SEASON 3 EPISODE 101: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:45) SPECIAL COMMENT: Trump fired the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and replaced him with a junior officer he brought back from retirement whom HE claims once wore a MAGA cap in his presence. Then he fired the Judge Advocate of the army, the Judge Advocate of the Navy, and the Judge Advocate of the Air Force.

What you have been told by news organizations – even ones that still have good reporters – that this is part of the Trump Racism Orgy. The fired Joint Chiefs Chairman Charles Q. Brown is black. The Chief of Naval Operations was a woman. Their identities are cover stories and red meat for the Trump cult. Trump looked at the top lawyers at the Army, Navy and Air Force, the ones who would tell him, no, you can’t have the Army shoot civilians, and you can’t have the Navy blockade Vancouver and Greenland and the Panama Canal, and you can’t bomb the next Democratic convention… and he fired them.

At least six different reporters and commentators on the military beat said the same thing. Firing the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs is bad and a red flag. Firing the T-JAGS, the Judge Advocates, the lawyers who tell you when something you are going to do with the military is illegal… can mean only one thing… you are planning to do something with the military that is illegal. You fire the people who would SAY it’s illegal and replace them with people who would say it ISN’T illegal.

There are degrees of nightmare ahead. They all amount to different versions of Trump's plot to permanently take over the government by using the military.

B-Block (26:20) THE FIRING OF JOY REID: Yes, firing her is racist and maybe worse yes it is designed to keep out people who might think differently and it is designed to reward professional political salespeople like party chairmen and press secretaries. But most of all, since they also fired Alex Wagner, it means that four women of color have solo hosted prominent shows ON MSNBC and all four of them have now been fired. 

C-Block (58:00) SPORTSBALL CENTRAL: I could not have been more wrong about hockey's Four Nations Faceoff. But at least I wasn't as wrong as Wayne Gretzky, now under deserved attack in Canada as a remorseless Trumpist, and rapidly becoming The Man Without A Country. (1:11:00) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Senator Thom Tillis begins to suck up to Trump. Jared Polis, "Democratic" governor of Colorado, should resign. So too should Phil Murphy, "Democratic" governor of New Jersey.

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