SEASON 4 EPISODE 8: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:45) SPECIAL COMMENT: Donald Trump might as well have shot those kids in Minneapolis himself yesterday.

Trump sends the WRONG guns in the WRONG hands to the WRONG places pursuing the WRONG criminals. You want to be tough on crime, Trump? Deploy the National Guard to the headquarters of the gun-manufacturing companies and arrest the monsters who make their money from the child-murdering business. Murdering children during their thoughts and prayers. And have ICE round up the politician prostitutes who take the gun money to protect a lie about what the second amendment really means.

These are the criminals. Trump is the criminal. Trump is soft on crime, especially on the most prevalent, heart-rending crime of our century, school shootings. You want to push back against Trump as he militarizes this country? As he makes it The United Police States of America? You want to make something good happen in the wake of these latest children that we as a nation have sacrificed on our mindless altar of worship to guns? You want these to be the last? You have to say it; you have to SAY the truth: Trump might as well have shot them himself.

Democrats are strangling themselves by listening to consultants and strategists who insist they cannot push back on Trump's deployment of troops in big cities because polling shows Trump's only policy that gets approval (53%) is his new stance on "crime." And yet the biggest political event of the week was a man who simply stood up and concisely and with controlled rage told the truth: Trump is crazy, Trump is trying to provoke violence, Trump's enablers will be prosecuted (or betrayed by him), and the media is bothsidesing us to death. His name is Governor J.B. Pritzker of Illinois and his comments may have been the true headline of this week.

Also, bookkeeping news: the fine folks at iHeart and I have agreed to continue this podcast through at least the midterms. And a further announcement on a wider footprint is coming.

B-Block (27:33) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: This may be the best edition of this, ever. Could this be the craziest thing (out of the 50,000 crazy things) Stephen Miller has said? Is he the first person to use the phrase "pool hall" in 60 years? Oh here we go: my ex is back in the news and stuck with the worst headline I've ever read: "RFK Jr's Digital Lover." And Candace Owens is being sued for defamation by the President and 1st Lady of France and she wants Trump to declare them "foreign invaders" and is amazed he won't because she's just not bright.

C-Block (44:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Do people like Owens believe the crap they spout? I actually have 45 years' experience dealing with the phenomenon of the product subsuming the salesman. I met Rush Limbaugh when he was just a baseball guy and 30 years ago he stood at my desk at ESPN dreaming of doing SportsCenter. I knew Hannity when he said "why do people get worked up about this? It's just TV?" And then the link is established. The more they believe, the more money they make.

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