IMPEACH TRUMP. IT WON'T WORK NOW. IT WILL WIN THE MIDTERMS LATER - 1.22.25

treacherous garbage in our history. Because lost in the avalanche of evil he has perpetrated since beginning his second dictatorship, lost in the astonishment and even the despair of true Americans, lost in the numbed, terrified, capitulatory media coverage, is the reality that his pardoning of the January sixth Traders is amazingly unpopular, literally unpopular enough to cost him at least forty three House seats right now, right now, before he

mindlessly signs even more red meat, Stephen Miller slides under his piggish face. And the second part of this is he has also already literally intentionally violated the Constitution of the United States, already not forty eight hours on the job, and he is already guilty of violating one of the amendments and doing so deliberately. He is already guilty of at least two impeachable offenses. Already, there is almost nothing

to do to stop Trump now. The Democrats are minorities in both houses, the courts are The Supreme Court is just another Trump scam company. The billionaires like Musk and Bezos and Zuckerberg and the other tech scum have lined up besides him, just as Kroup and I G. Farbin and Opal stood next to and behind Hitler. There is nothing to do today except to borrow from the musical version of the lyrics of the fascists to make sure tomorrow belongs to us. Introduce a bill today, or even

multiple bills today, to impeach Trump. Keep the crimes he has already committed, including the ones he has been convicted of and the ones he wriggled out of with dubious legality and non existent morality front of mind, and the new ones too. Fight back, thwart him, anger him, waste his time, make him play defense, enrage his base, and terrify those billionaire idiots. Because you could see on that little mouse Zuckerberg's face during the inauguration that he wasn't

so sure anymore. He picked the right side and fight back against these bastards moreover, give the opposition, not the resistance this time, but instead the defiance. Give the defiance something to do with our time other than just sit here and replay November fifth and all the days leading

up to it in some PTSD doom loop. Nothing that has ever been wrong in the history of the world has ever stopped being wrong without the same goddamned first step, people standing up and saying this is wrong, this must

be stopped. Seventy six and one half million people voted against Trump, forty nine and two fifths percent of the population, the voting population, and we are all just sitting here saying nothing, doing nothing, feeling sorry for ourselves, watching Trump wreck train after train, and insisting to ourselves there's nothing to do about it. Well, there is. Few of us have even noticed that gift he gave us by pardoning nearly sixteen hundred convicts and suspects to start within freeing them.

Trump and MAGA and their Republicans have gained full ownership of January sixth, in a way they had spent four years denying and trying to avoid. The Republican Party is now officially pro vigilante. It is now officially pro militia. It is now officially pro political violence. It is now officially pro politicization of the Department of Justice. It is now officially anti law and order. Make every Republican answer for this every day until Tuesday, November three, twenty twenty six.

Make them answer for it because they will not be able to. Because if you want something with which to figuratively beat Trump over the head every month, every week, every day until the midterms, if you want to defy this idiot, just handed you the stick just a week ago. The Protect Democracy nonprofit. The board and advisors there include everybody from my friend John Dean to historian Tim Snyder, from Matt Dowd to Ian Bassen. Protect Democracy conducted a

YouGov in the forty three most competitive House districts. Seventy five percent of voters in those districts opposed pardoning anybody using a deadly or just a dangerous weapon on January sixth, three quarters that includes fifty five percent of the Republicans in those districts. Fifty four percent of Republicans who will vote for those House seats next year opposed pardoning anybody who assaulted Capitol police officers, and among all voters. It's

seventy three percent. Fifty five percent of voters in these districts oppose any pardons for anybody convicted in federal court. Let me just do this again. Three quarters of voters in the forty three swingiest House swing seats oppose basically the first thing Trump did upon taking the dictatorship. Again, a clear majority of the Republicans in those districts also feel that way, and even among those who support him,

this was not what they voted for. Out of seventeen priorities, choose three, these voters said pardoning the January sixth thugs was the fifteenth most important thing. Seven percent support for pardoning the January sixth mob seven percent. Trump Ism is a blinding, deluding, psychological disorder, but there are degrees of it. Forty five percent of them said curbing inflation was the priority.

Forty one percent said the border and immigration. Pardoning the January sixth perpetrators was down at the bottom, next to nine percent support for gutting healthcare and five percent support for ending Title nine protections for transgendered students. That is more important to Trump voters in these forty three districts that could not only take back the House next year, but give the Democrats the modern equivalent of a super

House majority. That nonsense is more important to the ones voting against the Democrats than was freeing Trump's stochastic terror squads. He blew it for whatever short term gain he will get, for whatever loyalty he will now buy from the bullies and the criminals, Trump has really really screwed this up. If the issue is pressed, hammered, enshrined in legislation, if it becomes unavoidable, it becomes the basis of a new

impeachment bill every month from now until the midterms. If we do that, it will mean that Trump and MAGA and the Republican Party will have committed electorals suicide. When have you ever heard of anything any president did, especially in the brilliant honeymoon unforgettable light of his first goddamned day. When have you ever heard of anything producing polling that says three quarters of swing voters in swing districts hated it.

It is now imperative that we the Defiance, and the Democrats in the House, and the Democrats in the Senate, and the Democrats in every state, the Democrats on every street, take this pardon nonsense, this pardon bullshit, and shove the pardons up Trump's ass. And then there is and also the small matter on this issue of the reality that impeaching Trump is a moral necessity. Simply put, it's the right thing to do, because freeing sixteen hundred violent gangsters

is morally wrong. It is the equivalent of what Putin did to fill the ranks of his army in Ukraine. It is morally wrong on so many levels, in so many ways that the levels are almost uncountable. And not the least of those background moral issues is that he who inspired them to commit these crimes has now let them out of jail, which is the definition of a

quid pro quo. It is also part of a cover up conspiracy about Trump's own crimes related to trying to overthrow the government, exactly like Watergates cover up conspiracy was about Nixon's own crimes. What Trump did was morally wrong, and taken in concert with his other impeachable offense on day one, which I will get to, it is clear and inarguable evidence that he's already violated the constitution sufficiently

to be removed from office. Now today, where the House Democratic right now, there would be a rush to promulgate impeachment bills. It is wrong, it is illegal, it is impeachable. That it will not happen for two years does not mean you sit back and let it die. The concept of moral right and wrong has long since fallen into obscurity in the political cesspool of our damaged nation, well behind the current primary organizing principle of the United States

of America. What can I get away with this time? But right and wrong still exists, and the first step towards defeating wrong is to stand up for what is right. Move to impeach Trump today and again in February and in March, and on television and at rallies and in campaigns, and as we build out and build up defiance. The Republicans are the party of criminals. The Republicans are the party of circumventing the law. The Republicans are the party

of immorality. The Democrats are the party of justice and enforcing the law, and of moral force. And not incidentally, the idea of deliberately being a broken record about these cynical evil pardons is not as stagnant as it may first sound. As Brian Boutler, who also by utter non coincidence, titled his newsletter yesterday Impeach Trump, emphasizes the story of the January sixth pardons does not end with the release of these manifest threats to the safety not just of

democracy but of other citizens. Here. What do you think they're all going to retire from thuggery and political violence? You think they're all going to take their undeserved wins and go home. Now, what they do next will not be sixteen hundred gangsters signing up to go to monasteries and nunneries to become priests and sisters. Thus, what they do next will be its own, continuing, evolving, disgusting story. And we must make Trump and the Republicans own each

of those stories, Boiler writes, quoting him. Democratic operatives should be in the business of tracking the public conduct of freed insurrectionists. What do they say on social media? Which of them recidivates with what crimes? Trump will bear direct responsibility for all their future transgressions, whether that's violence in his name or run of the mill criminal activity. They should not want memories of his action to fade, or for the consequences to go unnoticed unquote, he's Enrique Trump.

Now they're all Trump. This, of course, will probably require figuratively decapitating the leadership of the Democratic Party at all levels. Bouler quotes Chuck Schumer, or I should say, more correctly, he quotes both. Chuck Schumer's the one who says the January sixth convicts quote should not have been pardoned. Trump is ushering in a golden age for people that break the law and attempt to overthrow the government. And then Bouler quotes the other Chuck Schumer. It is time to

look to the future. The Senate must respond with resolve, by partisanship and fidelity to the working and middle class of this country. By partisanship with whom, Chuck, the party that just freed those you just said, attempted to overthrow the government. So you are standing up for bipartisanship. Betwe the pro government Democrats and the pro violent overthrow Republicans. This is madness. Resign from the leadership, Resign from the Senate, get the hell out of the way. By partisanship got

us the second Bush term by partisanship. And this now antique thought that the voters will reward the most bipartisan party got us the second Trump term. It is a hell of a way to run a country. But we have re entered the kill them and eat them stage of the politics of the United States of America. We have been here before in eighteen sixty one. You have two choices, Chuck Schumer, you metaphorically kill them because they are scum and they are wrong, and Trump is a

madman and a dictator. You do that, or you can be metaphorically eaten by them. To Chuck Schumer and all the Chuck Schumers, busy or get out now. I apologize for having repeatedly referenced, but not explained, the dictator's other immediately impeachable act. A little afternoon Monday, Trump, his hand not on the Bible, presumably out of fear that the book would burn the effing flesh off his bones, swore he would to the best of my ability to preserve, protect,

and defend the Constitution of the United States. Yet within hours he not even bothering to get his horrors on the Supreme Court to pretend to do what is after all, their job and do this for him. He was overruling the Constitution, specifically the Fourteenth Amendment, and birthright citizenship, and rewriting that amendment, and rewriting our Constitution to deny the right of citizenship to anybody born here, whether they're the parents, are here legally or not. This was not, just, as

Trump promised, terminating the Constitution as it pertains through undocumented immigrants. However, this was not just a Trump action vaguely within that framework of the migration dilemma he caused. This was an act against all immigrants, and all foreigners, and all minorities.

It is an act of white supremacism. And the writers of the executive order that the white supremacist Trump may or may not have read, didn't even try to pretend this wasn't an act violating what has been the accepted interpretation of the Constitution by every Supreme Court and every other court, and every Congress and every Senate since ratification

of the Fourteenth Amendment in eighteen flipping sixty eight. If the drafters of that amendment and the state legislators that passed it meant no children of immigrants, they would have said, no children of immigrants. Trump's order simply pretends none of that is true. It is Orwellian memory holding. It is gaslighting, quoting the order. The fourteenth Amendment has never been interpreted to extend citizenship universally to everyone born within the United States.

The fourteenth Amendment has always excluded from birthright citizenship persons who were born in the United States but not subject to the jurisdiction thereof. And Oceania has always been at war with East Asia. Bullshit, nonsensical, obvious, and impeachable bullshit. So impeach him for it, because what I said before is true. If only Democrats and whichever Republicans still believe in representative government, get off off the goddamned floor sees

the gift Trump has moronically and unnecessarily handed us. He has already committed impeachable acts. So introduce resolutions to impeach him every month, every week, every day, every hour, if you have to introduce enough of them, so he will not be able to see over them as they pile up in his office. Bury him alive under impeachment bills. Think of those forty three swing house districts and the three quarters of voters in them, and the fifty five

percent of Republicans in them who oppose Trump. Letting the bubonic play rats out of the prisons and back out into our homes. Think of them, and impeach Trump now. Impeach Trump now and later. And lastly, if you are shying away from this because you are still on the floor,

it's understandable. Now get off the efing floor. If you hesitate to do this because you see democratic leaders folding looking at you, John Fetterman, get back on the spaceship, or more accurately, if you see democratic leadership going mia.

Consider this. After Trump freed sixteen hundred hardened criminal January sixth slime, after he officially and immediately and forever sided with the domestic terrorist attack on this nation and on democracy itself, the Republicans were still out there trying to sell the idea that Biden's last minute, tiny preemptive pardons of his family and Liz Cheney and Anthony Fauci and others that that was somehow criminal, and moreover, that it

certainly meant the recipients were guilty. By that Republican logic, a pardoned criminal or just a pardoned potential politicized prosecutorial target is guilty than what are these sixteen hundred January sixth scumbags? And what are they guilty of. They are guilty of, as Schumer even phrased it, attempting to overthrow the government. And on whose behalf? At whose instigation were they trying to do this? Who is as guilty as

anybody just pardoned Trump? This is easy. Trump has convicted himself of insurrection, trying to overthrow the government, and treason, and he has bought off his little stochastic army. This isn't complicated, it isn't risky, and among things to be defiant about, it isn't even all that defiant. It must, however, be exploited. It is being handed to us on a silver platter, or since it's Trump, it's being handed to

us on a fake, dull, ugly restolium gold platter. Take it, impeach Trump, and then take the platter and shove that up Trump's ass as well. A scheduling note barring Bolton News, this episode live just as Tuesday the twenty first became Wednesday the twenty second will take the place of the regular Thursday edition. I could have stuck to the schedule or spread the good news about impeachment. Now, it's the point was to do it. Now, I think I made the right choice by doing it now all se of

interest here bluntly, Jake Tapper needs to resign. Talk about going to a monastery somewhere to a tone. Jake Tapper's performance at the Trump Biden debate was pathetic and desperate, and he has somehow now outdone himself. Of course, very few people noticed that because he and CNN began to destroy their outlet in twenty twenty three, and the inauguration ratings are now in and they suggest congratulations are in order.

CNN has completed its task of self immolation. CNN finished third on inauguration coverage behind MSNBC in primetime, the last area of CNN semi relevance covering breaking news, and Jake Tapper helped reduce it to last place. He's in worse persons. That's next. This is countdown. This is countdown with Keith

Oberman stell ahead on countdown. Trumpists who can put together actual sentences and have more than three digits on each hand and foot but less than eight digits on each hand and foot often say, aldermin, what do you know about Trump? And I do enjoy stunning them by explaining I first met him in nineteen eighty three, and I knew him well enough that just over a decade ago he wrote me a goddamned fan letter. And I know him well enough to say when I say he's nuts

and dangerous, I have credentials. I said the same thing about him forty one years ago, ahead on things I promised not to tell the first time I met Trump. By the way, impeach him first. There are still more new idiots to talk about. The daily round up of the misgrids, morons and Dunning Krueger effect specimens who constitute

two days other worst persons in the world. The first is Christy eight nine, three, one, two, six, seven seven, And if I mentioned Trumpsts who have the ordinary number of fingers and toes, at the opposite end of the spectrum is Christy. Christy is a moron. Christy is Trump's base. Christy could be a bot, But looking at the Twitter

x of Christy, I don't think so. I just think she's the kind of person who a century ago never reached maturity because one day, while out of the house, they forgot how doors worked, and they couldn't get back inside, and thus they died of exposure. Still trying to remember what knobs were for I swear to God, I'm I'm reading this verbatim. It is a defense of Trump pardoning the Sewer rats. In a reply to a clip of Daniel Dale of CNN eviscerating Trump's lies about the pardons.

For the record, so you understand what I'm reading, let me emphasize the word is pardons pa r do ns Christy. That's Christy eight nine three one two six seven seven. She does not know this quote. Christy eight nine three one two six seven seven, replying to at CNN, why don't you say anything about Joe Biden partying his whole family and, by the way, parted eight thousand more people than any other president, CNN, look at your ratings partying.

Biden parted way more people than Trump did. He partying his whole family, he issued pardons. Why are we in this situation this country? Because Christy and several million other Christie's are utter idiots the runner up worser. On the other hand, she does have CNN about the ratings part not that this is unexpected given who would have been watching the inauguration, but during midday Monday, while it was actually happening, CNN was actually in second place in cable news,

CNN had more than double MSNBC's ratings. On the other hand, Fox had more than six times CNN's ratings. And then the numbers got bad for CNN. By noon, CNN had fallen into a tie in the demo audience with MSNBC. By seven PM, CNN had collapsed into a total audience tie with MSNBC. By eight pm, MSNBC a million one, CNN a million, third in a three team race in breaking news, Why welser when from the days we put it on the air, and I do mean we. I

started there. As year two began in nineteen eighty one, CNN increasingly dominated first cable ratings and then all TV ratings in breaking news. That's what it was. For the rest of the time. They couldn't charge as much for the commercials. Breaking news made them all the money they would ever make. And that's gone. And I have no means of proving this, but I think I know something

about cable news audiences. I was there when they started, and I was there when they finished, and I believe this collapse due to CNN is now simply the reality that CNN is just the TV version of the Washington Post and Penny Saber and Hot Sex News. Some people still go there by habit, Oh, something's happening They've put

on CNN. Some people are not yet personally offended enough to have found it alternative television Viewers are not required to be fully informed about the quality of the product they are about to watch. But most of the viewers of CNN got the message three years ago, and Chris lickt took over and started pandering to the fascists, and anybody left probably dropped out when Dana Bash and Jake Tapper refused to fact check Trump's lies at the Biden

Trump debate. And you can frame that anyway you want, but that is doing Trump's job for him. That is Dana Bash and Jake Tapper and CNN having successfully put their fingers on the scale to help get Trump elected. I hope that Dana Bash and Jake Tapper lived to be one hundred and eight years old each. And I also hope that their last thoughts on this earth are

I helped get Trump elected. What you did was you let Trump lie while you just stood there Bash and you just stood there Tapper, which is like a cop or two cops letting a thug beat up a victim, and now, as if this were possible, Tapper may have chased the rest of once was CNN's default audience away at two pm Eastern on Monday in the post inauguration glow,

and they were still a factor in the ratings. Quote Tapper, I think it's important to point out that the Trump dvance campaign in twenty twenty four was a very disciplined campaign and did a decent job of depicting Trump as

somebody who was within the realm of normalcy. He said, this aster God, he said, this disciplined campaign depicting Trump is within the realm of normalcy, Jake, Which part the part where they spent a week insisting that Haitian immigrants were eating pets in Ohio, the Madison Square Garden part where the alleged Trump comedian called Puerto Rico an island of garbage, when he said all the FEMA money had already been spent and Biden had spent it on immigrants

to fly them in and Kamala Harris had brought them into Chicago. Which part was the realm of normalcy and which part was the discipline Trump's constant moronic consistence that the migrants were coming from insane asylums, because Trump is so stupid and brain dead that he does not realize that what we used to kind of crassly call insane asylums, those aren't the same thing as political asylum, you efing moron. Which part of the campaign was the most within the

realm of normalcy? Jake Tapple, your hapless ass kisser. We are left with two choices, Jake. You have either joined the line of vhy collaborators, and in that line you're like two thousandth behind Bezos and Lauren Sanchez who was so affected by the inauguration speech that she almost managed to move her face. It's that, Jake, or you need to see a neurologist today. Either way, Jake Tapper, f you but our winner, speaking of the face almost moving

during the inauguration, it's Milagna. Do you know already about the crypto scam she and her employer. I'm sorry she and her husband ran over the weekend, but I have to point this out. All the advertising done to rip off the Rubes with Milanya's meme coin, they are all variations of her pictures grinning hands in front of her nose, eyes so covered over by liner that it looks like they're closed, and then prominently displayed or written in the text the name of the meme coin she was selling.

And meme coin names consists of a dollar sign and then the name. But of course a dollar sign is just an s with a vertical line through it. And I defy you to find anybody who doesn't see that dollar sign when it has a name or word directly attached to it, with no spacing between them, as in

mean coin names. I defy you to find any who doesn't see dollars sign millennia and here in their minds smell onya as in ah, what's that awful smell on YOUA Milania hereafter to be called Smellania Trump invest in distens to day's first person indiverse.

cheap end of the notions department at Filein's basement. But he really thinks he can sell anybody anything, and somewhere early in life he decided his means of doing that was to mimic a human smile and really make it as big and as preposterous as possible. And he's done this now for at least seventy years, from his childhood dementia to this dementia. And the way he registers a sail with people, his receipt for convincing them to do

his bidding is their smile in return. So the jury didn't smile at him, so the jury was biased against him, So the jury was corrupt, so the trial was rigged. So when he says these crazy things, there is a part of him that truly believes it is rigged, because they are, as the kids say, not buying what he's selling. He believes life is a transaction, and when he gives you his smile, you have to give him yours, and

then he owns you. I met him in the lobby of the apartment building I used to live at here, the no longer Trump Palace. I saw him first, then he saw me. Then he whispered to one of his flunkies. I'm guessing he was double checking it was me. Then he stared at me for a moment. Then when he thought I was first looking at him, his dead face

turned immediately into that fake smile. Remember the Senko Demayo Taco bowl tweet from twenty sixteen where he says I love Hispanics, like there were actual Hispanics in the taco bowl and he was eating them that fake smile. But his eyesight is not as good as he lets on, so he doesn't know that you have seen him first.

He had done the same thing twice in the lobbies of thirty Rock at NBC, once stopping just to shake hands, once actually stopping to tell me how good countdown was, and how pissed off his buddy Bill O'Reilly would get whenever he told him how good countdown was, and then striding off. And I watched to see if I could see that fake smile that had appeared so suddenly vanished

justice suddenly, but his back was turned to me. However, December fifteenth, nineteen eighty three, CNN sends me to cover a New York Post sports forum where owner George Steinbrenner of the New York Yankees, owner Fred Wilpond of the New York Mets, Sonny Werblin of the New York Rangers, and Nixon this real estate hump Trump who owned the sort of pro football team in New Jersey. They would

speak and do interviews and meet fans and whatever. He interviewed them all briefly, and when it came time to interview this Trump guy, he stood there and looked at me like he was trying to guess my weight. Then we put the camera light on and there it was, this big fake smile out of nowhere, and I asked some questions about the New Jersey Generals, and he boasted he was hiring a new name coach who used to

coach the Jets. When we turned out he hadn't hired him yet, and he spent a week cleaning up that mess. And when I said thank you, when we turned the light off, he turned off the big fake smile zap it was gone, and the blank look repeated in his eyes A couple of years ago, on a cold night, I turned a corner here and a familiar but older face shouted Keith, And suddenly I realized it's a CNN

cameraman I haven't seen in thirty years. Remember when we covered Trump at that sports thing, he says, And I realized he was the cameraman that day at the post thing. Remember what you said about him? And I didn't? And he laughs, and he says, we were walking back to the truck and you didn't say anything thing, and that worried us, because when have you ever shut up for five minutes? And so finally I say, what's bothering you?

And you stopped, and you turning, you looked at me and Jimmy, and you said that last guy we interviewed Trump, what the f is wrong with that guy? I've done all the damage I can do here. Thank you for listening. Brian Ray and John Phillip Shanell, the musical directors, have Countdown, arranged, produced and performed most of our music. Mister Shanelle handled orchestration and keyboards. Mister Ray was on the guitars, bass

and drums. It was produced by Tko Brothers. We're satirical and fifty musical comments are by the baseball stadium organist Arran Nancy Faust. The sports music is the Olderman theme from ESPN two, written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN, Inc. Other music arranged and performed by the group No Horns Allowed. My announcwer tod He was my friend Stevie van Zante.

Everything else was, as ever my fault. So that he is countdown for today, just one thousand, four hundred and sixty days until the scheduled end of his lame duck and lame reigned term. The next scheduled countdown is Monday. As always, bulletins, as the news warrants, remember in peach Trump, it won't work now. It will, however, win the Democrats the mid terms. Until next time. I'm Keith Olberman. Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and good luck. Countdown with Keith

Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.