SERIES 2 EPISODE 87: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Dictator-On-Day-One Trump continues to measure the windows for the new curtains in his White House, and I don’t know if that has been PROCESSED on the fascist side or if we have properly done so on the, you know, Non-Dictatorship Side but it is increasingly obvious that Trump is increasingly confident that he will seize power next year.

That is the ONLY possible explanation for what he has now done: leaking, to the gullible and willing stenographers from Axios Mike Allen and Jim Vandehei for publication yesterday, a set of choices for his administration that would make Jair Bolsonaro blush: Vice President Tucker Carlson, Chief of Staff Steve Bannon, CIA Director Kash Patel, Attorney General Stephen Miller, or Attorney General Mike Davis, or Attorney General J.D. Vance, Secretary of Defense Tom Cotton, Secretary of Denial Kari Lake, Secretaries-of-to-be-announced Kristi Noem, Byron Donalds, Johnny McEntee, and of course Secretary of Lecterns Sarah Huckabee. 

We will never fully now, not even after the autopsy, what PRECISELY is wrong with Trump’s brain but it seems clear that whatever it is one of its symptoms is that he must convince himself that he IS winning, WILL win, will ALWAYS win. Jack Smith is right and he IS a serial election denier but it’s deeper than that: at his advanced age and with his advanced diseases, if he ever believed he was defeated, he would die – figuratively or maybe literally. So the greatest relief he could possibly have would be to believe, 334 days before it happens, that he has already won the 2024 election and that is how he is behaving and I’m not sure WHAT to do with that but it HAS to make him sloppy and vulnerable and better minds than ours can problem figure out which soft spot on his head to PUSH.

What VALUE is there in saying “here’s Tucker Carlson: psychopathic white supremacist whose career stability makes Keith Olbermann’s look like that of Bob Cratchit – I’m going to put him in government. Along with Kari Lake, whose highest elected office was weekend weather-girl in Rock Island.” It’s the kind of things you do NOT to rally your base and NOT to scare your opponents but because you really can’t STOP yourself from doing them, and suddenly you are more convinced than ever than you can get away with them.

And if that isn’t a motto for the entire Trump Nazi Party I don’t know what is.

PLUS: Matt Gaetz is about to get Robespierred, J.D. Vance wants to get a head start on prosecutor writers. And competing January 6 Truthers fight it out over whose bullshit is true.

(17:35) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: MAGA Congresswoman McClain makes a fool of herself but not as much as would-be MAGA Congressman Philip Sean Grillo does. The NFL coach who really doesn't have to "hand it to" the 9/11 plotters. Poor Nick Fuentes and Vivek Ramaswamy pushing white supremacy without realizing that if the Trumpers run out of brown immigrants, the next people they'll purge will be... Fuentes and Ramaswamy.

B-Block (33:31) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: Mr. Preble Gets Rid Of His Wife

C-Block (43:32) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: A Box To Hide In

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