April 25, 2024 • 47 mins
SEASON 2 EPISODE 164: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: The 'Presidential Immunity' case beginning today at the Supreme Court?
Trump's already won.
Because while most of the coverage is binary (the Court will never invent something as anti-democracy as 'presidential immunity'/the Court will grant Trump presidential immunity) the real point here is that the delay already created by the Supreme Court's conspiracy to keep Trump from facing justice and to fix the election so he can seize power, has already guaranteed the jury can't possibly get the case before the election. The point from here on in is to extend that delay and the way to do that is to send the case BACK to Judge Chutkan with some lame ass "review" to see if there are parts of Jack Smith's indictments Trump might be immune from.
Trump's already won.
Plus: the Arizona Fake Elector Indictments are in. Trump is an unindicted co-conspirator and Giuliani and Christina Bobb are among EIGHTEEN just plain indicted. And as I always say, democracy survives not because of our efforts to preserve it, but by the stupidity of those who would destroy it. Fox nimrod Jesse Watters has found his analogy for Trump prevailing no matter how his enemies try to lay him low: Trump is King Kong. "And what happens with King Kong? You remember! So he's going to bust out of this cage eventually."
Jesse doesn't know that King Kong gets killed.
B-Block (24:09) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: The L.A. Dodgers get an entertainer who has sung the anthem at their games five different times ARRESTED for asking them to let her bring her purse into the stadium with her. Pastor Shane Vaughn thinks if you say 'I'm not calling Joy Reid...' followed by a really racist insult, it means you didn't call her that. And Cornel West thinks he's going to beat Trump and apparently does not know the people trying to get the signatures needed to get him on the ballot work...for Trump.
C-Block (35:48) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: If it's Supreme Court day, why don't I tell the story of the day I was invited on a first date by a woman who thought the ideal thing to go see was...Clarence Thomas's chair at the Supreme Court. Yes, it was Laura Ingraham.
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Transcript
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. Trump
has already won his presidential immunity case beginning today at
(00:25):
the Supreme Court. I don't mean they're actually going to
make up an unconstitutional, nonsensical political science fiction thing called
presidential immunity. In fact, as I'll explain in a moment,
the last thing they or Trump want is actual presidential immunity. No.
To do its part in Trump's cover up of his
(00:45):
January sixth treason, the Supreme Court only has to do
this pretend, just like Trump is, pretending that the concept
of maybe there is presidential immunity is just plausible enough
that it has to be debated and dejudicated. And they've
already done that. The Samuel Alito conspiracy to delay justice
(01:09):
to save Trump and to try to fix the election
in his favor this November. This confidence trick by anti
American scumbags like Alito and Clarence Thomas, and Trump's three
concierge justices and lower court judges has helped to keep
Jack Smith's prosecution of Trump for his coup attempt frozen
(01:30):
in place since December thirteenth. Trial was supposed to have
begun on the fourth of last month. We should be
fifty three days deep into this thing, but Trump came up,
or somebody smarter than Trump came up with something ridiculous
yet not too ridiculous, and has bought and paid for
(01:52):
theocratic rubber stamp. Justices could then say, good enough, we
can make something out of this crap. They are the
Supreme Court and as long as death or resignation are
the only way to remove their members, Trump could have
used almost anything to achieve what he has already achieved.
He could have argued that he can't be prosecuted because
(02:14):
of presidential immunity, or he could have argued that he
can't be prosecuted because first he deserved a commission to
investigate whether he really lost in twenty twenty, and thus
maybe he can't be prosecuted because he's still president. Or
he could have argued that God wants him not to testify,
and thus the case cannot proceed until they get a
(02:35):
deposition from God, which flavor of bullshit Trump is feeding
the justices and the nation doesn't matter so long as
it is typed up in the form of a submission
to the court. But this stain on democracy. The John Roberts.
Court can go even further now in colluding and conspiring
(02:58):
with Trump. Most of the coverage anticipating oral arguments has
been binary. The Court is going to will presidential immunity
into existence out of thin air, or the Court is
not going to do that. In point of fact, the
best outcome for Trump now is none of the above.
(03:18):
If the Court takes just its ordinary length of time
on a case like this, it doesn't have to say
a word about this before the thirtieth of June. It
can ice this trial for another two full months and
not even look as corrupt as it actually is. Just
that timeline. It's June thirtieth. Here's our ruling. Oh, there
(03:39):
is no presidential immunity. Just having Clarence Thomas sit his fat,
useless ass on the scales of justice for the normal
length of delay time, and there's no way the election
subversion case can get to the jury before the election.
If Trump loses, he wins. But if that's not enough,
(04:02):
and trust me, Trump has gotten the message through to
these useless, gutless fascists that it is not enough. If
Trump wants them to not only delay the case but
destroy it, the court can look at the case and
not say there is presidential immunity, nor say there is
no presidential immunity, but to say instead maybe there is,
(04:23):
and we need to find out if it applies here.
We have studied this carefully, Sam Alito can lie, and
we have decided that there is a litmus test needed
to determine whether or not presidents might have criminal immunity
for what they have crimed while in office. And that
(04:45):
test ain't person woman, man, camera TV. It's one hundred
and sixty seven different points. And before Judge Tanya Chutkin
may resume her little naive attempt to preserve democracy and
to put criminals behind bars, she has to apply this
litmus test we just made up out of whole cla
off to everything in the indictments of Trump gotten by
(05:08):
the Special Council. She has to take this new presidential
immunity quiz, maybe even seek expert testimony in her own
court to everything in the Trump indictment before she can
even begin the actual trial. And guess when the actual
(05:29):
trial would start. Then you're right, it wouldn't. It wouldn't
unless Joe Biden is reelected. So, as I said, Trump
has already won at the Supreme Court, because this is
rigged and this is fixed, and we know the names
of the people doing the rigging and the fixing, and
they are doing so in plain sight. And their names
(05:52):
are Samuel Alito and Amy Barrett and Neil Gorsch and
Brett Kavanaugh and John Roberts and Clarence Thomas, and may
they burn in hell. And there is not a goddamned
thing we can do about them. And know there's no
Mike Johnson with a brief and transient burst of conscience
(06:14):
riding to democracies rescue today, And there is not even
a realistic scenario in which the Supreme Court metaphorically shoots
itself in the foot and metaphorically shoots Trump in the
face and says, why, yes, there is presidential immunity, And
there's also a Santa Claus and there are brownies and
elves and UFOs and John F. Kennedy is alive. Because,
(06:35):
as I said before, the last thing the Court or
the Republicans or the fascists or Trump want is forth
here to be actual presidential immunity, because if come June
thirtieth they declare it really is extant, there really is
presidential immunity. If that happens on June thirtieth, then Joe
(06:55):
Biden is smart. The first thing he would do is
arrest and detain Alito and Barrett and Gorstach and Kavanaugh
and Roberts and Thomas, and arrest and detain Trump and
Ansel the election, because guess what, If there's going to
be presidential immunity and thus there are no circumstances in
which any president is held to any account for breaking
(07:17):
any law or betraying this country in any imaginable way,
who would you rather have wielding those dictatorial powers, Joe
Biden or Donald Trump. A declaration before the election that
there is presidential immunity would literally officially end American representative government.
(07:42):
It would make the president an absolute monarch instantly that day,
and he would have the entirety of the US military
behind him. And if the Supreme Court rules that on
June thirtieth, we will be put in that oldest of binds.
(08:02):
Would you rather be the person going to the prison
camps or would you rather be the person sending other
people to the prison camps? And sorry, I'll choose being
the person sending somebody else to the prison camp. Every
single goddamned time, especially if I know that my dictator
is going to be the proverbial benign one who would
(08:25):
restore democracy as soon as possible, as fantastical as it
is just to speak out loud, these crazy nightmarish things,
they are this serious. The Supreme Court ruling that there
is presidential immunity would be that earth shattering instantly, Lady
(08:50):
or the tiger fight or flight? Eat or be eaten?
Eat or be eaten? Let me see the menu, please,
and what are the specials today? And that, of course,
is why the point of the Supreme Court hearing the
presidential immunity case, why the point of Trump bringing the
(09:12):
presidential immunity case, is to have it heard and debated
and drawn out and drag on and continue indefinitely, and
ultimately to fizzle out just late enough that it eliminates
the Trump election subversion trial and presumably eliminates the Trump
espionage and documents trial. Like that one needs more stalling
(09:36):
than already being provided by Judge Cannon. Now there is
one remaining ultimate nightmare scenario, and I suspect that even
Trump and his Supreme Court will not try this one,
because just to put this structure into place almost guarantees
(09:59):
that if Trump loses the election, he will instead die
in prison and willll capital letters no backup plan. If
the gambit here is to send the case back to
chuck In for review and presidential immunity quiz, and then
return it to the Supreme Court for final approval and
(10:20):
drag out that final approval until after the election, so
that in late January, the Court could then say, hey,
guess what, there is presidential immunity and Trump's president, so
guess who gets to see that ultimate power menu. Now.
If that is the ultimate play for the ultimate power
for Trump, it would blow up irretrievably in Trump's face
(10:45):
if he didn't win the election, because then there are
only two scenarios. If the Supreme Court actually delays a
ruling until late January, just late November, and the ruling
is there is no presidential immunity and Biden has been
re elected, Trump might as well confess he's finished. But
if the Court delays the ruling until after Biden is
(11:06):
reelected and the ruling is yes, there is presidential immunity,
well Trump can say, see, you can't convict me. I
was immune while I was president. Whereupon Biden could say, cool,
you ain't president. Now I am, and sitting presidents are immune.
So my Attorney General is suspending your habeas corpus rights boy,
(11:27):
and my FBI is imprisoning your ass. And good luck
to any judges who try to stop my government because
I'm immune. So the point of having a presidential immunity
case go to the Supreme Court was and is to
have a presidential immunity case go to the Supreme Court
(11:53):
and waste all this time, not to create a new
law that is suggested by approximately nothing in the Constitution,
nor in anything in two hundred and forty eight years
of American case law, but just to stall, and to
by the way, keep the unheard testimony about Trump's coup
(12:15):
plans and what he was doing on January sixth, the
testimony for Mark Meadows and Dance Covino and others, the
stuff Liz Cheney wrote about in The New York Times,
saying it was vital evidence that her January sixth committee
could not get to make sure that unheard testimony remains unheard,
especially before the election. But the ultimate point of this
(12:38):
tawdrey corrupt, partisan anti democracy delay by Trump's fellow conspirators
on the Supreme Court. Is that the tawdry, the corrupt,
the partisan, and the anti democracy all win merely by delay.
(13:00):
And they already have their delay. They have their win.
It is now just a question of whether these Supreme
Court injustices give them a second delay as protection. Let's
(13:22):
run a couple of other headlines. The Arizona election interference
fake elector's indictments came out near close of business yesterday.
Eighteen Trump allies accused of trying to keep Biden from
legally becoming president. Trump is an unindicted co conspirator, which
(13:43):
would seem cowardly. But again, if you're indicting him now
at the end of April, what's the rush. If he's elected,
you cannot prosecute him. If he's not elected, you got
plenty of time, or more likely you'd just be hanging
around as backup, ready to prosecute just in case all
the other prosecutions failed. Take a number Arizona. You're number
thirty eight ung those indicted, all of the fake electors,
(14:08):
and Juliani and Mark Meadows, maybe Ken chesbrow to experts
I rely on disagree. One says he is. One says
he's not Mike Roman, the guy who tried to screw
up the Georgia case, John Eastman, Boris Epstein. Two very
interesting names, Christina Bob and Jenna Ellis, And I'm going
(14:33):
to bet on Jenna Ellis turning state's evidence in Arizona.
And perhaps most satisfyingly of all, the former Arizona Republican
chair who tried to sue everybody after the twenty twenty
election and presented no evidence that Trump had actually won
and got laughed out of court. Kelly Ward, the Kem
(14:55):
Trail lady. She's been indicted too. Speaker of House Johnson
went to Columbia yesterday and got shouted down the student protesters.
So he and Tom Cotton and Josh Hawley now say
they want the National Guard called in. Okay, you do that.
(15:16):
You order the Democratic president or the Democratic governor of
New York or the Democratic mayor of New York to
call in the National Guard to clear out a liberal
university in New York. They'll get right back to you. Now,
maybe the mayor will. That's a reason that he's at
(15:39):
sixteen percent approval. I appreciate the seriousness of the protests.
I have not devoted any time to them here why not?
Harvard Kennedy School study voters aged eighteen to twenty nine,
done in English and Spanish. Which national issue concerns you
the most? Various economic issues? Inflation, gas prices, taxes twenty
(16:00):
seven percent, environment and climate change six percent, abortion rights
six percent, gun rights and the Second Amendment three percent,
Israel and Palestine two percent. I don't plug stuff from CNN,
but read Annie Grayer and Melanie Zanona on their website
(16:21):
about James Comer suddenly trying to find an emergency exit
from the impeachment disaster. Suddenly for some reason, he wants out.
In fact, he wants out of Congress so he can
run for governor again, which is when we found out
(16:43):
about his college girlfriend and him allegedly beating her up
and threatening her life. Quoting the story, Comer is hoping
Jesus comes so he can get out. One of the
GOP gawmakers who spoke to Comber told CNN he is
fed up. He is fed up? Is that he Comber
(17:08):
or Jesus help me. Non impeachment Jesus, and your daily reminder.
As I say endlessly that democracy is preserved not by
the efforts of those of us trying to save it,
but by the stupidity of those trying to destroy it.
Jesse Waters, who started at Fox as the guy who
(17:30):
stalked women reporters that his boss Bill O'Reilly didn't like.
Jesse Waters is perhaps the dumbest person in America. Don't
worry Trump loyalists, He insisted yesterday Trump will get out
of it, just like King Kong got out of it.
Speaker 2 (17:52):
Uh, they called him.
Speaker 1 (17:55):
They trapped him in a cage we called a courtroom,
but as a cage. I mean they're acting like it's
like a zoo creature. And what happens with King Kong?
You remember boom, It's not going to be good. So
he's gonna bust out of this cage. Eventually, they're not
going to be able to keep him down. They killed
King kog Yeahens. He took a white woman on top
of a boar and it was frowned upon in the forties,
I think I saw the end of that movie. And
(18:18):
of course I'll add the PostScript. Not only did they
kill King Kong and then he fell from the top
of the Empire State Building to his death. Hey, Jesse,
it's your Trump analogy not mine, But in nineteen seventy
two or so, the great cartoonist B. Clibin added a
PostScript that really makes the Jesse Waters King Kong Trump
(18:42):
imagery work for me. In this cartoon, Clibin's got two
guys eating hamburgers at a New York automat or a
greasy busy lunch counter. One man, still wearing his hat
and coat, has taken clearly one bite of his hamburger,
(19:03):
and after the first bite he is daring at his
burger as if some great, horrible truth has just become
clear to him. Cliven's caption question, what did the city
of New York do with King Kong? He'll get out
(19:30):
of it. He's like King Kong. Look out below. Also
of interest here, I said Jesse Waters might be the
dumbest person in America. Then again, maybe not so long
as Cornell West is around Trump. Cornell West says is
a fascist. That's why he Cornell West will beat Trump
(19:52):
and become president. Wait till doctor West finds out who
is out there actively soliciting the signatures to get him
on the state presidential ballots. How about the head of
early voting for the Trump campaign that's next. This is Countdown.
(20:15):
This is Countdown with Keith Olberman stell ahead of us
(20:40):
on this edition of Countdown. So the Supreme Court ever
been there? Ever been there? On a date? I don't
mean the Supreme Court, bar and grill, I mean the
Supreme Court, the Supreme Court. You ever sat in Clarence
Thomas's chair? You ever gotten a free RV? Because some
(21:01):
fascists just assumed that if you were sitting at the
Supreme courting Clarence Thomas's chair, you should get a free
RV or something else. I have experienced all but the latter,
my date at the Supreme Court. Ahead in things I
promised not to tell. First, still more new idiots to
talk about. The daily roundup of the misgrants, morons and
(21:22):
Dunning Krueger effects specimens who constitute today's worst persons in
the world, the bronze worse. The Los Angeles Dodgers. Comedian
and singer and dog activist Elaine Boosler has sung the
national anthem there at five Dodgers games over the years.
She has played in the Dodgers' annual Hollywood Stars Softball
(21:44):
game ten times, and done other volunteer activities involving the
team since the nineteen eighties, and Sunday, the Dodgers got
her arrested. Boozler, Who's bit about how if you sing
the anthem, the echo from the public address system at
the ballpark comes back to you seemingly forty five seconds
later is a class. As Boozer was taking some of
(22:07):
her family to the Dodgers Mets game Sunday and bringing
her baseball bag with her, basically a ten inch perse.
As she went through the security screening at Dodger Stadium,
they told her she could not bring that bag into
the ballpark because it was not clear. It was not
see through. She pointed out that it didn't say at
(22:27):
anywhere on her ticket, or at the Dodgers' official secondary
market ticket site or anywhere else that you could only
have see through clear bags, and that her bag was
absolutely okay to bring into a bunch of other Big
League ballparks that she'd been to. And they said, you'll
have to take it back to your car or throw
it away, or you can't come in. And she said,
(22:48):
back to the car. We just paid fifty dollars to
park the car a mile away, and it's eighty degrees
and then they told her the rules were there to
prevent terrorism and that if she didn't cooperate they would
arrest her, and she said sure, And then she gave
it up and apologized repeatedly for the even apologizing to
the Dodger security clown who was making the scene, and
(23:10):
he said there was no way they were going to
let her into the game. And then they arrested her.
Arrested her for trespassing, trespassing while she had her Dodger
tickets in her hand. They cuffed her, They cuffed her
behind her back. They then handcuffed her to a bench
for a couple of hours. They threatened to have her
(23:30):
taken downtown and booked sergeants take her downtown and Booker
sergeant take her down Sergeant Booker if she didn't just leave. So,
after being handcuffed with welts and swollen wrists, she cut
her losses and left. In addition to this, as Elaine
Boosler noted, somebody with just a little power always wants
(23:51):
to exercise it. There's a larger issue. Since nine to eleven,
baseball and the other sports leagues have employed draconian screening
processes that you don't even go through at airports, and
for nearly a quarter of a century they have gotten
away with insisting they are doing so to prevent terrorism.
(24:12):
There has never been an act of terrorism inside a
stadium at an American League sporting event. So why the
security theater at Dodger Stadium at other places, why the
you must have a clear bag. It's so the Dodgers
can be certain you are not sneaking something into their stadium,
something more dangerous to sports franchises than any terrorist attack
(24:35):
that might be attempted by a seventy one year old
comedian with a baseball purse. The teams demand clear bags
so they can be sure you are not bringing in
good food or booze. You can bring in at Dodger
Stadium up to one liter of water or tea or
(24:56):
some food in a small, clear plastic bag. That's it,
because if you could bring in other food or drink,
you wouldn't have to buy the Dodger seven dollars hot
dog or they're sixteen ounce beer that costs sixteen dollars
a dollar announce for beer at the ballpark. Elaine had
(25:16):
the final word on it. Of course, now she knows
why Dodger fans always notoriously arrive late. They are all
delayed because all the women have to take their bags
back to the car first. The silver worser, Shane Vaughn
a racist maga quote pastor unquote. Now, the last we
had heard from this nutjob Vaughn was when he reported
(25:38):
that God had told him in no uncertain terms that
Kevin McCarthy would be ousted as Speaker of the House
and replaced by Jim Jordan. He explained that happening or
not happening. He explained, you know, God being wrong by
revealing that the actual new speaker, Mike Johnson, was in
fact Jim Jordan, just a duplicate of Jim Jordan. Now,
(26:02):
Pastor Vaughan of Waveland, Mississippi, who is nuts, has broadened
out a little bit to stark racism. He pretended he
was not calling Joy Reid from MSNBC a racist name.
Listen carefully to him say it anyway. It may be
difficult to hear, maybe not. It sounds kind of like bugs, bunny,
only it ain't bugs.
Speaker 2 (26:23):
Now, y'all gotta watch this little well. I gotta watch
my mouth here, because when I talk about I'm talking
about anybody unless they black. Okay, y'all gotta watch this.
Don't call no jungle bout it. Let's see, y'all gotta
watch this. Uh, let's go with the wig. How about that?
Let y'all watch this blonde wig? He it, y'all gotta
watch this now. I gotta I can't talk about them
like that because I get in trouble. Let me see,
you talk about anybody in the world. But anyway, they
(26:44):
can talk about me all day long. They can call me. Look,
they can still frame my face where you know, like, yeah,
I can do anything you want to no white man.
Speaker 1 (26:51):
I would point out that if you've never seen him,
Pastor Vaughn has hair that comes down over most of
where his forehead should be, and it immediately made him
look like to me, it made me think of one
person in one person alone, James Brown, the Godfather of Soul.
Other critics have suggested that mister Vaughan may in fact
belong to some of the group he so loudly hates,
(27:14):
but I'm not going to go that far. I'll just say,
regardless of race, creed, color, or orientation, he's clearly maga
and that is universal. They all suck, but our winner
the worst, Doctor Cornell West, third party presidential candidate, I
believe his party is the help Trump get elected anyway,
(27:36):
and then express shock and outrage that Trump got elected
party doctor West, who I must adds another former professional
friend who used to address me as brother, Olderman, gave
a fulsome interview with The Washington Post the other day
in which he explained that Trump is a fascist, and
Jill Stein is no longer his friend, he voted for
her before, and Kennedy is evidence free, and Biden is unacceptable,
(28:00):
and the reporter never asked him what he's going to
do if he draws away enough support from buyers to
get Trump elected. The Post instead gave Cornell West all
the space he wanted to say things like quotes both
parties are beyond redemption, and I just see both of
them as so thoroughly unacceptable, which is saying you can't
(28:20):
tell the difference between the two parties, which means you're
a moron. But nowhere in this article is there anything
about what his opinion would be of himself if he
helps to get a guy elected who would first put
Hispanics in concentration camps and then put African Americans in
concentration camps and then put intellectuals and liberals in concentration camps.
(28:41):
The interview leaves the clear impression that doctor West actually
thinks he is going to be elected president, which is
a second definition of insanity, the first one being you
can't tell the difference between the Democrats and the fascists.
But more importantly, the article never touches on the reality
that right now, this minute, the Trump campaign is out
(29:02):
there actively gathering so signatures on Cornell West's behalf in
order to get him on the ballot in as many
states as possible, to hurt Joe Biden as much as possible.
And for once, the Trump campaign is not lying about it.
It's doing so in hopes of taking a point or
two away from President Biden. On November fifth, and how
(29:24):
do we know this? Scott Pressler, the very troubled QAnon
guy with the shoulder length hair, whom Lara Trump wanted
to give a formal Republican National Committee titled to but didn't.
But he's still working for the RNC. He says so
on the record on tape. This is from the last
Trump tour stop in North Carolina. I don't see any
(29:47):
ambiguity here, Cornell West, this helps take away votes from
Joe Biden. He is the bar left Marxist. If we
get him on the ballot, he going to take up
percentage point a waiver ruse by yea.
Speaker 2 (30:02):
The Trump team tr to get him.
Speaker 1 (30:07):
So there you are, doctor West. You're a stalking horse,
You're a spoiler, your prop, your stooge. You're a useful
Trump idiot. You're a Trump asset. You are in effect
a fascist and a totalitarian. And the Communists would throw
you out. And if Trump is lucky and you keep
helping him, you will realize all this only when some
(30:29):
Trump beholden law enforcement official comes to arrest you and
put you in the camp where, just to make it worse,
they'll put you in the same cell with me. And
for as long as we are in there, I will
keep repeating only one thing I effing told you so,
Cornell West, asshole. Two days, worst person and the world
(31:17):
to the number one story on the countdown on my
favorite topic, me and things I promised not to tell.
So apparently it's Supreme Court Day, So why not of
all the weird things I have ever experienced in what
will soon be literally half a century of dating. Maybe
(31:39):
the idea that one of my dates had for where
we should go on our first date remains the weirdest.
Her idea the Supreme Court, where I sat in Clarence
Thomas's seat. Unlike him, nobody paid me anything. I didn't
(31:59):
try to subvert democracy, but the woman I was out
on the date with she explained how she had done
unplenty in that regard to subvert democracy. In fact, it
was about this time of year, early May late April
nineteen ninety eight when I went on my second and
last date with this person. She had been one of
the originals at MSNBC, and by November of nineteen ninety
(32:23):
seven she had appeared on my first show there as
a guest for the first time. She was paid to
be there on the show, not on the date, and
her name was Laura Ingram. This began a process that
ended in us going out on two dates, and something
(32:43):
she told me on the first of these dates has
resonated with me literally every month since and is relevant
to politics today. I did not so much date her
as survive her. Even then before nine to eleven helped
to slide her cheese off her cracker. I find a
(33:05):
diary entry referring to her as Hurricane Laura. That was
March fifteenth, nineteen ninety eight. Beware the iddes of March
Julius Caesar. I didn't, honestly, and God helped me. Nearly
forty eight years of dating, I have not been a
kiss and teller. I have dated. I don't know dozens.
(33:27):
We're in a couple of hundred, actually thirteen, seriously, with
maybe three exceptions. You don't know any of their names.
One of them, now a political writer, basically lived with
me for three years. I keep that confidence. So why
am I telling this story violating that? Because not three
months after that first date, when we were still going out,
(33:50):
Laura Ingram asked me if she could look at a
speech I was going to give it Corneill's graduation weekend
and offer suggestions. This is so long ago. I literally
faxed it to her. Sure Enough, a couple days later,
I'm watching Imus in the morning, which was televised by
my network MSNBC, and there on his desk in front
(34:11):
of him is the faxed copy of my speech, and
he is reading from my facts. I could recognize the
exact sequence of the vertical stripes my cheap fax machine
used to streak all my outgoing pages with Laura used
to go on his show a lot so to curry
favor with iMOS. She sent him the speech without asking me,
(34:36):
as I told her that day. All bets are now off.
So I've told parts of this story before, like she
had been a Supreme Court clerk for Clarence Thomas, and
our first date consisted of taking me on an insider's
tour of the court and having me sit in his
chair in tribute to him. I did not say or
do anything constructive. She then cooked me the largest steak
(35:00):
I had ever seen that did not have a rodeo
cowboy writing on it, and we watched a woman later
discredited because she could not keep her stories straight, go
on sixty minutes and make allegations against Bill Clinton. This
is my perfect date, Laura told me, seared into my memory.
But the important Laura Ingram's story sitting there in the
(35:23):
middle of all the debris. I don't think I've ever
told this. The first date was only about six weeks
after the then First Lady Hillary Clinton got on the
Today Show and blamed the at best exaggerated scandal about
her husband at Monica Lewinsky on the quote vast right
wing conspiracy that is sound stumpid. Laura said that night,
(35:46):
as she showed me her small office upstairs, I expected
that she was about to decry the idea that Republicans
would exploit television, talk radio and the brand new Internet
to try to bring down a president from the other party.
And I said, so naive little boy that I was no,
not that, of course we're doing that. She was kind
(36:06):
of offended that I doubted the conspiracy part. I explained,
I'd only been covering politics for two months. At the
end of the day, she said, end of the day, constantly,
at the end of the day, it's the vast part.
It's not vast, vast right wing conspiracy. Why, I bet
there's not even thirty of us. Laura Ingram then explained
(36:28):
that she was essentially the central desk for what she
called the miniature right wing conspiracy. She showed me a
printed page that had the facts numbers of about two
dozen people. There at the top are the sources, she said.
There was Ted Olsen, the attorney, founder of the so
called Arkansas Project and the husband of Barbara Olsen. A
constant presence as a talking head on cable news. She
(36:50):
later died on nine to eleven. Everybody liked her. There
were several numbers in the Office of Independent Counsel ken Starr.
One of them read B. Kavanaugh. I said, who's that?
She said, nobody impartant. The only other I remember was
Spencer Abraham, who then was a senator from Michigan. She said, they,
including the people in ken Starr's office, sent her all
(37:12):
the rumors, the ideas, stuff about Clinton. Stuff they made up,
and she distributed them to the other parts of the list.
That's these numbers. One number was marked Hannity Radio, another
Hannity TV, O'Reilly Radio, O'Reilly TV. There was one for Limbaugh.
There was one mark Justice Thomas, and I pointed to it.
(37:35):
He likes to stay and farmed. Now, maybe the most
important name is not on that list. That's Matt Dredge.
She said. Matt Drudge used all her stuff, but he
didn't want any of it to be traceable, very big
on not traceable, so I never fax it to him.
She said, I just give it to my brother. This
is when she still liked her brother. He sees Drudge
(37:57):
all the time. He gives the stuff to Drudge. Now, Oliver,
here is my baseball collection. There were reasons to go
out with her. At the time, I could think only
of an old cartoon I had once seen. It was
an octopus working in the post office, using all eight
of its limbs to sort the mail. But every couple
(38:20):
of weeks it dawns on me afresh. Then I was
actually a witness to one of the earliest configurations of
the machinery. And there is no doubt today whether it
is vast or miniature. It's beast, the machinery that links
the right wing politicians and those who are supposed to
be above the fray, like Supreme Court justices and special
prosecutors and people like that. There with the right wing
(38:42):
publicity outlets that pretend to be news organizations like Fox
and Drudge and Oaan and Newsmax, and the ones that
don't even pretend, like those who succeeded Limbaugh. This machine is,
in fact everything that your typical paranoid conservative, Republican fascist
trumpest thinks is being run by George Soros or Bill
(39:05):
Gates or doctor Fauci or me. You want to be
able to say, there are reports or accusations about some
Democrat or a liberal figure or celebrity. Well, somebody puts
a rumor in at one end of the machinery, or
somebody makes up a rumor at one end of the machinery.
It is then sent to dozens of other people. They
repeat it voila. Suddenly there are reports. The reports then
(39:30):
get fed back to Fox News or Breitbart, or the
Wall Street Journal or the Supreme Court, or they're just
tweeted by a thousand bots simultaneously. You want to push
this ancient racist, anti Semitic paranoia called the Great Replacement,
but you want it to come out washed clean enough
that soulless opportunists like Elis Stefanic and jd Vance can
(39:54):
say it aloud on the campaign trail without forfeiting their candidacies.
This is the machinery. And I saw the machinery when
it was just a list of twenty and thirty people,
And at that moment I barely recognized the importance of
what I saw. Then again, I was still on that night,
recovering from not just the Giant's steak, but something far
(40:18):
more visceral. Earlier that day, as we were leaving the
Supreme Court, Laura Ingram had boasted about getting even with
an ex boyfriend by going back into what had been
their house and putting up exact copies of all the
photos of the two of them together that he had
taken down from his walls. And when he got smart
(40:41):
and changed the locks, she went back again to finish
the job. Found her key didn't work so naturally as
you would. She stuffed his garden hose through the mail
slot of his front door and turned on the outdoors
spigot ten thousand dollars worth of hire. And when Florence ruined,
(41:02):
she said proudly. Part of me screamed, flee, flee. Now
I didn't flee. Later, as I tried to sleep, two
noises kept me awake, snoring, not my own, and Laura's dog.
(41:23):
Laura's dog kept talking in his sleep, I mean almost
in syllables, ye like that. It was something like twenty
five degrees out and I was on the second floor.
And yet I resolved that if her dog really did
(41:44):
make that last leap to formulate actual syllables. And it
turned out her dog was the one telling her what
to do, I was simply going to leave by the
window without bothering to open it. First. The next morning,
Laura and I walked her dog. We got to an
empty field. She threw a tennis ball, He went and
got it. She cocked her arm back again. He took off,
(42:08):
loving life as he did. She did not throw it.
He went forty to fifty sixty feet, then stopped and
looked back at her with such disappointment and even a
sense of betrayal, and she said, loudly, without a trace
of affection for him or anything else, wait far at,
(42:30):
which is when I realized I was being courted to
be the next dog. A few weeks later, back home
in New York, I got home from working an early
morning shift filling in for the commentator Paul Harvey at
ABC Radio. I was just waking up from a tortured
nap when the phone rang and it's Laara. I'm downstairs.
(42:50):
We're going to my old law firms party at the museum.
I said. I was exhausted. We're going, or I'll just
stay here at this payphone outside your planes calling you
all night. We went. The next opportunity probably was going
to be me on the wrong end of a hostage drama.
(43:11):
Turned out she was not invited to her party. Went
crashing it. I'm going to drink heavily. Frankly, it was
a great party. I got to meet Hillary Clinton's mother
and her brother. And if you think the fascists are
completely sincere about everything, even their neuroses and their paranoia, no,
Laura Ingram hugged Hillary Clinton's mother and Hillary Clinton's brother.
(43:32):
They seem to be friends. Later we wound up meeting
friends of her in the Oak bar at the Plaza Hotel,
where she kept drinking. I was astonished. After about her
sixth Cosmopolitan on top of everything she'd had at the party,
she began to droop her head, nodding like a bobblehead doll.
Her friend said, Okay, that's it. We'll take care of
(43:55):
the check. You take care of her. She had not
gotten a hotel room or anything. And if you've ever
heard of anybody who needed to be poured into a
cab because they were so drunk, you don't really know
what that means until you have to pour them into
a cab. Frankly, I wanted to put her in a
hotel somewhere, but the spectacle would have made the gossip pages.
(44:20):
She basically could not stand up, so I took her
to my apartment, put her into my bed, and I
went and slept on the couch at the far end
of the apartment, which is where I was hours later
in the morning when she woke me up because she
came parading through using my phone to call my assistant
to get a car sent to my address to take
(44:41):
her to the airport, and to make sure that everybody
in my office knew she had stayed overnight at my apartment.
And all I kept thinking was why didn't I follow
my instincts. My instincts said flee. I fleed. Not, of course,
(45:01):
if I had fled, I would have missed seen the
telephone tree of the miniature right wing conspiracy, wouldn't I.
(45:22):
I've done all the damage I can do here. Thank
you for listening. Yes, Sometimes in the middle of a
cold night at home, summer, winter, fall, spring, I will
awake my heart doing seven hundred feets a minute because
I've had a dream in which I have a third
date scheduled with Laura Ingram. You may scream, but they'll
(45:51):
never hear you over the sound of her voice countdown.
Musical directors Brian Rang, John Phillip Chanel Arrange produced and
performed most of our music. Mister Ray was on the guitars,
bass and drums. Mister Chanee handled orchestration and keyboards. Produced
by Tko Brothers. Other music, including some of the Beethoven compositions,
arranged and performed by the group No Horns Allowed. The
(46:11):
sports music is the Olderman theme from ESPN two, written
by Mitch Warren Davis Curtesy of ESPN inc. Our satirical
and pithy musical comments are from Nancy Fauss. The best
baseball stadium organist ever. Our announcer today was Tony Kornheiser,
and everything else was pretty much my fault. That's countdown
for this the one hundred and ninety fifth day until
(46:32):
the twenty twenty four presidential election and the two hundred
and six day since Defendant Jay Trump's first attempted coup
against the democratically elected government of the United States. Use
the fourteenth Amendment. Use the only thing the Supreme Court
will give us, the not regularly given elector objection option,
Use the Insurrection Act, Use the justice system, Use the
(46:55):
mental health system to stop him from doing it again
while we still can. The next countdown is tomorrow. Bulletin
says the news warrants till then. I'm Keith Oldreman, good morning,
good afternoon, good night, and good luck, and he's like
(47:28):
can com Countdown with Keith Olberman is a production of iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts.
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. Trump
has already won his presidential immunity case beginning today at
(00:25):
the Supreme Court. I don't mean they're actually going to
make up an unconstitutional, nonsensical political science fiction thing called
presidential immunity. In fact, as I'll explain in a moment,
the last thing they or Trump want is actual presidential immunity. No.
To do its part in Trump's cover up of his
(00:45):
January sixth treason, the Supreme Court only has to do
this pretend, just like Trump is, pretending that the concept
of maybe there is presidential immunity is just plausible enough
that it has to be debated and dejudicated. And they've
already done that. The Samuel Alito conspiracy to delay justice
(01:09):
to save Trump and to try to fix the election
in his favor this November. This confidence trick by anti
American scumbags like Alito and Clarence Thomas, and Trump's three
concierge justices and lower court judges has helped to keep
Jack Smith's prosecution of Trump for his coup attempt frozen
(01:30):
in place since December thirteenth. Trial was supposed to have
begun on the fourth of last month. We should be
fifty three days deep into this thing, but Trump came up,
or somebody smarter than Trump came up with something ridiculous
yet not too ridiculous, and has bought and paid for
(01:52):
theocratic rubber stamp. Justices could then say, good enough, we
can make something out of this crap. They are the
Supreme Court and as long as death or resignation are
the only way to remove their members, Trump could have
used almost anything to achieve what he has already achieved.
He could have argued that he can't be prosecuted because
(02:14):
of presidential immunity, or he could have argued that he
can't be prosecuted because first he deserved a commission to
investigate whether he really lost in twenty twenty, and thus
maybe he can't be prosecuted because he's still president. Or
he could have argued that God wants him not to testify,
and thus the case cannot proceed until they get a
(02:35):
deposition from God, which flavor of bullshit Trump is feeding
the justices and the nation doesn't matter so long as
it is typed up in the form of a submission
to the court. But this stain on democracy. The John Roberts.
Court can go even further now in colluding and conspiring
(02:58):
with Trump. Most of the coverage anticipating oral arguments has
been binary. The Court is going to will presidential immunity
into existence out of thin air, or the Court is
not going to do that. In point of fact, the
best outcome for Trump now is none of the above.
(03:18):
If the Court takes just its ordinary length of time
on a case like this, it doesn't have to say
a word about this before the thirtieth of June. It
can ice this trial for another two full months and
not even look as corrupt as it actually is. Just
that timeline. It's June thirtieth. Here's our ruling. Oh, there
(03:39):
is no presidential immunity. Just having Clarence Thomas sit his fat,
useless ass on the scales of justice for the normal
length of delay time, and there's no way the election
subversion case can get to the jury before the election.
If Trump loses, he wins. But if that's not enough,
(04:02):
and trust me, Trump has gotten the message through to
these useless, gutless fascists that it is not enough. If
Trump wants them to not only delay the case but
destroy it, the court can look at the case and
not say there is presidential immunity, nor say there is
no presidential immunity, but to say instead maybe there is,
(04:23):
and we need to find out if it applies here.
We have studied this carefully, Sam Alito can lie, and
we have decided that there is a litmus test needed
to determine whether or not presidents might have criminal immunity
for what they have crimed while in office. And that
(04:45):
test ain't person woman, man, camera TV. It's one hundred
and sixty seven different points. And before Judge Tanya Chutkin
may resume her little naive attempt to preserve democracy and
to put criminals behind bars, she has to apply this
litmus test we just made up out of whole cla
off to everything in the indictments of Trump gotten by
(05:08):
the Special Council. She has to take this new presidential
immunity quiz, maybe even seek expert testimony in her own
court to everything in the Trump indictment before she can
even begin the actual trial. And guess when the actual
(05:29):
trial would start. Then you're right, it wouldn't. It wouldn't
unless Joe Biden is reelected. So, as I said, Trump
has already won at the Supreme Court, because this is
rigged and this is fixed, and we know the names
of the people doing the rigging and the fixing, and
they are doing so in plain sight. And their names
(05:52):
are Samuel Alito and Amy Barrett and Neil Gorsch and
Brett Kavanaugh and John Roberts and Clarence Thomas, and may
they burn in hell. And there is not a goddamned
thing we can do about them. And know there's no
Mike Johnson with a brief and transient burst of conscience
(06:14):
riding to democracies rescue today, And there is not even
a realistic scenario in which the Supreme Court metaphorically shoots
itself in the foot and metaphorically shoots Trump in the
face and says, why, yes, there is presidential immunity, And
there's also a Santa Claus and there are brownies and
elves and UFOs and John F. Kennedy is alive. Because,
(06:35):
as I said before, the last thing the Court or
the Republicans or the fascists or Trump want is forth
here to be actual presidential immunity, because if come June
thirtieth they declare it really is extant, there really is
presidential immunity. If that happens on June thirtieth, then Joe
(06:55):
Biden is smart. The first thing he would do is
arrest and detain Alito and Barrett and Gorstach and Kavanaugh
and Roberts and Thomas, and arrest and detain Trump and
Ansel the election, because guess what, If there's going to
be presidential immunity and thus there are no circumstances in
which any president is held to any account for breaking
(07:17):
any law or betraying this country in any imaginable way,
who would you rather have wielding those dictatorial powers, Joe
Biden or Donald Trump. A declaration before the election that
there is presidential immunity would literally officially end American representative government.
(07:42):
It would make the president an absolute monarch instantly that day,
and he would have the entirety of the US military
behind him. And if the Supreme Court rules that on
June thirtieth, we will be put in that oldest of binds.
(08:02):
Would you rather be the person going to the prison
camps or would you rather be the person sending other
people to the prison camps? And sorry, I'll choose being
the person sending somebody else to the prison camp. Every
single goddamned time, especially if I know that my dictator
is going to be the proverbial benign one who would
(08:25):
restore democracy as soon as possible, as fantastical as it
is just to speak out loud, these crazy nightmarish things,
they are this serious. The Supreme Court ruling that there
is presidential immunity would be that earth shattering instantly, Lady
(08:50):
or the tiger fight or flight? Eat or be eaten?
Eat or be eaten? Let me see the menu, please,
and what are the specials today? And that, of course,
is why the point of the Supreme Court hearing the
presidential immunity case, why the point of Trump bringing the
(09:12):
presidential immunity case, is to have it heard and debated
and drawn out and drag on and continue indefinitely, and
ultimately to fizzle out just late enough that it eliminates
the Trump election subversion trial and presumably eliminates the Trump
espionage and documents trial. Like that one needs more stalling
(09:36):
than already being provided by Judge Cannon. Now there is
one remaining ultimate nightmare scenario, and I suspect that even
Trump and his Supreme Court will not try this one,
because just to put this structure into place almost guarantees
(09:59):
that if Trump loses the election, he will instead die
in prison and willll capital letters no backup plan. If
the gambit here is to send the case back to
chuck In for review and presidential immunity quiz, and then
return it to the Supreme Court for final approval and
(10:20):
drag out that final approval until after the election, so
that in late January, the Court could then say, hey,
guess what, there is presidential immunity and Trump's president, so
guess who gets to see that ultimate power menu. Now.
If that is the ultimate play for the ultimate power
for Trump, it would blow up irretrievably in Trump's face
(10:45):
if he didn't win the election, because then there are
only two scenarios. If the Supreme Court actually delays a
ruling until late January, just late November, and the ruling
is there is no presidential immunity and Biden has been
re elected, Trump might as well confess he's finished. But
if the Court delays the ruling until after Biden is
(11:06):
reelected and the ruling is yes, there is presidential immunity,
well Trump can say, see, you can't convict me. I
was immune while I was president. Whereupon Biden could say, cool,
you ain't president. Now I am, and sitting presidents are immune.
So my Attorney General is suspending your habeas corpus rights boy,
(11:27):
and my FBI is imprisoning your ass. And good luck
to any judges who try to stop my government because
I'm immune. So the point of having a presidential immunity
case go to the Supreme Court was and is to
have a presidential immunity case go to the Supreme Court
(11:53):
and waste all this time, not to create a new
law that is suggested by approximately nothing in the Constitution,
nor in anything in two hundred and forty eight years
of American case law, but just to stall, and to
by the way, keep the unheard testimony about Trump's coup
(12:15):
plans and what he was doing on January sixth, the
testimony for Mark Meadows and Dance Covino and others, the
stuff Liz Cheney wrote about in The New York Times,
saying it was vital evidence that her January sixth committee
could not get to make sure that unheard testimony remains unheard,
especially before the election. But the ultimate point of this
(12:38):
tawdrey corrupt, partisan anti democracy delay by Trump's fellow conspirators
on the Supreme Court. Is that the tawdry, the corrupt,
the partisan, and the anti democracy all win merely by delay.
(13:00):
And they already have their delay. They have their win.
It is now just a question of whether these Supreme
Court injustices give them a second delay as protection. Let's
(13:22):
run a couple of other headlines. The Arizona election interference
fake elector's indictments came out near close of business yesterday.
Eighteen Trump allies accused of trying to keep Biden from
legally becoming president. Trump is an unindicted co conspirator, which
(13:43):
would seem cowardly. But again, if you're indicting him now
at the end of April, what's the rush. If he's elected,
you cannot prosecute him. If he's not elected, you got
plenty of time, or more likely you'd just be hanging
around as backup, ready to prosecute just in case all
the other prosecutions failed. Take a number Arizona. You're number
thirty eight ung those indicted, all of the fake electors,
(14:08):
and Juliani and Mark Meadows, maybe Ken chesbrow to experts
I rely on disagree. One says he is. One says
he's not Mike Roman, the guy who tried to screw
up the Georgia case, John Eastman, Boris Epstein. Two very
interesting names, Christina Bob and Jenna Ellis, And I'm going
(14:33):
to bet on Jenna Ellis turning state's evidence in Arizona.
And perhaps most satisfyingly of all, the former Arizona Republican
chair who tried to sue everybody after the twenty twenty
election and presented no evidence that Trump had actually won
and got laughed out of court. Kelly Ward, the Kem
(14:55):
Trail lady. She's been indicted too. Speaker of House Johnson
went to Columbia yesterday and got shouted down the student protesters.
So he and Tom Cotton and Josh Hawley now say
they want the National Guard called in. Okay, you do that.
(15:16):
You order the Democratic president or the Democratic governor of
New York or the Democratic mayor of New York to
call in the National Guard to clear out a liberal
university in New York. They'll get right back to you. Now,
maybe the mayor will. That's a reason that he's at
(15:39):
sixteen percent approval. I appreciate the seriousness of the protests.
I have not devoted any time to them here why not?
Harvard Kennedy School study voters aged eighteen to twenty nine,
done in English and Spanish. Which national issue concerns you
the most? Various economic issues? Inflation, gas prices, taxes twenty
(16:00):
seven percent, environment and climate change six percent, abortion rights
six percent, gun rights and the Second Amendment three percent,
Israel and Palestine two percent. I don't plug stuff from CNN,
but read Annie Grayer and Melanie Zanona on their website
(16:21):
about James Comer suddenly trying to find an emergency exit
from the impeachment disaster. Suddenly for some reason, he wants out.
In fact, he wants out of Congress so he can
run for governor again, which is when we found out
(16:43):
about his college girlfriend and him allegedly beating her up
and threatening her life. Quoting the story, Comer is hoping
Jesus comes so he can get out. One of the
GOP gawmakers who spoke to Comber told CNN he is
fed up. He is fed up? Is that he Comber
(17:08):
or Jesus help me. Non impeachment Jesus, and your daily reminder.
As I say endlessly that democracy is preserved not by
the efforts of those of us trying to save it,
but by the stupidity of those trying to destroy it.
Jesse Waters, who started at Fox as the guy who
(17:30):
stalked women reporters that his boss Bill O'Reilly didn't like.
Jesse Waters is perhaps the dumbest person in America. Don't
worry Trump loyalists, He insisted yesterday Trump will get out
of it, just like King Kong got out of it.
Speaker 2 (17:52):
Uh, they called him.
Speaker 1 (17:55):
They trapped him in a cage we called a courtroom,
but as a cage. I mean they're acting like it's
like a zoo creature. And what happens with King Kong?
You remember boom, It's not going to be good. So
he's gonna bust out of this cage. Eventually, they're not
going to be able to keep him down. They killed
King kog Yeahens. He took a white woman on top
of a boar and it was frowned upon in the forties,
I think I saw the end of that movie. And
(18:18):
of course I'll add the PostScript. Not only did they
kill King Kong and then he fell from the top
of the Empire State Building to his death. Hey, Jesse,
it's your Trump analogy not mine, But in nineteen seventy
two or so, the great cartoonist B. Clibin added a
PostScript that really makes the Jesse Waters King Kong Trump
(18:42):
imagery work for me. In this cartoon, Clibin's got two
guys eating hamburgers at a New York automat or a
greasy busy lunch counter. One man, still wearing his hat
and coat, has taken clearly one bite of his hamburger,
(19:03):
and after the first bite he is daring at his
burger as if some great, horrible truth has just become
clear to him. Cliven's caption question, what did the city
of New York do with King Kong? He'll get out
(19:30):
of it. He's like King Kong. Look out below. Also
of interest here, I said Jesse Waters might be the
dumbest person in America. Then again, maybe not so long
as Cornell West is around Trump. Cornell West says is
a fascist. That's why he Cornell West will beat Trump
(19:52):
and become president. Wait till doctor West finds out who
is out there actively soliciting the signatures to get him
on the state presidential ballots. How about the head of
early voting for the Trump campaign that's next. This is Countdown.
(20:15):
This is Countdown with Keith Olberman stell ahead of us
(20:40):
on this edition of Countdown. So the Supreme Court ever
been there? Ever been there? On a date? I don't
mean the Supreme Court, bar and grill, I mean the
Supreme Court, the Supreme Court. You ever sat in Clarence
Thomas's chair? You ever gotten a free RV? Because some
(21:01):
fascists just assumed that if you were sitting at the
Supreme courting Clarence Thomas's chair, you should get a free
RV or something else. I have experienced all but the latter,
my date at the Supreme Court. Ahead in things I
promised not to tell. First, still more new idiots to
talk about. The daily roundup of the misgrants, morons and
(21:22):
Dunning Krueger effects specimens who constitute today's worst persons in
the world, the bronze worse. The Los Angeles Dodgers. Comedian
and singer and dog activist Elaine Boosler has sung the
national anthem there at five Dodgers games over the years.
She has played in the Dodgers' annual Hollywood Stars Softball
(21:44):
game ten times, and done other volunteer activities involving the
team since the nineteen eighties, and Sunday, the Dodgers got
her arrested. Boozler, Who's bit about how if you sing
the anthem, the echo from the public address system at
the ballpark comes back to you seemingly forty five seconds
later is a class. As Boozer was taking some of
(22:07):
her family to the Dodgers Mets game Sunday and bringing
her baseball bag with her, basically a ten inch perse.
As she went through the security screening at Dodger Stadium,
they told her she could not bring that bag into
the ballpark because it was not clear. It was not
see through. She pointed out that it didn't say at
(22:27):
anywhere on her ticket, or at the Dodgers' official secondary
market ticket site or anywhere else that you could only
have see through clear bags, and that her bag was
absolutely okay to bring into a bunch of other Big
League ballparks that she'd been to. And they said, you'll
have to take it back to your car or throw
it away, or you can't come in. And she said,
(22:48):
back to the car. We just paid fifty dollars to
park the car a mile away, and it's eighty degrees
and then they told her the rules were there to
prevent terrorism and that if she didn't cooperate they would
arrest her, and she said sure, And then she gave
it up and apologized repeatedly for the even apologizing to
the Dodger security clown who was making the scene, and
(23:10):
he said there was no way they were going to
let her into the game. And then they arrested her.
Arrested her for trespassing, trespassing while she had her Dodger
tickets in her hand. They cuffed her, They cuffed her
behind her back. They then handcuffed her to a bench
for a couple of hours. They threatened to have her
(23:30):
taken downtown and booked sergeants take her downtown and Booker
sergeant take her down Sergeant Booker if she didn't just leave. So,
after being handcuffed with welts and swollen wrists, she cut
her losses and left. In addition to this, as Elaine
Boosler noted, somebody with just a little power always wants
(23:51):
to exercise it. There's a larger issue. Since nine to eleven,
baseball and the other sports leagues have employed draconian screening
processes that you don't even go through at airports, and
for nearly a quarter of a century they have gotten
away with insisting they are doing so to prevent terrorism.
(24:12):
There has never been an act of terrorism inside a
stadium at an American League sporting event. So why the
security theater at Dodger Stadium at other places, why the
you must have a clear bag. It's so the Dodgers
can be certain you are not sneaking something into their stadium,
something more dangerous to sports franchises than any terrorist attack
(24:35):
that might be attempted by a seventy one year old
comedian with a baseball purse. The teams demand clear bags
so they can be sure you are not bringing in
good food or booze. You can bring in at Dodger
Stadium up to one liter of water or tea or
(24:56):
some food in a small, clear plastic bag. That's it,
because if you could bring in other food or drink,
you wouldn't have to buy the Dodger seven dollars hot
dog or they're sixteen ounce beer that costs sixteen dollars
a dollar announce for beer at the ballpark. Elaine had
(25:16):
the final word on it. Of course, now she knows
why Dodger fans always notoriously arrive late. They are all
delayed because all the women have to take their bags
back to the car first. The silver worser, Shane Vaughn
a racist maga quote pastor unquote. Now, the last we
had heard from this nutjob Vaughn was when he reported
(25:38):
that God had told him in no uncertain terms that
Kevin McCarthy would be ousted as Speaker of the House
and replaced by Jim Jordan. He explained that happening or
not happening. He explained, you know, God being wrong by
revealing that the actual new speaker, Mike Johnson, was in
fact Jim Jordan, just a duplicate of Jim Jordan. Now,
(26:02):
Pastor Vaughan of Waveland, Mississippi, who is nuts, has broadened
out a little bit to stark racism. He pretended he
was not calling Joy Reid from MSNBC a racist name.
Listen carefully to him say it anyway. It may be
difficult to hear, maybe not. It sounds kind of like bugs, bunny,
only it ain't bugs.
Speaker 2 (26:23):
Now, y'all gotta watch this little well. I gotta watch
my mouth here, because when I talk about I'm talking
about anybody unless they black. Okay, y'all gotta watch this.
Don't call no jungle bout it. Let's see, y'all gotta
watch this. Uh, let's go with the wig. How about that?
Let y'all watch this blonde wig? He it, y'all gotta
watch this now. I gotta I can't talk about them
like that because I get in trouble. Let me see,
you talk about anybody in the world. But anyway, they
(26:44):
can talk about me all day long. They can call me. Look,
they can still frame my face where you know, like, yeah,
I can do anything you want to no white man.
Speaker 1 (26:51):
I would point out that if you've never seen him,
Pastor Vaughn has hair that comes down over most of
where his forehead should be, and it immediately made him
look like to me, it made me think of one
person in one person alone, James Brown, the Godfather of Soul.
Other critics have suggested that mister Vaughan may in fact
belong to some of the group he so loudly hates,
(27:14):
but I'm not going to go that far. I'll just say,
regardless of race, creed, color, or orientation, he's clearly maga
and that is universal. They all suck, but our winner
the worst, Doctor Cornell West, third party presidential candidate, I
believe his party is the help Trump get elected anyway,
(27:36):
and then express shock and outrage that Trump got elected
party doctor West, who I must adds another former professional
friend who used to address me as brother, Olderman, gave
a fulsome interview with The Washington Post the other day
in which he explained that Trump is a fascist, and
Jill Stein is no longer his friend, he voted for
her before, and Kennedy is evidence free, and Biden is unacceptable,
(28:00):
and the reporter never asked him what he's going to
do if he draws away enough support from buyers to
get Trump elected. The Post instead gave Cornell West all
the space he wanted to say things like quotes both
parties are beyond redemption, and I just see both of
them as so thoroughly unacceptable, which is saying you can't
(28:20):
tell the difference between the two parties, which means you're
a moron. But nowhere in this article is there anything
about what his opinion would be of himself if he
helps to get a guy elected who would first put
Hispanics in concentration camps and then put African Americans in
concentration camps and then put intellectuals and liberals in concentration camps.
(28:41):
The interview leaves the clear impression that doctor West actually
thinks he is going to be elected president, which is
a second definition of insanity, the first one being you
can't tell the difference between the Democrats and the fascists.
But more importantly, the article never touches on the reality
that right now, this minute, the Trump campaign is out
(29:02):
there actively gathering so signatures on Cornell West's behalf in
order to get him on the ballot in as many
states as possible, to hurt Joe Biden as much as possible.
And for once, the Trump campaign is not lying about it.
It's doing so in hopes of taking a point or
two away from President Biden. On November fifth, and how
(29:24):
do we know this? Scott Pressler, the very troubled QAnon
guy with the shoulder length hair, whom Lara Trump wanted
to give a formal Republican National Committee titled to but didn't.
But he's still working for the RNC. He says so
on the record on tape. This is from the last
Trump tour stop in North Carolina. I don't see any
(29:47):
ambiguity here, Cornell West, this helps take away votes from
Joe Biden. He is the bar left Marxist. If we
get him on the ballot, he going to take up
percentage point a waiver ruse by yea.
Speaker 2 (30:02):
The Trump team tr to get him.
Speaker 1 (30:07):
So there you are, doctor West. You're a stalking horse,
You're a spoiler, your prop, your stooge. You're a useful
Trump idiot. You're a Trump asset. You are in effect
a fascist and a totalitarian. And the Communists would throw
you out. And if Trump is lucky and you keep
helping him, you will realize all this only when some
(30:29):
Trump beholden law enforcement official comes to arrest you and
put you in the camp where, just to make it worse,
they'll put you in the same cell with me. And
for as long as we are in there, I will
keep repeating only one thing I effing told you so,
Cornell West, asshole. Two days, worst person and the world
(31:17):
to the number one story on the countdown on my
favorite topic, me and things I promised not to tell.
So apparently it's Supreme Court Day, So why not of
all the weird things I have ever experienced in what
will soon be literally half a century of dating. Maybe
(31:39):
the idea that one of my dates had for where
we should go on our first date remains the weirdest.
Her idea the Supreme Court, where I sat in Clarence
Thomas's seat. Unlike him, nobody paid me anything. I didn't
(31:59):
try to subvert democracy, but the woman I was out
on the date with she explained how she had done
unplenty in that regard to subvert democracy. In fact, it
was about this time of year, early May late April
nineteen ninety eight when I went on my second and
last date with this person. She had been one of
the originals at MSNBC, and by November of nineteen ninety
(32:23):
seven she had appeared on my first show there as
a guest for the first time. She was paid to
be there on the show, not on the date, and
her name was Laura Ingram. This began a process that
ended in us going out on two dates, and something
(32:43):
she told me on the first of these dates has
resonated with me literally every month since and is relevant
to politics today. I did not so much date her
as survive her. Even then before nine to eleven helped
to slide her cheese off her cracker. I find a
(33:05):
diary entry referring to her as Hurricane Laura. That was
March fifteenth, nineteen ninety eight. Beware the iddes of March
Julius Caesar. I didn't, honestly, and God helped me. Nearly
forty eight years of dating, I have not been a
kiss and teller. I have dated. I don't know dozens.
(33:27):
We're in a couple of hundred, actually thirteen, seriously, with
maybe three exceptions. You don't know any of their names.
One of them, now a political writer, basically lived with
me for three years. I keep that confidence. So why
am I telling this story violating that? Because not three
months after that first date, when we were still going out,
(33:50):
Laura Ingram asked me if she could look at a
speech I was going to give it Corneill's graduation weekend
and offer suggestions. This is so long ago. I literally
faxed it to her. Sure Enough, a couple days later,
I'm watching Imus in the morning, which was televised by
my network MSNBC, and there on his desk in front
(34:11):
of him is the faxed copy of my speech, and
he is reading from my facts. I could recognize the
exact sequence of the vertical stripes my cheap fax machine
used to streak all my outgoing pages with Laura used
to go on his show a lot so to curry
favor with iMOS. She sent him the speech without asking me,
(34:36):
as I told her that day. All bets are now off.
So I've told parts of this story before, like she
had been a Supreme Court clerk for Clarence Thomas, and
our first date consisted of taking me on an insider's
tour of the court and having me sit in his
chair in tribute to him. I did not say or
do anything constructive. She then cooked me the largest steak
(35:00):
I had ever seen that did not have a rodeo
cowboy writing on it, and we watched a woman later
discredited because she could not keep her stories straight, go
on sixty minutes and make allegations against Bill Clinton. This
is my perfect date, Laura told me, seared into my memory.
But the important Laura Ingram's story sitting there in the
(35:23):
middle of all the debris. I don't think I've ever
told this. The first date was only about six weeks
after the then First Lady Hillary Clinton got on the
Today Show and blamed the at best exaggerated scandal about
her husband at Monica Lewinsky on the quote vast right
wing conspiracy that is sound stumpid. Laura said that night,
(35:46):
as she showed me her small office upstairs, I expected
that she was about to decry the idea that Republicans
would exploit television, talk radio and the brand new Internet
to try to bring down a president from the other party.
And I said, so naive little boy that I was no,
not that, of course we're doing that. She was kind
(36:06):
of offended that I doubted the conspiracy part. I explained,
I'd only been covering politics for two months. At the
end of the day, she said, end of the day, constantly,
at the end of the day, it's the vast part.
It's not vast, vast right wing conspiracy. Why, I bet
there's not even thirty of us. Laura Ingram then explained
(36:28):
that she was essentially the central desk for what she
called the miniature right wing conspiracy. She showed me a
printed page that had the facts numbers of about two
dozen people. There at the top are the sources, she said.
There was Ted Olsen, the attorney, founder of the so
called Arkansas Project and the husband of Barbara Olsen. A
constant presence as a talking head on cable news. She
(36:50):
later died on nine to eleven. Everybody liked her. There
were several numbers in the Office of Independent Counsel ken Starr.
One of them read B. Kavanaugh. I said, who's that?
She said, nobody impartant. The only other I remember was
Spencer Abraham, who then was a senator from Michigan. She said, they,
including the people in ken Starr's office, sent her all
(37:12):
the rumors, the ideas, stuff about Clinton. Stuff they made up,
and she distributed them to the other parts of the list.
That's these numbers. One number was marked Hannity Radio, another
Hannity TV, O'Reilly Radio, O'Reilly TV. There was one for Limbaugh.
There was one mark Justice Thomas, and I pointed to it.
(37:35):
He likes to stay and farmed. Now, maybe the most
important name is not on that list. That's Matt Dredge.
She said. Matt Drudge used all her stuff, but he
didn't want any of it to be traceable, very big
on not traceable, so I never fax it to him.
She said, I just give it to my brother. This
is when she still liked her brother. He sees Drudge
(37:57):
all the time. He gives the stuff to Drudge. Now, Oliver,
here is my baseball collection. There were reasons to go
out with her. At the time, I could think only
of an old cartoon I had once seen. It was
an octopus working in the post office, using all eight
of its limbs to sort the mail. But every couple
(38:20):
of weeks it dawns on me afresh. Then I was
actually a witness to one of the earliest configurations of
the machinery. And there is no doubt today whether it
is vast or miniature. It's beast, the machinery that links
the right wing politicians and those who are supposed to
be above the fray, like Supreme Court justices and special
prosecutors and people like that. There with the right wing
(38:42):
publicity outlets that pretend to be news organizations like Fox
and Drudge and Oaan and Newsmax, and the ones that
don't even pretend, like those who succeeded Limbaugh. This machine is,
in fact everything that your typical paranoid conservative, Republican fascist
trumpest thinks is being run by George Soros or Bill
(39:05):
Gates or doctor Fauci or me. You want to be
able to say, there are reports or accusations about some
Democrat or a liberal figure or celebrity. Well, somebody puts
a rumor in at one end of the machinery, or
somebody makes up a rumor at one end of the machinery.
It is then sent to dozens of other people. They
repeat it voila. Suddenly there are reports. The reports then
(39:30):
get fed back to Fox News or Breitbart, or the
Wall Street Journal or the Supreme Court, or they're just
tweeted by a thousand bots simultaneously. You want to push
this ancient racist, anti Semitic paranoia called the Great Replacement,
but you want it to come out washed clean enough
that soulless opportunists like Elis Stefanic and jd Vance can
(39:54):
say it aloud on the campaign trail without forfeiting their candidacies.
This is the machinery. And I saw the machinery when
it was just a list of twenty and thirty people,
And at that moment I barely recognized the importance of
what I saw. Then again, I was still on that night,
recovering from not just the Giant's steak, but something far
(40:18):
more visceral. Earlier that day, as we were leaving the
Supreme Court, Laura Ingram had boasted about getting even with
an ex boyfriend by going back into what had been
their house and putting up exact copies of all the
photos of the two of them together that he had
taken down from his walls. And when he got smart
(40:41):
and changed the locks, she went back again to finish
the job. Found her key didn't work so naturally as
you would. She stuffed his garden hose through the mail
slot of his front door and turned on the outdoors
spigot ten thousand dollars worth of hire. And when Florence ruined,
(41:02):
she said proudly. Part of me screamed, flee, flee. Now
I didn't flee. Later, as I tried to sleep, two
noises kept me awake, snoring, not my own, and Laura's dog.
(41:23):
Laura's dog kept talking in his sleep, I mean almost
in syllables, ye like that. It was something like twenty
five degrees out and I was on the second floor.
And yet I resolved that if her dog really did
(41:44):
make that last leap to formulate actual syllables. And it
turned out her dog was the one telling her what
to do, I was simply going to leave by the
window without bothering to open it. First. The next morning,
Laura and I walked her dog. We got to an
empty field. She threw a tennis ball, He went and
got it. She cocked her arm back again. He took off,
(42:08):
loving life as he did. She did not throw it.
He went forty to fifty sixty feet, then stopped and
looked back at her with such disappointment and even a
sense of betrayal, and she said, loudly, without a trace
of affection for him or anything else, wait far at,
(42:30):
which is when I realized I was being courted to
be the next dog. A few weeks later, back home
in New York, I got home from working an early
morning shift filling in for the commentator Paul Harvey at
ABC Radio. I was just waking up from a tortured
nap when the phone rang and it's Laara. I'm downstairs.
(42:50):
We're going to my old law firms party at the museum.
I said. I was exhausted. We're going, or I'll just
stay here at this payphone outside your planes calling you
all night. We went. The next opportunity probably was going
to be me on the wrong end of a hostage drama.
(43:11):
Turned out she was not invited to her party. Went
crashing it. I'm going to drink heavily. Frankly, it was
a great party. I got to meet Hillary Clinton's mother
and her brother. And if you think the fascists are
completely sincere about everything, even their neuroses and their paranoia, no,
Laura Ingram hugged Hillary Clinton's mother and Hillary Clinton's brother.
(43:32):
They seem to be friends. Later we wound up meeting
friends of her in the Oak bar at the Plaza Hotel,
where she kept drinking. I was astonished. After about her
sixth Cosmopolitan on top of everything she'd had at the party,
she began to droop her head, nodding like a bobblehead doll.
Her friend said, Okay, that's it. We'll take care of
(43:55):
the check. You take care of her. She had not
gotten a hotel room or anything. And if you've ever
heard of anybody who needed to be poured into a
cab because they were so drunk, you don't really know
what that means until you have to pour them into
a cab. Frankly, I wanted to put her in a
hotel somewhere, but the spectacle would have made the gossip pages.
(44:20):
She basically could not stand up, so I took her
to my apartment, put her into my bed, and I
went and slept on the couch at the far end
of the apartment, which is where I was hours later
in the morning when she woke me up because she
came parading through using my phone to call my assistant
to get a car sent to my address to take
(44:41):
her to the airport, and to make sure that everybody
in my office knew she had stayed overnight at my apartment.
And all I kept thinking was why didn't I follow
my instincts. My instincts said flee. I fleed. Not, of course,
(45:01):
if I had fled, I would have missed seen the
telephone tree of the miniature right wing conspiracy, wouldn't I.
(45:22):
I've done all the damage I can do here. Thank
you for listening. Yes, Sometimes in the middle of a
cold night at home, summer, winter, fall, spring, I will
awake my heart doing seven hundred feets a minute because
I've had a dream in which I have a third
date scheduled with Laura Ingram. You may scream, but they'll
(45:51):
never hear you over the sound of her voice countdown.
Musical directors Brian Rang, John Phillip Chanel Arrange produced and
performed most of our music. Mister Ray was on the guitars,
bass and drums. Mister Chanee handled orchestration and keyboards. Produced
by Tko Brothers. Other music, including some of the Beethoven compositions,
arranged and performed by the group No Horns Allowed. The
(46:11):
sports music is the Olderman theme from ESPN two, written
by Mitch Warren Davis Curtesy of ESPN inc. Our satirical
and pithy musical comments are from Nancy Fauss. The best
baseball stadium organist ever. Our announcer today was Tony Kornheiser,
and everything else was pretty much my fault. That's countdown
for this the one hundred and ninety fifth day until
(46:32):
the twenty twenty four presidential election and the two hundred
and six day since Defendant Jay Trump's first attempted coup
against the democratically elected government of the United States. Use
the fourteenth Amendment. Use the only thing the Supreme Court
will give us, the not regularly given elector objection option,
Use the Insurrection Act, Use the justice system, Use the
(46:55):
mental health system to stop him from doing it again
while we still can. The next countdown is tomorrow. Bulletin
says the news warrants till then. I'm Keith Oldreman, good morning,
good afternoon, good night, and good luck, and he's like
(47:28):
can com Countdown with Keith Olberman is a production of iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts.
Host
Keith Olbermann
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