NO, NBC, TRUMP ISN'T JOKING ABOUT A '3RD TERM', YOU IDIOTS - 3.31.25 - Countdown with Keith Olbermann

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. I
don't know what good it does you exactly. While the

(00:27):
rest of the media and some of the public freaks
out over that nitwit with the same crazy stare, Cash
Patel has Kristen Welker on NBC insisting to Trump that
he's joking about stealing an unconstitutional and illegal third term,
and the dictator replying, no, I'm not joking. I'm not joking.
You already knew this because the first time I warned

(00:51):
here that the fascists were looking to game the twenty
second Amendment term limits was on Wednesday, November eighth, two
thousand and twenty three. This has been the plan, like
all the other plans, take something unconstitutional and illegal and
do it anyway, and dare somebody to sue, and then

(01:12):
get his concierge Supreme Court to invent a new law
and a new country to let him do it anyway,
and then insist that this is the law, and if
you oppose him on this, you are breaking the law.
That's the way they papered over Trump's violation of the
Insurrection Clause in the Fourteenth Amendment. That's the way they
are going to try to paper over Trump violating the

(01:36):
twenty second Amendment term limits. The news in Welker's flatulent
lap sitting phone interview of Trump yesterday is that the
insane brain damage dictator gave away one of the ways
the entire lunatic revolutionary authoritarian mob would scam the twenty
second Amendment. Trump now seems to think they could do

(01:58):
a Lurelean Wallace and run Vance as the presidential candidate,
with Trump as the VP but really in power, or
Trump not even on the ticket, and then the elected
VP quits and Vance appoints Trump VP, and then Vance resigns,
and then Trump is president again. It's still unconstitutional and

(02:20):
illegal because under the twenty second Amendment, Trump cannot serve
again after two full or virtually full terms. Oh the constitution,
like that matters. That is also the problem with the
first scam, in which someone somehow was to award Trump
another term because he'd had to spend so much of

(02:42):
his first term defending himself against his you know, crimes,
or because he can get enough people to say he
really did win in twenty twenty, so we owe him
that one. In fact, that would be the way they'd
go for a fourth term. The twenty second Amendment is
explicit two terms or one full term and most of

(03:04):
a second term, and you are ineligible to again serve
as president. The question that remains there is whether you
could even be elected vice president, because you, as vice
president would be there to assume the presidency in the
event of the death of the president in any event.
This is also the problem with the second scam, which

(03:25):
they have apparently abandoned now after running with for more
than a year, that the twenty second Amendment limit of
two terms means two consecutive terms. So Trump, as the
first non consecutive electee since Grover Cleveland, could run again,
but Obama couldn't, and Clinton still couldn't, and Bush still couldn't.

(03:47):
Just Trump and Grover Cleveland. And there is of course
reason to wonder which one of them is more mentally
fit for the job, because while Grover Cleveland died in
June of nineteen oh eight, Trump is completely insane. The
vibe I got from this latest interview, apart from the
fact fact that Trump told this moron Welker that knows
she was wrong, he wasn't joking, and she never once

(04:10):
came back with the Constitution limits a president to two terms.
You know that, right, What makes you think you would
get away with it? She never said anything like that,
because she's an idiot. The vibe I got besides that
is that they may not have enough bullshit even to
get this legal leisure domain passed his own Supreme Court,

(04:31):
and they just cut to two versions of the same
ending of American democracy. One is the simple elimination of
elections or the declaration of an emergency of some sort,
with the subsequent violence and suppression and arrest of political opposition,
a preview of which we could be seeing now in
the disappearing of those protesters and of course the gay

(04:51):
barbers with tattoos. The other is a variation on that
lureline Wallace ploy in which the twenty twenty eight fascist
ticket is anybody and anybody else, and when it comes
time for the inaugura address, President anybody says I am
ceding all power to Donald Trump, and Trump doesn't even
move out of the Oval office, let alone out of power.

(05:15):
If that sounds at all familiar somebody who isn't president
acting as president, they may have taken that out for
a test run for the first few months of this presidency,
though it seems to be receding somewhat. That was the
period of the musk Co presidency. Could you get away
with somebody actually running the government without being president? Could

(05:37):
Trump's mental diseases be satisfied by being president in reality
but not president in name only? Regardless? No, sorry, miss Welker,
he's not joking. You're wrong. You should resign. I have
mentioned this on and off for the last five hundred

(06:00):
and nine days on this podcast. Trump not only as
a pathological need to remain in power, he has no
choice but to try to do so, no matter what
laws he must subvert, nor who he must kill or
have killed to remain in power. It is more than
appropriate to yet again quote the Yale historian Tim Snyder,

(06:22):
reminding us that Trump is in the classic dictatorial position.
He needs to die in bed holding all executive power
to stay out of prison. This means that he will
do whatever he can to gain power, and once in power,
will do all that he can do to never let

(06:43):
it go. This is a basic incentive structure which underlies
everything else. It is entirely inconsistent with democracy. Tim Snyder's
precise somber encapsulation of the reality of what we face
and what people who are supposed to be a thousand
times smarter than Kristen Welker still somehow think as a

(07:04):
oak or is trolling of some kind. This has taken
on added gravitas in the past week. Few things shock
me anymore. This shocked me. The Yale Daily News reports
that three of that university's top professors are leaving to
go teach somewhere else starting with the fall term this year.

(07:26):
Philosophy Professor Jason Stanley, history Professor Marcy Shore, and Marcy
Shore's husband, history Professor Tim Snyder. All three are moving
to the Monks School of Global Affairs and Public Policy
at the University of Toronto. Tim Snyder is leaving the country.

(07:52):
As I said, few things shock me anymore. But for
an hour after I read the news of Tim Snyder
bailing out, I was beginning to make preparations to see
if Professor Snyder of the Monk Schools of Toronto needs
a teaching assistant. I once was a teaching assistant. It

(08:34):
was in Communication arts. It was in nineteen seventy nine.
I was an undergraduate, and I have to say I
was pretty good at it references available upon request. Happily
at the moment, I actually think Trump should be less
worried about getting a third term and more worried about
finishing his second one. There are forces gathering against him,

(08:54):
all of them on his side of the political spectrum,
and I'm not sure that individually any of these forces
could extract him from office. But if they coalesce, and
if the Democrats win the midterms, a popular anti Trump
front could literally drive him from office. The first force
is the most blatant and least acknowledged sign of his insanity.

(09:18):
These suicidal tariffs analysis from the Federal Reserve Banks of
Atlanta and Richmond and Duke University have put out a
new study. American companies that import heavily from Canada, China,
Mexico and other victims of trumpanomics. The Lets Party like
its eighteen ninety nine plan. They expect to raise prices

(09:40):
this year by more than five percent. The ones who
won't be strangled by tariffs still plan to raise prices
this year by nearly three percent. Now, you can blind
yourself trying to analyze this data, but the headline is
Trump promised lower prices on day one, and here as
April looms is now delivering inflation at least three percent more,

(10:05):
may be well over that five percent more figure. He
bluntly stated on camera that he wants foreign car prices
to go up. Is this registering with his mesmerized base.
You bet your ass. At election time, nearly half of
all American voters believed they would be economically better off

(10:28):
under Trump. That was November. That number has already fallen
to twenty five percent. And it's not just consumers. The
Wall Street Journal says Trump got on the phone with
the CEOs of the top auto companies in this country
and warned them against raising prices after tariff flation hits,
that he will recriminate against them if he does so.

(10:51):
He has already repaid the media companies that prostituted themselves
to him by killing tourism to this country, so that
the Universal theme parks co owned with NBC and the
Disney theme parks co owned with ABC are going to
hit crises. His psycho in charge of health is threatening
to ban prescription drug advertising on television. And if you

(11:13):
haven't watched linear television lately, that's all the advertising there
is on linear television anymore. And Friday, his nut job
at the FCC repaid Bob Eiger cow twing to him
by opening an investigation of Disney Quote. In particular, I
want to ensure that Disney and ABC have not been

(11:35):
violating FCC Equal Employment Opportunity regulations by promotioning invidious forms
of DEI discrimination. He attached an article by a right
wing conspiracy theorist which called Disney quote the wokest place
on Earth. Gee, Bob, It's almost as if trying to
appease lunatics who threaten you with multimillion dollar bribes just

(11:59):
makes them conclude you will keep giving them more multimillion
dollar bribes if they keep threatening you. Not great, Bob.
The point is the CEOs and the stock market is
coming to understand that when they thought Trump would cook
the economy to give a select group of people all
this nation's wealth, he didn't mean them. He meant him.

(12:27):
He meant him, and maybe Musk and maybe Bezos. But
I bet you any amount of money Trump plans to
cut Bezos's legs out from under him sooner rather than later.
In any event, every time they turn around, He's cut
another bunch of them out of the money Club. He's
tanked the stock market, He's killed overseas markets for American companies.

(12:51):
Nobody wants to buy anything here right now. We don't
need a consumer strike. The consumers aren't buying crap. We're
headed for a depression, a Donald Trump depression, and bluntly,
copations are designed. They exist to eliminate the human equation
from business decisions. They eliminate any sense of feeling. They eliminate,

(13:15):
you know, whether or not people should live or die.
They are there to make money, guilt free, nothing else,
and anything in their way will eventually be removed. If
anybody extracts Trump from office, it will be from the

(13:36):
far right via a consortium of corporations, unless it's his
own intelligence community. The Trump Cabinet civil war enters its
second week, and all evidence leads to the conclusion that

(13:59):
the National Security Advisor is doing his damndest to get
the Secretary of Defense fired and hopes that it'll keep
him from getting fired. And the likeliest outcome is that
Trump refuses to fire either of them. And the heg
Seth Security Disaster and the second heg Seth Security disaster,
and now the third heg Seth Security Disaster and the
fourth heg Seth security disaster. They continue to sit atop

(14:23):
Trump's face like the prop monsters from the Aliens movies.
Somebody is leaking everything they have on Pete Hegseth to
the media. Oh no, how will we ever figure out
who's doing this? Who could it be? How could this
mystery ever be solved? Unless it could possibly be the

(14:43):
National Security Advisor, the guy who had the number for
the editor of The Atlantic in his phone and put
him on the secret chat about exactly when to attack
the houties and did everything but set an alarm in
the editor's phone to go off when the bombs went off.
That all started a week ago today, and it will
continue to strang the Trump administration if the Democrats just

(15:08):
lift a finger to poke at the scandal every day.
You remember the Democrats that used to be the other party,
led by Chuck Schumer, that apparently decided once another guy
was elected with a minority of the vote, all the
Democrats should go on sabbatical or something, or just start

(15:29):
mailing in their opposition and talking about the price of
peanut butter and jelly sandwiches or something. Christ back to
the Hegseth scandal, scandals already in progress. Because it turns
out for Pete it's always happy hours somewhere Hegseth, it's
also always bring your wife to work day and bring

(15:51):
your brother to workday somewhere. And those stories leaked out
in the last week. And again, who in this equation
has high level Washington media contacts and would be leaking?
Oh yeah, I mean besides the National Security Advisor who
apparently and put his finger about six inches above the
jay on his phone and boom. Jeffrey Goldberg of The
Atlantic has suddenly added to the Boa Boma real good

(16:13):
group chat. First, somebody tipped off the Associated Press that
one of heg Seth's most promising young staffers at the
Pentagon is a podcaster named Phil heg Seth. Why that's
a coincidence. He's Department of Homeland Security liaison and senior advisor,

(16:33):
which is impressive since he has no qualifications except he
came out of the same womb as the Secretary of Defense.
He worked for somebody else's podcast company, and then he
had his own podcast company. Why that's the entire spectrum
of experience, isn't it? References available on request the end?

(16:57):
We don't know what this seeming textbook example of nepotism
is getting paid by us. But the AP also found
out that little Phil was previously hired by Pete at
Concerned Veterans for America for one hundred and eight thousand
dollars to do media relations. And we know what Concerned
Veterans for America is concerned with. It's concerned with paying.

(17:20):
Hegseth brothers then came a leak to the Associated Press
that heg Seth and the Wall Street Journal that Hegseth
had brought his wife, the new one, the one he
cheated on with the previous wife, the ex Vice President
Fox Nation, the new wife. He has brought her to

(17:40):
a series of sensitive international meetings. There was one on
March sixth with the UK's Secretary of Defense, even though
she probably has weaker security clearances than his little brother does.
Brought the misses in to meet the secretary from the UK.
The Pentagon even issued official photographs of a meeting with

(18:00):
Hegseth and foreign leaders and missus Hegseth, who doesn't have
any clearance? Now, why wasn't she on the Houthie call?
Hegseth was already in such trouble over the houthie call
that a right wing group was launched called veteran action,
and the action they mean is threats. They are there

(18:22):
to threaten, according to the lead thug quote members of
Congress that they better have Pete hegseats back. And the
thing with bring your wife to the secret meeting day
was responded to by the right with a universal chand
of ooh, wait, will I tell you about Jill Biden,
which kind of collapsed once the fascists were reminded that
unless it's way worse than we know, Jennifer Hegseth is

(18:46):
not the first Lady of the United States and is
not sleeping with Trump. It had already gotten to the
stage when another story leaked on Missus Hegseth Wall Street
Journal Again. Remember those meetings with senators before his confirmation,
the ones who were little concerned, earned who were Susan

(19:06):
Collins ish about heg Seth's anger management issues and the
history of allegations of abuse of women, his total lack
of qualifications for a job. The one on one meetings
between heg Seth and those senators nah two on one meetings.
Quoting the Journal, some senators were surprised that Pete Hegseth

(19:27):
invited his wife Jennifer to sit next to him in
their private meetings, making it awkward to ask questions about
allegations related to infidelity and sexual misconduct, said people familiar
with the senators, thinking, not only did heg Seth bring
his wife to these meetings with US senators seeking their

(19:50):
votes for his confirmation, but he used his wife as
a human shield against allegations related to infidelity and sexual misconduct.
Once again, I just can't imagine where all these stories
are coming from, other than Mike Waltz, a nepotism story,

(20:16):
a wife gets to see classified information story, the continuing
who he chat classified information story, or sensitive information story,
or simply bombing schedule story. All we're missing is another
story about Hegseth and that other thing they've mentioned about
him for years. What's that word again? I think it

(20:38):
sounds kind of like nepotism. It doesn't rhyme with nepotism exactly,
but doesn't it end also in ism? Thank you, Nancy Faust.

(21:09):
We could be headed to that rare simultaneous double knockout
here because Politico reports that Vance and Susie Wiles and
one of Trump's personnel flunkyes have urged him to fire
Mike Waltz, especially after the photo of Mike Waltz with
jeff Goldberg of The Atlantic popped up on social media.
The guy, Waltz says, he's never met I can tell

(21:30):
you for one hundred percent, I don't know this guy,
wouldn't know him if I bumped into him, if I
saw him in a police lineup, police line up. Maybe
you haven't confused with Hegseth. Anyway, turns out, four years ago,
the French outeur and TV philosopher Bernard Henrie Levi held

(21:51):
a book launch in Washington, and there in a photograph
is Waltz applauding, and right behind him, leaning in on
Waltz as if whispering to Waltz directly into his ear
is Jeffrey Goldberg. And Waltz has never met Jeffrey Goldberg,
which means Jeffrey Goldberg is standing way too close. Leevy

(22:14):
posted the photo in twenty twenty one and tagged Waltz
and Goldberg on Twitter. So if the Democrats just pushed
this a little, maybe Waltz could get Hegseth fired, and
then vance can get Waltz fired because, to be fair,
Hegseth is self destructing. And this is just going to

(22:35):
stay like this because Trump can't afford to fire any
of them, even if he believes there's a reason to,
because he has now convinced himself that all criticism of
him is a hoax. And as I examined last time,
they around him are all lying to him about his
poll numbers and his popularity and how well everything's going,
and even his vote count. They'll be lying to him

(22:57):
about the inflation numbers soon enough, because they know Trump
is coming apart at the scenes mentally and they have
to manage him and give in to what Advance called
the president's desires or something really bad could happen. Oh
like what, it's not like he's forgetting easy to remember
facts like what's a country and what's not a country? Quote.

(23:24):
If the European Union works with Canada in order to
do economic harm to the USA, large scale tariffs far
larger than currently planned, will be placed on them both
in order to protect the best friend that each of
those two countries has ever had. So uh uh, he

(23:48):
U is now a country?

Speaker 2 (23:49):
Trump?

Speaker 1 (23:51):
Nah, He's fine, He's fine. No, reason to assume all
of this destruction of the economy in these nineteenth century
terrify ideas, and this move towards assuming the presidency for
life is actual insanity. No no, no, no, no, he's
he's fine. He's And on the journalism front, they're fine too.

(24:20):
Nobody ever learns nobody. The White House Correspondence Association Annual Dinner,
also known as Community Service for Reporters or a preview
of Your Time in Hell, will for the second time
in seven years, not feature a comedian because the Association,
at its president Eugene Daniels of MSNBC, naturally is afraid

(24:44):
of Trump and more interested in their own jobs than
in preserving the free press or the United States of America.
They have fired Amber Ruffin as the comedian after booking
her months ago. Quote Politico report or It's that. The

(25:05):
decision to remove Ruffin came after the White House Deputy
Chief of Staff Taylor Budowitch criticized the WHCA for hiring
Ruffin as she has been critical of President Trump. Alongside
a clip of Ruffin calling the political climate bonkers, boodoo
Witch wrote, this year's WHCA dinner will be hosted by
a second rate comedian who is previewing the event by

(25:27):
calling this administration murderers who want to feel like human beings.
But they shouldn't get to feel that way because you're
not all right. That's a statement of fact. They are murderers,
and the political climate certainly is bonkers. Second rate comedian

(25:50):
Caroline Levitt is a second rate comedian. Wait, there's more
from this story. Trump is expected to not attend the event.
In his past administration, he also did not attend any
of the dinners hosted. So Trump's not going, The fascists
aren't going. Appeasing Trump doesn't work. After taking money literally

(26:10):
from the people who run the media and own the media,
he's now going after those people again. So fire Amber
Ruffin anyway, when the comedian was the only reason worth
paying for parking at that event, which is literally less

(26:31):
impressive than the annual Big to do of the Rotary
Club in Ithaca, New York in nineteen seventy seven, I've
attended both, and the White House Correspondence dinner sucks. In
the old days. It was bad enough in the old days.

(26:51):
It was torture in the old days. Now it's just
dinner at Fichies. But to leave you with two happy moments.
My glass half full report that Christy Nomes sado masochistic
ilsa she wolf of the SS porn video that she
put out, filmed in front of the kind of people

(27:14):
she helped to kidnap off our streets and trundle off
without due process to an l Salvador slave prison. A
pro tip here, I have found my ability to process
that Christy Nomes snuff film improves appreciably if I interpret
the images backwards. Just tell yourself as you look at

(27:36):
this that she's the one behind the bars and the
dozens of shirtless guys are outside of her cage. And
I have a second half glass full, glass half full.

(27:56):
Lara Trump on her Fox show, which I believe is
titled we have to Fill weekends somehow, ask the Secretary
of the Interior and Commissioner of Eyebrows, Doug Bergham, if
we'd ever see Trump's face on Mount Rushmore. Now this
might be a little hannibal lectorish, but my first thought

(28:19):
was Trump's face, his real face on Mount Rushmore.

Speaker 2 (28:27):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (28:33):
Also of interest here in this all new edition of Countdown,
Bill maher self destructs again. How many times can you
do this bill? Only this time he explains to Chris
Cuomo that he's going to go to talk to Trump
at the White House so they can save the country.

(28:54):
Shouldn't go to the White House? Bill to a go
to an emergency room, get a CT scan. Also, I
have resumed my television sports career, and this merits both
an explanation and a plug. That's next. This is countdown.

Speaker 2 (29:14):
This is countdown with Keith Olberman.

Speaker 1 (29:37):
Still ahead. In this all new additional countdown, I have
resumed my TV sports career. I want to go into
some detail about this and why, because if you've been
listening the last roughly two and a half years, you
will have heard me say I don't think you should
be doing both politics and sports, certainly not in the

(30:00):
same venue, but maybe not even in different venues. Well,
I'd like to amend those remarks because I'm now doing
it in different venues, politics here and baseball on TV.
Ahead first, believe it or not, there's still more new
idiots to talk about. The daily roundup of the misgrants,
morons and Dunning Kruger effect specimens who constitute today's other

(30:24):
worse persons in the world. Here are the nominees the
Bronze Worse, Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna. If that is your
real name, Anna Meyerhoffer, And I'm sorry, miss, but I'm
afraid the role of Marjorie's stupid Green has already been cast.
But honestly, when she hits that magic percentage of body

(30:46):
weight that is just steroids and she goes catatonic, we
will call you, madam. Miss Luna announced on Fox quote,
I would like to tell the American people. I was
made aware to me this evening that NBC actually have
a video that has never been seen before that allegedly

(31:08):
shows Oswald near a vehicle at the time, which means
it couldn't have been him. Now, look, she's a simpleton.
She shows some evidence of brain damage, and god knows
what she heard and couldn't understand and decided was was
that evidence that it couldn't have been Oswald. I assume

(31:32):
either somebody told her about Oliver Stone's movie JFK and
a v tape of JFK this is the tape that
NBC has, or they told her about the various recreation
films of Oswald near the vehicle in which police officer
Tippett was shot long, the biggest timeline hole in the

(31:53):
Oswald Solo gunman theory, though not a fatal flaw in
that theory. But anyway, this misses the point. The day
JFK was shot, there was no way to burn tom
of Day into film or even the early giant sized
forms of videotape. There was no time code available until

(32:13):
nineteen sixty seven, so no nineteen sixty three film could
establish when anybody was anywhere that day or any other
day in human history, even one with a clock visible
in the background, because clocks could be wrong. I know
by this point her eyes have rolled back in her
head and the drool is flowing like wine. But you

(32:34):
still get my point. Also, the congresswoman added quote, we
hope to bring forward legislation to ensure this never happens again.
And who in the hell knows what she meant there?
Make sure assassinations never happened again. Make sure no more
Warren commissions, make sure there's no more evidence locked away
by the government. Make sure there's no more Oliver Stone movies.

(32:57):
Who knows, by the way, you know who was great
in that movie doesn't get credit for it. John Candy
was great and AFK. Moving on the runner up, Dave
la Rock, the far far right would be candidate for
governor of Virginia, the one who referred to Virginia's quote
colored community unquote. He didn't say that in nineteen fifty two,

(33:19):
he said it in twenty twenty one. He's a nut
job and a nitwit. And if you didn't know that,
listen to this interview in which he brings up his
favorite movie, No Not JFK, in which it was proved
that at the time of the assassination Lee Harvey Oswald
was actually working with a chisel atop Mount Rushmore No.

Speaker 3 (33:36):
No.

Speaker 1 (33:37):
Two thousand and sevens film Freedom Writers with Hillary Swank.

Speaker 4 (33:41):
One of my favorite movies, and I tell you moves
me emotionally, is a movie called Freedom Writers. Have you
ever seen that? I have seen that movie. Yes, it's
a spectacular movie, isn't it. And it's this inner city,
these kids that think they've life has been terrible, and
it justifies them being violent toward each other, and the teacher,

(34:02):
Hillary Swank, I think, introduces them to a Holocaust survivor,
and I think it's based on a true story. It is,
and they just appreciate that what these people have been
put through it, which makes their own struggles, I think,
seem like something they can overcome. So again, the central

(34:24):
theme of it is, well, a couple of different things
going on, but it uses the I think it was
Anne Frank that they actually brought in to tell her
story and it really changed these people's lives.

Speaker 1 (34:37):
Yeah, a life changing event when they brought on franc
into the classroom in Long Beach, California in person to
tell the kids about the Holocaust. On Frank herself. I
guess these days you and I should be happy when
we find a Republican, even an idiot Republican, who believes

(35:01):
it happened and believes it mattered. But honestly, can we
lock LaRock and Luna in a classroom for like three
minutes and just force them to brush up their knowledge
of just these two events and leave the other ten
thousand things they each get wrong in day to day
life wrong just on these things. Just about the fact

(35:26):
that there's no videotape of the JFK shooting and couldn't
be that, and then a Frank did not survive the
holl just somebody tell him this, Good God, But they
have excuses they're morons. Our winner the worst, once again,
does not have such an excuse. Bill Maher with assists

(35:49):
from Chris Cuomo and Gavin Newsom. He's got everybody working
with him except Chris Soliza. I'm not going to suggest
here or anywhere else that anybody ever took Bill Maher
seriously as a political thinker, but he had a certain fearlessness,
and one of like well two platforms that were largely
or mostly liberal in the early years of this century,

(36:11):
I might modestly countdown, was the other one. But Bill's
trolley has come off the track, and like so many
seemingly strong figures in our society, turns out that he
was made out of paper mache and filled with oatmeal.
Just like all the guardrails. What Bill has done has
decided he wants to be on the winning side more often.
So he's now going to the White House to see

(36:33):
Trump with his new friend Kid Rock. And once you
get past his new friend Kid Rock, everything else is
superfluous detail. If Kid Rock is one of your friends,
your life is at essentially an end. Mar is hanging
out with other quizzlings too. I mentioned Newsom, who used

(36:54):
to be the Democratic governor of California and is now
a podcast host. Announced on Mars Show Friday, Newsom did
that the polling showing the Democratic Party has twenty seven
percent approval means, quote, the Democratic brand is toxic right now.
Unquote gav a. The Republican Party has thirty six percent approval,

(37:16):
which is not a lot more given that they won
the election. B Most of the dissatisfaction with the Democratic
Party is from Democrats because of the weasliness and appeasement
from clowns like c. Gavin Newsom and Bill Maher. We
talk down to people, Newsom told Mar, we talk past people. Well,

(37:40):
the two of you do, That's correct, the idea that
we can even have a conversation with the other side,
Newsom asked rhetorically. Mar's reply, you have to They won,
says oo. Fox News has a larger audience that Bill
Maher Hell Newsmax. May Bill, do you have to talk
to them because they won? Mar apparently thinks this means

(38:04):
going to talk to Trump and to step into his
own personalized echo chamber that says this is a good idea.
He went on with Chris Cuomo, another guy who, to
paraphrase a line about Michael Jordan's willingness to do commercials
for anything. If they promised Chris Cuomo his own Network
TV show again, but he had to do a commercial
for it wearing a jockstrap that you wore on your face,

(38:28):
he would do it for once. Though. In this clip,
Chris Cuomo is the least insufferable person in the room
because the only on other one in the room is
mar listen to the delusions of grandeur parade out of
Bill Maher's tiny, little deviated septum.

Speaker 2 (38:47):
What do you think has been the response so far?
What do you think it will be?

Speaker 1 (38:50):
And why are you doing it?

Speaker 2 (38:53):
Which I'm totally for by the way, and I love it.

Speaker 1 (38:55):
I get it.

Speaker 3 (38:56):
Well, I'm doing it because first of all, it was
presented as a dare not a dare no, just like
maybe this is a beginning to heal America. Now, I
don't have some sort of complex where I think I
can heal America.

Speaker 2 (39:13):
I can't.

Speaker 3 (39:14):
Okay, let's get that clear. I'm not going to be
healing America. But if two guys who've been at each
other for so long, I mean, it's kind of a
Nixon to China thing, I have the credential there was
nobody who was harder on Trump or more prescient about
the fact that he wasn't going to leave office voluntarily

(39:39):
than I was. I feel like I have the credentials,
but they also respect me because I'm honest about the
woke train to crazy Town.

Speaker 1 (39:50):
First, Bill, they don't respect you. They're using you. That's
all this is. Don't you see that? Ten years ago,
the next to last time I was on Bill Mars show,
he and I talked about how the Trump who had
just announced his candidacy was utterly different than the one

(40:11):
we had met personally. That in person he had been polite,
almost mild mannered. I said that the disparity was so
vast that it didn't matter which Trump was the real
one and which one was the act the racists viewing
hate Trump or Eddie Haskell Trump. That the problem was
we could never survive a president who had two complete

(40:31):
and completely contradictory personalities Bill Bill said he thought we
should give the nice Trump a try, leading me to
my second point. Bill Maher was hardly the first person
to say Trump would never leave office. I said it
in my commentaries before the twenty sixteen election. I said
it on Mars show the night of the inauguration in
twenty seventeen, and Bill thinks he's been the toughest on Trump.

(40:57):
He may have been because of the size of his
platform top one hundred maybe, but his work since election
cozying up to Trump's people, platforming them. And now this
Neville Chamberlain was cool parade and going to the Lanehouse
with my friend, can'd rock because you have to talk
to the paint bomb. Bill is down to about a

(41:18):
millionth on the list. Also woke, Bill, take woke and
shove it up your ass. Wait wait, wait, Bill Maher
actually got worse, more condescending, more delusional. Just just listen
to this.

Speaker 3 (41:36):
First of all, it's an honor to be invited to
the White House.

Speaker 1 (41:39):
Yes it is.

Speaker 3 (41:40):
And I've already had a couple of people who I
said to them, you know, I'm just going to take
it as a backhanded compliment. Then you glide right past
the idea that little Bill Maher from Rivervale, New Jersey,
just a humble kid from the suburbs, was invited for

(42:00):
a private dinner of the White House. You glide right
past that to how dare you talk to him? And
that you're not impressed.

Speaker 2 (42:07):
By it at all.

Speaker 3 (42:07):
I'm impressed by it a lot. I'm impressed the fuck
out of it. I get to go to the White
House and yes, that is the structure of this dinner
is just let's talk. Let's talk to each other face
to face. Let's not stop shouting from three thousand miles away.

Speaker 1 (42:25):
You know.

Speaker 3 (42:27):
So if they expect me to be leaving in a
maga hat, they're going to be very disappointed. But I
know they don't and I think it's going to be
you know, look, it probably will accomplish very little, but
you got to try him, man, you got to try.

Speaker 2 (42:41):
I love it, you know, Kanye, Bill Maht. Thank they
very much appreciate you. Love being with you, Bud. Yeah,
this was so much fun and I love that you're going.

Speaker 3 (42:52):
I think it's graced for exactly that is, isn't it
a hundred percent?

Speaker 1 (42:55):
Yes?

Speaker 2 (42:56):
And I will celebrate it when it happens.

Speaker 1 (42:58):
Great.

Speaker 3 (42:58):
I appreciate that.

Speaker 1 (43:00):
And Bill, if Chris Cuomo loves it, it's the worst
idea of your life. Newsom Chris Cuomo. And as I said,
all you need is the endorsement of Chris Solisza and
you have the complete quizzling boxed set. Also, it's an
honor to be invited to the White House now after

(43:21):
what Trump did with Zelensky in the White House. Oh,
Hitler's invited me to the Life Chancellery. Maybe I can
get a selfie with him, Maybe you let me wear
his hat. It's an honor, I mean after Connor McGregor
was invited, after Sarah Palin, after a bunch of crooked

(43:43):
TV evangelists. Cuomo mentioned Kanye West. You were invited seven
years after Kanye West. They're just inviting you now, and
you think it's an honor. Hell, I was first invited
to the White House checks notes twenty six years ago. Okay,

(44:05):
they're just getting to you now, Bill, Let's stop yelling
at Hitler. Mar two Day's Other Worst Person and the
World Take four B one March thirty one, three two one.

Speaker 2 (44:36):
This is Countdown with Keith Olberman, host Scripts to the news,
some headlines, some updates, some snark, and in this case,
some explanation for unexpected personal conduct, not bad personal conduct.

Speaker 1 (44:58):
I'm not in the Trump administration, just unusual personal conduct.
And first, this is the Countdown podcast. And these are
the places where there's news. Dateline New York while and
other places like Atlanta, Cincinnati, Miami, the Tampa Bay Area

(45:21):
actually in this case Tampa itself, Detroit, Los Angeles, but
more correctly Anaheim, Kansas City, Cleveland, and Milwaukee.

Speaker 2 (45:30):
Hello.

Speaker 1 (45:32):
I have railed recently about the increasing merger between sportscasting
and politic casting, between the number of sportscasters at nominally
sports venues who have gone into commenting on politics. This
has been led by such derelict outlets as barstool and

(45:52):
the others, but it has also recently creeped into places
like ESPN, and I have been virulently angry and most
condescending towards with I think justificationation Stephen A. Smith, who
has decided the other day on the air that he
is going to debate Donald Trump on the subject of DEI.

(46:13):
This is, of course, part of what Steven A. Smith
thinks is a very clever little idea of his to
get himself mentioned as a presidential candidate, and as ninety
nine percent of the country laughs when they hear that,
the other one percent say, I'd like to have a
president who could give a seven hour State of the
Union address without taking a breath and without saying anything
at all because the one thing we want after this

(46:36):
one is another guy who wants to take all of
the air out of the room for himself. In any event,
it's not hard to figure. Many politicians have tried this before,
and lots of people who know nothing about politics think
it's a clever idea. Tell everybody that, oh, you'd do
it if it were necessary and people really wanted you to,

(46:56):
but you don't have the time, and you certainly don't
want to be president, and you let other people say no,
he'd make a great president, and you try a draft
some anonymous name like I don't know, John A. Smith
for president. There's been a lot of that recently, and
for some reason, things that at ESPN literally five years

(47:17):
ago would have gotten anybody suspended or perhaps fired is
now encouraged. Part of this was the new management there,
and part of it was its affection for people like
Pat McAfee. I think that's the name the guy who
spends all afternoon talking and talking and talking and bringing
on people like Aaron Rodgers, who was not necessarily fully

(47:39):
versed in living in this universe and has his own
kind of universe. And this eventually bleeds into politics, which
of course now fifty percent of all political discussion is
actually a conspiracy theory about something that does not exist,
because we have moved into that America. The post reality
America is where we are politically, as you well know.

(48:01):
But what I have been complaining about, and what I
had complained about even in the old days when I
was at ESPN and at other sports venues before that,
was that something we had done long long ago didn't
really work anymore and really shouldn't be done anymore. I
no longer thought it was a good idea for one
broadcaster to be a sports personality in one place, one network,

(48:25):
one outlet, one online place, one I don't know website,
and then be a political commentator somewhere else. Not that
there was any reason that a sportscaster should not be
qualified to talk about politics, but because in this time
of extraordinary pressure on all of us, we do need

(48:48):
to have a few areas in which politics will not
chase us. I always think of Donald Trump as the
character if you can believe this on the old Fred
Flintstone show who used to when you turn the TV off,
the hand would come out from around on the side
of the TV, and this character would turn the TV
back on so he could keep talking to you. That's Trump,

(49:11):
that's politics. I think there needs to be a place
where we can get away from that, and I think
one of the easiest ways for that is sports. I
am not saying when something like when the Trump administration
tried to erase Jackie Robinson from the history of the
Defense Department, I'm not saying that should be ignored by sports.
Quite the contrary, that's when it is absolutely necessary. I'm

(49:33):
not saying that when athletes have opinions about sports that
they should be ignored. Absolutely not. That is their platform,
and they should be covered, and they should be covered
to some degree neutrally, and the fallout should be covered
to some degree neutrally. But the point is that they're
the ones making the comments, not the sportscasters. The sportscasters

(49:53):
don't count. As I said in the old days back
at NBC in nineteen ninety seven, when I was first
hired there, I was hired to do both news and sports,
and the news part quickly devolved into almost all politics.
I was anchoring the State of the Union address and
then going to the Super Bowl weeks later. In nineteen

(50:15):
ninety eight, and then when I went back to MSNBC
in two thousand and three, it was just going to
be news. Well, that changed rather quickly too, and by
two thousand and seven I was on Football Night in America,
co hosting it with Bob. Bob Costas and several other
people were involved in the show at that time too.

(50:35):
Later Dan Patrick joined me on that program and we
separated those two entities. I did sports five nights a
week on MSNBC, or rather five nights a week of
news on MSNBC, in politics and increasingly political commentary on MSNBC,
and then one night a week on Big NBC, doing
just football and leaving politics out of it. In fact,

(50:58):
prior to that, in two thousand and five, I had
joined with Dan on the radio and talked sports for
an hour every day at three o'clock in the afternoon
or two o'clock in the afternoon, I can't remember now
one of those two hours. And then I'd get in
a car and go over to New Jersey and at
eight o'clock at night, it's been an hour yelling at
George Bush and it didn't really seem to bother anybody.
Those two things were separate identities. The mention of these

(51:22):
two subjects in the same lifetime in somebody's work as
a body of work was acceptable to the point where
Rush Limbaugh tried to buy the Saint Louis Rams football team,
and I supported him when lots of people on both
sides of the political spectrum said no, I said, if
you've got a reason for him not to be an owner,

(51:43):
that's fine. His failure at ESPN when he tried to
do football commentary, well, maybe that's a good reason for
him not to be an owner in the NFL. But
the simple idea that he was a political commentator or
in this case, a propagandist who had been sent by Satan, well,
I can understand why that might piss you off, and
you would want him to be an owner in the NFL.
But that's not a good enough reason. Well that's the

(52:05):
way we felt back then, before everything got kind of
out of hand, because what is complained about now basically
is if you are a liberal political figure and you
happen to have some other livelihood, the right wants to
destroy that livelihood. You can't be a sportscaster who has
liberal political opinions. You're not allowed to be a sportscaster

(52:25):
anywhere your simple presence is some sort of expression of
liberal media. That is the way these people think, or
at least pretend to think. And I mean pretend to
think in both senses of that phrase. So as time
war on, it became more and more difficult for me
to do both the sports end of my career and

(52:45):
the political end of my career. And they did overlap
for a solid fifteen years, and then I went back
into sports, and then I went back into politics. And
then I went back into sports, and then I went
back into politics, and I kept them each separate. In
twenty twenty, I was working at ESPN. I did Sports

(53:06):
Center for ESPN. I did other programs and weekly features
for ESPN. And as the election approached, as September came around,
given the fact that there were really no sports and
there wasn't much for me to do anyway, I wanted
to comment on the upcoming election. Obviously, I wasn't going
to sit that out, and so I retired from ESPN.

(53:29):
In any event, that was my decision because I wanted
to keep those things separate. I felt that was nice
and clean and important for it to be that way.
The rules have changed. As I said, I'm railing against
what Steven Smith and others have been doing and with
ever increasing measures. And there are sports websites that are

(53:49):
essentially this spell of portnoy at Barstool. And there's another
some other Southern guy, I forget his name. He's not
particularly smart, but he's a out kick kick can whatever
it's called. That's just a right wing website that they
use sports to draw people in and suck them in.

(54:10):
That's not really a sports site, but it does underscore
the merging of these two things. So, having said all
of this for the last ten minutes about how we
should not put sports and news, particularly politics together anymore,
it's just not two thousand and nine, where on January twentieth,
I anchored the inauguration of Barack Obama as President of

(54:34):
the United States on MSNBC. That's January twentieth. January twenty seventh,
I turned fifty years old, and February first, I co
anchored the three hour pre pregame Super Bowl show. That's
quite a lot of stuff for twelve days, But the
two extremes, I think that'll be the last time you'll
see anything like that because it was pure politics in

(54:54):
the first and news, and then twelve days later it
was sports and my partisan and yay and flags and
flyovers and all the rest of the Super Bowl. I
think that time has gone. And having said that, I
don't expect any of you saw this. The likelihood is
probably very, very small. But I resumed my TV sports
career last week surprise. It was kind of a surprise

(55:19):
to me too, and it may be nothing more than
what was accomplished last week. It was done as a
very last minute idea from a friend of mine who
is now running the network called fan Dual Sports. He
asked me last week if I would be willing to
do some quick, minute and a half long essays on

(55:40):
what he needed to know as the generic viewer for
each of the nine teams the baseball teams that the
fandual network carries. That would be the Atlanta Braves, the
Cincinnati Reds, the Miami Marlins, Tampa Bay Rays, Detroit Tigers,
Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, Kansas City Royals, Cleveland Guardians,

(56:01):
and Milwaukee Brewers. Just whatever I wanted to talk about,
something serious, but something off the beaten track. And then
if I wanted to put something funny in it. That
would be fine too, write them up and send them
to me. Well that was Tuesday, and I think the
first of them aired on Thursday in the preseason specials
for these teams for Opening Day, and they were met

(56:24):
with absolutely no negative response. I mean, now that I'm
publicizing this, I suspect somebody will complain, but to this
point nobody said, Gee, Keith Oleruman can't also continue to
do baseball pieces. I do have some credibility on this subject.
Fan Duel counts as a network and thus is the
fifth network I have covered baseball for. I have hosted

(56:47):
the World Series and for two of them NBC and Fox,
and added in for Turner the hosting of the postseason.
I've done play by play of baseball for ESPN and
now this work for FanDuel, and I reported from dugouts
in World Series, have been in World Series games per se,
in the postgame interviews and all the rest of that.

(57:09):
And I'm a baseball historian. I've been a member of
the Society for American Baseball Research since nineteen eighty four
and been associated with them since nineteen seventy three. So
I have some chops on baseball that perhaps stand alone
from the rest of my sports experience in any event, though,
I was hesitant to merge these two streams to use

(57:31):
a ghostbuster's analogy, And then as I was sitting there
listening to myself complaining about Steven A. Smith, it dawned
on me that the rules I was trying to enforce
on them no longer were being applied to anybody. So,
after a moment's hesitation whether or not I should do this,
I said, why not? Why should I apply those rules
to me when I am meticulous about keeping the two

(57:52):
things separate anyway, And all this rule does when I
apply it to myself, which is you're not going to
talk about sports while you're talking about politics nominally, and
you're certainly not going to talk about politics while you're
doing sports. Always religiously that those rules are long gone,
and the next one in which Steven A. Smith can

(58:14):
go on ESPN and demand that Trump debate him, if
that's the rules, my doing a feature piece on whether
or not Mike Trout is going to be healthy this
year for the Los Angeles Angels is not much of
a violation, and it would make for a nice break
because frankly, doing these pieces as valuable as I understand
they are to you, and as cathartic as they are

(58:36):
often to me, they still are, like, you know, gargling uranium.
And it's nice to do something other than gargle uranium
every once in a while and to just try to
figure out what are the most interesting five things about
each of these baseball teams. It was kind of fun.
I mean, I got to do a couple of good jokes.
I got to say farewell to Bob Buker on the
air in Milwaukee, which pleased me very much. I got

(58:59):
to talk about whether or not my old friend Tito Francona,
the manager of the Cincinnati Reds, would have taken that
job if he didn't think the Cincinnati Reds were going
to be winners. And I got to make a joke
about the Detroit Tiger young star Colt Keith and whether
or not he could pull off his move from playing
second base to playing first base. And I noted that

(59:20):
there's one thing that you should know that perhaps nobody
but me would know that only five times have World
Series winning teams in baseball history featured a player named Keith.
So this has been done. The rubicon has been crossed.
I am continuing to do these political broadcasts, podcasts, political appearances,

(59:43):
political commentary, social media commentary full of swear words, and
yet over here I am now part of the legendary
pre season baseball coverage at yet another television network. As
I said that maybe it it may have been a
one shot deal. There were no expectations on either end.

(01:00:06):
He just wanted these pieces. He thought they'd make the
better broadcast, which is a good enough reason. And you know,
I didn't have to leave the house, and they paid me.
So it's baseball. It's not exactly heavy lifting for me,
and it was nice to use those mental muscles once again.
But it does underscore this idea of where are we

(01:00:28):
going if we are going to have a rule in
which you can say anything you want to on any
television network and drag politics into it and not provide anybody,
including me and you, somewhere safe to go where we
are not likely to be chased by Donald Trump, because that,

(01:00:50):
of course, is the essence of being Donald Trump. I'm
trying to remember who it was, whether it was Roger Angel.
I think it may have been Roger Angel, the great
baseball writer who said during the Ken Burns documentary that
when he went to a New York Yankees game, whether
he was literally there or simply thinking about the Yankees,
every time he tried to look at the team, he

(01:01:10):
would see the owner, George Steinbrenner, stand up in front
of his view and start screaming and saying, no, listen
to me, listen to me. Well, that's a characteristic that
happens to be true of Trump. Obviously, it's far more
dangerous in a man who happens to be the commander
in chief of a large military and is out of
his mind and is being treated as he is out

(01:01:31):
of his mind by his colleagues who are working every
day to find new roots around him. It's a very
dangerous situation, and we really shouldn't spend too much time
not watching what the f this lunatic bastard is doing next. However,
I think it would be okay if we all went
for two hours over into a sporting event or into

(01:01:55):
a movie and felt fairly sure we were not going
to be unless we thought in advance we would be
attacked by news of Trump and Trump's people. Maybe that
gives them a two hour head start. I don't know,
I do know if we attempt to continue to cover
this in our own minds, you and me, NonStop without

(01:02:17):
a break, without something else, the top of my head's
bound to blow off at some point. And I don't
mean somebody's going to make it happen. I'm not suggesting
they're out to get me. I'm just saying that the
pressure inside is going to blow the roof off of
my head. Now it may fall back into place, and
I have some good gorilla glue in the garage, maybe
I can use that. I'm just saying I put out

(01:02:40):
a steadfast rule that the time had gone when we
could ever have a sportscaster and a political commentator in
the same being in the public space in the United
States of America. And when I said that, I meant
there were degrees to that. I meant politics and sports

(01:03:01):
on the sports network. That's no good. This other one
where the guy does the Hair on Fire political podcast
about Trump twice a week or more and then does
a feature on how many guys named Keith have ever
played on a World Series winning team. I am now
officially declaring that that's not only okay, but it was

(01:03:24):
actually pretty effing funny. I've done all the damage I
can do here. Thank you for listening. Brian Ray and
John Phillips Shanel, the musical directors have countdown, arranged, produced

(01:03:46):
and performed most of our music. Mister Chanelle had old
orchestration and keyboards, Mister Ray was on the guitars, bass
and drums, and it was produced by Tko Brothers. Our
satirical and pithy musical comments are by the best baseball
stadium organist ever, Nancy Faust. The sports music is the
old Woman theme from ESPN two, Who's This over Moon Anyway?

(01:04:08):
It was written by Mitch Warren Davis. I can pronounce
his name, and its courtesy of ESPN Inc. Other music
arranged and performed by the group No Horns Allowed. My
announcer today was my friend Dennis Leary, who succeeded in
pronouncing my name. Everything else was, as ever, my fault.
That's countdown for today, just three hundred and ninety two

(01:04:29):
days until the scheduled end of his lame duck and
lame brained term, unless Musk removes him sooner, or the
actuarial tables do, or the corporations do. The next scheduled
countdown is Thursday. As always bulletins as the news warrants.
Remember in peach Trump. It won't work now. It will
though when the Democrats the mid terms. If there are midterms,

(01:04:53):
if the Democrats are going to show up, put out
an APB for Chuck Schumer. No, don't until next time.
I'm Keith Oulderman. Good morning, good afternoon, goode, and good luck.

(01:05:23):
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts.

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NO, NBC, TRUMP ISN'T JOKING ABOUT A '3RD TERM', YOU IDIOTS - 3.31.25

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}NO, NBC, TRUMP ISN'T JOKING ABOUT A '3RD TERM', YOU IDIOTS - 3.31.25