Countdown with Keith Olbermann
- Episodes
- 713
- Released
- several times a week
- Latest episode
- Nov 12, 2026
About the podcast
“Countdown With Keith Olbermann,” the landmark news and commentary program that reordered the world of cable news, returns as a daily podcast. Olbermann’s daily news-driven mix will include his trademark “Special Comment” political analysis, the tongue-in-cheek “Worst Persons In The World” segment, and his timeless readings from the works of the immortal James Thurber. The man who turned SportsCenter into a cultural phenomenon will broaden the content to include a daily sports segment, a daily call for help for a suffering dog, and a remarkable series of anecdotes covering a career that stretched from covering the 1980 Olympic Miracle on Ice a month after his 21st birthday, to anchoring the 2009 Presidential Inauguration and the 2009 Super Bowl pre-game show in a span of just twelve days, to rejoining ESPN as a “rookie” baseball play-by-play man at the age of 59.
Episodes 713
DO YOU REALLY THINK TRUMP ISN'T IN THE JENSEN HUANG SPY SCANDAL? - 11.12.26
COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN - SEASON 5 EPISODE 23 A-Block (SPECIAL COMMENT): Why ON EARTH would anybody look at this Jensen Huang Chinese Industrial Spy Scandal and not think Trump was in the middle of it …
Show notes
COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN - SEASON 5 EPISODE 23
A-Block (SPECIAL COMMENT): Why ON EARTH would anybody look at this Jensen Huang Chinese Industrial Spy Scandal and not think Trump was in the middle of it, partly or fully aware?
Why ON EARTH would anybody look at Jensen Huang and NOT ask if he was just SELLING AI Chips ILLEGALLY to China VIA his girlfriend the Chinese Spy?
Why ON EARTH would anybody look at Huang, and Huang's girlfriend Huang, and the spy, and the infighting inside the Trump cabinet, and Trump's insatiable insane greed, and not ask if Trump wasn't just making money from both sides of the law: from banning the sales of chips to China, and then profiting as somebody one step removed him from sold them to China anyway?
The official story still is: This Nvidia Trump Whore, worth like $160, $200 billion, Jensen Huang, has had a Chinese mistress for years, she’s also in the A-I business, also named Huang, and turns out she seems to be a Chinese Spy stealing AI secrets. And Jensen Huang didn’t know that or if you want to go more nuanced, a “white glover” as the Chinese apparently refer to half spy/half business people. And Trump bought stock in Nvidia a couple months ago but HE didn’t know there WAS a MISTRESS. And Trump didn’t know she was a SPY. And still thinks the problem here is, Huang is now depressed.
The problem is: there are a couple of news stories breaking out here that contradict the official story. Like 113 different news stories. And nobody’s put them together. (Ok, it's only seven separate stories - including of Marco Rubio rushing aboard Air Force One to tell Trump 'she's a spy' and getting ignored, and Rubio sending Howard Lutnick a memo saying 'she's a spy' and getting ignored again). But the seven stories have 113 details.
B-Block (28:00) BOB BOONE, IN MEMORIAM: One of the straightest shooters I ever met died on Monday. Bob Boone, a baseball All-Star who was the first player in history whose father and son both played in the major leagues, died 10 days shy of what would have been his 79th birthday. I wanted to record this podcast now to make sure I told the story of meeting this singularly impressive man, because his first words to me were "Keith, I'm Bob Boone and I don't like your work." Happily it got better than that, and it focused on him making sure I knew where he stood before I asked a favor of him - which was to meet a fan of mine, his 13-year old son who is now manager of the New York Yankees.
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STEPHEN MILLER'S APPOINTMENT IS TRUMP'S DECLARATION OF WAR ON AMERICA - 11.9.26
COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN - SEASON 5 EPISODE 22 A-Block (SPECIAL COMMENT): Do not deceive yourself. Trump's appointment of Stephen Miller is not some kind of desperation ploy because there's just nobody …
Show notes
COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN - SEASON 5 EPISODE 22
A-Block (SPECIAL COMMENT): Do not deceive yourself.
Trump's appointment of Stephen Miller is not some kind of desperation ploy because there's just nobody else to do the job. This is the Junta's reaction to the clear signs that after the mid-term defenestration, Trump was giving up on being a forever king, and instead receding into his fantasy world of ballrooms and arches and filigree.
The people who help manipulate Trump to manipulate his insanity, NEED Trump to try something akin - at least in spirit - to January 6. They need him to declare Texas "stolen" and threaten to jail the Democrats who are constitutionally obligated to perform oversight in the House. They need to keep his madness at the forefront.
Miller is there to keep Trump insane - and Pete Hegseth is there to supply the violence as necessary.
ALSO: The prospects of impeaching Hegseth (or this idiot Attorney General Todd Blanche who actually thinks the constitution even refers to a job called 'Attorney General') are excellent - but the prospects of getting the two-thirds Senate vote to remove them aren't. But there are plenty of next steps to take now that Alito and Thomas have both indicated they have no plans on retiring from SCOTUS.
PLUS: It is the greatest question any reporter has ever asked Trump, he did nothing but flinch and walk away - and it could never be asked by any American reporter, each of whom could shout it out at every gaggle, but they know their bosses would fire them and try to blacklist them, instantly (because the "Liberal Media" is owned by conservatives.
B-Block (THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL) 45:00. We near the 40th anniversary of one of the great spans of my life. In 1987-88 there was actually, for a months, a multi-station, multi-network, multi-city... bidding war for my services. And it featured one station bidding against itself, while the odds on favor blew the lead, and its boss called me up and swore at me for not accepting his fatally flawed offer. May you enjoy the story, and then some day enjoy a bidding war.
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BULLETIN: TRUMP MAKES STEPHEN MILLER CHIEF OF STAFF - 11.6.26
BULLETIN: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN - SEASON 5 EPISODE 21 Trump's plan to "work with" Democrats after they eviscerated him in the midterms? Fire White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and replace her with …
Show notes
BULLETIN: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN - SEASON 5 EPISODE 21
Trump's plan to "work with" Democrats after they eviscerated him in the midterms?
Fire White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and replace her with white supremacist Stephen miller.
We should have seen this coming. In a little-seen interview with BBC yesterday, one of the architects of Project 2025, Paul Dans, said "the blame there lies at the feet of president trump’s incompetent staff. His chief of staff Susie Wiles was not a governance leader, she was a campaign leader, and she stepped into a role that was completely over her head… the only way they’re gonna get through this is change at the top, which means marching those people out of the White House by sundown tomorrow”
She was in fact, out before Sundown. And Goebbels' stunt double is in.
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AS VANCE ATTACKS HIM, TRUMP TURNS RADIOACTIVE - 11.5.26
COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN - SEASON 5 EPISODE 21 A-Block (SPECIAL COMMENT): As Vance attacks him, it's finally true: Trump is now radioactive - even inside the GOP. Jayvee's "J'Accuse" post about the …
Show notes
COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN - SEASON 5 EPISODE 21
A-Block (SPECIAL COMMENT): As Vance attacks him, it's finally true: Trump is now radioactive - even inside the GOP. Jayvee's "J'Accuse" post about the midterms and Iran was actually 613 words of euphemisms for "blame the midterms on Trump." He's trying to set himself up for '28. Even Ron DeSantis came back from the political grave to declare an "extinction level event" for everybody in his party except him. The MAGA circular firing squad opens fire, and I am reminded of The Maltese Falcon, with Trump as Brigid O'Shaughnessy: "Don't be silly - YOU'RE taking the fall."
Meanwhile on the human side of the equation: us humans may need a new Speaker and Majority Leader because Jeffries and Schumer are already saying 'affordability not accountability' when YOU CAN WALK AND CHEW GUM AT THE SAME TIME. Trump corruption CAUSED the affordability crisis and rooting out and prosecuting the corruption can address the reality that stealing billions and insider trading by Trump and his crime family cost ordinary Americans their money. People have to go to jail.
There's also a post-celebration drumbeat about Democrats now being in position to neuter The Electoral College from below, via state legislatures, but I think believing you can do it without a constitutional amendment is wishful thinking, as long as there is still a Trump-filled Supreme Court. Plus a heartfelt message hoping for an intervention for Haley Stevens.
B-Block: THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL (37:00) All the politics reminded me of the first convention I ever went to - Democrats, here in New York, 1980. And that reminded me of trying to explain to today's New Yorkers what a different place Fun City was just 46 years ago - like the day I saw a dead guy riding the E train with me, then worked a whole day for CNN, got back on the subway, and there it was: it was the same train, the same car, and the same dead guy.
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BULLETIN: DEMOCRATS SWEEP HOUSE, SENATE, CRUSH TRUMP - 11.4.26
BULLETIN: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN - SEASON 5 EPISODE 20 Blue Wave? Insufficient. Blue Tsunami? Not good enough. To paraphrase "Arrested Development": Trump just blue himself. Where do we START? Senator …
Show notes
BULLETIN: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN - SEASON 5 EPISODE 20
Blue Wave? Insufficient.
Blue Tsunami? Not good enough.
To paraphrase "Arrested Development": Trump just blue himself.
Where do we START? Senator El-SAYED? Senator TALARICO? Governor ACTON? Governor HINOJOSA? EX-Senator Susan Collins LEARNING HER LESSON? Senator ANDREWS? Governor BOTTOMS? Senator HAMILTON? Senator FLANAGAN? Governor CROWLEY? Governor HAALAND? Congresswoman Ilhan Omar winning 76 to 16? Male Model but not Senator Jon Husted? And it looks like Derrick Van Orden out in Wisconsin, Virginia Foxx in a virtual tie, probably headed for a recount in North Carolina and Lauren Boebert going down in Colorado?
Looks like 255 or 256 Democrats in the House, and 54, 55, or 56 Democrats in the Senate.
It’s so big that Trump doesn’t even seem likely to try to do anything.
It’s so big that Trump told the New York Times just before 11 PM Eastern, he was quote “absolutely willing to accept those results. We’ll – you know – look forward to working with them. We’ll probably work something out.” Trump blamed the landslide on the fact he wasn’t on the ballot.
And could it be enough to make Trump a lame duck within his own party? Will Republicans looking towards 2028 - in the House, the Senate, or for the Republican nomination - need to distance themselves from his now undeniable, quantifiable, baggage.
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WHAT THE WORLD WILL LOOK LIKE AFTER THE MIDTERMS? - 11.2.26
COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN - SEASON 5 EPISODE 19 A-Block (SPECIAL COMMENT): What Fresh Hell will the world look like after the midterms? Certainties: it will look like a Wednesday, and Haley Stevens' time …
Show notes
COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN - SEASON 5 EPISODE 19
A-Block (SPECIAL COMMENT): What Fresh Hell will the world look like after the midterms?
Certainties: it will look like a Wednesday, and Haley Stevens' time as an American will be over. She betrayed her state, party, constituents, and now the Republicans will betray her. All for the sake of her fiancé, Uncle Fester.
Probabilities: a Democratic House. By double digits. And Trump bombing Iran as early as Wednesday, possibly using nukes, to help Netanyahu, and to try to force a regime change that will not happen.
Possibilities: a Democratic Senate (but remember it could be a Republican Senate, possibly by more than it is now). If the former, the most immediate outcome will be Trump forcing Alito and Thomas off the Supreme Court even if it means nuking them. He would have two months before the Senate would deny him any nominee. There is also an easy-to-see scenario in which the process by which Trump resigns because a Democratic Supreme Court would invalidate both Presidential "Immunity" and his own self-pardon. It might not happen until the morning of January 20, 2029, but he'll have to do it.
Also: somehow even with the Haley Stevens heel turn Michele Tafoya is still the worst human being involved in the Senate races. Attacking Lisa Guerrero over her miscarriage? Sometimes you can read a book by its cover (especially if Michele's pages are blank). The CBS News/60 Minutes disaster worsens, and Anthropic thinks AI has a soul - and can make bioweapons.
B-Block 37:00 (PATRICK STEWART): I got to meet the late legend, and that fact gives me the chance to not only recount the pleasure of the encounter, but how we talked mostly about...Cable News. I got to tell him that a show you probably don't know him for called "Blunt Talk" - about an impeccable cable news/political anchor who off the air was a basket case, was perfect, and on the money, and reminded me of...everybody I ever worked with, including one of them we called "Lawrence Of Egomania." How he loved THAT.
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HOUSE DEMOCRATS RELEASE NEW TRUMP-EPSTEIN RAPE FILES - 10.29.26
COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN - SEASON 5 EPISODE 18 A-Block (SPECIAL COMMENT): "...the actual evidence we have seen...indicates that Trump abused, assaulted, and even raped numerous women alongside, and in …
Show notes
COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN - SEASON 5 EPISODE 18
A-Block (SPECIAL COMMENT): "...the actual evidence we have seen...indicates that Trump abused, assaulted, and even raped numerous women alongside, and in coordination with, the most infamous sex trafficker in history."
The House Judiciary Democrats call for a Special Counsel to investigate Trump-Epstein. The appalling new details in their Staff Report on Trump-Epstein, and the equally appalling reasons the media won't let you see it: The New York Times doesn't mention it but at last look it has SIX pieces up about Obama and The Cheesecake Factory trivia.
The evidence, they write, "shows that Trump lied about kicking Epstein out of his Mar-a-Lago club and strongly suggests that Epstein introduced Trump to his wife Melania."
But tell me more about phony umbrage from a phony populist with phony hair who then boasts that his own supporters can't afford to eat at his clown college Temu Diner.
TRUMP SEEMS POISED TO NOT PULL OUT ALL THE MID-TERM STOPS: since HE is not at personal risk, he'll push frivolous suits (California? Minnesota? Where that idiot ex-colleague of mine Michele Tafoya is down by FOURTEEN) and perhaps seize ballots but not try another January 6. Once again, his candidates are the Democrats' greatest assets: after his ad starring Amy Acton's psychotic birth mother, Ramaswamy now trails by four and is dragging the GOP Senator down with him, and El-Sayed has pulled up by six in Michigan.
MEDIA: Bill Maher boasts about how much he and Trump like each other, while Trump is composing a 1300-word screed making him somehow smaller even than he is in real life, and just what you asked for: Chuck Todd and Chris Cillizza joining forces to bring you the latest in politics (if it's 1998).
B-Block (36:00) Things I Promised Not To Tell: What happens when you have the football draft scoop of all scoops? That the possible first draft pick has already signed in Canada? And as you confront him, the camera man forgets to hit "record"?
C-Block (1:00:00) Good Night and Good Luck!
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TRUMP LAUNCHES HIS PLOT TO STEAL THE MID-TERMS - 10.26.26
COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN - SEASON 5 EPISODE 17 A-Block (SPECIAL COMMENT): Deeply delusional, convinced his approval is "really" at 60% but The New York Times stole it from him, believing he can stave off …
Show notes
COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN - SEASON 5 EPISODE 17
A-Block (SPECIAL COMMENT): Deeply delusional, convinced his approval is "really" at 60% but The New York Times stole it from him, believing he can stave off a Democratic house and a senate with enough Dems and terrified Republicans to convict and remove him, Trump launches his Weaponized Department of Justice and personal justice slut Todd Blanche against Alaska Senate ballot because he doesn't know what the word "incumbent" on the ballot means. Trump threatens voters there - and election officials in California if they don't corrupt the voter rolls for him.
BUT THERE ARE THOSE HEROES UNDERCUTTING TRUMP namely: the Republican candidates. Ramaswamy's subhuman Amy Acton ad blows up on him; Ohio businesses reportedly canceling events on him because they can't afford the blowback after being seen hosting him, and Cook Politics changes the Governor's race from Toss-Up to Lean Democrat. There are equivalent disasters in Michigan, Iowa, Texas.
TRUMP HIMSELF is always the Democrats' best campaign tool: Trump claims to gullible columnist Byron York that his approval rate is "really 60%" and admitting he "doesn't give a damn" if you know he's overjoyed that oil companies are making "a freaking fortune" off your suffering. Oh and by the way the Netanyahu says the Iran war escalates to regime change Wednesday, and others confirm it may last another year.
B-Block (33:00) SPORTSBALLCENTER TONIGHT: I'd like to apologize for the World Series; the NBA can't apologize enough for Knicks' owner Jim Dolan; and there is nobody more unconsciously funny in American politics than America's 85th Place Sweetheart, ex-swimmer Riley Gaines. She's done it again - twice.
C-Block (42:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: The day I didn't have coffee with Uma Thurman.
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COULDN'T TRUMP'S DOCTORS INSTITUTIONALIZE HIM? - 10.22.26
COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN - SEASON 5 EPISODE 16 A-Block (SPECIAL COMMENT): Trump's doctors are not asking him to tell the difference between a snake and a giraffe because he CAN tell the difference between …
Show notes
COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN - SEASON 5 EPISODE 16
A-Block (SPECIAL COMMENT): Trump's doctors are not asking him to tell the difference between a snake and a giraffe because he CAN tell the difference between a snake and a giraffe! They're asking him because in private he must be showing continual signs that HE CAN'T TELL THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A SNAKE AND A GIRAFFE!
We've lost the truth behind Trump's boast about his "perfect scores" on "IQ tests" and all those doctors who stick by him even if you in the crowd are dying. This is not like taking his BP every day. The tests have to be to confirm he's not nuts - not TODAY anyway.
Since it's a given the countless psych doctors Trump boasts about are there because metaphorically speaking Trump isn't, can't some of them put him away? Institutionalize him? Or failing that, couldn't one of them go public? On behalf of mankind? Risk everything (and by the way, sure you'd stop being a Trump doctor. Instead you'd become Psychology Jesus and an instant World Hero forever and make billions from a grateful planet).
ALSO: De-Trumpification accelerates, especially after Whorenvoy Steve Witkoff praises Putin to his face as a "humanitarian." And Vivek Ramaswamy evidently thinks George Washington is in hell, because he's talking about what he'll have to say to George when he meets him in "the afterlife."B-Block (THE BIG FINISH) (24:00) The latest G. Elliott Morris polling indicates a 10-point Democratic lead for the average house seat and a Senate range that goes as high as 56 Democratic seats. The fallout to the idiotic tweet by soon-to-be-ex-CBS-News-Legal-Correspondent Jan Crawford has opened a can of worms there, and inside was a worm named Bari Weiss. And can you imagine a dinner in which Kid Rock is the intellectual star? You can if the other three guys were Bill Maher, Stephen A. Smith, and Trump.
C-Block (THE GENIUS OF JAMES THURBER) His classic centerpiece to his book "My Life And Hard Times" - "The Night The Bed Fell."
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TRUMP PROVES IT AGAIN: HE IS OWNED BY RUSSIA - 10.19.26
COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN - SEASON 5 EPISODE 15 A-Block (SPECIAL COMMENT) Trump has proved it again and Trump has proved it anew. He is owned by Russia. Only, this time, even rabid Conservatives are …
Show notes
COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN - SEASON 5 EPISODE 15
A-Block (SPECIAL COMMENT) Trump has proved it again and Trump has proved it anew.
He is owned by Russia.
Only, this time, even rabid Conservatives are realizing it's true.
The National Review is out with a new article insisting "Congress Must Investigate Trump's Aid and Comfort to Putin." That, again, is our Constitution's terminology for treason. And a rabid right winger, Dan McLaughlin, who still somehow thinks Trump's previous conspiracies with Putin were simply rhetorical, now says "this time The Wolf comes as a Wolf."
The tipping point was Trump's gutting of the sanctions against oil and diesel sales by Russia. And the right is also reacting to Trump's attempt to get the nearly $300 billion in Russian assets in Europe, either to keep himself or return to Putin.
There is no telling what's next after Trump dug still further yesterday by not merely endorsing Netanyahu (who cares) but trying to blackmail Israel. "If Israel has the wrong leader, which would be anyone other than Bibi, America will have to do this work ourselves, and I am not inclined to do so." He's threatening to lessen or pull U.S. support for Israel. Remember Trump, in the classic mindlessness of the antisemite that he is, believes American Jews are more or equally loyal to Israel. If so, did he not just destroy Republican chances with them? Should they not rise up and neuter him and his movement?
B-BLOCK (25:00) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD. So many nominees I'm handing out six medals! Stephen Miller makes an orientation joke about Talarico while Trump is checking out men's backsides. A guy fired by Fox thinks Nixon was innocent. Elon Musk turns out to be the sole owner and proprietor of Ken Paxton. Stephen A. Smith solves the world's problems by saying don't worry, he has "pressed" Trump on several issues over dinner. CBS must fire legal correspondent Jan Crawford after she thanks a bigoted right-winger who tried to troll Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan over the weekend, and congratulates him on getting him to "self-own." Who in the hell is she to be taking a political advocacy position? Even at CBS? And JD Vance gets called the b-word by a liberal and the floodgates have opened because guess what? He is.
C-BLOCK (37:00) SPORTSBALLCENTER. My modest proposal: The Baseball World Series will feature two of three cities who have combined to play 227 seasons in which there's been a World Series or equivalent. To show for it they have three World Series wins, and the 1895 Temple Cup. This is not going to be a big TV draw. So why not take back what baseball once had in the glory days of 40,000,000 viewers per game? Grab a sports-exclusive window. Play games during weekdays. I mean, how could it hurt?
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BULLETIN: TRUMP FIRES PRESS SECRETARY AT HALF A SCARAMUCCI - 10.16.26
COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN - SEASON 5 EPISODE 14 Bulletin - Trump confirms press secretary Katie Zacharia (in Monday, out before close of business Friday) is out as Press Secretary. "I told her I think you …
Show notes
COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN - SEASON 5 EPISODE 14
Bulletin - Trump confirms press secretary Katie Zacharia (in Monday, out before close of business Friday) is out as Press Secretary.
"I told her I think you are better off being happy. I'm not sure you can ever be happy in this job." Trump said she may stay in the administration in "a more pleasant form" and a White House source says she is "transitioning out" of the role she occupied for about 100 hours.
Though she clearly lied about whether she was a lawyer, an attorney, or the perfectly respectable position she tried to hide - that she had a law degree but never was admitted to the bar - that was not the cause here. Lying is a plus in this administration.
She was fired because the revelations surprised Trump and at his stage of mental deterioration he can't handle any more surprises.
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TRUMP IS INSANE: NOW HE'S POSTING SNUFF FILMS - 10.15.26
COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN - SEASON 5 EPISODE 13 A-Block (SPECIAL COMMENT): The President is insane. I know you know this – we all know this. But – days after a disturbed man climbed into a tiger enclosure …
Show notes
COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN - SEASON 5 EPISODE 13
A-Block (SPECIAL COMMENT): The President is insane.
I know you know this – we all know this.
But – days after a disturbed man climbed into a tiger enclosure in England and was mauled to death, Trump posted a video of another man in a lion enclosure. He captioned it “Don’t ever mess with nature.” Almost immediately afterwards he posted ANOTHER video of a series of similar incidents, at least half a dozen lions killing people. One tiger. No caption this time. Just grisly, horrifying, death. Five hours later, as if to mock the disturbed man who died in the tiger enclosure – he posted an AII video of himself tackling a tiger, then playing with it – as if to prove HE wouldn’t meet the same end as the disturbed man in England did.
I first wrote and commented on Trump's genuine mental instability a decade ago in "Could Trump Pass A Sanity Test?" for Vanity Fair. He's not getting better. He's posting snuff films. The President is insane. And every once in awhile it is absolutely necessary to underscore this truth – to ourselves, for the record, for the future – if there is one.
And it shows up in his daily decisions, like appointing a Press Secretary who won't take questions and can't read aloud (although why are kind of looking at this backwards. She's humiliating him - why is this a BAD THING?). Throttling internet and warning systems for Ukraine because he told them they'd agreed to an "energy cease fire" - only they hadn't.
There's also a series of smaller stories including how we should almost feel bad for Kim Guilfoyle, but not for Megyn Kelly. And how we definitely should try to figure out where in the cabinet a Democratic County Council candidate in Indiana best fits in, because she is out of Effs and I'd take her as Senate Leader instead of Schumer.
B-1 (35:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: I've never told this story before, it's 40 years ago, but way back then a respected producer in Hollywood believed I was the perfect host for a show he was developing called... YOUR FACE OR MINE. I'm afraid you're going to have to listen to find out why the heck he thought this was a winning title.
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ONE THIRD OF TRUMP '24 VOTERS ABANDON HIM AS MIDTERMS LOOM -10.12.26
COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN - SEASON 5 EPISODE 12 A-Block (SPECIAL COMMENT): 31% of those who voted for Trump just 707 days ago now DISAPPROVE of his presidency. His approval rating among those who voted for …
Show notes
COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN - SEASON 5 EPISODE 12
A-Block (SPECIAL COMMENT): 31% of those who voted for Trump just 707 days ago now DISAPPROVE of his presidency.
His approval rating among those who voted for him was 95% on January 20, 2025. It is now just 67%.
There is no other word for this: it is a collapse within his base. Even if they do not go to the polls to punish him, and even if a large percentage of those in the new Pew/USA Today poll saying they do not approve actually blame somebody else for his failure, it portends a midterm calamity for MAGA and the GOP so large that it could trigger the avalanche in which the Democrats not only get both houses, but are left with enough terrified Republican Senators up for re-election in '28 that they'll abandon Trump in January '27.
This overlooked outcome overshadowed a busy week of lying and traitoring and repeating himself. Trump's newest treason? He is buying oil from Putin that he himself sanctioned only 25 days ago. His latest repeated lie? He announced an "energy ceasefire between Ukraine and Russia" yesterday (American media had already forgotten he already announced an "energy ceasefire" just one month ago). And oh by the way he's also trying to start a race war in Minnesota and New York and America.
And it turns out he literally can't find America on a map - or a globe.
B-Block (SPORTSBALLCENTER TONIGHT): You think the spectacle of Mike Tyson - whose life Donald Trump ruined nearly 40 years ago - was shocking to YOU? Through marriage and adoption Mike is my cousin. Also Bob Costas has additional details on the Don Larsen Perfect Game Batters' Eye controversy, and the baseball "final four" belies the owners' argument for a salary cap, and the White Sox choke requires the invocation again of one of the greatest things the great writer Jean Shepherd ever wrote: The White Sox and the Military Suicide Mission.
C-Block (THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL): We all have something we are eternally ashamed of. For some of us, we knew before it happened that it would be eternally shameful. I'm in that group: I once worked for Rupert Murdoch. What can I tell you? It helped set me up for life financially AND it got me out of the nightmare of covering the Republicans hunting Monica Lewinsky and Bill Clinton. The whole gory story, in detail.
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TRUMP’S “LET THEM TAKE OUT L.A.” IS TREASON. IMPEACH HIM FOR IT - 10.8.26
COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN – SEASON 5 EPISODE 11 A-Block (SPECIAL COMMENT): This is not complicated. Trump: ”They could take out a city. Let them take out Los Angeles. Let them take out San Diego.” U.S …
Show notes
COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN – SEASON 5 EPISODE 11
A-Block (SPECIAL COMMENT): This is not complicated.
Trump: ”They could take out a city. Let them take out Los Angeles. Let them take out San Diego.”
U.S. Constitution: “Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.”
It’s impeachable aid and comfort to an enemy. Literally. Definitionally. PER THE CONSTITUTION. Add it to the $14 Billion he freed up by letting Iraq and its investors regain access to their oil money in March - $14 Billion they could use to fund a “take out” of L.A. or San Diego or – moron – the all-MAGA corridor between the two cities.
So impeach him next January. The chances that there will be 60 Senators willing to convict continue to increase, between Democratic chances, terrified GOP Senators up for re-election in 2028, and accelerating De-Trumpification. Greg Abbott blew him off in San Antonio yesterday. Mike Rogers cut an anti-tariff ad in Michigan. Sununu. Rupert Murdoch! Maybe even David Ellison!
-And an all-time great meme is born. Susan Collins continues to self-destruct in Maine, giving birth in the middle of a debate to ‘Let Them Eat Road Salt.’
-Plus why Trump is actually right about Murdoch throwing him under the bus, and the indicator that new CNN/CBS owner David Ellison is backing into the hedges. The phenomenal story of Kash Patel appearing to put fugitives on the FBI’s Most Wanted List just as the FBI is about to arrest them – they’ve even corrupted THAT.
B-Block (39:00) SPORTSBALL CENTER TONIGHT: The Secret of Don Larsen’s World Series Perfect Game is Revealed!
70 years ago today a mediocre pitcher who had led the league in losses two years earlier and would be traded nine times in his career, threw the only perfect game in the history of the World Series (indeed any post-season game). Don Larsen of the Yankees: 27 Dodgers up, 27 inexplicable Dodgers down.
Well it WAS inexplicable. A revelation on a long-lost kinescope of the game telecast from 1956, and two sets of previously unknown color photographs, explains the whole thing. I own the photos and I’ll share them with you.
In short: the Dodger batters never saw the ball coming out of Larsen’s hand! Can't see ball, can't hit ball!
C-Block (55:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Since we’re doing baseball in the middle of the baseball playoffs – why not? Let me tell you the unexpectedly hilarious story of the day in 2000 my Mom, sitting in our seats at Yankee Stadium, got hit in the face with a wild throw by the second baseman, Chuck Knoblauch. She was the star of the New York tabloids for a week, she never had more fun in her life, and to ratchet it up a notch – I was ON THE AIR anchoring the Game-of-the-Week broadcast on Fox and got to narrate highlights of my own Mom becoming the most famous fan in America.
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TRUMP'S NEW BRIBE LIE: "THE CHECK IS IN THE MAIL!" - 10.5.26
COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN - SEASON 5 EPISODE 10 A-Block (SPECIAL COMMENT): Even Trump sees the wave of Blue water forming on the horizon, now less than a month out. It's so bad he's resorted to one of the …
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COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN - SEASON 5 EPISODE 10
A-Block (SPECIAL COMMENT): Even Trump sees the wave of Blue water forming on the horizon, now less than a month out. It's so bad he's resorted to one of the three classic cliched lies: "The check is in the mail!" He has actually said it, virtually word-for-word, in Ohio, talking about his latest attempt to buy votes. Not $5,000 apiece this time. Not even a $100 advance he mentioned. This is $500 to Ohioans. It's desperate, stupid, and invites Natalie Harp jokes that even I just won't make lol.
But he has reason to panic. G. Elliott Morris at Strength In Numbers now puts a Democratic House at 99% and a Democratic 52-48 Senate at 73% and Republican bastions are crumbling. They've abandoned the Senate race in South Carolina. Two ex-Republican governors of Iowa have endorsed the Democrat. Ken Paxton is losing so badly in Texas he trashed Trump's Nuremberg Rally off the record, and now he's had to beg the wife who is divorcing him on BIBLICAL GROUNDS to do a TV ad endorsing the statewide ticket even though she refused to say his name. Texas Toast, indeed.
(SPECIAL COMMENT 2): If you are shocked and shamed and furious at the plight of Jane Doe at Cornell, imagine how we alums feel. Imagine how we alums who have wanted to see the fraternities banned at Cornell...since 1975. They still bully and influence not just the lives of anyone they want to manipulate, but the University itself. And they encourage and protect criminal behavior. Beyond what must be done to reform Cornell and every other university where sexual violence is protected, the frats have to be banned. Today.
B-Block (40:00) SPECIAL COMMENT 3: If you flinched when you saw Trump's Leni Riefenstahl commercial run on MS NOW - at Taxpayer Expense - imagine my shock when it turned out the Quisling at the former MSNBC who rationalized it to his enraged colleagues was the former line producer of Countdown, a skilled show timer with absolutely no editorial sense who used to regularly leave the studio to go sing in a choir just before showtime - and insist he not be docked any time off. His name is Greg Kordick and of COURSE it's him who sold out the network and its viewers.
B-Block (1:04:00) SPORTSBALL CENTER TONIGHT: Aaron Judge has a calf injury. Giancarlo Stanton has a calf injury. Francisco Lindor had a calf injury. Juan Soto had a calf injury. And a second calf injury. Funny thing - what did we used to presume when there was a seeming epidemic of soft tissue injuries in joints?
C-Block (1:08:00) MONDAYS WITH THURBER: We celebrate the memorial service for his daughter Rosemary, and the re-publication of "Thurber's Dogs", with the first reading of this new series: the first one I ever read aloud, the unparalleled "A Box To Hide In."
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TRUMP WROTE ME A FAN LETTER - 9.28.26
COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN - SEASON 5 EPISODE 9 A-Block (SPECIAL COMMENT): You heard me. Trump wrote me a fan letter - but he hates me. Yet here's something I never write: but this is not about me! We'll …
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COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN - SEASON 5 EPISODE 9
A-Block (SPECIAL COMMENT): You heard me. Trump wrote me a fan letter - but he hates me.
Yet here's something I never write: but this is not about me! We'll get to it later. It's important because it is a metaphor for what's happening to the Republican Party as the midterms speed towards us: all of their candidates are vulnerable because their base is sick of the war and sick of Trump and especially sick of a guy who on the same day launches a tax-payer tirade concluding "America will never become a Communist country!" and then hours later is holding a State Dinner for the number-one ranked communist in the world. Even for a man who has never held the same thought in his head for two days in a row, it's bad.
The De-Trumpification is picking up speed. ANOTHER Republican Trump Darling has scrubbed Trump from his site. The small-c conservative Cook Report has moved fifteen House races towards Democrats. An Iowa religious broadcaster says all the House candidates there have been told they are vulnerable, even if Trump won their district by 15 points.
It. Is. Happening.
B-Block (33:00) OK, the story of the fan letter from Trump and my other encounters with him, that date back to December 1983 (and which was followed by me walking in silence and then blurting to my camera crew the still-unanswered question 'WHAT THE EFF WAS WRONG WITH THAT GUY?"
C-Block (58:00) WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Succession? The fourth best TV show of the century? I worked for the Murdochs. "Succession" is laugh out loud bad. Then there's the National Hockey League trying to manipulate history, and why the newest craze of paying half a million or two million or three million for an active athlete's trading card is madness. It's simple: what if he gets hurt, and you just paid $500,020 for his card, as some fool just did for a card of football's Jaxson Dart.
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BREAKING: REPUBLICANS THROW TRUMP OVERBOARD - 9.24.26
COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN - SEASON 5 EPISODE 8 A-Block (SPECIAL COMMENT): BREAKING: Republicans finally throw Trump overboard - or maybe it's "Republicans finally throw Trump under the campaign bus." …
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COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN - SEASON 5 EPISODE 8
A-Block (SPECIAL COMMENT): BREAKING: Republicans finally throw Trump overboard - or maybe it's "Republicans finally throw Trump under the campaign bus."
-Trump toady Byron Donalds, running for Governor of Florida and only ahead in the polls by 1/10 of a percentage point, scrubs Trump from his website.
- Foundering GOP Senate candidates in Iowa and Michigan criticize Trump's war in Iran and resultant high prices.
- Trump's approval among Pure Independents drops from +15 to -71 since Election Day (an 86 point swing against Trump!; 99 point swing on the economy)
-The percentage of Trump voters who supported him - not the GOP - goes from +23 on Inauguration Week to -22.
-And the Tump staff response? They want to rename Ford's Theatre after Trump! 'Ford's Theatre - because the one thing you really want as the midterms loom is some commercial that includes the tag lines 'The Lincoln Assassination - brought to you by Donald Trump!'
The De-Trumpification Has Begun!
PLUS the polls are crashing around him and Trump can't decide if the midterms are about him or aren't about him, and I have to take some of your time to protest this claim that a baseball player who may lead the American League in Runs Batted In this year after leading the National League four years ago, will be the first to ever do it. He isn't. There is now a desperate bid to make everything that happens, something that has never happened before. 'The first time since 1904' is a plenty big enough accomplishment without hyperbole.
B-Block (40:00) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Stephen A. Smith is back and fully up to date on politics (as long as that date is July 15 2024). Jared Golden, phony Democratic congressman from Maine, endorses a Republican in New York because they worked together prioritizing lobstermen over democracy. And Friedrich Merz, a German chancellor having trouble fending off a bunch of fascists bent on ethnic cleansing. Get some help, Ethel Mertz.
C-Block (52:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: I cherish the memory of a friend no longer with us and the extraordinary person she was. In fact, she should've been president - at minimum, she should've been the VP candidate on the Democratic ticket, not her husband. Elizabeth Edwards - my friend.
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SHOCKER: WHY CNN + MS SHOULDN'T FIGHT TRUMP WHITE HOUSE BAN - 9.21.26
COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN - SEASON 5 EPISODE 7 A-Block (SPECIAL COMMENT): I confess - I fell for it. Trump banned CNN and MS Now from the White House and I immediately thought: the rest of the media …
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COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN - SEASON 5 EPISODE 7
A-Block (SPECIAL COMMENT): I confess - I fell for it.
Trump banned CNN and MS Now from the White House and I immediately thought: the rest of the media finally, FINALLY, has to walk out and not give this bastard any further coverage.
No - I was wrong.
Then I thought: he ADMITS “we took the freedom of speech away.” And I thought: it IS the most blatant attack on the 1st Amendment in the history of our country And it should – it WILL – it MUST inspire even this nation’s somnambulant media to rise up as one and for once use its power to fight back – to defend not their jobs, but their country.
No. I was wrong.
On second thought, I realized this was a set-up. Trump has picked fights with Iran, with Canada, the EU, over oil, over tariffs, over hockey, over arches, over the Kennedy Center - and he's lost them all. He needs a fight against a weak opponent who will fold up when the first punch lands. It's his only chance to salvage the midterms.
Weak opponent? Who will fold up? When the first punch lands? That's our White House press corps! I'm asking them to do what comes naturally to them - do nothing. Nothing until after Trump gets fricasseed in the midterms. Don't give him the fight he needs. Then, humiliate him.
And at this rate he is going to get fricasseed. 97% chance the Democrats take the house, 65% the Democrats take the Senate, Democrats winning all the key Senate races (the one in North Carolina by FIFTEEN points). Let's not shoot off our big bazoos and snatch defeat from the jaws of Trump's defeat.
Also: he's threatening Iran again, the Greenland deal is just a climbdown, and if the 25-story D.C. Arch (a life-sized reproduction of Trump's ego) weren't already bad enough, he's added a platform for snipers and a staging ground for drones. Because that's what you need next to a major airport.
B-Block (38:00) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: King Charles, some rando on Threads who thinks the Democrats are admitting "illegal ALLENS" and Puck media guy Dylan Byers, not only carrying water for the disaster that is Bari Weiss, but now with new reported financial conflicts of interest whenever he covers CBS (The Conservative Brainwashing System).
C-Block (51:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: MS NOW is in the news for being too political and as the founder of the only iteration of it or MSNBC that succeeded, I find this infuriating - and ironic. During my first stint there in 1997-98 we were so non-political and so ultra-tabloid that I walked in one day and the rundown said our lead story was an advance look at the publication of "The Farmers' Almanac" and our guest was its publisher. Live. Lead. FARMERS. ALMANAC.
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IT'S NOT JUST "A.I. WILL KILL US ALL"...IT'S "TRUMP'S A.I. WILL KILL US ALL" - 9.17.26
COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN - SEASON 5 EPISODE 6 A Block (SPECIAL COMMENT): We're actually under-reacting to the threat from A.I. because it is not just 'A.I. Will Kill Us All' - it is 'TRUMP'S A.I. Will …
Show notes
COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN - SEASON 5 EPISODE 6
A Block (SPECIAL COMMENT): We're actually under-reacting to the threat from A.I. because it is not just 'A.I. Will Kill Us All' - it is 'TRUMP'S A.I. Will Kill Us All.'
Trump is up to his each of his 27 chins in his own investments in A-I; for all we know he's also thinking A-I might fix the midterms for him; humanity is at risk because Trump and his idiot sons and his cabinet members and his foreign fixers and everybody in the Epstein Files and the whole kaleidoscope of corruption is thinking about one thing only - not how to protect mankind but how to protect their money.
Humanity is at risk, because Artificial intelligence is meeting Trump's total LACK of intelligence
Also: when Trump's SkyNet gains sentience it will get U.S. weapons in space to use against us. And remember the Epstein Files? Trump Junior's new wife mainlines back not just to Putin's flunkies but to one of Epstein's bankers: her own father. Speaking of Putin's flunkies: Putin is why the National Hockey League must ban its all time leading goal scorer. And the 60 Minutes ratings are in – they’re down 21% so it’ll now be called 47 MINUTES.Well done CBS – The Conservative Brainwashing System.
B-Block (40:00) THE RETURN OF THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: The latest in the endless parade of football quarterbacks and TV pitchmen, Arch Manning, recommends and busts out laughing at an AI video of his college coach knocking a woman reporter to the ground. Another Michigan Republican candidate thinks God is sending him messages for Dan Bongino. Lee Greenwood's latest business deal with Trump: his wife is gonna be an Ambassaduh. And Kash Patel leading the FBI: the Federal Bestiality Investigators?
C-Block (58:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: The terrible truth about TV newscasters and the real draw of the profession for many of them - the free hair care. The whole thing clarified itself to me when I discovered that the gifted craftsman who cut my hair when I was in radio in 1980 is still working and is still a gifted craftsman.
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OH BTW - WE'RE AT WAR WITH CHINA - 9.14.26
COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN - SEASON 5, EPISODE 5 A-Block (SPECIAL COMMENT) - Hey, yeah, sorry, we forgot to mench...before U.S. servicemen were killed at a base in Jordan, Iran got satellite images of the …
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COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN - SEASON 5, EPISODE 5
A-Block (SPECIAL COMMENT) - Hey, yeah, sorry, we forgot to mench...before U.S. servicemen were killed at a base in Jordan, Iran got satellite images of the facility from "Chinese entities" according to The Wall Street Journal. Nobody's saying it's the GOVERNMENT so end of story, especially if you have the IQ of a Trump. Use your brain: Iran didn't buy these on eBay - there's only one kind of Chinese "Entity" - a Chinese GOVERNMENT Entity.
Ten days before he's supposed to entertain Chinese Dictator Xi at the White House, Trump is on the losing end of a war with Iran (assists: China, Russia) and naturally Xi is threatening to cancel it because we're selling Taiwan nation-saving weapons. China knows Trump is useless, weak, imbecilic.
As, obviously, does Putin, who is now threatening Kiev-to-Warsaw trains as they near the Polish border and Trump is blaming Zelensky because Diesel prices because Trump cannot understand people, only money.
Thank god the president of Ireland, Catherine Connolly, made Trump sit at the kids' table yesterday. Literally.
All this while A.I. might destroy all of humanity. All of humanity? So Trump is safe?
B-Block (30:00) (MORE SPECIAL COMMENT) - The good news is, MAGA is slipping from a close second to extinction levels in all polling, polling analysis, and on the campaign trail. Jon Ossoff called Trump a draft-dodger but reserved worse remarks for his opponent, Mike Collins. Turns out Jon Karl and vandals didn't destroy the Lincoln Reflecting Pool remodeling - the contractor did, and confessed. And 25 years later and Ari Fleischer is still lying for George W. Bush, and as usual, managing to only make him look worse.
C-Block (50:00) (THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL) - I put no weight in dreams as prophesy. Maybe as messages to yourself. But I don't mind telling you I was reminded of the breadth of the failure of cable and broadcast news in this time of institutional collapse, when my late friend Tim Russert showed up in a dream.
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BULLETIN: TRUMP OFFERS EVERY ADULT $5,000 BRIBE IF GOP WINS MIDTERMS - 9.10.26
COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN - BULLETIN, SEPTEMBER 10 2026 An hour into his typical delusional speech at the Republican "Midterm Convention" in Texas last night Trump actually said something different: he …
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COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN - BULLETIN, SEPTEMBER 10 2026
An hour into his typical delusional speech at the Republican "Midterm Convention" in Texas last night Trump actually said something different: he offered each adult American $5,000 in a "tariff dividend" if the Republicans maintain control of the House and Senate in the midterms.
Without a lot of people being excluded from the bribe that would cost taxpayers $1 Trillion.
Bribing voters is completely illegal under a federal law passed in 1948 - although it's debatable whether or not it applies here.
It's also debatable about whether or not Trump would pay off on his promised palm greasing. He didn't deliver the "little tariff rebate" of "at least $2,000 each" last December, nor the "Doge Dividend" of last February.
Still, it indicates the desperation of Trump, underwater in all swing states with his candidates trailing Democrats in all key Senate races and the GOP privately conceded Congress.
And it could be a crime to offer it. Or - please note - to receive it.
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NEWEST EVIDENCE TRUMP IS NOT LOYAL TO THE UNITED STATES - 9.10.26
COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN - SEASON 5 EPISODE 3 A-Block (SPECIAL COMMENT) Am I the only one who noticed this? Is the news media so compliant, so dead, not to recognize Trump newly bending the knee not to …
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COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN - SEASON 5 EPISODE 3
A-Block (SPECIAL COMMENT) Am I the only one who noticed this? Is the news media so compliant, so dead, not to recognize Trump newly bending the knee not to America but to Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin? The story was so easily told just by the sequence and yet it gave our newsmen and our supposed liberal commentators the proverbial haircut. I'll walk you through it.
THERE IS REASON TO HOPE we will be able to rein the monster in. Newest polling from Michigan: el-Sayed is up by three, Trump's tariffs are underwater 60-40 with non-college voters and he's only got 41% support among them. The Democrat could grow several points as the Trump haters come round to him.
AND WHAT IS ANTISEMITISM? Criticizing Israel? No. Criticizing Trump? Certainly not. How about coming out and saying that Jewish people are only Jewish if they look Jewish to you? And if they don't and still claim to be Jewish, you want to see a map of their DNA. Because no past dictator ever tried that formula did they, Elon Musk?
B-Block 40:00 (SPECIAL COMMENT: 9/11) I won't inundate you about 9/11 but one of Zohran Mamdani's critics thinks Osama bin Laden is still alive, and another one is Rudy Giuliani, of all the former mayors of New York the one whose worldview comes closest to al-Qaeda's. Anybody remember when after 9/11 Rudy tried to seize power as an unelected quasi-dictator of New York? Plus some of my reporting from that time 25 years ago.
C-Block 1:10:00 (SPORTSBALL CENTER TONIGHT) Can collective amnesia in baseball be cured by Performance Enhancing Drugs? A theoretical question for you fans of the diamond doings. Plus my unusual appearance in the new biography of Renee Richards, and an unexpected comp from Peter Gammons: me and...Hunter S. Thompson?
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BULLETIN: MURDOCH FIRES MARIA BARTIROMO FOR TATTLING TO TRUMP - 9.3.26
BULLETIN: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN SEPTEMBER 3 2026 Trump's favorite Goebbels impersonator Maria Bartiromo has been fired by Fox - I believe directly by Rupert Murdoch - for telling Trump that Fox News …
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BULLETIN: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN SEPTEMBER 3 2026
Trump's favorite Goebbels impersonator Maria Bartiromo has been fired by Fox - I believe directly by Rupert Murdoch - for telling Trump that Fox News had ordered her and others to not give credence to Trump's July speech in which he promulgated the hallucination that China had stolen the 2020 election which he lost, from him.
That she was fired was evident from the timing: it is the proverbial "Take Out The Trash" Day (the Thursday before the four-day Labor Day weekend); she was given no chance to say goodbye; she is not leaving for another job. Oliver Darcy of Status added the detail of Bartiromo ratting Murdoch out to Trump; he reports she even forwarded the text message from her Fox bosses telling staff not to buy into Trump's latest delusion, to the White House.
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TRUMP BECOMES THE FIRST U.S. PRESIDENT TO LOSE A WAR! - 8.6.26
SEASON 5 EPISODE 1: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (2:30) SPECIAL COMMENT: Hey look, we're back. A special edition to test new equipment (both internal and mechanical), and to talk about the amazing …
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SEASON 5 EPISODE 1: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (2:30) SPECIAL COMMENT: Hey look, we're back. A special edition to test new equipment (both internal and mechanical), and to talk about the amazing reality that Trump has lost his war in Iran, and the only result he got has just been made permanent as Iran made a deal not with him, but with Oman, to institutionalize the Strait of Hormuz tolls. He is literally the first U.S. President to lose a war. So much winning! Plus the latest media fails (New York Times platforms that idiot David Ellison, who has been silenced by the liberal media that is owned by conservatives; more Maggie Haberman), new Michigan senatorial candidate Abdul El-Sayed comes out throwing figurative punches at MAGA, and the bigger picture on the through lines back of Trump's Iran Forever War: burying Epstein, monetizing war for the Trump Mafia, and trying to make you afraid that gas will cost an extra buck rather than afraid your descendants will be smothered by gas's destruction of the atmosphere.
B-Block (50:00) SPORTSBALLCENTER TONIGHT: Did you notice baseball's celebration of its "Trade Deadline" this week? This is a relatively new phenomenon. Through most of its history baseball has tried to legislate AGAINST powerful well-heeled teams from monopolizing all the talent. In fact there was once a rule against making a trade with a defending champion! And, maybe you heard I'm selling one of my rare Honus Wagner baseball cards. The idea that the card was damaged (the background to the player's portrait was cut away, probably in 1909) and I had it restored by a master conservator, has kind of gotten warped in the hype about the auction. The point is: restoration - illicit, secret, designed to mislead and deceive - has been around for three decades and I had this already-altered card re-altered was and is an attempt to make restoration above board.
C-Block (1:23:14) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Well my old pal Laura Ingraham was back in the news and I'm afraid Dr. Fauci was subjected to a real-time version of one of my recurring nightmares: I'm somewhere public, trying to deal with a crisis, and I can tell somebody is sitting behind me gesticulating and contorting their visage - and it's LAURA. Or you can title this "The many faces of Laura Ingraham."
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THINK BIG, BE BIG, DEMOCRATS! THIS IS NOT THE FINAL COUNTDOWN - 5.11.26
SEASON 4 EPISODE 84: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (3:00) SPECIAL COMMENT: Back from a week off just in time to put the podcast on health hiatus...details within today's supersized edition. Plus …
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SEASON 4 EPISODE 84: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (3:00) SPECIAL COMMENT: Back from a week off just in time to put the podcast on health hiatus...details within today's supersized edition. Plus, befitting the time off, some meta pictures on how Democrats should plan for what they want this country to look like on its 300th anniversary, if it lasts that long. Will we have jailed Trump and gotten back the money he took? Undone his damage? Eliminated the anachronistic idea that Wyoming should have as many senators as California? Let the Supreme Court continue to lie, cheat and steal the democracy from under us? As John Candy said in "Splash": Think big, be big, my friend.
MORE IMMEDIATELY: Whaddya mean the Governor of Virginia hasn't been BRIEFED on the way to overturn her state's Supreme Court's usurpation of redistricting? Why the hell not Hakeem Jeffries? Anybody notice Trump is simply rotating the same three lies about Iran? Why are only independent journalists like Garrett Graff still covering the WHCD non-shooting when the New York Times is doing 31 paragraphs on the future of the dinner like anybody gave a crap?
AND MOST IMPORTANTLY: stop saying Trump is painting everything GOLD. That color is not GOLD. It is the color of WEE WEE. Say it. Use the clinical terms, use the gutter terms. The gutter terms define this idiot president. Stop saying gold when you mean whizzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
B-Block (56:00) ON THE PASSING OF TED TURNER: Hard to believe few of the obituaries mentioned how he also invented 7-day-a-week sports on national television. Or how Jane Fonda kept him from destroying himself in, like, 1982. One particularly harrowing saga had him telling the lowest ranking staffer at CNN's Washington Bureau which way, when he finally decided he'd do it, he'd do it. And this is said with admiration and affection for the man who created the place where I and so many of the figures of the last 45 years began our TV careers.
C-Block (1:30:00) ALL TED ALL THE TIME: I was holding back until I was certain I wouldn't jinx him. My beloved first rescue dog, Ted, was up against it last fall. I took him to the University of Florida for life-saving open heart surgery and boy, did they! Eight hours on the table, eight hours of SICU, all for an eight pound dog and now - he's not even on any medications! It's a long story and I would insist it's worth hearing it. And if you have a dog (or know of one) moving from Mitral Valve Disease to Heart Failure, maybe this will provide you with hope - and an option.
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TRUMP'S PLAN TO STEAL A THIRD TERM: THE 2020 ELECTION OF 2028 - 4.30.26
SEASON 4 EPISODE 83: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (3:00) SPECIAL COMMENT: Trump has given away his labyrinthine plot to stay in office past 2028 in one social media post and he’s just crazy enough to …
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SEASON 4 EPISODE 83: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (3:00) SPECIAL COMMENT: Trump has given away his labyrinthine plot to stay in office past 2028 in one social media post and he’s just crazy enough to think it will work. It is in his rant claiming the indictment of a political opponent means "The 2020 Presidential Election Should Be Permanently Wiped From The Books And Be Of No Further Force or Effect…”
He is not going to try a new Constitutional Amendment or say the limit is two CONSECUTIVE terms. He's not going another coup (at least not initially). He is going to try to nullify the 2020 Election - and hold that vote again. ANOTHER 2020 Election. In 2028.
If you think that's too crazy easy for him - is it crazier than Trump insisting yesterday that we are in a war against UKRAINE? Crazier than indicting the former FBI Director on a threat to kill Trump with a seashell meme? Crazier than trying to get a comedian fired for a joke about Trump’s death and his wife when TRUMP then goes out and makes a joke about his death and his wife and all America is talking about is the dreaded D-word? Crazier than indicting a man for trying to shoot him at the Correspondents’ Dinner when it is now unmistakably clear that the suspect never fired a shot and was never on the same floor as Trump was? Crazier than Trump's insistence that we should pay for this damn ballroom because it'll protect presidents? What - are they sealing themselves in like Saddam Hussein in his Hidey Hole?
And then I'll detail Trump’s bid to MATA: Make America 2020 Again.
B-Block (36:00) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Two competing Bari Weiss entries because while nobody's watching her version of the CBS Evening News, everybody seems to have seen her prized reporter Olivia Reingold making a fool of herself on video from the Correspondents' Dinner. And speaking of that, Stephen A. Smith came out of that experience knowing who is to blame for all America's problems: those evil liberals! Whose presidential nomination he expects to win. ESPN has a choice: platform a political idiot and Conservative tool and destroy your franchise, or get rid of him and keep it.
C-Block (55:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: I often wonder WHY I ever became a political commentator. It wasn't planned and it wasn't supposed to be permanent. And the story of HOW I became a political commentator is even crazier.
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I'M NOT SAYING IT WAS STAGED! YOU'RRRE SAYING IT WAS STAGED - 4.27.26
SEASON 4 EPISODE 82: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (3:00) SPECIAL COMMENT: Call me a cynic but I am beginning to get a sense that you may have some doubts about this Not-An-Assassination Attempt at The …
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SEASON 4 EPISODE 82: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (3:00) SPECIAL COMMENT: Call me a cynic but I am beginning to get a sense that you may have some doubts about this Not-An-Assassination Attempt at The White House Correspondents Dinner.
Well - that's what it was. Or in this case, what it wasn't. The acting attorney general says the alleged perp quote “was stopped before he got anywhere near the President.” So, NOT an assassination attempt, per the attorney general. But of course the White House is still trying to sell it as one (its 'protocol director' insists it was "the hand of God" again; its deputy chief of staff tried to start another 'USA!' chant after the incident). Even though proximity is the definition of such a nightmare scenario. Saturday Night? Obama had 15 of those.
Still, among my fellow Americans who are NOT in the Trump Mass Hypnosis Cult, I may be in the minority because I DON’T think it was staged. Why are you so cynical? Just because an hour beforehand Karoline Leavitt told Fox quote “There will be some shots fired tonight!” That’s a coincidence. Just because Trump has gone insane about his quote “militarily top secret ballroom” and the next thing you know he’s GOING to a ballroom and after that the Secret Service screws up security AT the ballroom and after THAT he’s holding a press conference saying this is WHY he needs that ballroom and all his sock puppets are tweeting about the ballroom. Coincidence!
Just because Trump and his filth have lied to you about every THING, every DAY, for 11 years… that’s no reason for you to think that was STAGED. It’s a coincidence! It’s all a coincidence.
ALSO: for God's sake stop saying there's no room for violence in American politics and we don't resolve our differences this way! Certainly we all wish that were true. But in point of fact there's room for almost nothing BUT violence in American politics! Ask JFK, Reagan, Teddy Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, Garfield, Lincoln, McKinley, dozens of others! What was the Civil War if not political violence?
B-Block (28:00) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: The Staten Island cop who has reportedly amassed more than 500 speeding tickets, and last year averaged one every other day. Jeff Bezos' Washington Post will only print a letter to the editor responding to its editorial if the authors take out the references TO Jeff Bezos. And Tom Cotton makes a hilarious mistake: Iran will meet its match not on the battlefield but at the bargaining table because it's never faced the author of "Art Of The Deal." Who's gonna tell him?
C-Block (41:00) MONDAYS WITH THURBER: We need a break from media people talking about themselves so let's drop "Things I Promised Not To Tell" and instead read you his wonderful, weird, slightly spooky "The Black Magic Of Barney Haller."
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TOP MAGA MAGAZINE HEADLINE: "TRUMP IS LOSING HIS MIND" - 4.23.26
SEASON 4 EPISODE 81: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (3:00) SPECIAL COMMENT: "Donald Trump Is Losing His Mind." It's the headline on a column in perhaps the most prominent MAGA magazine headline. It's …
Show notes
SEASON 4 EPISODE 81: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (3:00) SPECIAL COMMENT: "Donald Trump Is Losing His Mind."
It's the headline on a column in perhaps the most prominent MAGA magazine headline. It's not me saying it this time. Not Jimmy Kimmel. Not George Conway. Not a psychiatrist. The Washington Examiner: “Donald Trump Is Losing His Mind.”
Why? Just because he’s also losing IRAN? Just because he’s COMPARING Iran to Vietnam (which he dodged)? Just because he threatened to go General Sherman on Teheran? Just because he's just announced you are no longer ALLOWED to CRITICIZE him ABOUT Iran?
“Donald Trump Is Losing His Mind” writes The Washington Examiner - guess that makes it unanimous (and there is now polling on this!)
ALSO: House Democrats want Kash Patel to take an alcoholism screening test. His choices amount to: a) ARE you an alcoholic? b) Are you so FULL of alcohol you’re at risk of bursting into flames, or c) are you J. Edgar Boozer.
AND about the White House Correspondents Dinner Saturday. The Correspondents Association is obeying in advance to Trump, calling him an "honoree" and welcoming his rats like Brendan Carr and Stephen Miller. If you’re attending this dinner, and you are not planning to storm out or otherwise using this rare opportunity to protest Trump’s presence, you’re not only a traitor to JOURNALISM, you’re a traitor to America.
B-Block (36:00) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Trump's "National Garden Of Heroes" with 250 statues of everybody from Elvis to Whittaker Chambers is dumb enough. What happens when they forget to order the statues? Interior Secretary Burgum wants Theodore Roosevelt in the pro football Hall of Fame even though there wasn't pro football while T.R. was alive. And new Congressman Clay Fuller says he was only joking when he said Georgia was named after George Washington.
C-Block (45:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Talking about dinner in DC Saturday (The White House Correspondents) led me to mention my disastrous dates last century with Laura Ingraham on social media and there was considerable disbelief so it's time to tell that story.
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EMPEROR TRUMP HAS NO CLOTHES - AND NO CLUE ON IRAN - 4.20.26
SEASON 4 EPISODE 80: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (3:00) SPECIAL COMMENT: Nobody is at the wheel of Trump's war in Iran. Is the Strait of Hormuz open or is it closed? Are there peace talks with Iran …
Show notes
SEASON 4 EPISODE 80: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (3:00) SPECIAL COMMENT: Nobody is at the wheel of Trump's war in Iran.
Is the Strait of Hormuz open or is it closed? Are there peace talks with Iran in Pakistan TOMORROW… or nah? Is Jayvee Vance going? Is Iran going? Has Trump scheduled peace talks where we’re the only ones there? Will it make any difference if we’re the only ones there? Doesn’t “blowing a hole in the engine room” of an Iranian cargo ship yesterday mean we aren’t honoring Trump’s own ceasefire he boasted about? Are we paying 20 billion dollars for the Iranian uranium and hostages? The same uranium and hostages Obama bought for 400 million and Trump called him a traitor? Or is that a no?
Don’t ask Trump – he doesn’t know. But that won’t stop him from answering anyway. Yes. Then Nope. Then Yes again. Then: All of the Above. in 48 hours he went from 13 posts congratulating himself on winning, to insisting he would stop being “Mr. Nice Guy” and blow up all of Iran. By the way, eactly when was he “Mr. Nice Guy”?
We are LOSING the war in Iran and as of today a total idiot is still president and commander-in-chief. He gets questions about the pointless war he started to divert attention from Epstein and the economy he crashed, so he orders the reporters out of the Oval Office, and sits there with hapless munchkin Little Joe Rogan standing behind him, the shine off his cueball noggin blinding cameras and journalists alike. Trump has set off a chain of events over which he no longer has any control – except to withdraw and flee – and to withdraw and flee is to acknowledge he screwed up. And this man would jump off the roof of the White House before admitting he screwed up.
The Trump “Administration” has so UTTERLY jumped the shark, that the truthers are coming out from inside MAGA: Alex Jones now insists Trump has done all this DELIBERATELY, because he has made a “deal with the deep state to throw the election to the Democrats." Marjorie Taylor Greene has joined the Trump Assassination Truthers and Trump himself has floated a kind of conspiracy theory ABOUT himself… he wrote ‘Praise Be To Allah’ on Easter morning to “seem as unstable and insulting as possible.”
He wanted to seem as unstable as possible? MISSION ACCOMPLISHED, Trump! You’ve finally done something you promised!
B-Block (28:30) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Before the year is out, Major League Baseball will threaten to lock the players out and cancel the season in 2027 because the smaller market teams can't make enough money to compete. One of those teams just sold for $3.1 billion more than it did in 2012. New York's hockey teams support a) Trump putting his name on public buildings or b) legal funds for cops convicted of killing unarmed civilians. Vivek Ramaswamy dismisses his opponent talking about being raped as a child as her "complaining." And Lauren Boebert thinks Congress is too horny and she won't remain, uh, hands off.
C-Block (45:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Netflix stock took a huge hit, supposedly after the co-founder Reed Hastings announced he was bowing out. But I think it might've been another announcement that did it. They are going into news podcasts with - Brian Williams? The story of how he imploded at NBC, while I was literally an eyewitness to his public self-destruction, and the advice I gave his bosses that could have saved him (and them) if they hadn't ignored it.
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TRUMP DOUBLES DOWN WITH DISTURBING MAKE-OUT IMAGE - 4.16.26
SEASON 4 EPISODE 79: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (2:30) SPECIAL COMMENT: Trump doubles down on bashing the Pope and appropriating Jesus. This time it’s not him pretending to be Dr. Jesus or whoever …
Show notes
SEASON 4 EPISODE 79: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (2:30) SPECIAL COMMENT: Trump doubles down on bashing the Pope and appropriating Jesus.
This time it’s not him pretending to be Dr. Jesus or whoever. It's, it's, it's...well the image he posted looks like he’s about to make out with him. I mean this isn’t one of my areas of expertise but JC is fondling Trump's chest. It’s so bad even Speaker Mike Johnson noticed.
The Republicans aren’t mad about the other part, slamming Pope Leo, because right wing governments have been attacking the Catholic Church since King Henry the 8th. But some of the comments do underscore that if they want the Pope to "stay in his lane," the MAGA evangelical squad needs to stay in its.
This also underscores how MANY wars can Trump start at the same time? War against the Pope, War against European governments, War against Iran, War against Reality. He again insists he’s blockading the Strait of Hormuz when the American navy is clearly NOT blockading the Strait of Hormuz. He again insists he’s already beaten Iran, when Iran now says IT may also halt shipping in the RED SEA.
Does Trump even KNOW how bad it’s going for America in the Gulf? In world capitals? Or is this like Germany 1942 where citizens – and many government officials – were actually told the Luftwaffe had totally destroyed New York City. Let me tell you the story of what happened when German POW’s actually SAW New York City…
Plus: watch where you put your hands, J.
B-Block (26:30) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Is naming a large pothole on the Moon in honor of the late wife of one of the astronauts an "act of colonialism"? One anti-colonialism commenter thinks so. When you OD and that isn't the worst thing you did all week - the story of Clavicular. And the Swalwell Disaster prompts one Congressman (Andy Ogles) to propose hanging rapists (who's going to tell him?) and one Fox host (Jesse Watters) to pontificate on the proper time to "whip it out."
C-Block (39:15) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: She was a five-hour a week camerawoman who had already survived several years on Capitol Hill. He, owned the network and invited her to the best French restaurant in Georgetown. And she - as she told me back in '82 or '83 - wound up saying good night, by standing up in the middle of that restaurant and slapping him.
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