Podcasts about b block

John Pollock and Wai Ting review WWE SmackDown with John Cena and the returning Cody Rhodes appearing on the show.Also: Jade Cargill vs. Naomi vs. Nia Jax and Jacob Fatu vs. Andrade vs. Carmelo Hayes in Money in the Bank qualifying matches, plus the return of Bianca Belair.The XL Edition continues at POSTwrestlingCafe.com with News of the Day and Your Calls/Feedback, ad-free. Today's stories:SmackDown remaining three hours, per reportMariah May removed from AEW's roster pageVince McMahon's new companyTwo more class action suits against UFCYOH wins B Block of the Best of the Super JuniorsSaturday Night's Main Event draws a large audience on NBCAEW Dynamite & NXT ratings TNA Against All Odds matches AEW Collision lineup POST Wrestling Café Schedule:Sunday: Collision CourseFREE Shows:Friday: Rewind-A-SmackDown (XL in the Café)Saturday: Saturday Night's Main EventSunday: AEW Double or NothingSunday: NXT BattlegroundPhoto Courtesy: WWERASD Theme by THE IDENTiTY CRiSiS: theidentitycrisis.com / youtube.com/theidcBluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/postwrestling.comX: http://www.twitter.com/POSTwrestlingInstagram: http://www.instagram.com/POSTwrestlingFacebook: http://www.facebook.com/POSTwrestlingYouTube: http://www.youtube.com/POSTwrestlingSubscribe: https://postwrestling.com/subscribePatreon: http://postwrestlingcafe.comForum: https://forum.postwrestling.comDiscord: https://postwrestling.com/discordMerch: https://Chopped-Tees.com/POSTwrestlingAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

SEASON 3 EPISODE 130: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:45) BREAKING NEWS: A Reagan judge, an Obama judge, and a Trump judge walk into a courtroom and rule Trump's "Liberation Day" tariffs - which not only crashed our economy but that of the entire world's - are not a legal use of the 1977 laws empowering him to take actions in the event of an economic emergency. This is not just any court. It's the United States Court of International Trade. Trump already appealed. Stephen Miller already called it a "judicial coup." The fact that America's corporations simply went along with Trump's crap when it knew - as the court knew - this was executive overreach - is its own problem. The halt on the tariffs will itself probably be halted by the appeals. So the re-shaping of the market will be re-re-shaped by the judges, and re-re-re-shaped by the further litigation. That, of course, is not Trump's problem. His only job is to break stuff. SPECIAL COMMENT: Now it's Governor Gretchen Whitmer has learned the lesson - twice. Never appease Trump, never negotiate with Trump, never cooperate with Trump, never support anything Trump wants, never do anything Trump wants. All that registers with him is: you are easier for him to destroy. She sucked up to him. She worked with him. He tricked her into appearing at his photo-op. She hid her face behind a folder like it was a perp walk. Now, he says he's looking into PARDONING THE TERRORISTS CONVICTED OF TRYING TO KIDNAP HER. There is only one way Gretchen Whitmer is going to SURVIVE Trump, Governor. Apple is going to SURVIVE Trump, Tim Cook. There is only one way Columbia is going to SURVIVE Trump, Claire Shipman. There is only one way the White House Correspondents are going to SURVIVE Trump, Eugene Daniels. If you haven’t figured it out yet, I’ll spell it out. Doing what he wants only tells him you will DO WHAT HE WANTS. So he comes back and gives you ANOTHER list of what he wants. He’s a blackmailer. He’s a crooked businessman. He’s a bully. There is only one way to SURVIVE Trump and that is to DESTROY Trump. In a world of White House Correspondents, be the PENTAGON Correspondents. In a world of Apples, be Wal-Mart. In a world of Columbias, be a Harvard. Put your hands on Trump’s shoulders and knee him in the groin. Stand up to him and you can then own HIM, like the Harvard newspaper op-ed writer who has proposed settling the disputes between her school and Trump by challenging Secretary of "Education" Linda McMahon, the wife of the wrestling slime bag, to a Steel Cage Match. ALSO: TRUMP CONFESSES to operating on Russia's behalf and to protecting Putin. HE LEARNS for the first time of the Wall Street analysts mocking him with the tariff acronym "TACO" ("Trump Always Chickens Out") and he chickens out. Turns out Tom Homan also worked for the top Private Prison company. A woman who contributed a million to Trump gets a pardon for her jailbird son. Anybody remember Rudy Giuliani's alleged boast he could sell you a pardon for two million, to be split between him and Trump. And a past president's grandson has died. The president he was the grandson of, left office in... 1845. B-Block (33:00) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Kristi Noem and the camel she rode in on. Jesse Watters and Rep. Tim Burchett try to make fun of men using straws not remembering there's a photo of Trump at Yankee Stadium using a straw. And boy did THIS sound familiar: Rupert Murdoch just buried a New York Post reporter who followed all the rules and instructions Murdoch's minions had laid out for him, because somebody didn't like the story... Just like in 2001 Rupert personally fired ME for doing exactly the same thing (C-Block 43:00 THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL). The punchline is the reporter's name is Josh Kosman and last September he was the guy at The Post who called and told me they were about to update the RFK Jr/Olivia Nuzzi sexting story by claiming I had lived with Olivia. So I busted his scoop and put the story out immediately. Now we're in the Rupert Isn't A Journalist Club. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SEASON 3 EPISODE 129: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:45 SPECIAL COMMENT) The Trump Mental Illness Crisis - and Cover-up -worsens. This kind of reality detachment, in such different venues, on such different topics, from turning the West Point graduation ceremony into advice on when to marry a trophy wife to demanding somebody pay him a cut of what Harvard takes in tuition (and mistaking $52 Million for $52 Billion)... this kind of mental incapacity from any other president, at any other time – including Trump himself, seven or eight years ago – would have been greeted by wall-to-wall television and online coverage and banner newspaper headlines. Instead within 12 hours it was all forgotten so our national media could ignore the extinction-level-event crisis of a president gone fully insane, so it could return to regularly scheduled programming about how the PAST president wouldn’t instantly admit his acuity game had slipped to a B, B-minus. The Trump Trophy Wife remark, to say nothing of the overnight demand of a taste of the tuition action at Harvard, vanished by the time the Sunday news shows hit. Including the Sunday news show hosted by Jake Tapper. ESPECIALLY the Sunday news show hosted by Jake Tapper. Also missing from Tapper's show – and the others – the reality that Tapper and his co-author, gossip writer Alex Thompson, are going to have to withdraw their book about President Biden’s acuity issues. From Politico, Semafor, Breaker, and other outlets comes the not-so-startling truth: these idiots fact checked next to nothing. There's also an internal revolt against Tapper at CNN. MEANWHILE: What the hell is wrong with Kristi Noem, and why is Harvard doing so well in fighting back against Trump while my old colleague Claire Shipman and Columbia are circling the drain? B-BLOCK (36:40) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Death pimp and Republican Congressman Andy Clyde makes it easier to shoot people and buy his guns. Tim Walz says "Gestapo" and the right freaks out when it should be the left freaking out because he didn't say it last October. And Bill Maher has kissed more MAGA heinie yet still thinks anybody thinks he's a liberal. C-BLOCK (50:45) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: It's anniversary time! 24 years since I asked Rupert Murdoch how I should cover a story about Rupert Murdoch selling a baseball team for Rupert Murdoch's TV Sports network, and when I did what his office told me, he fired me. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SEASON 3 EPISODE 128: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:45) SPECIAL COMMENT: Trump wants – and his Republican Whore House of Representatives could give him, as early as today, more likely tomorrow – a LAW letting him not only ignore the courts and their injunctions or temporary restraining orders - but immunize himself and his minions from even BEING subject to CONTEMPT CITATIONS. The law, cutting the legs off every judge in this country including all of them on the Supreme Court, is sitting deep in the MAGA multi-trillion dollar budget bill, curled up like a snake ready to attack and poison the judiciary. At Trump’s sole discretion. Any court issuing a T-R-O against Trump or his pack of wolves with titles decimating safety regulations or firing tens of thousands of essential government employees; any court issuing an injunction against Trump kidnapping and renditioning people off the street; any court doing anything Trump doesn’t like could rule whatever IT likes but when it came to the only teeth such orders have – the threat of putting somebody who ignores them, IN jail, FOR contempt, would be GONE. The gist of this is the Trumpists found another loophole, about a cash bond requirement if you seek to enjoin the government. It’s normally set by the judge at Zero Dollars. This bill would make any such Contempt of Court findings or Injunctions set at zero… unenforceable. SO ICE has accelerated the renditions, now dismissing old charges that are currently being ajudicated and seizing the defendants at the courtrooms and putting them on flights to South Sudan or Libya or wherever because, if there's no Contempt of Court, who's going to stop them? ALSO: Kristi Noem having no idea what "Habeas Corpus" is? That was the SMART part. She also doesn't think "suspend" means "enact." Why is Trump investigating Andrew Cuomo? So if he gets elected Mayor of New York they can blackmail him into selling OUT New York. CBS is warned by Senators that its "settlement" with Trump may be a criminal bribe. And the bad news for CNN is, it's become a 24/7 Shopping Channel selling Jake Tapper's crap book. The good news is, they'll be televising George Clooney's live Broadway show about Murrow, "Good Night And Good Luck" so at least there'll be some pretend journalists on the network. B-Block (40:27) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Musk's "Grok" thinks Kristi Noem was talking about the WNBA. The guy Jeopardy fired as host after a week is now running Ben Shapiro's Propaganda Channel. And karma gets Bill Maher back for praising Trump and dissing Larry David: his "uncancellable" podcast studio? Cancelled. C-Block (52:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: The arrival of a piece of the fabric roof ripped off Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg last October by Hurricane Milton has inadvertently reminded me why I do this podcast, because it reminded me of the day nearly half a century ago when my dad the architect warned me not to go into an arena with another fabric roof that he (correctly) predicted was about to come off because of bad weather.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SEASON 3 EPISODE 127: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:45) HEADLINE: BIDEN'S CANCER DIAGNOSIS: The concern here, obviously, is Joe Biden’s health and comfort. I know him enough, however, to believe that it has occurred to him that the timing of this terrible news carries with it one extraordinary irony. The car in which all of the Biden Acuity Truthers and Reporters and Book Writers and Finger Waggers has just stopped suddenly and they have all been ejected from the car they were climbing over each other in order to drive faster and faster. And you deserve it utterly, Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson and Jonathan Allen and Robert Hur and Politico and The Washington Post which yesterday MORNING printed a column that began “The verdict is in. Joe Biden is to blame.” (. ) SPECIAL COMMENT: TRUMP THREATENS SUPREME COURT. Trump has now descended to making threats against the Supreme Court. Under his own name? Indirectly and stochastically. Under the names of others whose menacing he re-posts? Directly. Directly. And specifically towards the justices HE himself appointed. This country is now in this frozen moment of madness in which its president isn’t just ignoring and trying to veto the judiciary and the Supreme Court, but actually encouraging violence against its members. Trump has also now amplified at least 14 posts demanding the arrest of former FBI Director James Comey, including one claiming Comey’s dumb photo proves the assassination attempt against Trump last year was quote “an inside job” and another calling for quote “public military tribunals” for President Obama – a post that was actually captioned “Re-truth if you want public military tribunals” which Trump… re-truthed. B-Block (34:20) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Trump thinks a soccer stadium in New York will be used in the L.A. Olympics. Somebody high up at Twitter-X turns Grok into a white supremacist holocaust denier. I wonder who?!? Jake Tapper and CNN and Politico climax years of political malpractice by exploiting Biden's mental lags and ignoring Trump's total mental breakdown. B-Block (45:40) SPORTSBALLCENTER: Three baseball managers fired in ten days? By the three teams most interested in forcing a lockout and no season in 2027? That's a coincidence. And a second look at the Joe Jackson/Pete Rose decision. C-Block (54:46) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: It's graduation season so time to look my graduation and the phone call the Friday before it when I asked the registrar if I WAS graduating and she said "Yes? No?"See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SEASON 3 EPISODE 126: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:45) SPECIAL COMMENT: Buyer's Remorse on an unprecedented scale. New polling from the new site of the last chief of 538, Elliott Morris: If the 2024 election were held again today, Harris would win by FIVE. And Trump isn't just underwater he's DROWNING: Net -16 on Approval. STRONGLY disapprove scores twice as highly as strongly approves. Net -34 on his economic decisions. Net -32 on inflation. Net -21 on tariffs and trade. Net -20 on cutting programs. Net -17 on the economy. Net -16 on foreign policy. Net -16 on health care. Net -16 on education. And the Democrats are up in the House midterms by +6. If this were this Obama or Clinton or Carter the right wing press would be DEMANDING the president either fire his entire cabinet or resign. ALSO: Democrats eviscerate Kristi Noem on Kilmar Abrego Garcia and she slanders him by calling him a terrorist. Look in a mirror, witch. BUY mirrors, Chief Justice Roberts and A.G. Sulzberger. Two of the most guilty perpetuators of Bothsidesism point fingers at everybody but themselves because we're all trying to find the guy who did this and as the commentator Darth notes, these two guys are fighting over who gets to wear the Hot Dog Suit. PSAKI PSHOW PSTINKS: MSNBC is trying to spin otherwise, but her ratings in the Maddow slot are, simply, not survivable. B-BLOCK (39:35) SPORTSBALLCENTER: What the heck? A White Sox fan gets elected Pope and five days later White Sox tragic anti-hero Shoeless Joe Jackson is suddenly made eligible for the Hall of Fame? (44:19) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: I'm sure it's delicious and healthy but doesn't a plant-based product called "Protein Puck" make you think of the movie "Soylent Green"? Politico thinks it's got any remaining credibility. Andrew Cuomo thinks HE'S got any remaining credibility and is accused of being backed by MAGA. C-BLOCK (54:10) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: If you want to skip this, please do. But I have a story about an inexplicable hockey card, why they made it in the first place, and why it took 40 years for me to obtain it. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Brandon Scott gives his latest thoughts on Giannis possibly being on the move, the Rockets get unlucky in the lottery, and what Jayson Tatum's injury means for the Celtics. Subscribe: https://youtu.be/QOA4Fxv1x1M Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

SEASON 3 EPISODE 125: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:45) SPECIAL COMMENT: What do you like least? Suspending Habeas Corpus? Breaking the law by threatening to arrest members of Congress for obeying the law? Or Trump accepting a half billion dollar impeachable illegal bribe from the government of Qatar that the Attorney General has ruled ISN’T illegal and by the way the Attorney General used to be a lobbyist FOR the government of Qatar? They’re all nation-destroying events but bluntly there is no way back from a suspension of Habeas Corpus. It’s a one-man dictatorship then – because if you think SUSPENDING Habeas Corpus ‘just for undocumented immigrants’ is somehow acceptable on its face, remember two things. One is: that there would be NO HEARINGS and NO LEGAL RECOURSE for ANYONE seized in this way so that all they would have to do is CLAIM that YOU are an undocumented immigrant to rationalize disappearing you, and you would not have a hearing at which you could prove you were a citizen, and you would not have a lawyer to appeal the decision not to GIVE you a hearing. And Stephen Miller didn't even say 'we'd only suspend it for undocumented immigrants.' Of course threatening to arrest members of Congress for exerting their legal right of oversight to the Concentration Camp ICE just opened in Newark by accusing them of assaulting agents (you know: The Congresswoman hit my fist with her face!) is bad and it mainlines back to the idea that they could just arrest them and under suspended Habeas Corpus just disappear them. As Congressman Michael 'I'm Too Dumb To Realize I'm Calling For My Own Arrest' McCaul now says of the Jersey Democrats "you cannot be complicit with gang violence against our law enforcement. And I think perhaps that’s what it comes down to.” ALSO: Trump's new Qatari plane is an illegal, impeachable offense but since the AG already registered as a Qatari agent, just hit the shrug emoji. They've accused The Secretary of Scotch with plagiarism at Princeton. They fired the Librarian of Congress and Karoline Lie-vitt is so stupid she thinks kids check books out of the Library of Congress. Trump now wants Jeanine Pirro as interim U.S. Attorney in DC, which allows us to flash back to the time she lost a page of her speech announcing she was running for Senate and just stood there until they found it for her. And of course, there's a new Pope. Father Bob. Father Bob the White Sox fan. Meaning our Nancy Faust, who went back to the White Sox games yesterday to reprise her role as the greatest stadium organist of all time, is right when she says "Who knew? All those years I literally had a papal audience!" B-Block (46:27) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: This time they're all people I know and used to respect who have failed the world. Gavin Newsom has again proposed appeasing Trump. Bob Iger has again carried an immeasurable amount of propaganda water for Trump. And Claire Shipman, whom I adored, has stood by as Columbia University (you know, the place with the Journalism School) suspended four of its own student reporters for...reporting. C-Block (1:02:00) OUR PAL SMILES again needs your help.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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

Brandon Scott gives his latest thoughts on the NBA conference semifinals, reacting to Steph Curry's hamstring injury; the Cavs' choke job; the Knicks as a title contender and OKC over Denver as the surest thing in a field where there really is no sure thing. Subscribe: https://youtu.be/KbxFxon0y4w Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Brandon Scott gives his latest thoughts on the NBA conference semifinals, reacting to Steph Curry's hamstring injury; the Cavs' choke job; the Knicks as a title contender and OKC over Denver as the surest thing in a field where there really is no sure thing.The B-Block podcast is a partnership with Foolish Club Media.

With the Rockets losing to the Golden State Warriors in seven games, Brandon Scott of SportsRadio 610 looks ahead to the offseason. He goes through few different courses of action for the Rockets to choose from: running it back, trading for Kevin Durant, or Devin Booker or Giannis Antetokounmpo.  Subscribe: https://youtu.be/jdOY3RCzHe8 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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

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

Kim Davis of Chalk Talk joins Brandon Scott with a reaction to the Rockets' dominant Game 5 win over the Golden State Warriors. Have the Rockets found something in these last couple of games they can hold on to? Do they still have a shot? Subscribe: https://youtu.be/7jKfyUHTflQ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

 Brandon Scott is joined by Lachard Binkley of the Rockets Fuel podcast to discuss what's gone wrong with the Rockets as they find themselves on the brink of elimination down 3-1 to the Golden State Warriors.The B-Block is a partnership with Foolish Club Media. Follow them on all platforms. 

Kim Davis of Chalk Talk joins Brandon Scott with reaction to the Rockets' dominant Game 5 win over the Golden State Warriors. Have the Rockets found something in these last couple of game that they can hold on to? Do they still have a shot?For the record, Kim and B.Scott both picked the Rockets to win it in seven games. Stranger things have happened.The B-Block is a partnership with Foolish Club Media.

Brandon Scott reacts to the Houston Rockets' trailing 3-1 after their loss to the Golden State Warriors, what stands out about Houston's failure to pass the test, and where the Rockets go from here. Plus, he tells you why the Texans got better after the NFL draft.  Subscribe: https://youtu.be/xi7DTM1cOik Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Brandon Scott reacts to the Houston Rockets going down 3-1 to the Golden State Warriors; what stands out about Houston failing the test and where the Rockets go from here. Plus, he tells you why the Texans got better after the NFL draft. Subscribe to the B-Block wherever you get your podcasts. 

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

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

Brandon Scott reacts to the Rockets' 109-94 win against the Warriors in Game 2. Jalen Green's 38-point performance and what it means for Houston, Jimmy Butler's injury and what it means for the Warriors, and how Houston's stars have officially arrived in the playoffs. Subscribe: https://youtu.be/gzDi9mfAbC8 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Brandon Scott and Big Sarge from the Locked on Texans podcast react to the Rockets' 95-85 loss in Game 1 to the Golden State Warriors, assess whether it's time for Houston to panic, and look ahead to the Texans' draft options. Subscribe: https://youtu.be/d2SWAdhPm24 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

SEASON 3 EPISODE 119: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:45) SPECIAL COMMENT: Senator Lisa Murkowski may be the most important person in the country right now. Her public confession that she too is afraid of the Trump nightmare and her HINTS at talking to Senate colleagues ABOUT her fear – could provide just enough Republican rebellion to rein Trump in. It feels as if she just got it, as if she just understood that yes Trump is Nazi-esque and yes Trump often emulates the Soviets but the closest parallel to him is O'Brien and "The Party" in Orwell's "1984" and the simple terrifying conviction that "the object of power is power." That's why I think when Kristi Garden Noem and Secretary of Defense (and Vodka) Hegseth (if he's still on the job after ANOTHER Signal chat came to light) file their report on the border to Trump this week and tell him no, they don't need to invoke The Insurrection Act, he may do it anyway because... the object of power is power. Murkowski and thirteen other Republican Senators and at most four Republican Representatives can stop this. They can save the country. They can impeach Trump or if they still can’t get over the hump, the 18 of you can use the THREAT to impeach him, to virtually fetter him, to at least control the width and breadth of his damage, to make him know the Senate WILL vote against him. She can also talk to anybody on the Supreme Court except Alito or Thomas. The other seven, in the middle of the damn night - at 1 AM Saturday - stepped in to freeze any further disappearing Americans under the phony premise of The Alien Enemies Act. And there is reason to hope that these Murkowski-led conversations might happen before the iron curtain of dictatorship descends: Later in her confession of fear, she hinted at doing exactly what I just suggested. Meanwhile, how many times can you self-destruct on this? Gavin Newsom dismisses the Kilmar Abrego Garcia case as a "distraction" and calls Democrats sheep for defending the constitution. On the other hand, Senator Ed Markey is crafting a sense of the senate resolution stating Trump cannot again be elected, and cannot again serve, as president or vice president. Damn Straight. B-Block (40:00) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: The Musk Crappertruck Owner who claims to also be a "girl dad"; Pennsylvania congressman Dan Meuser kinda blames Governor Josh Shapiro's criticizing Trump for provoking the attempt to incinerate him and his family in the governor's mansion on Passover. And Trump DEI hire Pam Bondi lies that compulsive martyr and 85th Place Olympic Trials finisher Riley Gaines "went to the Olympics." Not unless she bought a ticket, Pam Blondie. C-Block (55:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: The renewed Trump bid to ban the Associated Press got me talking to a friend: How MANY times have I been banned, as a reporter? Do you mean this century, or in total? It's... a lot. From the LA Clippers to the ESPN Campus, I've been banned... a lot. And je ne regret rien!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

It's another episode of The B-Block podcast with Brandon Scott! Brandon catches up with Chancellor Johnson to preview the upcoming series between the Warriors and Rockets. They also discuss the University of Houston's run to the NCAA Championship game. Subscribe: https://youtu.be/Gf2zD9XpjMo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In his debut episode of The B-Block podcast here on Foolish Club Media, Brandon Scott dances on the Phoenix Suns' grave after they fired their head coach. A Kevin Durant trade should follow, but should the Houston Rockets still be interested? Who do you prefer the Rockets face in the first round: the Memphis Grizzlies or Golden State Warriors? Either way, we'll find out who they're facing on Tuesday night. Let's talk about how the Rockets can make the NBA Finals despite no one believing they can. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

 In this episode of the B-Block podcast, Brandon Scott dances on the Phoenix Suns' grave after they fired their head coach. A Kevin Durant trade should follow, but should the Houston Rockets still be interested?Plus, who do you prefer the Rockets face in the first round: the Memphis Grizzlies or Golden State Warriors? Either way, we'll find out who they're facing Tuesday night. Finally, why the Rockets can make the NBA Finals, despite no one really checking for them like that.

SEASON 3 EPISODE 118: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:45) SPECIAL COMMENT: ICE Director Tom Homan and his boss Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem must be arrested for contempt of court. It SHOULD be President Ted Bundy Trump being arrested for contempt of court – potentially for ignoring the orders of the SUPREME COURT - but we already know how the laws of this land have been corrupted to protect the greatest criminal in our history. That it cannot be will simply hasten the latest iteration of the constitutional crisis created by a lawless chief executive who still has the military behind him. We are headed for a flashpoint, perhaps as soon as today. To summarize: Trump believes he is God. But in the interim it is time for U-S District Judge Paula Xinis to send this rogue government a message. In fact it is well past time. “Time” was two days ago, at 5 PM. Noem and Homan are now in contempt of HER order in the case of the Noem-Homan-ICE abduction, the DISAPPEARING of a Maryland man already under the PROTECTION of the government of the United States, Kilmar Abrego Garcia. They are in contempt of the orders not of some judge – as the fascist Stephen Miller and his brownshirts call any representative of law and order – they are in contempt of the LAWS OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. It is not some judge. They are in contempt of the NATION and they are on the VERGE of being in contempt of the Supreme Court. The point, of course, may be the admission that they abducted someone by "mistake." They sent a Massachusetts-born immigration lawyer a notice to leave the country by "mistake." They warned ICE will keep illegal "ideas" from entering the country, by "mistake." Maybe these are mistakes - God knows, it all involves Elon Musk - but now they see an opportunity to exploit even mistakes to deliver the message, passively but still aggressively, that even when they are wrong they are still RIGHT because even when they are wrong what do you think YOU are going to be able to DO about it? What do you think YOU are going to be able to DO about it, Mrs Abrego Garcia? What do you think YOU are going to be able to DO about it, Judge? What do you think YOU are going to be able to DO about it, AMERICA? B-Block (40:00) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: We have a new member of the WPITW Hall of Fame, Linda McMahon. We dedicate this episode to Stephen A. Smith, still making a fool of himself. And then the nominees: Bill Maher makes a propaganda video for Trump saying all the nice things about Trump that Maher has forgotten he already said about them in 2016 and then repudiated. Trump butt dials the wrong McMaster. And Jeanine Pirro may be the dumbest person to ever work at Fox News. Do you know what an accomplishment this would be? C-Block (1:04:05) GOOD NIGHT AND GOOD LUCK: A quick announcement about the immediate future of this podcast. Sounds more ominous than it is.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SEASON 3 EPISODE 117: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:45) SPECIAL COMMENT: Trump has already LOST the tariff wars he finally claimed he paused yesterday (without really pausing). Already. Took him only eight days. From Liberation Day to a day when in any other war, literal or figurative, he would have been deposed - 8 days. And never mind how much YOU AND I think he’s crazy; a high-priced adviser to macro fund managers says “a few have quietly wondered if the president might be insane." And after Wall Street came off the ledge and got back to where it was Monday – only, what, seven trillion lost – he declared victory. “Up 2500 points. Nobody has ever heard of it. Gotta be a record.” Because he can’t admit he made a mistake; his head would fall off. His approval numbers have cratered. He’s underwater by an AVERAGE of six points. LAST Wednesday it was an average of TWO points. Since the election he’s lost 20 points among those over age 65; he’s lost 50 points among those under age 30. And he still raised the tariffs on the Chinese again – to 125 percent – because he’s mad at them. Because they of course are winning. Because the Chinese are not negotiating; the Chinese are as they have been for centuries, waiting for their opponents to DIE. The Chinese are apparently dumping our 10-Year Treasuries, driving up our debt. And they’ve opened trading partnership negotiations with the head of the European Union. And for all the claims about pausing the tariffs, a universal TEN percent tariff will be maintained. He didn't pause anything. He simply lost everything. B-Block (27:10) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Joe Manchin writes a book celebrating his middle of the road bona fides. The cover photo shows only the right half of his face, naturally. Marjorie Stupid Greene reveals she does not know what the word "Merch" means. And the president of the hockey writers' association, a bonehead named Frank Seravalli, not only defends Wayne Gretzky's attacks on Canada but his bringing FBI Director and Election Denier Kash Patel to the Ovechkin game - and calls CRITICISM of those decisions "political BS." Instead of, maybe, calling out Gretzky for BRINGING political BS into a moment of sports history. C-Block (49:15) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: She's still at it. Even as Trump's boasts of pausing the tariffs while INCREASING them on China and maintaining them on everybody else, Laura Ingraham is still carrying his water for him. It's time for me to review my dates with her last century, and the extraordinary revelation she made during the first of them about the then-nascent Republican-Media Industrial Complex.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SEASON 3 EPISODE 116: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:45) SPECIAL COMMENT: I want polling on a special, emergency, extra-constitutional Presidential Recall Vote. I know there isn't going to BE a Presidential Recall Vote. I know we're not going extra-constitutional, we're not REPUBLICANS dammit. But they are always making up laws (inside the Supreme Court and outside of it) on the premise that the people really want it, so after this week of unprecedented insane unnecessary failure on the part of Trump and his Team of Imbecilic Rivals, I want to know where we stand. Because the moment we get 10 Republicans in the House and 14 in the Senate to believe that if Trump stays in office, their careers are over, he's gone. Half of them think he's nuts already and a quarter have had doubts. They need to be pushed and I don't want to wait until the mid-terms for them to get the damned message I want SOME pollster - independent, news-related, hired by the Democrats, SOMEBODY - to ask these questions: 1) if the election were re-run today would you vote for Trump or a Democrat. Or another Republican. Or a fairly intelligent farm animal. 2) would you support a special recall vote to potentially reverse the outcome of the 2024 presidential election. 3) would you describe the current financial panic and the upcoming tsunami of inflation and unemployment as a national emergency. 4) do you think Donald Trump has lost his mind. 5) do you think Donald Trump is mentally fit to run the country. 6) do you think Donald Trump is acting to destroy the United States on behalf of a foreign country. 7) do you think it is necessary to act outside the constitution if necessary to save the United States of America FROM Donald Trump. 8) if the midterm elections for the Senate and the House were tomorrow would you vote Republican or Democratic? WHATEVER the percentages are they could easily scare the crap out of 10 House Republicans and 14 Senate Republicans and the day they do, Trump vanishes. You doubt me? Ask Richard Nixon. Ask Abraham Lincoln, whom they were ready to get rid of seven months before Lee surrendered at Appomattox because they thought he wasn't going to be re-elected. Also is it possible the Democrats are listening to me? Obama emerges to spout sense, as I've asked. The DNC Chair founds "The People's Cabinet." All we need now is POLLING ON A PRESIDENTIAL RECALL VOTE. B-Block (31:28) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: The Pittsburgh Pirates rip a Roberto Clemente memorial off their outfield wall to make room for an ad for seltzer, a Republican influencer insists there are no tariffs on Russia because we don't import anything from Russia (we import $2.5 Billion a year from Russia), and the Secretary of the Treasury wants YOU to buy American while he buys British. (41:28) SPORTSBALLCENTER: Alexander Ovechkin DOES have more goals than Wayne Gretzky now, but no, that's still not the big league hockey record (and Gretzky managed to throw himself out another window during the celebrations) and the date of the first American, maybe the first human, to be photographed giving the finger to the cameraman has to be pushed back from 1886 to 1882 after a discovery this weekend about baseball Hall of Famer Old Hoss Radbourn. C-Block (55:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: I have been asked by a listener to expand on last week's news that Chuck Todd not only does not realize that his news career is over but he thinks investors are going to give him $2,000,000,000 to go buy a news organization now. The answer to the question "Chuck Todd: Why?"See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Let me know what you thought of the episode!On this episode I talk about anime episodes 635-637 where we see the beginning of B Block round of the tournament where we see the return of Bellamy and the introduction of a bunch of new combatants! Hope you enjoy! Support the show

SEASON 3 EPISODE 115: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:45) SPECIAL COMMENT: It only took Trump losing a critical election by 10 points in a state he carried last November for even HIM to figure out that Elon Musk is the best electoral friend the Democrats have right now. The White House has leaked that Elon's 130-day exemption as a "Special Government Employee" is up at the end of May and so is his time inadvertently saving democracy from the MAGA cult. We CAN'T LET HIM LEAVE! Also, INDICT ELON! Also also, PROTECT ELON AT ALL COSTS! The reporting suggests Trump intends to keep Musk as an informal advisor and frequent White House visitor and that is great news. If Trump won't keep Musk attached to him sufficiently, we have to do it for him. ELON MUSK'S UNFAVORABILITY AMONG DEMOCRATICS IN WISCONSIN IS 97 PERCENT. Let's take that national! OH BY THE WAY TRUMP JUST TANKED THE WORLD ECONOMY. 54% tariffs on China? 26% on India? Huge on the EU and UK? 10 percent on the people he likes? This is the day the Leopards of Wall Street discover that Trump of the Leopards Eating Faces Party is a cannibal: he eats the faces of other leopards! Also I'll explain how this whole tariff crap mainlines back to Trump's insane fixation with gold and the color gold. MEDIA DISASTER: Bill Maher self-destructs. Stephen A. Smith thinks he's the first person to discover the Trump 3rd Term Scam. MSNBC's attempt to tank is so successful "Morning Joe" is now behind CNN in the demo. B-Block (36:14) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Whoever let the BBC start a piece about the Myanmar Earthquake with the line "On the road to Mandalay." Ex-journalist Matt Taibbi will never testify to the House again. And Richard Carlson, at the center of transphobia, sports, TV news, Fox News, Renee Richards, and even worse things, is dead. C-Block (49:45) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: With the New York Times reporting Chuck Todd is seeking to buy a podcast or local high school sports news company for two billion dollars, it's time for me to note that we are nearing the six year mark since I finally said "I have had enough of this idiot for one lifetime."See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SEASON 3 EPISODE 114: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:45) SPECIAL COMMENT: NO, NBC NEWS AND KRISTEN WELKER - YOU IDIOTS - TRUMP HAS NEVER BEEN 'JOKING' ABOUT A 3RD TERM: Only to dimwitted media types who have been lying to themselves and their audience was it a shock when Welker insisted yesterday to Trump that he’s “joking” about stealing an unconstitutional and illegal third term and the Dictator replying “No I’m not joking, I’m not joking" and he alluded to several ways to game the 22nd Amendment Term Limits. Trump has been serious about this since at least 2023 and the first time I reported on that fact on this podcast was on Wednesday, November 8th… 2023. This has been the plan (like all the other plans) take something unconstitutional and illegal and do it anyway and dare you to sue and get his Concierge Supreme Court to invent a new law and a new country to LET him do it anyway AND insist THIS is the law and if you oppose him, YOU’RE breaking it. That’s the way they papered over Trump’s violation of the Insurrection Clause in the 14th Amendment. Worse yet, the man who has best encapsulated the evil inside Trump, Yale History professor Timothy Snyder, is leaving the country. Literally. Moving to the University of Toronto. If that doesn't tell you all you need to know about how much Trump is NOT kidding. IF ANYBODY STOPS TRUMP it'll be the corporations and Wall Street types who suddenly realize that when he said he'd cook the economy to give all the money to the rich guys he meant just him and Musk. Or maybe it'll be Trump's Intel Community. Somebody is leaking career-ending stories about Pete Hegseth and Bring-Your-Wife-To-Secret-Meetings-Work-Day and Bring-Your-Brother-Into-A-Nepo-Job-Day and I wonder who it could be. Perhaps the National Security Advisor who needs Hegseth to take the fall for SignalGate and just happens to have the number of the editor of The Atlantic programmed into his phone? If we're lucky maybe Hegseth and Mike Waltz will accomplish the rare simultaneous double knockout! B-Block (33:06) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Anna Paulina Luna thinks NBC is hiding a videotape with time code proving Oswald wasn't at the JFK Assassination (three years before time code was invented). A would-be GOP Nominee for Governor of Virginia thinks Anne Frank appeared in a classroom in California 20 years ago to tell gang bangers about the holocaust. And Bill Maher has self-destructed again. Now he thinks he's going to meet Trump because they respect him, because he was the first to predict Trump wouldn't leave office, and to heal the country. And Chris Cuomo and Gavin Newsom are there to reinforce Bill's gullibility! C-Block (49:00) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: So I've resumed my TV sports career! I am back on the air this week in pre-season specials on nine regional baseball networks that carry nine major league clubs. This kinda conflicts with my complaints about the same guys doing sports and politics at this time. I'll explain my rationale.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SEASON 3 EPISODE 113: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (SPECIAL COMMENT): The reason Trump’s Team of Idiot Rivals sent each other their war plans on Signal wasn't to keep them secret from the Senate, or from future investigations it was to keep them secret from TRUMP. They no longer TRUST Trump. They no longer think Trump UNDERSTANDS what’s going on. There WAS a work-around – AROUND TRUMP. They are CUTTING TRUMP OUT. I'm NOT defending any of these sloppy, stupid, dangerous, morons. But behind their blithering incompetence is the WHY. WHY did they conduct this Signal Chat? Because they have established at least one Ghost Mechanism to allow Trump’s cabinet to try to get something done without him destroying the world (yet) and if THAT’S the case the POINT of this is: you have a president whose own people think he is now a complete FEEB, that he can not function, and cannot be trusted not to do something at least disastrously stupid, IF that thing requires him to do anything more than blather for 40 minutes and morph slowly into Gloria Swanson as Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard. We need a whole new president, like, later today. This guy’s nuts. Also, they can all be charged with espionage under 18 U-S Code 793 “Gathering, transmitting or LOSING defense information."And a German newspaper found live mobile numbers and email addresses for Waltz and Gabbard and Hegseth. I’ll circle back to that. Also Waltz and Gabbard and Hegseth are three of the biggest idiots in this nation’s history. And I’m going to go further out on a limb and answer the MOST intriguing, MOST unaddressed question of this entire mess: why in the hell would the name of the editor of The Atlantic pop up automatically in the auto-composition in the phone of National Security Adviser Mike Waltz? Huh? Is MY name in there too? How about Jasmine Crockett? Goldberg was in Waltz's phone because Waltz put him there, and Waltz is denying it because Trump will fire him if he believes that's true. The other issues here are all valid and intriguing and as a story, boy did they hit the cloud just right and we got 77 inches of snow, this story has TWICE as much engagement world wide as any other news story this year. But the NEWS here is, this is NOT a Trump plan to keep reality from America. THIS is an AMERICAN plan to keep reality… from TRUMP. B-Block (31:30) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: American governments mishandle information as if that's what they were hired. It's been true since the Confederacy dropped Robert E. Lee's battle plans on the ground in Maryland in 1862. It was true when the Bush Administration spent a day unable to send me an email, and instead wound up revealing to me all the people inside NBC News that Bush could count on to give him favorable coverage. C-Block (51:00) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: A Pennsylvania legislator is dumber than she looks. She's touting her career 100% Score from...The John Birch Society. Steve Bannon has finally been broken - he is caveating his own violent imagery. And Bill Maher keeps growing, keeps innovating, keeps finding new ways to make an idiot out of himself. This one involves Kid Rock and Trump.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SEASON 3 EPISODE 112: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:45) SPECIAL COMMENT: Give me liberty or give me death. Patrick Henry said it 250 years ago yesterday, to galvanize Americans against the tyranny growing around them brought by an insane dictator-king. Not whatever was manifesting near St. John’s Church in Richmond where the Second Virginia Convention was meeting; not what threatened them individually; not what was at their door, but what they knew WOULD be at their door soon or late because it was already inside the homes of their fellow Americans in far off Boston. Give me liberty or give me death - because whether or not the tyrant is here for US now, he is here for our brothers and sisters. He will be here for us soon enough. And what would OUR Patrick Henry have said on March 23rd, 2025? Give me liberty or give me… a free 12-ounce coffee with the purchase of a dozen donuts while supplies last at participating outlets. Add Columbia University, my alma mater Cornell and a major Democratic-heavy law firm to the list of those who when the chips were down saved themselves and told the rest of us to drop dead. The list already , the American news media, the Republican Party, the Democratic Party (save for AOC and Bernie), the former presidents, the laws, the courts, the Supreme Court, and every supposed guardrail you can think of It's not just that democracy is being raped by Trump. It's that we're standing around shrugging. And as soon as Columbia caved, Trump decided to Disappear a Cornell student. As soon as Paul, Weiss collapsed, Pam Bondi was sicced on all firms supplying lawyers to deportees or suing Trump. Give me liberty or give me up to 30 percent off on rooms at select Disney Resort Hotels when I stay five nights or longer. B-Block (33:15) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: Trump again threatens MSNBC and NBC, saying MSNBC (and CNN) "will be turned off." A week ago he declared them "illegal." Do not misunderstand him. He means it. And I suspect since it's a month since MSNBC fired Joy Reid and the other anchors of color, NBC is going to through someone or something out the MSNBC window, and that right soon. C-Block (54:45) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: How unpopular is Wayne Gretzky in Canada? They smeared feces on the statue of him outside the Edmonton hockey arena. New York's Mayor may have Trump but he also has raised $36,000 this year. And while celebrating the demise of the Department of Education, Musk misspelled "Department."See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SEASON 3 EPISODE 111: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:45) SPECIAL COMMENT: The White Supremacist Trash Trump Administration thought it had gotten away with memory-holing Baseball immortal and Civil Rights immortal Jackie Robinson. They eliminated the Pentagon web page honoring Jackie's service during WWII and re-directed you to a URL reading "DEI SPORTS." They thought they had gotten away with it so much that a Pentagon spokesman named John Ullyot boasted loudly about eliminating the DEI Robinson represented (and the Navajo Code Talkers and that one Native American at Iwo Jima and the Tuskegee Airmen). And then when all hell broke loose, within 90 minutes they actually backed off and restored the page - and made it MORE racist, insisting that they would only honor Robinson as an ex-serviceman, not as a man who may have saved this country from becoming then, what Trump is trying to make it into now. And for all the reversals, one other company's website associated with Jackie Robinson DID scrub any references to "DEI" from its mission statement and has not responded to the Robinson blowback. The other company is of course... Major League Baseball. This is hardly the most important of the daily parade of Trump Atrocities. It may, however, may the most symbolic. B-Block (23:40) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: A podcaster insists what's happening to Tesla is "worse than January 6." Life comes at you fast: Friday, Minnesota State Senator Justin Eichorn introduced a bill to make "Trump Derangement Syndrome" an actual legal thing there. Monday he was being arrested for trying to pay a 17-year old for sex. And why did Jake Tapper drink another pitcher of Kool-Aid and call it "The Gulf of America"? Well there are some people who become their salaries, nothing more. C-Block (43:00) GOOD NIGHT AND GOOD LUCK:See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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

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

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

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

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

SEASON 3 EPISODE 105: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:45) SPECIAL COMMENT: Trump has just lost World War Three. Trump listens to Musk maybe because he recognizes Musk is more insane than he is. Musk literally wants to own and rule the world. Musk just demanded this country withdraws from NATO. Other Muskers and Trumpers are following. If we leave NATO its remaining members will turn into a private hunting ground for Putin, or China, or both. Eventually he or they will run out of European countries to destroy and subsume and he or they will turn to destroying us. As Senator Chris Murphy said yesterday: "The White House has become an arm of the Kremlin." It's that simple. Trump is the Russian Commissar of America. And he's already lost World War Three - and evidently so have the British. Back home, Prime Minister Starmer did the unthinkable, met Zelensky not at the front door of Number 10 but he went INTO Downing Street to embrace him on the sidewalk. The front page of yesterday’s far right tabloid the Daily Mail headlined “outrage over U-S President’s humiliation of Zelensky” and insisted “Now stop the state visit for Bully Trump.” Demanded the British WITHDRAW their invitation for Trump to go there. But within hours their ambassador here undid all of that. Lord Peter Mandelson went on ABC This Week here and called for a “very radical re-set” that “has to consist of the United States and Ukraine getting back on the same page and President Zelensky giving his unequivocal backing to the initiative that Trump is taking to end the war and to bring a just and lasting peace to Ukraine.” Europe's nations “need to back the calls for a ceasefire and by the way I think that Ukraine should be the first to commit to a ceasefire and defy the Russians to follow." Hey, Lord Mendacious? Forgotten already? Zelensky already signed a cease-fire with Putin. Signed in 2019. Putin broke it in 2022. 200,000 guys named Lord Gaseous and Sir Toby Belch and they sent the one who sounds most like Neville Chamberlain. The British are defending Zelensky but their Ambassador just surrendered to Hitler. I mean Trump. No, Hitler. It’s impossible to believe the Prime Minister hasn’t fired Mandelson already (“recalled” is the polite term; “vaporized” would be the accurate one). Regardless the schism is present and the schism is a repeat, a throwback, a re-enactment of 1938, where as Churchill said the British leaders had a choice between shame and war. They have chosen shame, they will get war later. The war THEY got later was World War Two. The war WE will get later will be World War THREE. We will have to go to war – the real thing, none of this Iraq bullshit – the real thing, millions dead – not just to free Europe and all the other places who thought we understood that the world is simply successfully managed tension between the forces of more-or-less-good and the forces of the Putins, Hitlers, Musks, Trumps, Chamberlains, and Mandelsons… not just to free them but to save whatever’s left of this nation after the headstart Trump and Musk are giving, right now, as we speak, to Putin and China. Thus I’ll repeat what I said in the bulletin after the pre-planned performative and nauseating ambush of Zelensky last Friday: Trump has not only imperiled the freedom of the United States of America AND the existence of Ukraine AND the independence of all the nations of Europe he has also lost all moral right to keep power in this country and he must lose that power. B-BLOCK (25:00) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: So. HOW does he non-violently lose power (and it must be non-violent, albeit probably unconventional)? I have the beginnings of ideas: a shadow cabinet, weekly press conferences to co-opt the Sunday and Monday news cycles, a huge multi-faceted protest at Trump's speech to Congress tomorrow. Aggressive behavior. Maybe the Democrats can do it, maybe not. Also: some thoughts on Trump pardoning and baseball seeking to reinstate Pete Rose, the alleged pedophile and child rapist. C-BLOCK (48:00) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Andy Ogles just proposed a law that will fire anybody who altered the FBI evidence on Jeffrey Epstein. So you want a law forcing the firing of Kash Patel and Trump? Cool! Trump stooge Ed Martin wants to prosecute something that never happened. And we've missed the true meaning of the Jeff Bezos launch of Katy Perry, Lauren Sanchez and Gayle King on Blue Origin: BEZOS WANTS TO SEND HIS OWN GIRLFRIEND INTO SPACE LOL.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SEASON 3 EPISODE 103: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:45) SPECIAL COMMENT: There is an alternate, rogue religious theory about an afterlife. It goes like this: "Hell" is not some place deep in the earth or anywhere else with eternal torture and fire. In fact, what we call "life" - THIS is hell. There is considerable new evidence this week that this theory is probably correct. The Washington Post had already been proving that its slogan "Democracy Dies In Darkness" was not a warning but Jeff Bezos's game plan. Now he's made it official: Op-eds are out; pro-Trump "liberties" and "free markets" are in. Other opinions need not apply. Bezos is a fascist. And he's only the third of three media disasters this week. To my surprise, Rachel Maddow DID say something about the Racist Purge at her MSNBC. Unfortunately, it wasn't the truth. She gave out the corporate cover story that Joy Reid "left" and "went out the door" and and and... she was FIRED. I guess I should've known. Rachel also didn't tell the truth when I left. I had kept her in my confidence as I negotiated my exit in 2010 and 2011 and the night it happened she was on Maher's show and though she knew everything, when he asked her about the breaking news - a few hours after my last email to her suggesting "this is it" she answered "This is the first I’m hearing about any of this. I know nothing about it.” And Trump's response to MSNBC throwing Reid into the volcano as a human sacrifice? He's threatening to sue them all anyway. And change the laws. And then there's the White House Correspondents Association. It did nothing about Trump trying to rewrite the Associated Press's stories. So now he's told them they will no longer select the pool reporter. But don't worry, the WHCA's cowardice won't go unpunished. Its president will be one of the new MSNBC hosts who can get sacrificed in the Trump Bottomless Bit later. B-Block (35:38) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Welcome to political scrutiny, Stephen A. Smith. Musk loves Trump - now. 2020? Called him an effing idiot. And this is how bad it is: Trump put one of my exes on the Kennedy Center board. C-Block (44:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: She's in the news and we need the laugh, so once again, the saga of my two dates with Laura Ingraham, one of the last times I thought "this might be the night I die."See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SEASON 3 EPISODE 101: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:45) SPECIAL COMMENT: Trump fired the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and replaced him with a junior officer he brought back from retirement whom HE claims once wore a MAGA cap in his presence. Then he fired the Judge Advocate of the army, the Judge Advocate of the Navy, and the Judge Advocate of the Air Force. What you have been told by news organizations – even ones that still have good reporters – that this is part of the Trump Racism Orgy. The fired Joint Chiefs Chairman Charles Q. Brown is black. The Chief of Naval Operations was a woman. Their identities are cover stories and red meat for the Trump cult. Trump looked at the top lawyers at the Army, Navy and Air Force, the ones who would tell him, no, you can’t have the Army shoot civilians, and you can’t have the Navy blockade Vancouver and Greenland and the Panama Canal, and you can’t bomb the next Democratic convention… and he fired them. At least six different reporters and commentators on the military beat said the same thing. Firing the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs is bad and a red flag. Firing the T-JAGS, the Judge Advocates, the lawyers who tell you when something you are going to do with the military is illegal… can mean only one thing… you are planning to do something with the military that is illegal. You fire the people who would SAY it’s illegal and replace them with people who would say it ISN’T illegal. There are degrees of nightmare ahead. They all amount to different versions of Trump's plot to permanently take over the government by using the military. B-Block (26:20) THE FIRING OF JOY REID: Yes, firing her is racist and maybe worse yes it is designed to keep out people who might think differently and it is designed to reward professional political salespeople like party chairmen and press secretaries. But most of all, since they also fired Alex Wagner, it means that four women of color have solo hosted prominent shows ON MSNBC and all four of them have now been fired. C-Block (58:00) SPORTSBALL CENTRAL: I could not have been more wrong about hockey's Four Nations Faceoff. But at least I wasn't as wrong as Wayne Gretzky, now under deserved attack in Canada as a remorseless Trumpist, and rapidly becoming The Man Without A Country. (1:11:00) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Senator Thom Tillis begins to suck up to Trump. Jared Polis, "Democratic" governor of Colorado, should resign. So too should Phil Murphy, "Democratic" governor of New Jersey.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SEASON 3 EPISODE 100: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Trump thinks we are not vulnerable to attack because the Atlantic Ocean separates us from Europe. He literally wrote this yesterday. This illusion of oceanic walls was shattered no later than the day the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941 and more likely the first time a German craft was seen off the shores of this country during the First World War. It's madness. It's disqualifying. And it got lost amid the madness about calling Zelensky a dictator and threatening Ukraine and Trump describing himself as "King" and and and... "This war is far more important to Europe than it is to us. We have a big beautiful ocean as separation.” Ironically, the man who disproved the "separation" was Charles Lindbergh with his solo crossing of the Atlantic and it is Lindbergh's America First Isolationists of the '30s whom Trump is now emulating. If you've ever wondered what it would have been like had Lindbergh become president and done a deal with Hitler, stop wondering. We're living through it now - only with Putin. AND DON'T DISMISS THE "KING" STUFF: “Congestion Pricing Is Dead. Manhattan and all of New York is saved. Long live the king.” I don’t know who the king could BE in this construction if Trump doesn’t mean Trump. I do know a Tea Party slob Trump made Deputy White House Chief of Staff promptly tweeted it with an AI image of Trump in fetching king’s robes that like his suits was clearly cut to hide his belly. The official White House account then put out a fake magazine cover with him wearing a crown two or three sizes too small. It is tempting to dismiss this as trolling but at minimum this is part of the effort to make him look omnipotent and mandated instead of a president with 49-point-eight percent of the vote and a disapproval poll rating that went from 41 percent on inauguration day to 51 percent last week. B-Block (31:00) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Markwayne Mullin makes everybody really uncomfortable at a Senate hearing. The NHL somehow thinks Trump's threats against Canada are an excellent marketing tool for their little hockey game tonight. And Stephen A. Smith thinks it's an embarrassment that people keep saying he should run for president and by people he means himself and by embarrassment he means please somebody say it. C-Block (42:20) COMIC RELIEF: Two lighter stories. There's the weirdest thing ever said to me by an athlete in an interview, by the late hockey great Bobby Hull, who is posthumously in the news. And there was a flashback to my original MSNBC show at of all places The Animal Medical Center. And the flashback involved making fun of Wolf Blitzer.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SEASON 3 EPISODE 99: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: There's a small problem (naturally) that Trump overlooked (of course) when he misquoted (evergreen) the probably-apocryphal (saw that coming) Napoleon quote "He who saves his country does not violate any law.” The problem should be obvious. What if I think I'm saving my country FROM Trump? What if you think you are saving your country FROM Trump? Set aside for a moment the implicit stochastic call to terrorism or just law-breaking from Trump to his supporters. What about his message to them? Us? You? Me? Did he just indemnify all of us? Seems kind of dangerous. On the other hand, seems like something that somebody who has slipped fully into a delusion of universal support would say. The implications are, like Trump and Musk, just staggering. ALSO WHY IT'S TIME FOR A NEWS BOYCOTT OF THE WHITE HOUSE: Again, I don't have enough space or words to tell you how much this won't happen, but the response to the White House attempt to dictate what the Associated Press gets to write (and open the path to telling you what YOU get to write) should be obvious and unanimous: don't send any reporters to the White House or Air Force One until the AP is restored. And I'm sure The Washington Vichy Post and The New York Bothsidesist Times and CNN (Certainly Not News) will be right out front. On the other hand, there IS a good media pushback idea: A Democratic Shadow Press Secretary,. B-Block (31:25) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Some Dominican voters in Reading, PA, who according to the Mayor there voted for Trump because they just assumed when he said he'd deport "illegals" he'd give them amnesties because they're good people. Mark Zuckerberg is back, suppressing ads for the ever-controversial (checks notes) Invictus Games. And Jim Vandehei and Mike Allen praise the "masculinity" of Musk and Trump even though the four of them don't have enough masculinity to fill up a thimble. C-Block (40:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: A confession. I didn't lie when I said why I discontinued the 2016-17 GQ Series "The Resistance." Nor did I tell the entire truth. I will now. It involves a threat against me, an inadvertent meeting with old SportsCenter friends, a deep hatred of the topic of Trump, and the firing of a loyal colleague.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SEASON 3 EPISODE 98: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Many Americans will not stop lying to themselves about Trump’s insanity. But the rest of us have to. The rest of us: every politician who steps in front of a microphone, every news producer who begins a newscast with some other story made trivial in contrast, every columnist who writes about alarm or some quarters or this Ohio diner, every commentator tempted to say this was the moment Trump truly became president. Trump is manifestly insane and this week he has entered that stage of whatever it specifically IS that’s wrong with him, that is characterized by mania: the conviction that something that is impossible WILL happen simply because he SAYS it is going to happen. HIS mania happens to be about Gaza. The next one could be about the sun rising in the west. Or about how Americans would survive a nuclear war because he’s leading them and he’s immortal. Mania doesn’t have to be MANIC. It doesn’t require hyperbolic words nor unsuppressed rage nor vivid hallucinations. He’s insane. He believes in things that aren’t true and can’t be true and he has a rationalization ready for whenever somebody tells him that they can’t be true. There is nothing of the cliched crazy man in his voice as he talks about Gaza. Nevertheless this guy is metaphorically about one inch away from having conversations with invisible gophers. He says the land is beautiful and he will "cherish" it. His language matches what someone would say if they were having sex with the land. It's a form of what film-maker Billy Wilder allegedly told Nancy Reagan when she quizzed him about why the character played by Gloria Swanson had a pet chimp in their movie “Sunset Boulevard”: "that's because she was f'ing the monkey." Trump talks about Gaza like he is f'ing the monkey. B-Block (30:04) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Fox's Emily Compagno knows how to reform the media. Literally have them just republish Trump press releases. Well, it works for Fox. Dinesh D'Souza celebrates an Army Base NOT being re-re-named after a Civil War General, and Eric Adams, polling at 10% to be renominated for Mayor of New York, has not only sold out his city but now he is actively toying with switching to the GOP, where he will probably poll at LESS than 10%. C-Block (41:10) IN SPORTS: Oh man do I hate it when leagues shut down their seasons so the players can play made-up international tournaments. Wait, only the National Hockey League does that? As part of its marketing strategy to make this great game even LESS prominent? And by the way its new tournament unfolds as the 45th anniversary hits of a truly great international tournament: the 1980 Olympic Hockey medal competition. I covered it, and I'm still cold. Memories, and one of my radio reports, included.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.