 2020 Election. In 2028. If you think that's too crazy easy for him - is it crazier than Trump insisting yesterday that we are in a war against UKRAINE? Crazier than indicting the former FBI Director on a threat to kill Trump with a seashell meme? Crazier than trying to get a comedian fired for a joke about Trump’s death and his wife when TRUMP then goes out and makes a joke about his death and his wife and all America is talking about is the dreaded D-word? Crazier than indicting a man for trying to shoot him at the Correspondents’ Dinner when it is now unmistakably clear that the suspect never fired a shot and was never on the same floor as Trump was? Crazier than Trump's insistence that we should pay for this damn ballroom because it'll protect presidents? What - are they sealing themselves in like Saddam Hussein in his Hidey Hole? And then I'll detail Trump’s bid to MATA: Make America 2020 Again. B-Block (36:00) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Two competing Bari Weiss entries because while nobody's watching her version of the CBS Evening News, everybody seems to have seen her prized reporter Olivia Reingold making a fool of herself on video from the Correspondents' Dinner. And speaking of that, Stephen A. Smith came out of that experience knowing who is to blame for all America's problems: those evil liberals! Whose presidential nomination he expects to win. ESPN has a choice: platform a political idiot and Conservative tool and destroy your franchise, or get rid of him and keep it. C-Block (55:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: I often wonder WHY I ever became a political commentator. It wasn't planned and it wasn't supposed to be permanent. And the story of HOW I became a political commentator is even crazier. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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