SERIES 3 EPISODE 66: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

Russia has committed an act of war against this nation and our government.

We were attacked last night, as certainly as if they came across the borders or BOMBED polling stations - 40 or more - 32 Russian bomb threats just in Fulton county Georgia alone.

And what are you going to do about it, President Biden? What are you going to do about it Merrick Garland? There is real-time evidence of Russian interference in our elections. Russians deciding who becomes president, who goes to the Senate, the house.

32 bomb threats – many already identifying as coming from Russian email sources – in the most Democratic part of Georgia. A quarter of the state’s black population subjected to a terror attack – in Fulton and DeKalb Counties. And in Pennsylvania – one that closed a county elections offense for an hour, at least 10 others. AND in Wisconsin. AND in Michigan. AND in Arizona – at least 10 in Arizona. AND when Georgia extended voting, the Republican National Committee went to court to stop it.

Regardless of the outcome of the election, this is an act of war.

Russian interference means Trump – Trump already admitted at the debate he talked to Putin AFTER he left office - and now Trump means Elon Musk and we know Musk has been in contact with Putin frequently since 2022, and turned Twitter into a whorehouse for pro-Russian and pro-Trump indoctrination.

The Russians just shot our democracy in the heart and those who are there solely to protect it – and its citizens – have responded by establishing… a toll-free FBI tip line.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SERIES 3 EPISODE 65: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Well what do you THINK this episode is about?

There are plenty of polls, interior numbers, and tea leaves to read (see "Marist Poll," see Univision polls of Hispanics in Pennsylvania, see Harris outperforming Biden and Hillary in key demos). But if you want to know how this campaign is wrapping up it's way simpler.

The Trump-Vance closing argument: misogyny and violence against women. Trump says Mike Tyson should step into the ring against her. And after a week of trying to deny their comedian's "garbage" remarks had anything to do with their campaign, then trying to turn "garbage" into a bloody shirt attack on their own supporters, the night before the election, the world's most smug sexist J.D. Vance undid all of that by calling her "trash."

The public polls all look very good for Kamala Harris. The private polls the Trump people see? They must've decided their only chance is to get every last hateful white guy to vote for him - because nobody else is.

B-Block (26:54) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Politico's "Who Won The Day?" is a new high in low. Kari Lake explains her polling is better because she mixes in A.I., and Herschel Walker endorsed Trump. Or did he?

C-Block (33:45) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Solely because at times of stress it always gives me great joy to re-tell the story of how I met my friend the late actress Elizabeth Montgomery, and how she promptly pranked my parents.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SERIES 3 EPISODE 64: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Yeah, I heard it too.

I heard him he "shouldn't have left" the White House when his term ended. And I heard him say AT his rally that he wouldn’t mind people shooting at the reporters COVERING his rally. And I guess it’s shocking. Except he’s been saying these things (a little more coded) since 2015, and he said the shooting thing about Liz Cheney last Thursday night. And after all he is going through what the shrinks call “disinhibition” AT the rallies where he loses all sense of what he should say in private not public.

But that’s not what got me. I heard something I have never heard before. WHEN he said he wouldn’t mind people shooting the "fake news," he said he wouldn’t mind them shooting THROUGH "the fake news" - THROUGH it - AT him. Doesn’t that sound kind of… what’s the word? Suicidal?

Plus: I understand that we are inside the 48 hour bubble before the election and the pressure is like 887 Atmospheric Units and our rage against this creature and his cult that wants to burn this country to the ground – burn this world to the ground – and our amazement that there is ANYBODY voting for him – that RAGE is at unbearable levels – but… didn’t he sound kinda dead yesterday? At one point he was inaudible. At another, in North Carolina, he thought he was in Pennsylvania. Throughout, he sounded exactly like Hal the Computer in the movie “2001” when they unplugged him.

PRACTICALLY SPEAKING on the eve of the election, the polls continue to support a Harris victory (size TBD) and this shocking poll where she's up by 3 in Iowa hides an even more shocking number (she's ahead by 20 among women in the whitest part of the midwest). And the reaction to the pollster who published this 21 point swing from June tells you all you need to know about polling. They have previously insisted Ann Selser was an immortal. Now they're saying she's making the rest of them look bad by not tailoring her poll to fit their narrative.

B-Block (30:33) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: A Trumpist has vowed to "castrate himself on camera" if Harris wins Iowa (if you're a Trumpist, haven't you already castrated yourself?). Chris Cillizza 2024 mocks everybody who didn't buy the conventional wisdom about the vice presidency (evidently including Chris Cillizza 2020, who had disproved it), and courtesy Tim Alberta in The Atlantic, we find a new reason to hate Trump. This is the real reason he's so mad Biden dropped out. Trump thought he had the perfect nickname for the President - and it's appalling.

C-Block (37:48) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: I call it The Annual Day I Get Trapped Inside My Home Day. You know it - and may have seen it on TV yesterday - as "The New York City Marathon."

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

BULLETIN SERIES 3 EPISODE 63: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) In a late night appearance in Arizona, Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump said of former Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney "Let's put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her. Let's see how she feels about it, you know, when the guns are trained on her face."

At publication time, no Republican had repudiated Trump for his implicit threat, nor had any even repudiated him upon realizing that the next time he expresses such a desire to have a critic killed by a firing squad, it could be them.

What follows is the Friday Countdown podcast as originally produced.

(3:52) TRUMP INTERNAL POLLS MUST BE TERRIBLE: HE IS ALREADY FOMENTING INSURECTION II: There can no longer be any doubt that the Trump camp knows that he is losing and losing by enough that however close the popular vote may turn out to be, he will lose handily in The Electoral College and his only chance is to foment another insurrection, whether by violence or by Speaker of the House Mike Johnson.

Axios has printed a Trump press release (and describes it as a "scoop") that Trump's pollster has told him tells The Garbage Man "he's in a radically better position than he was right before the 2020 election...(it) draws on Real Clear Politics polling averages to argue that Trump's "position nationally and in every single Battleground State is SIGNIFICANTLY better today than it was 4 years ago."

This is like relying on stuff Rudy Giuliani heard from the voices in his head.

The Trump campaign is furiously stoking up racial hatred, white supremacism, anti-woman rhetoric - and the insistence that he's already being robbed in Pennsylvania. He'd only be doing that if he's being told he's LOSING in Pennsylvania and needs to try to steal the election.

Speaking of Rudy: he has now came this close to dropping a milder version of the N-word.

B-BLOCK (31:55) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Russia fines Google more money than there is in the world. Elon Musk goes full antisemite. Tucker Carlson insists he was mauled while asleep by demons. 

C-BLOCK (46:40) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: There's only one story for the weekend before the election. Thurber's Nostramadus moment: his prophecy of Trump, written in...1931?

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SERIES 3 EPISODE 62: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-BLOCK (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: There can no longer be any doubt that the Trump camp knows that he is losing and losing by enough that however close the popular vote may turn out to be, he will lose handily in The Electoral College and his only chance is to foment another insurrection, whether by violence or by Speaker of the House Mike Johnson.

Axios has printed a Trump press release (and describes it as a "scoop") that Trump's pollster has told him tells The Garbage Man "he's in a radically better position than he was right before the 2020 election...(it) draws on Real Clear Politics polling averages to argue that Trump's "position nationally and in every single Battleground State is SIGNIFICANTLY better today than it was 4 years ago."

This is like relying on stuff Rudy Giuliani heard from the voices in his head.

The Trump campaign is furiously stoking up racial hatred, white supremacism, anti-woman rhetoric - and the insistence that he's already being robbed in Pennsylvania. He'd only be doing that if he's being told he's LOSING in Pennsylvania and needs to try to steal the election.

Speaking of Rudy: he has now came this close to dropping a milder version of the N-word.

B-BLOCK (29:53) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Russia fines Google more money than there is in the world. Elon Musk goes full antisemite. Tucker Carlson insists he was mauled while asleep by demons. 

C-BLOCK (44:30) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: There's only one story for the weekend before the election. Thurber's Nostramadus moment: his prophecy of Trump, written in...1931?

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SERIES 3 EPISODE 61: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: The Kamala Harris closing argument: "The fact that someone does not agree with us does not make them the enemy within…I will always put country above PARTY and above SELF."

The Donald Trump closing argument: "I'm not Hitler!"

Well, I'M sold! THAT'S the way to make sure you aren't associated with Nazis and Hitler. Bring them up! And the way to avoid the continuing reverberations from Tony Hinchcliffe's Puerto Rican "garbage" insult is to dress up in a garbageman's orange reflective suit and give interviews from the cab of a garbage truck with the TRUMP CAMPAIGN LOGO ON THE SIDE.

And Jeff Bezos has already learned the wages of sin: Trump is touting The Washington Post's "decision" to not endorse anybody as a repudiation of Harris and an endorsement of him. It's time to boycott Amazon, Whole Foods, The Washington Post.

GOOD POLLS NEWS: CNN polling, Harris by 5 in Michigan, 6 in Wisconsin, tied in Pennsylvania - but she leads by 3 in Pennsylvania among "extremely motivated voters." The interior numbers continue to go entirely in Harris's direction.

AND AN ANNOUNCEMENT about the short-term future of this podcast.

B-BLOCK (32:37) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Ohio's Republican Senate candidate doesn't realize the VICE President can't issue Executive Orders. Any remaining thin veneer of journalism falls away at Fox. And Politico's Rachel Bade and Ex-CNN Now Just Stopping Passersby Chris Cillizza humiliate themselves over Biden's quoting of Hinchcliffe's "garbage" remarks.

C-BLOCK (41:00) GOOD NIGHT AND GOOD LUCK.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SERIES 3 EPISODE 60: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN - SPECIAL EARLY POSTING

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Trump keeps digging, and a Trump surrogate named Brenden Dilley doubles down on the scatological, foul, obscenity-filled insults against Puerto Rico and the Puerto Rican people:

"F*** you, f*** you right back to f***ing Puerto Rico. If you are in the f*****g United States of America right now and you're on the actual f***ing, the lower 48, you're there, you're not on your s***-ass island, you have no right to complain about how people perceive your dirty-ass island. Period. I expect more from Puerto Rican Americans…so, yes, there was a joke made at your f****ing expense, and it wouldn't be funny if your island wasn't actually a floating trash heap."

As Trump pretends nothing happened Sunday - or again last night - he is torched by everybody from the Archbishop of San Juan to Bad Bunny to Megyn Kelly. A disturbed entertainer named Tony Hinchcliffe turns out to have been work-shopping the line at a New York comedy club Saturday night, destroying the Trump contention they didn't know what was coming. Now he may turn out to clinch Pennsylvania for Kamala Harris, and Pennsylvania would likely clinch the presidency for her.

Meanwhile she gave the speech of her life, nailing her "final argument" before a delirious crowd at the Ellipse. It was so good even Dana Bash noticed.

And there's a rumor posted online by a veteran investigative reporter about a relationship between Trump and my former MSNBC colleague Tampon Hall.

B-Block (25:30) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Almost a three-peat! After flooding the world with her side of the repulsive Nuzzi/Lizza/RFK Jr story, Olivia wants to seal all the subsequent legal action? Laura Ingraham outdoes herself in Trump sycophancy. And somebody actually defends Tony Hinchcliffe's right to be an unfunny racist (on the premise that well, he was funny at the Tom Brady roast). It's the incalculably overrated Jon Stewart.

C-Block (42:15) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Since he held a news conference yesterday where he took no questions, time to tell of when I met Trump at a news conference - and took questions! It was just the other day - in 1983!

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SERIES 3 EPISODE 59: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: "GARBAGE" IS STICKING TO THE TEFLON DON AS SCANDAL WORSENS; 'COMEDIAN' WANTED TO CALL KAMALA HARRIS THE C-WORD:  The Madison Square Garden “Puerto Rico Is Garbage” disaster is not only NOT going away; it is still getting worse, with the news that Trump staffers VETTED that statement AND the tasteless reference to Latinos entering the country and the rest of the Tony Hinchcliffe comments and Hinchcliffe’s script originally included a line in which he dropped a c-word in describing Kamala Harris. The news site “The Bulwark” is reporting that, and that Trump staffers directed Hinchcliffe to take it out… BUT that they missed the anti-Hispanic material or as they have now claimed Hinchcliffe ad libbed all that even though the video clearly shows him reading his material off the same teleprompter everybody else used.

Day three of Trump’s self-immolation among Hispanic voters who make up twelve percent of the electorate – one WEEK before the election and no sign that it – like every previous racist Trump controversy – is actually abating. STILL the lead story at the New York Times – at one point it had SIX front page stories – AND at the Washington Post – AND on the Fox News talk shows AND at the Wall Street Journal AND at the ultra-conservative Washington Examiner AND when the Trump campaign’s defense is ‘well at least he didn’t call her a rhymes-with-bunt like he planned’ they have actually stepped neck high in it, especially since the pro-Trump PAC run by Elon Musk posted tweets based on the C-Word. Literally, says “The C- Word.”

Even the fig leaf usually accepted by the bothsidesist media looking for a way – SOME way, ANY way – to avoid slamming Trump – has opened up a whole new line of stories: the disingenuous statement from the conveniently Latina spokesperson disavowing the jokes only served to spin off a series of reports on all the OTHER remarks Hinchcliffe and others made Sunday at Madison Square Garden: from the line about African-Americans and watermelons and the line calling the Vice President’s staff “pimp handlers.”

And the story is still expanding. Now Joe Rogan and Robert F. Kennedy Junior have been sucked under.

AND AS THE VIBE KEEPS SHIFTING TOWARDS HARRIS there are plenty of different flavors of insurrection to worry about but a Contingent Election isn't one of them.

B-Block (21:05) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Trump has a "Sir" story. The Border Patrol agents said he was better on the border than Lincoln. The Don't-Cancel-Your-WaPo-Subscription crowd is missing the point: don't criticize angry ex-customers. If you can, join them. And it's not enough to bully reporters into sanewashing Trump, you must reward them. Thus CNN's embarrassment Dana Bash is profiled in The Wall Street Journal and we are told: This Is Her Moment.

C-Block (33:20) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: If Trump ruined Giuliani's life, why was Rudy at Trump's self-immolation at Madison Square Garden? Well among other things I believe Rudy now lives in a hallway at Penn Station so it was a quick commute. Plus, you may not have known but Rudy's been nuts since at least the mid-90's, as I'll tell you.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SERIES 3 EPISODE 58: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

As Kamala Harris's lead among Hispanic voters nearly triples in less than a month, one of Trump's preliminary speakers at his Nazi Rally at Madison Square Garden attacks them. “These Latinos, they love making babies, too" says somebody named Hinchcliffe.“There’s no pulling out. They don’t do that. They come inside, just like they did to our country.”

If a crass attack against 12% of the nation's likely voters would not cause enough damage to Trump in the final week, Hinchcliffe then added "There’s literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. I think it’s called Puerto Rico."

As even Florida Republican Senator Rick Scott attacks the remarks, a Trump flunky tries to distance itself from the extraordinary attacks saying they don't represent the campaign. At the same time, Donald Trump Jr re-posted video of the remarks.

There is a day in each failed presidential candidacy where the losing candidate woke up with his chances of BECOMING president still intact, but went to bed with them irrevocably destroyed. I think for Trump that day was yesterday. The viability of his candidacy has largely depended on his growing support among Latinos. 

450,000 residents of Pennsylvania self-identify as Puerto Rican – 127,114 of them in PhILLY and 33,531 in Allentown. 100,000 residents of North Carolina do so. 65-thousand in Wisconsin. 50,000 Michiganders. To say nothing of a million Floridians and a quarter million Texans.

EVEN IF YOU'RE NOT HISPANIC THERE WAS PLENTY OF HATE TO GO AROUND: Stephen Miller echoes Goebbels. Elon Musk, Dr. Phil, Hulk Hogan and Tucker Carlson beclown themselves. just as the German-American Bund discovered in 1939 when they paraded the swastika into the old Madison Square Garden, there is something about parading Trump’s backed-up sewer of hateful has-beens into the heart of bright blue New York City to scream their filth. Somehow the context, the location, underscores that they not only believe this, they not only see a future only for white people and others who have been approved BY white people, they not only think they are a majority, they not only think Trump is beloved, they not only think the tens of millions of us who repudiate their bestiality and their hatred and their racism are somehow just PRETENDING to repudiate these things but most of all, WORST of al these scumbags think they’re going to get away with it.

And against a fresh background, we are reminded what shame they have brought to us.

Meanwhile the interior numbers for Harris continue to explode. In the ABC poll, likely African-American voters are now hers… NINETY to seven. The CBS poll has her up by 1 despite something curious in the very first interior number. She leads among women by 12 points. He only leads among men by nine. If that difference is correct, she wins.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SERIES 3 EPISODE 57: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) BULLETIN: After the Wall Street Journal’s stunning story linking Elon Musk to Vladimir Putin and other members of the Russian dictatorship, it is no longer feasible nor safe to permit Elon Musk to continue to have access to any project involving the government of the United States, nor for Musk to remain at large in this country. The government should sever all connections with him immediately and seize all his technological assets including SpaceX, StarLink, and Twitter-X – and if need be, detain him, deport him, or if it descends to that level, arrest him. The safety of the nation may depend upon it. 

A team of journal writers led by Thomas Grove has now reported – to quote them - “Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and a linchpin of U.S. space efforts, has been in regular contact with Russian President Vladimir Putin since late 2022. The discussions, confirmed by several current and former U.S., European and Russian officials, touch on personal topics, business and geopolitical tensions.” 

The Journal cites two sources who say that Musk’s relationship was more than just conversational. They claim Putin asked Musk to NOT activate his Starlink satellite internet service over Taiwan, as quote “a favor to Chinese leader Shee Jinping.” That, the Journal reports, happened late last year and its source is a former Russian intelligence officer.

The Journal further reports one of Musk's primary contacts is a Putin henchman just cited by the Department of Justice as the agent behind more than 30 websites designed to spread disinformation about Ukraine and the U.S. election - some of it via Musk's Twitter-X platform.

(7:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Why is Kamala Harris in Texas tonight? I mean, yes, Colin Allred has a longshot's chance of upsetting Ted Cruz and a Democratic Infomercial starring Beyonce is a national event not a local one. But taking the time from stumping in a battleground state would, on the surface, be something Trump would do (and will do, Sunday, in New York, unless he gets lost on the way to Madison Square Garden).

Strategically the Harris Texas trip makes no sense - unless...

Unless her internal polling confirms two things that are beginning to show up in the early voting data and polling, plus the simulations of the Electoral College vote. It appears that even in states where Republican early voters outnumber the Democrats, she's winning by 55-45 (or better). And the forecasters are suggesting that as close as the swing states look they make actually all go to one of the two candidates, though they can't say who.

So there is the very real possibility - and don't relax, just take a deep breath as you contemplate this - that Kamala Harris can actually afford to take the night "off."

(23:20) THE WORST JOURNALISTS IN THE WORLD: A special segment saluting the gutless owner of the L.A. Times who refused to print the paper's endorsement of Harris in one of the bluest communities in the country; Dana Bash, who somehow did worse than she did at the debate; Erick Erickson who says Trump has a type and it's not Melania.

B-Block (30:00) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Yankees boss Brian Cashman explains his total under-performance since 2001 by blaming cheaters (ignoring evidence of Yankee cheating in 1999, 2000, 2009, 2011). Nicole Shanahan reportedly offered to pay off a Washington Post reporter working on a story about her. Lara Trump thinks there are 81 states.

C-Block (40:10) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: The political fables! Including "The Peacelike Mongoose," "The Very Proper Gander," "The Moth And The Star," and "The Owl Who Was God."

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.