EPISODE 213: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:43) SPECIAL COMMENT:  Joe Biden has still won the debt deal but now there is the chance that not only will Kevin McCarthy will lose it, but so will Joe Manchin. That putrid, unreliable, self-aggrandizing, self-inflating, fraudulent, sheep-in-sheep’s clothing Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia has managed to stick the permitting legislation for his favorite project to accelerate the end of life on the planet from catastrophic climate change, the good old Mountain Valley Natural Gas Pipeline. But Senator Tim Kaine is moving to remove the good old Mountain Valley Pipeline from the deal, since it's “completely unrelated to the debt ceiling matter” and of course it IS completely unrelated to it, and Kaine will file an amendment to get it cut the hell out of the bill. Because if President Biden would like to piss away the good will of averting a default that never should have been in play but Democrats in the House slept through the lame duck and Democrats in the White House apparently didn’t know about the 14th Amendment until a couple of weeks ago… and if President Biden would like to piss away the triumph of his victory over McCarthy, and if President Biden would like to piss away the early signs of a significant poll bump – Biden 46-44 in the Echelon Insights national poll, Biden 47-43 in the Clarity national poll, just out last night, and if President Biden would like to piss away all that, the way to do it is to umbrella this albatross of the Joe Manchin’s Integrity Memorial Pipeline into the Debt Deal. Plus: MAGA Chip Roy on the House Rules Committee is now pretending there is a secret deal for only unanimous votes to move bills like this onto the floor, and another MAGA Dusty Johnson is politely calling him a liar. Oh and, sorry, but the three-opponent-vanquishing hero of "Concession," Tom Wambsgans? The show's auteur says, no, he was NOT named after the three-opponent-vanquishing hero of baseball's 1920 World Series, BILL Wambsganss. Sorry! B-Block (16:05) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: These really ARE postscripts. Not just more from the Wayback Machine but the story of how I GOT my first prestige job as a sportscaster on a top New York radio station just after my 21st birthday: the way everybody else does - by hanging around that station at 5:15 in the morning the day their sportscaster happens to call out sick. C-Block (38:40) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Given today's headline, this is a good time to revisit the very FIRST Special Comment in this series: it involved fossil fuels, Joe Manchin, and the need to push Biden at all times. Also, a bad Howard Beale impression.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

EPISODE 212: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:43) SPECIAL COMMENT: I’d like to congratulate Joe Biden on kicking the asses of Kevin McCarthy and Donald Trump in the debt ceiling deal. More over, I'd like to thank Speaker McCarthy for writing President Biden’s first re-election campaign ad for him. Reporter: “Mr. Speaker, How would you describe your interactions with Biden during negotiations?” McCarthy: “Very professional, very smart. Very tough at the same time.” Voice Over (Announcer): “President Biden. Even the Republicans think he’s very professional, very smart, very tough at the same time!” Voice Over (Biden): “I’m Joe Biden and I approve this message because you heard him: I’m very professional, very smart, very tough at the same time.” Voice Over (Announcer): “Paid For By Biden-Harris 2024 and the Committee to Make Trump Eat Spit.” B-Block (11:52) Hey, it's Memorial Day. I'm OFF. Can't you TELL? Rather than re-purpose previous podcast components, here's stuff you'll either want to listen to, or not want any part of. Cool. It's your day off too. These are old newscasts and sportscasts and we start with one I had completely forgotten: a commentary for the United States Radio Network in 1985 in which I bash a football team owner named Donald Trump. And then three newscasts when New York radio station WNEW ran out of newscasters and had to have their 21-year old backup sports guy do drive time! C-Block (27:53) An assortment, beginning fittingly with Memorial Day 1987 when I filled in for Brent Musburger on CBS Radio. Also in here, the day George Steinbrenner fired managers for the second time in the same year in 1982 (on WNEW) and a series of college broadcasts from WVBR at Cornell from 1979.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

EPISODE 211: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:43) SPECIAL COMMENT: The Washington Post's choice of its headline was the Mar-a-Lago workers moving boxes full of classified documents the day before the Justice Department stopped by to pick up what they’d subpoenaed, but that’s not THE headline in the story. THE headline in the story is really startling and could be the biggest in this week-long festival of leaks, this waterfall of sources-saying because this leak the Post DIDN’T think was the headline suggests Jack Smith has witnesses who saw Donald Trump commit not just obstruction of justice but espionage. “Prosecutors…have gathered evidence indicating that Trump at times kept classified documents in his office in a place where they were visible and sometimes showed them to others… (they) have been told by more than one witness that Trump at times kept classified documents out in the open in his Florida office, where others could see them… and sometimes showed them to people, including aides and visitors,” unquote. So that’s literally espionage. Ten years or a fine or both. Per count. 18 USS Code 793 “Gathering, transmitting or losing defense information”paragraph “E.” Keeping classified documents is one thing. But having “unauthorized possession” of any document relating to the national defense and then being that guy who “willfully communicates, delivers, transmits, or causes to be communicated… to any person not entitled to receive it” is the point at which the option to not prosecute for espionage has typically ended. Also: the Ron DeSantis Twitter disaster has been explained by tech experts. It's not tech, it's - what else - the cheapness of Elon Musk. Plus the judge not only throws the book at Oathkeepers culprit Stewart Rhodes but tells him to his face that he's not a "political prisoner" and most importantly of all, warns the courtroom and the nation that we could have another January 6th. And the TPM website decided to work backwards in its files on Rhodes and find where he made his national TV debut. You may not be that surprised by the answer. Lastly just for laughs: Trump gets the year wrong and Junior tries to insult DeSantis but winds up saying "Trump" instead.  B-Block (15:28) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: I lament what my invention, MSNBC, has become. Once we were liberal skeptics, calling out lies and pressing Democrats to earn our support and do what's right. Now it is a place where if NBC decided tomorrow to go right wing, all most of the hosts would need to do would be change names or dye hair and they'd get away with it. Because it's now about them. Happily, seven years ago this week Lawrence O'Donnell confessed he and the current crowd had "broken" my invention. C-Block (35:05) Sam, the two-year old female in NYC (36:05) FRIDAYS WITH JAMES THURBER: My father's favorite Thurber story, the amazing saga of Thurber's 4th Grade Class and the other students who had been in it for decades: "I Went To Sullivant."See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

EPISODE 210: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:41) SPECIAL COMMENT: Though they've paid him $900,000 for lawyers and another $500,000 from their "think tank," Trump's team has not heard from his former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and does not know if he has stayed silent, is a target of Special Counsel Jack Smith, or has FLIPPED ON TRUMP AND IS SMITH'S PRIMARY WITNESS. Even Jim Jordan, conspiracist-in-chief, says he talks to Meadows weekly but never brings up, you know, conspiracies. This could be why the Special Counsel's office is wrapping up - and leaking - everything. Plus: Ron DeSantis should have used Fax, not Twitter. That unparalleled disaster is all he'll be remembered for, firmly eliminates Musk and Twitter as threats to Fox and others, and may make even Tucker Carlson think twice. CNN does schedule another Town Hall, because the first one went so well. And to Marjorie Taylor Greene's credit at least she knew which end of the gavel to bang against the table. Humiliation in the House. B-Block (17:16) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: Briefly it looked like Tom Hanks had gotten into a fight on the Red Carpet at the Cannes Film Festival. I immediately flashed back to the day in 1999 when it briefly looked like Tom Hanks had gotten into a fight on the Red Carpet at the Oscars... with ME. C-Block (36:00) EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: Poor Chelsea, on death row AGAIN in New York (37:05) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: In an LA-nostalgic mood, I must recount the day I got the scoop of the year in LA sports - maybe in all of sports - and then the cameraman said "wait - I may not have recorded that."See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

EPISODE 209: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:43) SPECIAL COMMENT: The Special Counsel is at the End Game. From The Wall Street Journal: “Some of Trump’s close associates are bracing for his indictment and anticipate being able to fundraise off a prosecution, people in the former president’s circle said...Jack Smith has all but finished obtaining testimony and other evidence” (about the classified documents Trump stole and stashed). What's more: Trump knows this is it. His attorneys John Rowley and Jim Trusty last night wrote a “Dear Attorney General Garland” letter that Trump clearly composed. I don’t know exactly where this lands on the scale from Panic, to Desperately Trying To Gain Public Pity, to Lawyers Desperately Trying To Please Their Crazy Client. But it's desperate and childish and revelatory: “Dear Attorney General Garland: "We represent Donald J. Trump, the 45th President of the United States, in the investigation currently being conducted by the Special Counsel’s Office. Unlike President Biden, his son Hunter, and the Biden family, President Trump is being treated unfairly. No President of the United States has ever, in the history of our country, been baselessly investigated in such an outrageous and unlawful fashion. We request a meeting at your earliest convenience to discuss the ongoing injustice that is being perpetrated by your Special Counsel and his prosecutors. "Thank you for your attention to this matter." I understand Garland has composed his reply “Dear Mr. Rowley and Mr. Trusty, happy to meet you and your client, please come to my office at 123 Trump Pooped His Pants Didn’t He? Avenue, Washington D.C." I know we all have Mueller Derangement Syndrome. But when the WSJ says it's over - it's over. B-Block (15:19) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: Ron DeSantis will announce something everybody already knows. He'll announce it on Twitter, which will make all the Trump cultists hate Musk. And he'll announce it instead of something he just mentioned in passing the other day which is the first good reason he's given for supporting him over Trump. How would Trumpy try for a 3rd Term? And just when the CNN Town Hall thing seemed to be dying, its PR person sets it ablaze anew. (21:25) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Martin Shrkeli is back and weirder than ever; the Youth Poet Laureate's poem is banned in Florida because of one crazy parent; Matt Gaetz confesses the Republicans think of the Democrats as their "hostages" in the debt discussion. C-Block (27:45) EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: Layla's Heart and Rescue in Texas needs your help (28:45) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Lauren Sanchez and Jeff Bezos are reportedly engaged. Engaged in WHAT?See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.