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December 3, 2024 19 mins

SEASON 3 EPISODE 75: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

Special Edition (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Some time over Thanksgiving in Nantucket the light bulb went off over Joe Biden’s head and he finally realized that no, the norms and traditions and institutions to which he and most of the rest of us have dedicated our lives did NOT miraculously re-grow, did NOT suddenly spring, fully restored and intact, from the ground.

He saw that not only was his son about to go to prison because of his own foolish decision to not interfere with an enfeebled Department of Justice, and because of the dictator it let get away, who would now aim his DOJ at Hunter Biden - and Joe Biden - and anybody else - for personal revenge.

The President figured this out and pulled his son out of harm’s way. And much of he left attacked him for it. They are Morons. I don’t care about Hunter Biden, particularly. I care about the fact that we are 48 days away from a nascent military dictatorship taking over this government, supported by an unknown percentage of the population that wants to see Hunter and Joe Biden hanging from construction cranes parading through the streets, and wants to see Trump in power for life. A

We JUST got one more guy out of their sights and we JUST shoved one more plotline up Trump, and up Kash Patel and Pete Hegseth and Stephen Miller and whichever other lunatics Trump wants to take over the asylum. And countless liberals – and anti-Trumpers – think this will actually provide cover for Trump pardoning the January 6thinsurrectionists because apparently for the last ten years they have been hallucinating and thinking Trump has ever bothered to seek cover for anything. Or they think we should be "better" than them. The Trumpists are planning to put us in camps. I don’t care if we are better than them or worse than them or monstrous to them. If somebody’s going to go to camps, it ain’t going to be us, it’s got to be them. End of debate.

In addition to explaining why this was not just the right decision but should be a template of thousands of further pardons, permit me to excoriate a bunch of the clowns who cannot see the forest for the trees. Or the fact that the forest is on fire.

And then for giggles we have the moronic comments of Nate Silver and Dinesh D'Souza, complaining about pardons when he himself got an undeserved pardon. 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. This
is a Countdown podcast special. And to anybody listening who

(00:27):
thinks President Biden pardoning his son Hunter was a bad idea,
and I suspect that includes nobody in this audience. But
if you happen to run into somebody who believes this,
you can use this explanation. And by the way, my
condolence is that you ran into somebody who thinks it
was a bad idea. Let me explain this to them.

(00:47):
One they cannot find their political ass from their political elbow.
Two that is probably because all they have is political ass.
And three President Biden didn't pardon his son to keep
him out of jail for this literally trumped up gun
and drug prosecution. He pardoned him to protect him from

(01:10):
further persecution by Trump next year. In this continuing hysterical
ringing of pearls and clutching of hands reaction to the pardon,
we are reminded that we are in this transcendent mess
because Trump is an evil psychopath. First of all, obviously,

(01:31):
but also because all of our guard rails against evil psychopaths,
the Constitution, the Supreme Court, the laws, the media, patriotism.
They all turned out to be made out of paper machet.
And we are reminded that perhaps the most disturbingly diaphanous
of these butter solid protections was the assumption that eventually

(01:56):
Democrats and liberals would actually, you know, fight back. Some
time over Thanksgiving in Nantucket, the light bulb finally went
off over Joe Biden's head, and he realized that no,
the norms and traditions and institutions to which he and

(02:18):
most of the rest of us had dedicated most of
our lives did not miraculously regrow after Trump's relentless assault
on them. They did not suddenly spring fully restored and
intact from the ground. Biden saw that not only was
his last son about to go to prison because he

(02:42):
was his son, and because he the President bent over
backwards to not interfere with the Department of Justice that
thought by partisanship meant bending over backwards to do nothing
against Trump while bending over backwards to do everything against Democrats.
The President not only saw that was true, but he
also finally, at nearly the last minute, as if this

(03:04):
were a Shakespearean tragedy like Othello, that Trump's Department of
Quote Justice unquote, will at minimum try to initiate further
prosecution against Hunter Biden next year, and through him against
Joe Biden, and through him against Jill Biden, and through
them against anybody else they could get their hands on.

(03:28):
The President figured this out and went over and pulled
his son out of harm's way, and then much of
left attacked President Biden morons. I don't care about Hunter
Biden particularly. I care about the fact that we are

(03:51):
forty eight days away from a nascent military dictatorship taking
over our government, supported by an unknown percentage of the
population that actually wants to see Hunter Biden and Joe
Biden and maybe me and maybe hanging from construction cranes
parading through the streets of Washington and wants to see
Trump in power for life. We just got one more

(04:18):
good person out of their sights, and we just shoved
one more plotline up Trump's ass and up the asses
of Cash Patel and Pete Hegseth and Steven Miller and
whichever other lunatics Trump wants to take over the asylums,

(04:40):
and countless liberals and anti Trump conservatives think this will
actually provide cover for Trump pardoning the January sixth insurrectionists,
because apparently for the last ten years these people have
been hallucinating and thinking that Trump has ever once bothered

(05:01):
to seek cover for anything, or they think we should
be better than them. They are planning to put us
in camps. I do not care if we are seen
as better than them, or worse than them, or monstrous
in comparison to them, because if somebody's going to wind

(05:24):
up in camps, it ain't going to be me, It's
going to be them. End of discussion. Also, where did
this idea come from, considering that he ran on pardoning
the January sixth insurrectionists that now he would be provided
cover for doing so. You people really need to take

(05:48):
the weekends and do a little work on them and
not half ass your jobs. Never trumpers and faint hearted liberals,
that's the generic you. I am not talking to you,
dear listener, since you agree with me. As I said yesterday,

(06:09):
I cheer the pardon of Hunter Biden. My loan complaint
is that the president should pardon another ten million potential
Trump targets. I want Trump waiting in the White House
neck high through biden issued pardons. I want him to
find that every prosecutor, every Democratic politician, every reporter, every critic,

(06:34):
every cartoonist has been pardoned. I want their families pardoned,
I want their pets pardoned. I want every barricade thrown
up against Trump on every street Biden can get to
in time. The serious host and human rights lawyer Cassim

(06:57):
Rashid adds, quote, My only issue with Biden pardoning Hunter
is if he stops there. Biden should commute death penal
for forty Americans on federal death Row, cancel student debt
via EO executive order, and force Trump to revive it,
and protect abortion nationwide. Ya EO, get bold, take action,
slow down maga fascism unquote exactly, just get in Trump's way.

(07:25):
You don't have to get run over by the tank
in TN and Men's Square. Just get into TN and
Men's Square. Every step Trump takes for the rest of
his god damned life should be into quicksand or at
least make him go through a pool filled with oatmeal.

(07:47):
Eric Holder cheered the pardon. Ellie Mistahal cheered the pardon.
My friend John Dene cheered the pardon and further urge
that it be extended to anybody on Trump's enemies list,
and John dene is one man who knows about presidential
enemies lists. But also to all anti Trump commentators, I'll

(08:10):
take the pardon. But then there are the idiots. Then
there are the reasons we are in this mess. Then
there are the dilettants. Rick Pearlstein's Nixon Land is a
classic of recent American history. It's up there with Gibbons

(08:31):
decline and fall of the Roman Empire, as far as
I am concerned, only it's better written. I read it
to my father out loud as he lay dying in
the hospital. And yet Pearlstein and I had this exchange yesterday.
He wrote, I think the Hunter pardon is dumb, instantating
Joe's political tragic flaw of selfishness with the worst possible timing.

(08:57):
It chisels the narrative of democratic deep state cronyism into stone.
For anyone on the fence about whether to surrender to
Maggie is or not, I replied, firstly, there is no
longer a fence, and nobody still on it him. No,
this is the most crucial time. Millions of people poise

(09:20):
between Trump is right and Trump is bullshit, between being
on the cop side of the line when the roundups
come or the Jews, I mean Mexicans. We have to
think inside the fascist, anti fascist frame, right Rick, I
hadn't been doing that me. The first step is to
block all efforts to put people in camps. The intended
further persecution of the bidens is part of the process.

(09:42):
Biden should pardon everybody. We are already at the barricade
the streets stage. Rick, fewer will join if they're given
own goal, excuses to sigh and say both sides are
the same. This helps depopulate the barricades. Me all caps.
They said that on November fifth, you are fighting the

(10:07):
last war, and I mean that of all people. Rick
should know that the Republicans have spent literally every day
since Watergate, which he wrote about in nixon Land, insisting
that both sides are the same. That is the whole point.
That is how they have gotten away with this. That
is how they tried to get away with Watergate. That

(10:30):
was the whole first line of defense in Watergate. Well,
everybody does this. Nixon just got caught. They have insisted
for more than half a century that both sides are
the same, and they have convinced at least half the
country that this is true, and Perlstein and other liberals

(10:51):
are wondering if something like the pardoning of Hunter Biden
might make the undecided waiver. The undecided decided they elected
Trump twice, and part of the reason that they decided
that way was the fact that the Democrats didn't fight this.
We are perceived as cowards. It's not an incorrect perception.

(11:17):
Some other samples of cowardice Matt Gertz from Media Matters
for America, the guy who always gets the angry missives
directed towards Matt Gates. My Hunter Biden take is that
if you make your whole stick the other guys put
themselves above the country, undermine the rule of law, and
lie constantly, then you need to have a much higher

(11:38):
standard for yourself than pardoning your son after saying you wouldn't.
It's Gavin Newsome getting caught at French laundry, just an
obvious example of not honoring the standard you said people
should follow when it affects you personally, that's idiotic. If
you vow you are not going to use a gun

(11:59):
against the people who are running after you on the streets,
pursuing you by foot, on the street, and then they
double their speed and their threats, and instead of running,
they get into tanks. You are allowed to change your
mind and use your gun up on the high horse,

(12:21):
Matt Gertz, you still don't see the difference between corruption
and self defense. Shame on you. Jonathan Chait in The Atlantic,
formerly of New York Magazine, which we now understand to
have been one of the great fraudulent operations of our
time politically now writes with this headline Biden's unpardonable hypocrisy.

(12:46):
The President vowed not to pardon his son Hunter and
then did so anyway. Charlie Sykes, an ex Republican supposed
non Trumper smart person, texts me Joe Biden has just
removed the issue of pardons from the political arena for
the next four years, and Trump probably once again camp
leave his own dumb effing luck at this point. Sadly,

(13:07):
I think he's right. Well, I got the word sadly
right in there. Yeah, Because Charlie Sykes, you and the
other writers made sure that Trump's pardons, including pardoning his
son in law's father for having hired a prostitute to
help him blackmail his brother in law, so he wouldn't
go to the authorities about the crimes, blackmail his brother

(13:30):
in law with a sex tape of his brother in law,
a tape he showed his own sister that of course,
was front of mind in the twenty twenty four election.
Oh that's right. Nobody mentioned it until Trump just appointed
this scumbag who he then pardoned as envoy to the
Middle East, the Democratic governor of Colorado, Jared Polis, who

(13:57):
just last week had been sucking up to RFK Junior
to side show Bob about vaccines. While as a father,
I certainly understand President Biden's natural desire to help his
son by pardoning him, I am disappointed that he put
his family ahead of the country. This is a bad
president that could be abused by later presidents and will

(14:18):
sadly tarnish his reputation. When you become president, your role
is pater familius of the nation. Anyway, I'm going to
interrupt a note that anybody who uses the phrase pater
familius non ironically is trying to pretend that he's smart
when he's not. Hunter brought the legal trouble he faced

(14:39):
on himself, and one can sympathize with his struggles while
also acknowledging that no one is above the law, not
a president and not a president's son. Jared, that ship sailed.
Everybody in trump Land is now above the law. In fact,
there is no more law. Maybe you missed it while

(15:00):
you were busily sucking up to RFK Junior about vaccines.
If the governor will not resign, mister Polish should be
expelled from the Democratic Party. We have enough cowards, two
more that border on the hilarious Nate Silver. You can
always depend on Nate. He'll always let you down. I

(15:24):
discussed here how I voted for Harris despite feeling like
Democrats indulged in a lot of bad behavior that voters
were rational to publish. He meant punish. But Nate has
a little problem publish after the White House lying about
the Hunter pardon. I'm not sure how much more I
can tolerate. Move to Brazil. Don't vote, he says, don't

(15:49):
vote for any Democrat in twenty twenty eight who doesn't
repudiate the pardon within forty eight hours. Nate forgets that,
thanks in part to his previous attempts to pinocchio himself
from his real form a calculator with bad haircut into
an actual living boy. We may not have any elections

(16:10):
in twenty twenty eight in which to not vote for
any Democrat who doesn't repudiate the Hunter pardon because of
all that bad democratic behavior. Oh yeah, Attila, the hunt
is over here, and over here is somebody who changed
his mind about pardoning his own son. I think we
should give Attila another chance. And lastly, not a liberal obviously,

(16:36):
but I like to try to give you something to
laugh at it the way out. Also not a liberal
and not a smart person, just plain old Denesh Desuza.
He retweeted my insistence that Biden should give out ten
million more pardons and then added, Olberman proves once again
he is the reductio ad absurdum of the left. The

(17:00):
punchline to this, of course, is that convicted of vice
relations of campaign law, Denesh Desuza was sentenced to eight
months in a criminal halfway house, but then on May
thirty first, twenty eighteen, he was pardoned by Donald Trump.
By the bye, Desuz's all time great moment of self

(17:24):
unawareness about pardons yesterday came on the same day he
had to retract under thread of lawsuit, the entire propaganda
movie two Thousand Mules, which, to my great surprise, two
thousand Mules that turned out not to be about his

(17:45):
love life. I've done all the damage I can do here.
Thank you for listening. Follow me for the podcast promos
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Tuba Gram. Bryan Ray and John Phillip Shaneil the musical
directors have Countdown arranged, produced, and performed most of our music.

(18:07):
Mister Chanelle handled the orchestration and the keyboards, and mister Ray,
of course, was on guitars, bass and drums. It was
produced by Tko Brothers. Our satirical and fifty musical comments.

(18:28):
You're by the best baseball stadium organist ever, Nancy Faust.
The sports music, although there wasn't any in this edition,
is the Olderman theme from ESPN two, written by Mitch
Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN Inc. Other music arranged and
performed by the group No Horns Allowed. That's Countdown for Today,
an abbreviated edition, but an extra one just and twelve

(18:50):
days until the scheduled end of the Lane Duck presidency
of Trump. The next scheduled Countdown is Thursday. As always,
as this evidence is, bulletins is the news warrants. Until
next time, I'm Keith Alderman. Good morning, good afternoon, goodnight,
and good luck. Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production

(19:25):
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