Countdown with Keith Olbermann

• TRUMP SUDDENLY SPECULATING ABOUT A FUTURE WITHOUT HIM - 10.6.25

  A-BLOCK (2:30) SPECIAL COMMENT: TRUMP SUDDENLY SPECULATES ABOUT LIFE WITHOUT HIM: From anybody else it would be trivia. From Trump this is startling. Buried in an ordinary narcissistic flight: "It'll be very unfair in the future when they (Republicans) don't have Trump to fight for them." That quote, might be the biggest headline Trump has made this year and it sailed RIGHT past the American news media yesterday. What in the HELL did he mean by that and more importantly why did he suddenly acknowledge there is an end, maybe soon? After being MIA for five days – no live public viewing of him, just one video that according to White House time stamps took more than two hours to produce even though it only required him to try to speak for a minute-ten… he EMERGED with what was, even for him, such an utterly bizarre and especially vulnerable admission. He was out of view for FIVE DAYS. FIVE. From that bizarre “please clap” speech before the Generals at Quantico on Tuesday – the Pete Hegseth International Day of Military Hair Care Symposium and Product Sampling – through yesterday morning when he managed to stagger out of the White House, blast a series of non sequitirs at the press pool, and then go to another military celebration for which we have the money even in the middle of his shutdown of the government. Nobody asked: HOW have you been, WHERE have you been, WHAT are they treating you for, WHAT does that "when they don't have (you) to fight for them" quote mean? Because again, as in the week he went MIA at the beginning of LAST month, nobody had a clue what would take a man with compulsive talking disease and an ego so large it has own it zip code, from appearing in front of crowds and cameras for FIVE DAYS. And THEN Trump went in front of the Navy and said he warned about Osama Bin Laden last year, and told Pete Hegseth about it a year before 9/11, and claimed he was president in 2016 but they fixed the 2016 election, but they ran it again and he "got 250." What. In The Hell. Is Wrong. With Trump’s Health? B-Block (27:44) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: A $1 Trump coin? Ten cents per chin? Ian Miles Cheong doesn't think they'll eat his face. Noem and Lewandowski think they'll find undocumented immigrants attending the Super Bowl. And Kristi really has to go to the toilet. THIS IS OFFICIAL BUSINESS! C-Block (38:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Well, here we are. Fifty years ago Tuesday night, at 11:15 PM, I did my first broadcast on an actual radio station with advertisers and listeners. I was 16 and it's not bad for 16 and for the fact that my much older colleagues at WVBR-FM did a superb job of hazing me. And yes, that first broadcast is still extant, as you'll hear.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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• RERUN: COULD TRUMP PASS A SANITY TEST? - 10.3.25

  SEASON 4 EPISODE 21: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (2:30) COULD TRUMP PASS A SANITY TEST? Warning: this is a PARTIAL RE-RUN. If you heard Thursday's episode, don't bother. But I got such a great response to re-reading and annotating and updating my July 2016 piece for Vanity Fair Magazine on this topic that I wanted to post this as a stand-alone segment in case you skipped it and had time to listen now. The Thursday news-of-the-day stuff has gotten slightly outdated so I've stripped it off. As you know, I don't make a habit of re-posting episodes and I'm not going to start. Again: if you listened to the whole thing Thursday, this is NOT going to be new to you. Don't listen - unless you're trying to memorize it. SO... COULD TRUMP PASS A SANITY TEST? I have grown old talking about Trump's sanity. As I wrote then: short answer? Probably not. This is a layman using professional tools: an actual kind of "triage" test used by working psychology professionals to assess if somebody is injured, tripping, or psychopathic. I had an active therapist walk through the examination and assign the points per topic. It's an important time to review what we knew - or should have known - nine long years ago. Because he was unwell then, too. B-Block (24:31) PART TWO OF "CAN TRUMP PASS A SANITY TEST": We conclude the annotated 2016 piece on Trump's already provable mental distress with the disturbing reality that takes us back to where we began on Thursday with Representative Madeleine Dean's lament: "The president is unwell." C-Block (45:00) THIS IS JUST THE SIGN-OFF: Honestly, there is no reason to listen to this. It's just the credits.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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• "THE PRESIDENT IS UNWELL" - WHITE HOUSE IN CRISIS - 10.2.25

  SEASON 4 EPISODE 20: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:45) SPECIAL COMMENT: “The President is unhinged. He is Unwell. The President is Unwell.” Representative Madeleine Dean of Pennsylvania with perhaps the most important eleven words in the past decade, perhaps the most important eleven words in the history of this country, CERTAINLY the most important eleven words for the FUTURE of this country. “The President is Unwell.” We have at LEAST one – probably TWO – presidential health crises in full flower at the same time: And near as I can tell, only Representative Dean is talking about it (and directly to Speaker Mike Johnson, in what was not intended to be a public conversation) along with Governor Pritzker of Illinois, whose diagnosis was SIXTEEN words long and just as important. Quote: "There is something genuinely wrong with this man, and the 25th Amendment ought to be invoked." The two crises are obvious: at his insane speech to the Generals Tuesday, Trump sounded as if his charger had been left unplugged for three weeks, his voice husky, indistinct, words slurred. And what he DID say made next to no sense. Pritzker suggests dementia which could explain both the rapidly declining mental capacity AND the audible collapse AND why Trump was invisible yesterday and had to send Vance to ride Day One of the government shutdown Trump orchestrated. It would all ALSO explain that missing week around Labor Day and the cabinet meeting – the LAST televised cabinet meeting – in which his Departmental Slaves shoveled twice as much laudatory BS as usual, as if it were a going-away roast for Trump. Maybe it was. “The President is unwell.” CAN TRUMP PASS A SANITY TEST? I have grown old talking about Trump's sanity. I first did it publicly in June, 2016, and a month later Vanity Fair published my article "Can Trump Pass A Sanity Test?" As I wrote then: short answer? Probably not. This is a layman using professional tools: an actual kind of "triage" test used by working psychology professionals to assess if somebody is injured, tripping, or psychopathic. I had an active therapist walk through the examination and assign the points per topic. It's an important time to review what we knew - or should have known - nine long years ago. Because he was unwell then, too. B-Block (35:23) PART TWO OF "CAN TRUMP PASS A SANITY TEST": We conclude the annotated 2016 piece on Trump's already provable mental distress with the disturbing reality that takes us back to where we began with Madeleine Dean's lament: "The president is unwell." C-Block (56:00) GOOD NIGHT AND GOOD LUCKSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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• TRUMP TACOS ON PORTLAND INVASION; HINTS HE CAN BESTOW IMMORTALITY - 9.29.25

  SEASON 4 EPISODE 19: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (2:30) SPECIAL COMMENT: Trump is escalating his terror campaign against you. If you oppose him, if you criticize him, if you even question him, he will try to call YOU a terrorist, put YOU on a terrorism BLACKLIST. And if that doesn’t work, ARREST you, and if THAT doesn’t work, invade your state and terrorize IT. On the other hand, he has apparently TACO’d out on his terrorist invasion of Portland now saying “well I mean we’re certainly LOOKING AT IT.” But on the OTHER OTHER hand National Security Presidential Memorandum Seven is not on hold; in it Trump claims the right to prosecute you for domestic terrorist if you express quote “anti-Christianity” or oppose the government in any way. Get you indicted when there is literally no case, like James Comey. Or reenact the McCarthy Era blacklist and try to get you fired, as with Lisa Monaco. Or just label you a domestic terrorist because you called Stephen Miller a "fascist." When Stephen Miller has called 150 million Democrats "fascists." That'll be quite the indictment against Miller. Which reminds me: Fox's Jesse Watters calls Miller a "sexual matador." Which I presume means he winds up getting gored in the groin. And just to bring this up a notch, Trump's insanity is growing and it certainly looks like over the weekend, he wanted his social media followers to believe he can bestow upon them the gift of immortality. Not IMMORALITY, "immortality." The saga of Trump's Med Beds and RFK jr's face. B-Block (34:20) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Isabel Vincent writes the weakest New York Post hit job on me in the history of New York Post hit jobs. The breaking news? An anonymous source says I may have been rude to a waiter in 1997. Marco Rubio bans the president of Colombia, tags him on twitter, tags the wrong guy. And Newt Gingrich complains about Abby Spanberger not voting for a particular bill in the House this month. Maybe because she hasn't been a member of the house since January? (45:47) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: It's Stevie Week! Thirteen years ago tomorrow since I was born again in dogs, when Olivia Nuzzi and I were adopted by a tiny Maltese who opened up a new world to me. C-Block (1:06:00) PART TWO OF STEVIE WEEK: The adventures of Stevie and the five dogs who have followed her, including a cameo appearance from the Gotcha Day Girl herself.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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• DEFEATED BY KIMMEL AND AN ESCALATOR, TRUMP SHOULD RESIGN - 9.25.25

  A-Block (2:30) SPECIAL COMMENT: After perhaps the most hapless 96 hours of his presidency, the worst 96 hours of the worst presidency of ALL TIME, the most FAIL in the shortest span… the mentally-deteriorating, untethered-from-reality Trump… must RESIGN. And take his idiot sycophants with him. The last 96 hours: His U.N. speech, sounding like an escapee from a psych ward. His Tylenol news conference, sounding like an escapee from a psych ward who’s been living on the street for a month. His suggestion NATO countries shoot down Russian jets. His sudden embrace of Zelensky, either another stall or a stupid dare to Putin. MAGA’s RAGE AT his sudden embrace of Zelensky. The cover of a London right wing daily: his picture and in 72-point type, the word “DERANGED.” The ICE shooting in Dallas; his sadistic Homeland chief pretending the victims were agents when they were detainees; his idiot simpering Vice President pretending the victims were agents when they were detainees; his corrupt venal FBI director pretending the victims were agents when they were detainees. His ICE chief not denying he took $50,000 in a paper bag. His staff THEN denying he took $50,000 in a paper bag. His cancellation of a meeting with Democrats making sure if there’s a government shutdown it’s all his fault. His crackpot pal Milei crashing the Venezuelan economy and needing us to bail him out. His paranoia over the stopped teleprompter at the U-N that was his White House staff’s fault. His paranoia over the stopped escalator at the U-N that was his own vanity videographer’s fault. His desire to arrest the U.N. escalator technician or the U-N escalator button pusher. His desire to arrest the escalator AND James Comey. The election of Raul Grijalva’s daughter to Congress. The fact that Adelita Grijalva will be the last Representative needed to force a vote on releasing the Trump Epstein Files. His self-humiliation at the Kirk Memorial. ABC reinstating Jimmy Kimmel. Meaning Disney told him to eff off. Meaning the National Football League told him to eff off. Meaning they all told his propagandists at Sinclair to eff off. Kimmel then shoving him in a locker using only a monologue. Kimmel getting a record 6 million viewers and 22 more online in the first TWENTY hours. Kimmel and his show getting new life and maybe a new contract. His self-owning confession that HE and his goons used threats to get Kimmel cancelled. The fact that Kimmel, and ABC, and Bob Iger, and Disney, and America told Trump to SHOVE HIS THREATS. And that’s just since Sunday night. You lost to an escalator. Resign. Take Vance with you. Take Noem with you. Take Ho-man with you. Take Milei with you. LEAVE the Epstein Files. B-Block (32:53) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Jason Whitlock says eff everybody, this is Christ-land and he won't be brainwashed any more (no brain, no pain). Derrick Van Orden says Kirk was Jesus and you don't F with the Jesus so defund The Mayo Clinic (he should go there and get CT scanned) and Kristi Noem says a tweet saying she'd have a bad day was terrifying for her. This is a piece of crap who in her spare time murders puppies. C-Block (42:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: The New York Post BS firehose points at a couple of liberals at a time, then it rotates away, but eventually it makes a full circle and comes back to you. For me this has been going on since the mid-1990's and it's just started again. If you'll permit, here's a brief history.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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