THEY FINALLY INDICT THE PROVERBIAL HAM SANDWICH - 3.31.23

EPISODE 166: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:41) SPECIAL COMMENT: Manhattan District Attorney's Office Confirms: Trump has been indicted. Improbably, Hannity sums it up best. And the breadth of reported counts (34?) suggests the range of charges could include really dangerous ones like tax crimes or lying to banks. In confirming he'll be brought in, Trump makes two outstanding bloopers. Sean Spicer has to announce it on Newsman. And maybe the most important consideration: life teaches us that in anything controversial, the toughest thing is to go first. Today it's twice as easy for Fani Willis or Jack Smith to indict him than it was yesterday afternoon.

Plus: just for fun I'll read you Trump's 2014 fan letter to me. No - seriously. Talk about a blooper!

B-Block (19:46) COULD TRUMP PASS A SANITY TEST, Part 1: An updated version of the 2016 Vanity Fair piece and video that forever linked me to the Oompa Loompa.

C-Block (44:00) COULD TRUMP PASS A SANITY TEST, Part 2: The conclusion and the final score and guess what...he COULDN'T.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. Impossibly,
it was Sean Hannity who said it best. Quote. A

(00:26):
grand jury can indict, as we say, a ham sandwich,
especially if that ham sandwich is Donald J. Trump. No
person in the history of humanity, guilty or innocent, confessed
or framed, has ever better defined the cliche of the
indicted ham sandwich than has Trump on whitebread. By the way,

(00:51):
indicted on a widely reported thirty four counts, which if
even one exaggeration, would confirm an investigation much wider and
much more thorough touching, much more than just Stormy Daniels,
you should excuse the expression than anybody had reported or thought.
First Trump confirmed it happened. Then so did a spokesperson

(01:11):
for the Manhattan DA, Alvin Bragg, quoting this evening, we
contacted mister Trump's attorney to coordinate his surrender to the
Manhattan DA's office for arraignment on a Supreme Court indictment,
which remains under seal guidance will be provided when the
arraignment date is selected. Unquote Tuesday. Reportedly, this is all

(01:34):
quote related to business fraud, per CNN, including quote documents
that have been uncovered during the probe but are not
yet known to the public. Slash been reported both financial
records and communications between key figures per CBS, but motly
nobody yet actually knows anything. The indictment or indictments are

(01:55):
under seal, and we have no other idea if there's
one of them, or thirty four or three hundred and
thirty four, or if it's business fraud or campaign finance
violations or falsified records, or given that reported volume of indictments,
if it was something even worse for Trump, like tax
crimes or false statements to banks, either of which would

(02:17):
necessarily include accomplices and thus could easily include accomplices who
have turned state's evidence, And sang, we don't know if
it's just Stormy Daniels or also Karen McDougall, who was
invoked by a Wall Street Journal report just hours before
the indictment news broke. We don't know if Trump's terroristic
threats of death and destruction on social media relating to

(02:40):
da Bragg might have produced additional charges by themselves. We
think we know that Trump will be arrested and indicted Tuesday,
so give credit where credit is due. He never said
which Tuesday did he. We also know pretty reliably from
Maga Haberman on CNN that the Trump camp had convinced
itself that the entire case had collapsed, and that the

(03:03):
Manhattan District Attorneys Office had yesterday announced a nearly month
long hiatus in meeting for the grand jury because Alvin
Bragg was looking for a climb down. I said nothing
about this here because, as I was told Tuesday, the
Stormy Daniel's case had not been dropped, but merely delayed.
No other explanation offered. CNN summed this up with an

(03:26):
anonymous quote from somebody close to Trump. Is this a
shock today? Hell? Yes, we do know that. When Trump
himself began the rumor that he was to be arrested
on Tuesday, March twenty first, he also leaked that he
would turn himself in and so a boast that seemed
to be lifted directly from the Norma Desmond character in

(03:46):
Sunset Boulevard. He said he would enjoy the glare of
the camera lights during his purp walk, and he was
debating which look he should put on his face. And
then the DA's office leaked that there would not be
a purp walk, but there would be fingerprinting and a
mug shot, mugshot, mugshot, mugshot, hugshot. But turning himself in

(04:07):
part turns out to impact Trump's main rival for the
twenty twenty four Republican nomination, Ron de Santis, a small
man in high heeled shoes, continuing to founder on any
stage bigger than the woke Finocchi swamp, immediately announced last
night quote Florida will not assist in an extradition request,
which is rather unfortunate because a, you do not need

(04:31):
to extradite somebody who is turning himself into the authorities
and be Article for Section two of the Constitution requires
every state to honor the extradition request of every other state.
So DeSantis, who graduated from Harvard Law but apparently never
went to class there, doesn't have a goddamned thing to

(04:51):
do with this. Other reaction to the news as it
broke did produce a series of absolute howlers. The guy
who happened to be on the air on Newsmax when
the story Sean Spicer, Trump's first press secretary, otherwise remembered
only because he was portrayed on Saturday Night Live by

(05:13):
an actress Melissa McCarthy. The Daily Show congratulated Trump on
finally winning a majority of votes. Somewhere as the news
broke on Fox, some of its five propagandists in the
studio gasped audibly. Stormy Daniels tweeted that there had been
so many messages of support that she couldn't respond to them,
a quote also, don't want to spill my champagne. That

(05:36):
added to her reaction from Sunday, when somebody had tweeted
President Trump wouldn't touch you with a ten foot poll,
and she subtweeted, true, he used a three inch one.
And Eric Trump, who at last report was supposedly Donald
Trump's son, actually responded to the indictment news by saying,
of his father, quote at some point, the guy deserves

(05:59):
a pass, which is about as far away from he's
not guilty as you could get without saying, yeah, he's guilty.
Way to go, Fredo. Nearly all of the rest of
the reaction fell into impotent, vague rage worthy of King Lear. Tuesday,

(06:21):
the Way Out whack Doodle Wayne Root had written an
article which Trump then disseminated, threatening that were Trump to
be indicted, fascist state and city district attorneys would then
indict Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, George Soros,
doctor Anthony Fauci, and Eric Holder. And you know, if
they paid off porn stars to keep quiet during their

(06:41):
presidential campaigns too, I'd have to say I approve. In
addition to calling Trump a ham Sandwich, Sean Hannity referred
to the opening of Pandora's box, and there was a
lot of genuine surprise and shock from the likes of
Tucker Carlson and other thwarted three year olds. In his
own reaction, Trump himself committed two outstanding bloopers that make

(07:04):
the whole experience worthwhile. Trump referred to the pending indictments
inevitably as a quote witch hunt, which remains an entirely
different kind of analogy when you stop to think that
in the three centuries ending about seventeen fifty that right
or wrong courts in Europe and colonial America convicted at

(07:25):
least thirty five thousand witches, thirty of them in Massachusetts alone,
and in a self own far less depressing than the
whole burning at the State thing, Trump posted on social
media that quote these thugs and radical left monsters have
just indicated the forty fifth president, which is in fact

(07:48):
literally true. But you keep using that word. I do
not think it means what you think it means. Indicated.
One thing Trump will never be accused of by any
district attorney is being too smart for his own good.
Rather remarkably, there was an astonishing number of basic questions
that followed that one would have assumed everybody already knew

(08:11):
the answers too. Yes, he can still run for president
when indicted. Even if convicted, he can run while in prison,
the labor leader Eugene V. Debs did in nineteen twenty.
Debs had been convicted of sedition in September nineteen eighteen
for encouraging people to dodge the draft for World War
One that he was serving ten years in the Federal

(08:32):
penitentiary in Atlanta, Georgia, Irony. There when he was nominated
for president for the fifth time by the Socialist Party,
Eugene V. Debs got nine hundred nineteen thousand, seven hundred
ninety nine votes for president, which doesn't sound too impressive
except that was a tenth as much as the Democratic
loser James Cox, and thus it was the equivalent of

(08:54):
about seven million, four hundred thousand votes today. Compare that
to what Jill Stein got in two sixteen, only a
million four The only thing Debs would not do in
nineteen twenty was vote for himself or for anybody else,
which might also be true for an incarcerated Trump in
twenty twenty four. Even if convicted and imprisoned and elected,

(09:19):
Trump could still assume the presidency, it would require a
compliant House and Senate to not immediately impeach him on
January twenty five, and for some reason, I wouldn't put
it past the Republicans to provide that kind of compliance.
Trump could even theoretically pardon himself for any federal convictions,

(09:44):
another reason why the state prosecutions in New York and
maybe Georgia are so important, And who knows, if Trump
were convicted just of state crimes, not federal ones, he
could shoot the works. He as a restored president, could
order federal troops to extricate himself from a state prison.

(10:04):
Of course, by now, in this particular bit of political
science fiction, we are almost certainly in the middle of
a civil war. But if it happens, don't say I
didn't warn you. Clearly the Constitution anticipated crooked men, but
not this crooked. The other practical question I was actually asked,
in various forms by various people last night, what about

(10:27):
those stolen classified documents? What happens to them now? What
about January six what about the thing in Georgia? I
had to explain that the indictment at arrest in New
York did not preclude indictment and arrest in Georgia for
trying to falsify the election results there, and that the
classified documents and January sixth federal cases were still alive

(10:47):
and well in pending the action of the Special Council
Jacksmith in DC. But it was shocking how many well educated,
generally well informed people did not know this. It was
a little less shocking, but not that less, that so
many of Trump's defenders seemed to think that because he
will be arrested for the New York case, he now
somehow cannot or will not be arrested and charged and

(11:10):
tried for the Marilago and Fulton County and the coup
attempt cases. Pro Tip, he sure can. Lastly, I would
suggest that the real importance of this story is contained
within one other reaction to the indictment of Trump that
came from a man named Yusef Salam, And if his

(11:30):
name is not immediately recognizable, Yusef Salam was a member
of the Central Park five, the kids whom Trump tried
to railroad to capital punishment more than three decades ago.
Yusef Salam he issued a one word statement, and that
one word was karma. And the point to that is

(11:51):
that somebody somewhere in authority finally did something yesterday. Somebody
finally said Trump broke the law. Trump erased the guardrails
of our democracy. He destabilized our society. And I don't
care if it was for trying to overthrow the government
or we're stealing a million dollars worth of Hamburgers. He
must face justice. Somebody somewhere acted, and the action is

(12:15):
the essence here. I would argue that all of this
indictments in Georgia and by the Special Council, and indictments
that would make those of Alvin Bragg seem like a
parking ticket, are now twice as likely as they were
yesterday afternoon. Because if life should have taught you one thing,
it is this. In almost any subject of importance, or controversy.

(12:40):
Nobody likes to go first. Nobody. We all like to
invoke pioneer Americans stock and Americans pushing the envelope and
American plock. But being the second district attorney or special
counsel to indict Donald Trump will be far easier than

(13:02):
being the first. What is the first thing's success in
any field, or just survival in any field produces imitation.
I will tell you a story that I confess is
largely a humble Bragg, but is actually presented here to
support my thesis that Alvin Bragg just made it phenomenally

(13:24):
easier for Fanny Willis or Jack Smith or anybody else
in authority to now indict Trump as well. At the
World Series in two thousand and seven, I was waiting
in a snake line at Fenway Park in Boston, waiting
to pick up my tickets, and they're approaching me from
the other direction. Was John Kerry. When he looked up

(13:44):
and saw me, he threw out his hands and said congratulations.
And I said thanks, And then I said for what?
And John Kerry said for winning us the mid terms
last year. And I was appropriately and sincerely really dubious
about that. And he said, don't you realize how much
cowardice there is in American politics. We all thought that

(14:06):
Bush was manipulating the terror alert system and arresting this
guy and revealing this fake plot just to score political
points with terrorism. But you were the only one who
actually went out and said it. And when you said it,
and not only didn't you get shipped to Gitmo, but
your network gave you a new contract and a raise.
All the rest of us said, well, now we can

(14:28):
say it too, And it turned out America was sure
of it too. And then we won the house in
the state and I said, wait, aren't you the guys
who are supposed to be the ones to say it first?
And Carry said you would think so, wouldn't you, But
we didn't either way. You were the one who crashed
his head through the wall. We just followed you through

(14:48):
the hole. So thanks for winning the midterms. Enjoy the game.
That's what it was. That's the key to it. Alvin
Bragg put his head through the wall last night. We're
more accurately, Alvin Bragg put Donald Trump's head through the

(15:09):
wall last night, still ahead of us in this edition
of Countdown. Lead us to say this edition is all Trump.
I'd like to get personal and give you a little

(15:30):
of my history with Trump. I am linked to him
by two stories. One is about selling my condo in
a Trump apartment building here because A I could no
longer bear to see his name over my front door anymore,
and B I realized that whether or not he won
or lost in twenty sixteen, his name alone would crash
the value of my apartment. The second story to which

(15:54):
links me, I'd like to update it for you. It's
a little piece I did in twenty sixteen called could
Trump pass a sanity test? The answer is it's less
likely now than it was in twenty sixteen. But first
let me read you something dated March twenty eight, twenty fourteen.
I was still working at ESPN. I had just done

(16:14):
a profile on the man who's daring launched my TV career,
Ted Turner, the founder of CNN, and this was in
my mailbox. Dear Keith, your piece on Ted Turner and
the Lifetime Achievement award was fantastic, and you're right when
you say he should get two of them. Keep up
the great work, with best wishes, sincerely, Donald Trump. Donald

(16:40):
Trump was a fan letter from Donald Trump to me.
I bet he'd like to have that one to do
over again. Could Trump pass a sanity test? That's next? This,
siscountdown Bee a bit much. Take two. So I have

(17:08):
told you what we know about Trump's indictment, and I
had told you my Trump origin story, and I've read
to you Trump's fan mail to me, and I've given
you a lot of the early highlights. But honest to God,
there was a time when I was known for SportsCenter,
or if we're just talking news, my name was linked

(17:29):
with President George W. Bush, or in a different sense,
with Bill O'Reilly. This all changed in twenty sixteen, like
so much of the life we knew then. By August
of that year, I was doing a video series where
GQ called The Closer, and after Trump won, another series
called The Resistance, and I forget the final play count,

(17:52):
but it was like one hundred and seventy episodes and
three hundred and fifty million plays. CBS News reported that
one episode got the most engagement on Facebook all year. Quote.
Political pundit keithal Roman found a way to channel concerns
about mister Trump. He started hosting a series of political
commentary and special interviews titled The Resistance with keithal Wrooman,

(18:14):
with the first episode featured on GQ on November sixteenth,
twenty sixteen, reaching fifty four million people, equivalent to one
in six Americans. All right, I'd like to hear about
the other five please? Anyway, that's when I was kind
of free christened the anti Trump guy and the thing

(18:37):
that started me on that path. While you're selling my
apartment to get out of a Trump building. But ultimately
it was a piece I wrote for Vanity Fair, which
we then did a really long, very well photographed video
four called can Donald Trump Pass a Sanity Test? There
ain't no santy clause one wee changes I'm going to

(18:58):
give you from the original. There's some dates and timing
are corrected for clarification, and there's two editors notes. So
here goes. Can Trump pass a sanity test? Short answer,
according to the facts, probably not. First several important caveats.
There is little worse and nothing cheesier than questioning the

(19:19):
psychological stability of a public figure, especially a candidate for president.
Even in this case, except that in his year of campaigning,
Donald Trump called Lindsey Graham a quote nut job, Glenn
Beck a quote real nut job, and Bernie Sanders a
quote wacko. Trump has insisted Ben Carson's quote got pathological disease.

(19:41):
He asked to Barack Obama, is our president insane? He
called Ted Cruz unstable, unhinge, a little bit of a maniac,
and crazy or very dishonest. He also called the entire
CNBC network crazy. He called Megan Kelly crazy at least
six times. Respectful reticence about aspersions and cliches and mental

(20:02):
health questions in a time in which mocking was seemingly
slowly maturing into concern died a long time ago in
the twenty sixteen presidential cycle, and it died at Donald
Trump's hands. Moreover, if the question is asked seriously and
not gratuitously, just the examination might explain how Trump has

(20:24):
seemingly survived dozens of moments that might each have been
campaign enders for almost everybody else. Why have we not
asked if a given presidential candidate might be disqualified from
office due to psychological reasons? Because we not only cannot
see this forest for the trees, but each time we try,
there are even more trees blocking our view than when

(20:47):
there were before in the twenty four hour news cycle.
Each successive John Yurky's Iceland from the Manchurion candidate moment
is not registered cumulatively. It merely supplants the moment from
last week, where from yesterday or from this morning. This
could also explain Trump's seeming imperviousness to his own mind

(21:09):
bending campaign. Surely it must be exhausting to attack the
Pope February eighteenth attack, President Clinton, May eighteenth, attack, John
McCain July eighteenth, attack, Mexicans June sixteenth, attack, Muslims December
eighth attack. Candidates to use a teleprompter May twenty six
just before you give a speech using a teleprompter, May

(21:32):
twenty sixth. It's got to be exhausting, unless, as the
old joke goes, no pain, no gain, but also no brain,
no pain anyway. The actual sanity test I found is called,
by delicious coincidence, the Hair Psychopathy Checklist Revised Introduced by

(21:56):
a Canadian criminal psychologist, Robert D. Hair H a r E.
In nineteen eighty. It is still in use, though with
ever more diffuse and specific mental health diagnoses. It is
not without its critics. However, as a practicing therapist who
walked me through this test agreed it serves as a
kind of triage device to separate the injured from the

(22:19):
tripping from the psychopathic. And about that word, we seem
to have completely muddled up sociopath and psychopath. Sociopath by definition,
think Ted Kazinski, the unibomber, living out there in his
shack in the woods, feeling nothing for other humans and
unable to interact with them, literally mailing it in psychopath

(22:45):
think Bernie made Off, feeling nothing for other humans, but
having long ago learned how to expertly mimic relationships by
being whatever he needed to be to whoever he needed
to use. As the former FBI profile where greg O
McCrary told The New York Times made Off matched the
psychopathic rates of quote lying, manipulation, the ability to deceive

(23:08):
feelings of grandiosity and callousness toward their victims. And neither
the psychopath nor the sociopath is automatically physically dangerous. So
to the test for each of the twenty items on
the hair psychopathy checklist, and if anybody's hair has ever
been psychopathic, it certainly his Thank you very much. You're

(23:30):
supposed to assign the subject a score a zero, A one,
or two. The highest and most dangerous score is forty.
In the United States, the accepted minimum score for possible
psychopathy is thirty. So those are the rules. Let's play
the feud one glibness slash superficial charm. I had interviewed

(23:54):
Donald Trump as long ago as nineteen eighty three, and
I'd always thought him a horse's ass. But after running
into him when we both worked at NBC, and then
in the lobby of one of his apartment buildings in
which I lived, I was stunned to encounter a quiet, succinct,
seemingly sincere co worker and in essence landlord. In one role,

(24:15):
he described himself as an anti Bush pro Obama Liberal.
In the other, he urged me to contact him personally
with any problems or suggestions about the building. Then he
got onto the campaign stage in two fifteen, and boom,
he was America's newest Mussolini impersonator. For a while, I

(24:37):
was flummixed as to which of these mutually exclusive personalities
was the act and which was the fact. Then I
was reminded that it didn't really matter which that having
multiple personality should by itself preclude one from having access
to multiple nuclear warheads. I was explaining this on Bill

(24:58):
Maher's show in November of twenty fifteen when Bill suddenly
got so g whiz that I I almost didn't recognize him.
Me too, he exclaimed boyishly. Bill Maher cynical to such
a degree that he makes me seem as earnestly faithful
as the Pope said he had been just as convinced
and thus just as stunned by this hydra of different

(25:22):
Trumpian personas now I can easily imagine myself being taken
in by a con artist like Donald Trump. I mean
Trump wrote me that fan letter, but mar mar who
called me a corporate sellout in nineteen seventy eight when
I was nineteen years old, when I had to that

(25:42):
point earned about five hundred bucks from all the corporations
in the world combined. He fooled Bill Maher so glibness
and superficial charm, but at professional grade points awarded two
running score two out of a possible two test number

(26:04):
two on the hair test. Grandiose sense of self worth quote.
I feel like a supermodel, he said on June eighteenth,
twenty sixteen, in Phoenix, except like Times ten. It's true.
I'm a supermodel. I'm on the cover of these magazines.
I'm on the cover of the biggest magazines. This stuff

(26:24):
about supermodels was stated by the first umpa lumpa American
to ever run for national office. He is bright orange.
He was then a seventy year old man affecting a
hair color and style that would have been rejected by
the eighties synth pop group A flock of seagulls. I
served with supermodels. I knew supermodels. Supermodels were friends of mine. Donald,

(26:49):
You're no supermodel? Points awarded two running score four out
of four point number three. Need for stimulation, proneness to boredom,
acknowledging that a lot of us get a point to here,
I certainly do not. All of those job changes were
their fault. Let me first quote the introduction from Trump's book,

(27:11):
Think like a billionaire, don't take vacations. What's the point?
Have a short attention span? Most successful people have very
short attention spans. It has a lot to do with imagination.
Here's some of the wide ranging businesses Trump's short attention
span has dragged him into real estate, vitamins, rentals, books, condos, chocolate, bars,

(27:32):
golf courses, pro football, beauty pageants, stakes, board games, television hosting,
bottled water, universities, men's where, professional wrestling, mortgages, airlines, fragrances,
coffee restaurants, energy drinks, vodka, search, engines, your analysis, and
of course, bicycle racing, the Tour to Trump, in which
contestants raced three hundred laps around his ego. And then

(27:56):
we have the whole President thing that happened after I
wrote this. Points awarded two running score six out of
six Top at four. Pathological lying June eighteenth at the
Woodlands in Texas. Quote. If some of those wonderful people
had guns strapped right here, right to their waist or

(28:17):
right to their ankle, and this son of a bitch
comes out and starts shooting, and one of the people
in that room happened to have it and goes boom,
you know what, that would have been a beautiful, beautiful site, folks.
That would have been a beautiful, beautiful sight. June twentieth
on Twitter, when I said that if within the Orlando
club you had some people with guns, I was obviously
talking about additional guards or employees. Can I stop there

(28:42):
or should I walk you through the hot and cold
running lies alternating with the admissions of the Times in
the nineties, he pretended to be his own spokesman, John
Miller and John Barron, or any of the twenty seven
pants on Fire recognitions that had been awarded by PolitiFact
to Trump for merely his most egregious lies from the

(29:04):
time he announced for the presidency through winning the Republican nomination.
Points awarded two running score eight out of eight. Topic
number five conning slash manipulative. I'm just going to assume
this was how Trump got Paul Ryan to commit professional

(29:25):
Harry Kiri. There are many different personality problems which include
almost supernatural one on one manipulation skills in the Trump
cannon see fools mar and fools Ulderman. Points awarded two
running score ten out of ten. Item six on the

(29:46):
hair test lack of remorse or guilt. Asked about his
faith at the Family Leadership Summit in Ames, Iowa by
the moderator Frank Luntz in July of twenty fifteen, Trump said, quote,
people are so shocked when they find out I am Protestant,
I am Presbyterian, and I go to church, and I
love God and I love my church once followed up

(30:09):
with a softball of literally biblical proportions. He wanted to
know whether Trump has ever asked God for forgiveness for
his own actions. Quote, I'm not sure I have. I
just go on and try to do a better job
from there. I don't think so. I think if I
do something wrong, I think I just try and make
it right. I don't bring God into that picture. I don't.

(30:32):
Trump then explained that Holy communions sufficed for that, quoting again,
when I drink my little wine, which is about the
only wine I drank, and I have my little cracker,
I guess that is a form of asking for forgiveness,
and I do that as often as possible because I
feel cleansed. I think in terms of let's go on
and let's make it right, the art of the deal. Indeed,

(30:57):
Trump picked up the thread with Jake Tapper in January
of twenty sixteen. Again the subject was religion. I like
to be good. I don't like to have to ask
for forgiveness. Tapper then asked about a rival, presumed to
be Ted Cruz, who was conducting field research into the
efficacy of questioning Trump's religious convictions as part of his

(31:19):
campaign against Trump, Trump said he shouldn't be doing that,
very unethical. Within a few weeks, Trump attacked Cruiz's religious
convictions instead. On February twelfth, he tweeted, how can Ted
Cruze be an evangelical Christian when he lies so much
and is so dishonest. You shouldn't talk about religion. You

(31:40):
shouldn't talk about my religion. Not a week after that,
Pope Francis answered a question about Trump's overall tone in
the campaign and said a person who thinks only about
building walls wherever they may be and not building bridges
is not Christian. Within hours, Trump responded by slamming the Pope.

(32:02):
He fantasized about an ISIS attack on the Vatican that
only he could stop, and he concluded this remarkable circle
of the illogic by writing, for a religious leader to
question a person's faith is disgraceful. He's a religious leader
who's going to question a person's faith? If not a
religious leader? Huh? And this was right after trumpet question

(32:25):
a person's faith after he twice admitted that his faith
included the option to not ask forgiveness and to not
bring God into that picture. And just four months before
he would go back to the well and question Hillary
Clinton's religious faith points. Awarded two running score twelve out
of twelve. Item number seven on the Hair Psychopathy Checklist

(32:51):
shallow affect. Now I had to have this one thoroughly
explained to me by my analyst friend. In some its
tone deafness when it comes to explaining relationships between people.
For instance, if somebody got up on stage for the
sake of argument, say it's Billy Joel at Madison Square Garden,
and Billy Joel insulted you by sarcastically dedicating to you

(33:14):
his song The Entertainer as a way of saying you
weren't a leader or a politician even but merely an entertainer.
You might take umbridge or at least recognize the dig
or complain that Billy only sings the same twelve songs
every couple of weeks in every concert he's had for
forty years. But not if you are suffering from shallow affect,

(33:36):
you wouldn't quote thank you, Billy Joel, Trump tweeted on
May twenty seventh. Many friends just told me you gave
me a very kind shout out at MSG. Appreciated love
your music. Another example of shallow affect would be a
kind of approach to how people influence each other's lives
that could be diagrammed as event B followed event A.

(34:00):
Therefore event A caused event B. If say, a prominent
athlete ignored you in some other tangential way interacted with
you before failing or being injured, with shallow affect, you
might think in passing that you jinxed him, especially if
you were still nine or ten years old, but you
probably wouldn't publicly claim it, not unless you were really

(34:25):
suffering from shallow affect. Quote Derek Jeter had a great
career until three days ago. Trump tweeted on October fifteenth,
twenty twelve, after the former Yankees captain shattered his ankle
during a playoff game when he sold his apartment at
Trump World Tower. I told him not to sell karma.

(34:49):
The answer this chain letter or many ankles will get
broken theme was not some early passing expression of the
now familiar syndrome we might describe as TWT tweeting wild.
Trump five days later, quote Derek Jeter broke ankle one
day after he sold his apartment in Trump World Tower.

(35:10):
And just to finish this topic, off. Another aspect to
shallow affect would be an unwillingness to acknowledge reliance on others.
In other words, it's just you. It's always you, It's
only you. On March sixteenth, Trump was asked about which
foreign policy consultants he was speaking to. I'm speaking with
myself number one, because I have a very good brain,

(35:33):
he said. Seriously, I know what I'm doing, and I
listened to a lot of people. I talk to a
lot of people, and at the appropriate time, I'll tell
you who the people are. But my primary consultant is myself,
and I have a good instinct for this stuff. On
June twenty fourth, twenty sixteen, in Scotland, he again described
his dream consultant, saying he spoke to quote foreign policy

(35:57):
advisors all the time, but the advice has to come
for me. The advice has to come from me. Points
awarded two running score fourteen out of fourteen. Item eight
on the hair Psychopathy checklist callous slash lack of empathy.
Oh yeah, you already know this. One June twelfth, twenty sixteen,

(36:20):
hours after the last shots were fired at the Pulse
Club in Orlando, quote, appreciate the congrats we're being right
on radical Islamic terrorism. I don't want congrats. I want
toughness and vigilance. We must be smart. As a reminder,
you cannot give fifteen hundred points for one item on
the hair checklist, even if that total is seemingly deserved.

(36:43):
Points awarded two running score sixteen out of sixteen, number nine.
Parasitic lifestyle. This is not as I originally thought, living
materially off mom or Dad or others, although that can
be a minor component, especially if you know Dad gave
you a million dollar loan circa nineteen seventy, and then
you've got nine million more from a bank on the

(37:05):
promise of your inheritance, and ultimately you got about forty
million upon your father's death, and you considered all this
just a small start. It has more to do with
taking credit for the work of others to the degree
of erasing all record of their contributions and slapping your
name on their efforts, often in transactions in which you

(37:26):
are literally renting the use of your name as a
brand and nothing else. You know, like Trump Palace, the
Tour to Trump, Trump Stakes, Trump taj Mahal, Donald Trump,
the Fragrance and of course, Castle trumpula, and just as
in court, a wife cannot be forced to give evidence

(37:48):
of parasitic lifestyle against her husband. Despite Milania Trump's twenty
sixteen convention speech, lots of which seemed copied from Michelle
Obama unless Hubby wrote that speech. Points awarded two, running
score eighteen out of eighteen. Well done, Donald, Item ten

(38:10):
poor behavioral controls, Well, he had poor behavioral controls, But
everybody agrees he's going to dial it all back this
time right after he pivots pivots towards dialing it back.
Right Judge Gonzalo Curiel, right, Don King, Joel Austine, Ben Roethlisberger,

(38:32):
Pete Rose, or anybody else who Trump claimed that endorsed
him when they had not, Or the Hispanic ABC reporter
he'd called a sleez, or the losing Republican presidential hopefuls
he mocked in a video the day after insisting he
would unite the Republican Party, or you know, everybody in
the world since not twenty seventeen. Points awarded two, running

(38:52):
score twenty out of twenty. Item eleven on this test
is promiscuous sexual behavior. And if I ever heard a
better moment, in any thing I have ever written to say.
I'll be back after this. It's eleven promiscuous sexual behavior.

(39:13):
I'll finish off the score of Donald Trump on the
could he pass a Sanity test test right after this
to resume that piece of work which originally tied me
to Donald Trump for life, the twenty sixteen Vanity Fair

(39:34):
article could Trump pass a Sanity Test? We had gotten
through the first ten points on the hair psychopathy test
and judging whether or not literally Trump could pass or
would fail this literal sanity test through ten which was
poor behavioral controls, he had a running score of twenty

(39:55):
points out of a possible twenty points. So if you're
going to wager now on how he did on the
whole exam, you better get your bets in now, because
point number eleven on the hair psychopathy exam is promiscuous
sexual behavior. I've told you this before. When I was
a young radio sportscaster, I was given the great opportunity

(40:17):
to interview by telephone a famous athlete who had just
been suspended from his own sport because he had gone
to work for casino. The athlete was Willie Mays, and
he was expecting my call and this, as near as
I can remember, it was the transcript of the start
of the call, ring ring voice sounding kind of like
Hattie McDaniel, the Academy Award winning actress from Gone with

(40:40):
the Wind. Mister Mays's residence. Me Hi. Milton Richmond from
UPI gave me mister Mays's number and said he would
be willing to give me a brief interview. May I
speak with mister Mays please, voice sounding kind of like
Hattie McDaniel, the Academy Award winning actress from Gone with
the Wind. Who's calling please me? My name is Keith

(41:02):
all Ryman from UPI Radio, voice suddenly changing to voice
of Willie May's. This is Willie. As silly as the
story of the whole fake Trump spokesman was. Of course
he has invisible friends, and of course they are pr flacks.
Lost in the laughter were three important details. Firstly, as

(41:25):
my conversation with Willie May's in nineteen seventy nine and
his imaginary housekeeper suggests, ordinary people do do this, but secondly,
when they do it, they usually try to disguise their
own voice. Thirdly, rarely do they assume other identities in
order to provide the second component to what we categorize
as sexual promiscuity, besides multiple partners, which is according to

(41:51):
psychiatrists boasting about it nineteen ninety one, John Miller, Trump
spokesman who sounded exactly like Trump talking to Sue Carswell,
then of people and now of vanity fair quote. Trump
is somebody that has got a lot of options, and frankly,
he gets called by everybody, gets called by everybody in

(42:12):
the book. In terms of women, I mean they call,
they just call. He's living with Marla and he's got
three other girlfriends. This was before the Access Hollywood video.
By the way, Points awarded two again because we couldn't
award two million. Running score twenty two out of twenty two.

(42:34):
Category twelve. Early behavior problems. Now, when I was a kid,
probably four or five, I twice hit a friend of
mine in the back of the head with a metal toy.
I remember shock blood, but no stitches, and family meetings.
We talked, and then folks got professional advice, and they
got me into organized sports and into exercise. And I

(42:55):
quickly realized that just because I was frustrated with somebody,
that was not a good reason to hit them with
a toy. Truck regardless, and I had my analyst friend
run the hair psychopathy checklist on me. I insisted she
give me a point on this because hitting a kid
in the back of the head with a toy truck

(43:16):
and then later a magnet was at minimum an indicator
of the potential for early behavior problems. So if you
give me a point for that out of a possible
two points, how many points would you give to a
child who attacked one of his own teachers. Quote I
actually gave a teacher a black eye, Trump wrote in

(43:38):
the Art of the Deal in nineteen eighty seven, barely
concealing his retroactive glee. He placed the assault in the
second grade, likely making him seven years old. Quote I
punched my music teacher because I didn't think he knew
anything about music, and I almost got expelled. What kind

(43:59):
of kid punches an adult in the face. I mean,
think back to being that age. You're in the second grade.
The one universal I can recall was that no seven
year old ever dreamt of trying to physically take on
an adult, for the simple and unavoidable reason that virtually
any adult was several times your own weight. If you

(44:22):
pick the wrong adult, they might do more than just
defend themselves. Even knocking an adult down could be an
exercising self destruction if he fell on you. The most
reality challenged of my classmates the kid who once ran
headfirst into the side of a moving school bus for
reasons that still remain unclear. Nine presidents later, he would

(44:45):
never have hit an adult. There is a second version
of the same story from a Trump biographer. He did
indeed give the teacher a black eye, but not with
a punch. He threw an eraser at the teacher and
hit him just right. Well, because that's way better, huh. Regardless,
the version Trump tells is of the four foot tall

(45:07):
edition of himself punching what was at least a five
foot tall adult in the eye hard enough to give
the man a shiner. The only argument against calling this
early behavior problems is that the first word implies that
it stopped at some point. Points awarded again two running

(45:28):
score twenty four out of twenty four, number thirteen. Lack
of realistic long term goals here the streak ended so far,
mister Trump has theoretically aced our exam, which is not
a good thing. But reality now invades our idyllic scene.

(45:49):
There could be a thousand things psychologically wrong with the
process by which Trump ends up with a low score
on this one. I mean, in the big picture, you
would have never thought Mussolini was less crazy just because
he left Italy for Switzerland in nineteen o two in
part to avoid military service, and exactly twenty years later
he became head of the Italian state and often dressed

(46:12):
up in a military uniform. But tests or tests, and
if you say, this guy Trump so lacks realistic long
term goals that he thinks he can become president and
he winds up with the nomination of a major party.
The long term goals turned out to be not that unrealistic. Huh. Still,
he gets only partial credit here because once again he

(46:35):
boasts about having the very thing psychology says is a
warning sign in the preface to think like a billionaire.
Trump quotes author Richard Coniff. Almost all successful alpha personalities
display a single minded determination to impose their vision on
the world, an irrational belief in unreasonable goals, bordering sometimes

(47:01):
on lunacy. I get a point here too, It's one
of my four or five points because I've always thought
I would make a great prime minister of the United Kingdom.
I have never been to the United Kingdom. Points awarded
one running score twenty five out of twenty six editors,

(47:26):
note number one. When I wrote this in twenty sixteen,
I gave Trump one point because I knew that while
he had breeze to the Republican nomination, there was no
way it would actually become president. So if you hadn't heard,
he did become president. So I have to take this
point away. I mean, becoming president cannot be considered an
unrealistic long term goal if you become freaking president, no

(47:48):
matter how you did it, no matter which country did
it for you. So his score reverts to twenty four
out of twenty six, and I'll use that corrected score
going forward, all right back to the original piece fourteen. Impulsivity.
Impulse Civity is like the old judicial definition of pornography.
You may not be able to define it, but you're

(48:09):
supposed to know it when you see it. Even the
Wall Street Journal editorial board, which seems not to have
approved of anything newer than Napoleon, took it for granted
that Trump defines the word impulsive. It wrote on June first,
twenty sixteen, mister Trump, needs to convince millions of skeptical
voters that he's more than an impulsive bully who poses

(48:33):
too big a risk in the oval office unquote. Yet
one man's impulsiveness might be another's recognition of the perfect
moment to act. Former colleague of mine met a woman
on a date proposed to her a week later. She
immediately said yes. Were they being impulsive or just visionary?
What about my other colleague who met a woman on

(48:55):
a date proposed to her the next day? She took
a day to think about it and said yes. The
first couple have now been married for thirty six years.
The second couple got it annulled at about thirty six hours. Impulsiveness,
as we layman use it tends to be results based

(49:18):
and devolves rapidly into twenty twenty hindsight. But in March
of twenty sixteen, writing in Psychology Today, doctor Glenn Gaihor
offered a different definition of impulsiveness. It's not necessarily the
same as rashness or its positive twin quick thinking. True
impulsiveness usually leaves fingerprints of edgy, though not automatically pernicious behavior. Rather,

(49:42):
it makes one do these things in the wrong place,
at the wrong time, like as mister Gayre was analyzing
discussing the size of your penis during a presidential debate.
Gayor did not include the other examples where the context
turns the behavior or the language from borderline to impulsive.

(50:02):
I mean, you might appropriately bring up that topic in bed,
or at a bar, or even at your tailors, like
saying a female presidential candidate had been schlonged in a primary,
Like criticizing the face of one of your female rivals
during speech, like crudely referring to a network television figures
menstruation while on a rival television network like the Hollywood tape.

(50:27):
The what was that? Line? Again grabbed them by the
points awarded two running score twenty six out of twenty eight.
Item fifteen of twenty irresponsibility. This is another seemingly easy
item that is actually difficult to nail to the wall.
What is irresponsibility not crediting John McCain's heroism because he

(50:51):
got captured when you yourself avoided the military draft four
or five times? Is irresponsibility shown by taking a position
on guns in nightclubs that's so extreme that the president
and legislative director of the National goddamned Rifle Association condemned.
It is irresponsibility, at least to the millions of lost

(51:13):
souls who actually thought you would make a great American president,
rather than merely the last American president to even make
a joke. If it was a joke that if you
were offered five billion dollars to drop out of the
race quote, I guess we'd have to think about it.
Is the word more applicable or less applicable if it
comes out the next day that during May your campaign

(51:34):
spent more than twice as much at businesses you own
than it did on payroll. The problem with this heading
irresponsibility is that so much of what fits vaguely into irresponsibility, promiscuity, bankruptcy,
punching out your teacher when you're a kid, fits like
jigsaw pieces, into the other categories in the hair test.

(51:57):
It doesn't mean the examples are ineligible, just that they
are imprecise. But it does mean we have to score conservative.
I'm afraid points awarded one running score twenty seven out
of thirty items. Sixteen failure to accept responsibility for own actions. Again,
you can't give more than two points in any category.

(52:19):
I'm sorry Both of my favorite examples here involved interviews
with the Washington Post. On May twenty fourth, sixteen, Trump
was caught having not yet donated the money from the
purported veterans fundraiser that he staged as counter programming to
the January twenty sixteen Republican primary debate that he bailed
out of. The Post quoted his remarks at the fundraiser,

(52:42):
which was televised nationally. We just cracked six million dollars, right,
six million, Trump replied to the Post, I didn't say
six The somewhat startled Post staffer said it was on tape.
Play it for me, Trump replied, because I'd like to
hear it, the Post reported. Trump then manipulated the conversation

(53:03):
to another topic, including the playing of the video in
which he said six eleven days earlier, the tape of
him speaking in his own voice but pretending to be
spokesman John Miller had been revealed when during a phone interview,
a Washington Post reporter brought up the proof. This time,
Trump simply hung up. Points awarded to running score twenty

(53:27):
nine out of thirty two seventeen. Many short term marital relationships, well,
this depends on numerical definitions. Despite the falling of religious
barriers against divorce and the rise of the pre nup
during Trump's lifetime, the mean is still around just one
point two marriages per American and the number of men

(53:50):
who marry more than once is still only about fifteen percent.
But Trump's marriage is still total only three and stormy
Daniels or no Stormy Daniels, their lengths fourteen years, six years,
and eleven years. There hardly in the annulled by sunset range.
So points awarded none running score twenty nine out of

(54:12):
thirty four. Coming down the stretch eighteen juvenile delinquency. Not
every student at Trump's high priced alma mater, New York
Military Academy NEEMA, was automatically the son of rich parents
who had been afforded a choice, not offered their less
affluent fellow troubled kids military school or reform school. That

(54:35):
would be a cliche, but the one on the record,
firsthand assessment we have of Trump as child cuts through
cliches and reputations. He was a pretty rough fellow when
he was small, said Donald Trump's father, explaining why he
had to pull him out of a traditional prep school
in their Native Queens and ship him away to New

(54:58):
York Military Academy NIMA. There are plenty of classmates at
the military boarding school who paint a picture of a
it always throwing hands. On June twenty third, twenty sixteen,
The Washington Post Trump profiled the NEMA inmate Trump quote
stuck with a broomstick during a fight. He tried to

(55:18):
push a fellow cadet out a second floor window, only
to be thwarted when two other students intervened. Maybe that's
where the Russians got the idea about windows. The paper
also quoted one of his pre NEMA teachers. He would
sit with his arms folded with this look on his face.
I use the words surly, almost daring you to say

(55:40):
one thing or another that wouldn't settle with him. The
Post also quoted a younger neighbor named Dennis Burnham. Once,
when she left Dennis in a playpen in a backyard
adjoining the Trump's property, Martha Burnham returned to find Donald
throwing rocks at her son. She saw Donald standing at

(56:01):
the fence. Dennis Burnham said, using the playpen for target practice.
That is the sort of stuff that would make a
bully flinch. Plus we have the boast from little Donnie
Trump about that seven years old blackening the eye of
an adult hist music teacher. Do we have records of

(56:21):
the police being called now? Nor does the category heading
ask for them, And that becomes a critical importance as
we come down towards the nineteenth and twentieth topics. Points
awarded two running score yeah, thirty one out of thirty six.
Nineteen The penultimate number revocation of conditional release. Well, how

(56:44):
many times have you brought that topic up? Don't be
worried if it confuses you. Confusion only means you're not
a parole officer. This is legal lingo for getting your
parole revoked or your probation converted into jail time because
you were just caught doing that illegal thing that had
gotten you in trouble in the first place. It is
very specifically a criminal record issue, and we're not there yet.

(57:06):
He only got indicted yesterday. It's not even official yet.
Points awarded zero, running score thirty one out of thirty eight.
So to the final one, twenty criminal versatility. The psychological
professional and I got into a big debate about this one.
She argued that criminal in this sense is not necessarily

(57:27):
meant literally here that if you scammed charities, stole money
from grandmothers via a phony university, and directed about twenty
percent of your campaigns monthly spending towards companies you own,
and the reimbursement for travel by your children, that all
qualified whether or not it was literally criminal. But my

(57:48):
point was the word criminal is used, not dishonest, not unethical,
not nefarious, not giving your kids money capital ce criminal
and the purp walk or the mug shot or the
multimillion dollar five and restitution, which that implies not that

(58:08):
that couldn't be the end result of Trump University, but
it isn't, not yet points awarded zero. Final score thirty
one out of forty. Editor's note number two. He was
impeached once, now he's being indicted. He's on deck before

(58:28):
two other grand juries. They think we can give him
the two points. So the adjusted final score on this exam,
this sanity test, where the low score is better, the
Donald Trump's score is thirty three out of forty. He
petered out towards the end there, but with thirty points
being the marker at which professionals could present a diagnosis

(58:50):
of psychopathy, the implications are clear. Our Trumper's new clothes
media rightly sees the latest Trump event, whatever it is
this time, as one of the most unbelievable developments in
American political history. But the mechanics of following, reporting, and
writing the proverbial new high in low every single day

(59:12):
means that they could be missing one overriding truth about
the health of the most remarkable presidential candidate since at
least the year eighteen sixty four. In short, our amateurs
exercise with the very professional hair psychopathy checklist suggests that
if you were betting on it, you would probably want

(59:34):
to bet that Donald Trump couldn't pass a sanity test,
even if it was open book. And now, having slogged
through this inventory of the citizen Kane storage unit of
bizarre presidential conduct, go look at social media, because in

(59:56):
the time it has taken me to read this to you,
the odds are pretty good. He's just done something new
that will actually raise his score. Okay, I've done all

(01:00:22):
the damage I can do here. Thank you for listening.
Here are the credits. Most of the music was arranged, produced,
and performed by Brian Ray and John Philip Channel, who
are the countdown musical directors. All orchestration and keyboards by
John Philip Chanel, guitars based and drums by Brian Ray,
produced by Tko Brothers. Other Beethoven selections have been arranged
and performed by No horns allowed when we use it.

(01:00:45):
The sports music is the Olberman theme from ESPN two,
written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN, Inc. Musical
comments when we have them by Nancy Fauss, the best
baseball stadium organist ever, and everything else, of course, is
pretty much my fault. So let's countdown for this, the
eight hundred and fifteenth day since Donald Trump's first attempt
coup against the democratically elected government of the United States.

(01:01:08):
Arrest him now while we still all right they are,
so arrest him again while we still can. The next
schedule countdown is Monday, but if the mugshot drops before then,
you can anticipate a special edition Boocket Dano till then.

(01:01:29):
I'm Keith Olverman. Good morning, good afternoon, goodnight, and Happy
Trump mess. Countdown with Keith ol Reman is a production
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(01:01:53):
app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts,