TRUMP WANTS TO CHARGE HIS AMERICAN CRITICS WITH TERRORISM - 4.24.25

morons by the team of idiot rivals. And as such, as the wheels fall off, as Trump's poll numbers collapse, as Trump crashes the world economy, as Trump can't keep one economic policy in place for two consecutive hours, and as Trump depopulates the life or death bureaucracy fostering public health and education and safety and scientific research and climate change, as the president of the New York Fed predicts five percent unemployment within the year, as his minions literally disappear

US citizens and others with legal rights to be here off our streets and ship them to foreign hells, as his Secretary of Defense might as well be shouting our battle plans at passers by on a Washington Street corner, as we betray and threaten our allies, and reward the scum of the earth, both kinds Russian scum and non Russian scum, as the media and academia and the law firms and the judiciary cover their own asses and throw the rest of us to the lions. As the nation collapses.

Because it is day ninety five of the Trump dictatorship of the morons, fled by the most moron public figure in our history, there is only one play left for the feral animal in charge, the one with the failing reptile brain. There is only one play left for Trump. We've all known it would come to this. We've all warned it would come to this. We've all predicted they would try to ease the knife in slowly that they

take the boiling frog roots. And here it comes. It is in every piece of political science fiction from nineteen eighty four to V for Vendetta. We are now here. If everything Trump deserves criticism and gets criticism, there will be only one thing left for Trump and his gang to do, and that is to prosecute criticism of Trump and to claim those who criticize Trump are aiding and abetting terrorists.

And now Gorka is Deputy Assistant to the President and Senior Director for counter Terrorism, and thus he is a clear and present danger to the stability of this country and not just some asshole so sketchy, it's so egotistical. To the first inauguration, he wore not only that beard, that consumes half the nation's supply of just for men,

but also a tunic. It was the last time you saw somebody wearing a tunic and a Garish medal with a conflicted history connected to both Hungarian World War two Nazi resistors and Hungarian World War two Nazi collaborators, but ultimately so bizarrely inappropriate because the metal looks either like an Eastern European fascist idea of class or something a minor league hockey team would wear as part of its

special uniform on ren and stimpy night. Well, Sebastian Gorka, whoever the f he really is, has now begun the process of trying to make criticizing Trump an act of terrorism. The full thought of nineteen eighty four, the satirical but unbearably terrifying political torturer played by Michael Palin in Terry Gilliam's movie Brazil. The disappearing of the Stephen Fry character in V for Vendetta after he satirized the paranoid, crazy

dictator the Countless. This is really happening, stories of true life torture in Spain and Germany and Venezuela and a

thousand other places. It's not enough, apparently, to wrap up a bankroll of a couple of billion dollars and threaten to metaphorically beat the owners of ABC and CBS and NBC to death with it, and know that at least one of them will fold, and one day, like day before yesterday, you'll read that the executive producer of sixty Minutes has left CBS News after thirty seven years because

his bosses are collaborators and colluds and goddamned cowards. It's not enough, apparently, to try to stochastically inspire vigilante death squads against reporters. It's not enough to threaten universities, usually universities with strong journalism programs like Columbia, with financial destruction

and extra constitutional judicial overlords. It's not enough to prosecute news organizations and reporters about stories and leaks when you are really just trying to force them into praising Trump,

like they did at the Washington Post. It's not enough, apparently, to put individuals in your crosshairs so that one day I wake up to watch people I worked with and trusted because they had spine and ethics fold up like a three card monte dealer's table during a raid people like Jeff Schell now destroying CBS News, or people like Claire Shipman now destroying Columbia University and thus the Columbia

Journalism School. None of that is enough because none of that has worked, because none of that has scared enough people viscerally, none of that has scared enough people personally, and the only thing still working in the Trump dictatorship is the prospect of scaring people into obeying. Also, there is the realization that if you think it is going badly now in Trump Land, wait wait until the predictions

come true. The predictions that the CEOs of Walmart and Target and Home Depot reportedly made to Trump this past Monday in the Oval Office, that it's not just that his tariff madness and his unshakable delusion that it was all so much better in the year eighteen ninety three, the delusion so tenacious, so complete within him that it is worthy of being a full visual and auditory hallucination

caused by a brain tumor. The prediction that all this will not just disrupt supply chains, not just double or treble inflation, not just leave store after store in every city in this country with empty shelves, but that it will do all that within two weeks. Wait until those predictions come true. And it's a matter of degree now, because Trump folded again on tariffs after those warnings, and folded on China on Tuesday because he was so scared

by what the CEOs told him. And then the delusion gripped him again yesterday and he went right back to his brain symptom of financing the national budget with effing tariffs. But wait until the undeniability of empty shelves hits the new cathedrals of America, the Target in Hoover, Alabama, one hundred and ninety one thousand square feet, the Home Depot and Buxhall, New Jersey, two hundred and seventeen thousand square feet, the Wall March at Crossgates Commons in Albany, New York

two one hundred and sixty thousand square feet. Wait until their shelves are empty, and the worshippers of our Lady of the Megabox store riot in the parking lots two one hundred and sixty thousand square feet of a Walmart. I mean, Saint Peter's basilica is only two hundred and forty seven thousand square feet. Ah, sorry about your Pope, says the American tourist. And this stadium here you got.

This is nice, but it sure ain't as impressive as the Walmot at Crossgates commons back to doctor Gorka and his lifetime supply of just for men Beard when there is nothing left in this Trumpian shit show but criticism of it. The pompous, falsely ominous, simplistic effort to terrify the Americans with the minds of children from the dregs of humanity like Sebastian Gorka will take on a totally different meaning. The clip of what he threatened, and to use the cliche, it is so full of false and

illogical extrapolation. It is so Sebastian Gorka that it hurts. That clip is nearly a week old, but it is just resonating today after their Axios has managed to put the truly evil pieces together, while as usual, never passing judgment on the morality of any of it, Like they were writing out assembly instructions for a potty seat for a child or for Trump. I'll quote from this Axios compendium.

Now Trump administration officials are suggesting their immigration crackdown could expand to include deporting convicted US citizens and charging anyone, not just immigrants, who criticizes Trump's policies. One sending convicted US citizens to prisons abroad. This has been floated as a spit off of Trump's deal with l Salvador, where a high security prison is holding about three hundred US immigration detainees that the administration says are suspected criminals and

gang members. Quote homegrowns are next, Trump said during an Oval Office meeting with I would point out as an aside his employee, Salvadoran President Naib Bucele last week, referring to sending Americans convicted of crimes to serve time in foreign prisons. Two, putting critics of the administration's policies in jeopardy. Some officials say US citizens who criticize administration policies could be charged with crimes based on the notion they're aiding

terrorists and criminals. Then comes the quote from the Gorka interview. Trump's team has also questioned the legality of civic groups providing immigrants with know your Rights trainings on how to respond to federal agents. Borders are Tom Holman suggested that such seminars help people evade law enforcement. I would suggest it allows people to evade fascists like Tom Holman and

their brown shirt Gestapo death squads. And I would note also that Tom Holman in particular has something for or Alexandria Accasio Cortes and is drooling at the thought of

putting handcuffs on her. Quote. They're trying to use terrorism laws to attack people for their speech and for their political activism, and that's an authoritarian effort, said Carrie Talbot, co executive director of the Immigration Hub, an immigration advocacy group three questioning the authority of court orders, The administration's resistance to returning Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was legally in the US with an order not to be deported back

to Al Salvador, but was deported to the prison there anyway, has raised questions about how far Trump's team can go in trying to skirt court orders. The White House says the decision to return Abrego Garcia rests with El Salvador because the US Supreme Court told the administration only to facilitate his return, not effectuated. Axios, of course, peppered this with its moronic life for dummies interjections like why it matters. I've always wondered what their coverage of an impending nuclear

war would look like. Why it matters because everybody would be dead. Axios also missed one other component. This is from Reuters from a month ago. Now. US House Speaker Mike Johnson on Tuesday warned that Congress's authority over the federal judiciary includes the power to eliminate entire district courts.

As the White House rails against activist judges blocking Trump's agenda, Johnson sold reporters the numerous injunctions issued by judges nationally that have steimied Trump's initiatives were part of a dangerous hand. This ugly, little, useless Johnson is talking about defunding the judges. That if the Democrats can't frame that as Republicans want

to defund law enforcement, give up. What in whole all this indicates is that Trump is, as I suggested earlier, out of moves, he is, in fact now road testing using terrorism charges against Americans for their exercise of free speech. They've already done it in the Khalil case at Columbia. Then Trump said the quiet part out loud about homegrowns. The idiocy of the DEI Attorney General Blondie is another

facet of this. Remember her boast that attacks on Tesla dealerships or Tesla vehicles would be treated as domestic terrorism. I'm not sure if this includes keing the cars, though the newspaper The Daily Mail reported that a decade ago Musk found a foreign born whistleblower in his company about bad breaks on Tesla's and threatened to deport her and

her team. And that was in two thousand fourteen. But if you put all these components together, you may face a terrorism charge for criticizing how good a car a Tesla is, or for criticizing how good a president A Trump is. The other headlines Dick Durbin is retiring. Good should have happened two elections ago. Take Schumer with you, and take Ron Johnson with you. There are dumber senators, There are more dangerous Republican Johnson's. There are snottier politicians.

But no one quite combines these three attributes as brilliantly as Russia. Ron his newest gambit as chair of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investment Mitigations, he wants one he has declared that World Trade Center Building seven collapse due to a quote controlled demolition, something disproved literally on nine to eleven and believed only by morons and rich losers who have never held any elected office other than the

Senate seat they bought from Wisconsin. They brought down Ron's brain with a controlled demolition long before nine to eleven. Also today, the last king of five thirty eight dot com Elliot Morris reports Trump has completely spent his approval ratings on immigration and the economy and the cost of living. At the beginning of February, he was a net plus eight on the economy plus eight. He's now at minus ten. At the same time, he was plus five on the

cost of living, He's now at minus twenty two. And on immigration. In the middle of February, he was at plus twelve. He's now at just plus two and a half. On immigration, he is hemorrhaging his support specifically and generally the overall. When he was at plus five in February, he is now twelve points lower at minus seven. New theory on the Christy Nome handbag theft, the one literally stolen out from under her at a DC restaurant with three thousand dollars in cash inside to pay for the

family Easter dinner. I assume because the cash anyway, because her family had long since learned to disbelieve her promises like I'll put it on my card or I'll take care of your dog. Police think the culprit at an adjoining table gradually pushed the handbag away from Nome with

their foot. My addition to this theory is that Nome has by now had so much work done that she could not move her head anymore to the side to check if the White House Correspondence din there is Saturday, having been forced to attend in two different centuries in far happier circumstances. My pro tip to the members of the DC political media industrial complex consists of just two words, uber eats and your pete. Hegseth update. He's still there,

I guess, but he's clearly not all there. Jennifer Jacobs of CBS News reports that heg Seth has made a major change at the Pentagon. He has spent thousands of dollars to install in the green room next to the press briefing room, a makeup room, a new director's chair, and a large mirror with vanity bulbs has been installed. All true, says the Pentagon, but the heg Seth spokesperson proudly insists Pete Hegseth does not have a makeup artist. He does his own makeup himself. Because all fighters need

to know when to powder their nose. And Trump is still behind hag Seth because we all presidents need to know when to empty another can of spray on their hair matrix or another car load lot of bronzer on their reptilian skin. Here we go again, It's just a waste of time he is doing. He is doing a great job. Because he's doing a great jobs to ask the hoodies how he's doing it? Why were they in

the signal Chat two? Also of interest here, no word yet from HBO Max as to when and where the memorial services will be held for Bill Maher's career, now that it has been ended by a pitch perfect guest essay in the New York Times. If by now you have somehow not read it, I am not going to spoil your surprise by telling you about it, reading from it, nor telling you who the author is. Well, I'm not going to do that now. I'll do it next This

is countdown. This is countdown with Keith Olberman. Stell ahead on this initiative countdown all new as it is. Did I ever tell you about the time I sang and danced on Broadway? I mean in an actual Broadway show, actually on Broadway, a political Broadway show. No, I didn't tell you because I had completely forgotten about it until I went to see George Clooney in Goodnight and good Luck, And then I forgot about it again until it turned out that my foot doctor's offices across the street from

where George Clooney is doing Goodnight in good Luck. Anyway, my Broadway career that was so bad it would have made zero Mostelle and or Nathan Lane and the producers proud next in things I promised not to tell first, Believe it or not, there's still more new idiots to talk about. The roundup of the miss Grants, morons and Dunning Krueger effect specimens who constitute the latest other worse persons in the world worse than me dancing on Broadway

Lebron's worst Congressman Derek Van Orden. If you want a leaving, breathing example of evidence that the new research is correct that for years the American military has been giving our war fighters brain damage and PTSD because our weapons move so violently when they are shot or otherwise employed, that just training on them literally shakes a soldier's brain. If you need to be able to point at somebody and say, like this guy, look at the brain damage the military

did to this guy. All he did was shoot a rifle. It's Congressman Van Orden of Wisconsin. I mean, I don't know how this actually works, because I'm not a brain surgeon, but it always seemed to me, having had a concussion, that if you had a small brain to begin with, it would rattle more, thus creating more damage. But who knows, maybe if you have a small brain to begin with, there's less two damage. Anyway, Van Orden has got major,

major issues. He's got anger problems, he's got seeming delusions of grandeurs, he likes to order people around, and of course he is a buffoonish idiot. Maybe it was the machinery in the army that caused this one social media disaster the other day. Maybe it was just that he was made this way. Governor Tony Evers of Wisconsin tweeted a video trying to hook the upcoming National Football League Draft in Green Bay, Wisconsin with the year of the Kid.

So Van Orden found a way to take this benign, kind of meaningless, generic tweet and turn it into a way to express all of his own problems anger, low class use of language, conspiracy theory, addiction, stupidity. And he did this all in a retweet of only ten words in length. Got to hand it to him for that great job. Turd a sitting US Congress and rights referring to the governor of his own state. How many kids

in Milwaukee can read? And of course Van Orden misspelled the word how he spelled it hoe, So the RT actually reads and continued to read all day ho many kids in Milwaukee can read, which by itself tells you everything you need to know about Derek Van Orden, but which, because of that one word ho, may lead us down the path of wondering if there's another issue mister Van Orden has been dealing with any who the runner up

worser Ryan kill mead to Fox and Friends. I've mentioned before, it's a real hall of fame of dumb white guys and gals over there. Jesse Waters will Cain, Janine Piro, Rachel Campos, Duffy. But if you had first draft choice, where would you go, where would you start? You would start with kill Mead. He has been there forever. He has been there literally twice as long as anybody else. And now he's made a major major boo boo even for him interviewing his former colleague eat as in PTSD.

I'll just text it to you Hegseth at eight twenty one Eastern the other morning. Brian Kilmead was clearly upset at having to do this interview, and with good reason, nervous, worried. Heg Seth was so jumpy, arms flailing, mugging to the camera twice as much as usual that you would have thought he was just coming in at that hour of the morning, not just getting up. Hey wait a minute, maybe he was just kidding him. No, no, I bet

he was just coming in. Any who. Kill Mead's part of this was saying, as usual, exactly what the Trumpsts did not want him to say, the Freudian slip of all Freudian slips. At the moment quote here to set the record straight himself, the former secretary, the current Secretary of State Pete Hegseth. First off, state no, I'm sorry, I would have accepted secretary of Defense or secretary of vodka.

Also the former secretary you called Hegseth, the former secretary you meant to call him the former secretary of Defense, Brian, I believe that's what we call in the business a spoiler alert, bro. But our winner Bill Maher or whatever is now left of him, and frankly, all that is left of him now is pretty much graffiti. If you have not read the best piece of satirical newswriting this year,

I urge you to go do so. It was in Monday's New York Times op ed section, and as in the last episode, I now read from somebody else's epic literary composition. First it was the objective power is Power speech by O'Brien has written by Orwell in the novel nineteen eighty four. But now I would like to read just a couple of paragraphs from this instant classic in the New York Times, and I urge you to go finish it. There is not one wasted word nor misplaced

comma in the whole damn beautiful thing. Title of the guest essay, my dinner with Adolph opening three paragraphs, I have to quote them. I can't edit it down. Quote. Imagine my surprise when in the spring of nineteen thirty nine a letter arrived at my house inviting me to dinner at the Old Chancellory with the world's most reviled man, Adolf Hitler. I had been a vocal critic of his on the radio from the beginning, pretty much predicting everything he was going to do on the road to dictatorship.

No one I knew encouraged me to go. He's Hitler, He's a monster. But eventually I concluded that hate gets us nowhere. I knew I couldn't change his views, but we need to talk to the other side, even if it has invaded and annexed other countries and committed unspeakable

crimes against humanity. Two weeks later, I found myself on the front steps of the Old Chancellory and was led into an opulent livering room where a few of the Furor's most vocal supporters had gathered, Himmler, Gering Lany Riefenstahl, and the Duke of Windsor, formerly King Edward the Eighth. We talked about some of the beautiful art on the walls that had been taken from the homes of Jews. But our conversation ended abruptly when we heard loud footsteps

coming down the hallway. Everyone stiffened as Hitler entered the room. He was wearing a tan suit with a swastika armband and gave me an enthusiastic greeting that caught me off guard. Frankly, it was a warmer greeting than I normally get from my parents, and it was accompanied by a slap on my back. I found the whole thing quite disarming. I joked that I was surprised to see him in a tan suit, because if he wore that out, it would

be perceived as unfeurerlike. That amused him to no end, and I I realized I'd never seen him laugh before. Suddenly he seems so human here. I was prepared to meet Hitler, the one I'd seen and heard, the public Hitler, But this private Hitler was a completely different animal, And oddly enough, this one seemed more authentic, like this was the real Hitler. The whole thing had my head spinning. Forgive my sudden move towards my pathetic impression of the

pathetic mar but it seemed fitting at the moment. I might add this piece, this extraordinary bit of writing, only gets better from here. And I add further that with admiration, pride, and as somebody who's actually written stuff for The Times op ed page's pure bright green envy, I am not in the same universe as the author of that, and the author of that is, of course Larry David, somebody I'm proud to call a friend and friend of the podcast. Again,

read the whole thing. That's just the start. This part about the the art stolen from the homes of Jews, just thrown away like that. Oh my goodness. The irony, of course, is as the historian Rick Pearlstein noted in the thirties, the Nazis really did what Larry David fantasizes about in this piece in The Times. They really did bring critics in to meet Hitler at one of Hitler's homes, and mostly they did this to tamp down the widespread

assumptions in Germany that the unmarried Hitler was gay. There is even a book about this campaign, this pr whitewashing, that invited the Bill Mahers of nineteen thirty nine to come meet the Donald Trump of nineteen thirty nine. The book is titled Hitler at Home by Despina Stratagatos from Yale Books from twenty fifteen. Larry sat top is so good it's real. The fact of that book makes Larry's

piece even better. But nothing, nothing will ever top the best part of Larry's vivisection of Mar, which is he never wants in the piece mentions Mar by name, never mentions Mar's obsequious, squirming praise of Trump after dinner with him at the Old Chancellery. Now there could be a good reason for not mentioning Bill Maher, because after what Larry David wrote about him, there no longer is a

Bill Maher left to mention Bill. I hope they saved what's left of him to drop with the rest of the confetti in Times Square on New Year's Eve, Mar two days other worst person hellowel to the number one story on the Countdown and things I promised not to tell, And this actually falls into the category of things I forgot to tell. It may be a sign of age. I like to think it's a sign of having done so much in a now fifty year career. In front of microphones and audiences. But it could be the idea

of age. But I had, until a couple of weeks ago, completely forgotten that I once sang and danced on Broadway. I don't mean out in the street when I used to work in Times Square, I mean on the Broadway stage with an audience who paid money to see it. I was not the star of the show, thank goodness. It would have closed during the first act. But nonetheless I sang and danced on the stage of the Blasco Theater.

And I did it twice, meaning someone made the decision that after the first time I did it, they should have me come back and do it again. Here's the background. In the spring of twenty seventeen, I got a call from Michael Moore. Michael and I have done countless things together,

landmark events in our respective careers. He was the first guest on the first edition of Countdown on Current TV in twenty eleven, when we beat both CNN and MSNBC in the ratings, even though our network was in digital might as well have been in black and white, might as well have been available only in three cities in the country, and we beat them. And Mike did that

I did it too. Mostly Mike. We did a thing, believe it or not, speaking of Bill Maher, we did a thing for Bill Maher in which Michael and I did the halftime show when mar Once did a live stand up special on HBO and then went to a different studio to do a live edition of his Real time I Capitulate to Trump. Whatever the name of the show is called. We did the show in between while he went from one theater to the other in Washington.

And we've been on each other's programs, and on each other's podcasts and on each other's coat tails for years. Michael and I have always gotten along very well, and that's often a challenge, both for him and for me. The call for Michael was he's going to do a one man show on Broadway, but they can't really trust it to be just one person. They want to experiment.

They've done a couple of them already, but in previews, you know, one guy talking for an hour and a half, as good as that might be, is a little challenging if you're seated in a theater and you're expecting, I don't know, the Lion King songs something. Now, they did have a wow finish to this thing that was songs and lights and dancing, but that you didn't see till the end. So the idea was, let's break this up

at some point. Let's have a surprise guest, a different guests show up in the middle of Michael's one man show every night at the Belasco Theater, unannounced, and just have Michael talk to him ten minutes, twenty minutes, whatever works. Would you come in, Keith and be one of the first people we try this with, In fact, would you be the first person we will try this with? And

I said, of course I would. So I get to the theater and they explained to me what we're going to do and how I'm going to enter and just walk on, And I said, you sure? You just want me to walk on? People are going to think I'm just rushing the stage, aren't they?

an example something that really rang home with me. Four years, four decades. The death knell of anyone's career in entertainment in America has been the dreaded invitation to appear on one show, and one show alone in American television, Dancing with the Stars. When you are asked to be on Dancing with the Stars, it means you are or shortly will be dead to the world of television. Yes they invited me. Yes, I simply burned the letter. Yes they invited Tucker Carlson, and he did the one thing you

should never do, which is say yes. And he has been since dead to the world of television. He now is out there in the extremes, first to Fox and now to a place where he's not reachable by human language. I mean, he had a good head start on that, but this really is this is no I think on behalf of the United States of America. I as the judge ruling on your sanity case, say you know, etc. But that's another topic for another edition of Things I Promise Not to Tell back to Michael Moore and the

invitation to appear on Dancing with the Stars. He was invited. Not only did he recognize, as we all do intuitively, that's the end, but he also particularly because like me, he's not necessarily a great dancer. He's a big guy like me, he's a little bigger guy than I am, in fact, and he's not really confident about physical motions

in public. So he thought, what would be a great example to people in the audience of really challenging yourself at this time when we need to challenge ourselves, was to actually say, tell the story about being invited on Dancing with the Stars, and then at the end of the show, do a version of Dancing with the Stars.

Put on a top hat, put on a glittery jacket, have a professional dancer just like I'm Dancing with the Stars, appear out of nowhere in a beautiful skirt with all kinds of beads on it and glits and tirly things, and she comes out onto the stage going sixty miles an hour in a perfect semi circle. And then he gets up and dances with her, and as I'm being made up to go out and do my little cameo. They say, now, would you mind participating in this? And

I was like, wait, you didn't mention this before. No, we find that it's probably a better idea just to bring this up. Once you're here inside the Belasco Theater, just stay till the end of the show. And here's what we want you to do. It's nothing big. When Michael is out there dancing with the woman from essentially Dancing with the Stars, we want you to again appear out of nowhere, go out onto the stage and interrupt them dancing. And I went and then danced with the

woman from Dancing with the Stars. No, we want you to tap her on the shoulder and start dancing with Michael. Well, I'm as open minded as the next guy, but it seemed to me that this was probably a bad idea, so I did it anyway. I also had, as I have had recently, problems with my feet, so I was actually in bad shape knee and foot wise. And yet the possibility of being on stage on a Broadway stage at least this one time in my life. I mean, when would I get the opportunity to dance in public

however badly I might do it. There were a few extra added efforts to this. Well, for one thing. The other part of this was Michael's fear of being arrested for saying something, for some sort of threat that he might be perceived as making against Trump by doing this show, and it was a setup for the police to come get him while he's dancing with the woman and then

the guest star me. So this first night, they're still officially in previews, I come out unannounced, and I can hear this kind of from the crowd, like there's a terrorist rushing the stage. I'm thinking, I told you so. And I just come out and I'm wearing a Lavalier microphone that no one can see even on the stage. And I just come out and Michael says, it's Keith ol Rimman. Everybody, and a nice response and a nice

conversation and thanks for coming out. And I walked off the stage and I said, do you agree with me now? And the producer went, yeah, you should have like at least a microphone. And I said, you gotta do a bit. Well, we want you to come back and do it went so well. I said, you haven't seen me dance yet, No, that's even better, especially if you break something. So at the end of the show, I'm standing in the wings, going, what in the hell am I doing here? What am

I doing here? Why am I out here dancing? I can't dance. He can't dance, but he's been practicing, he's been taking lessons. He's been talking about how he couldn't go on Dancing with the Stars because he can't dance. So what did he do? He took dancing lessons. He's not going on Broadway every night not knowing how to dance. You are going on Broadway tonight not knowing how to dance. So of course it was a terrible idea, and I did it anyway. Among other things, the dancer was really cute,

not Michael, but the professional dancer. So I come out and interrupt and start dancing with him, and then start dancing with her, at which point the cops descend on the stage. And now the audience is really scared because Michael has talked about something that he said that might get him arrested. Now it looks like he's getting arrested, and maybe me too. I didn't know about the cops coming on to the stage. I was as surprised as anybody. I went then and realized, that's probably not a cop.

He's wearing makeup, not even in New York. Is that a likelihood? So I did the whole dramatic, you know, perils of Pauline Dudley do wright protect the girl with both hands. The dancer, the woman dancer. I shouldn't call her a girl, but that's the image she was projecting.

So I'm protecting this professional woman dancer, shielding her with my body, and Michael is being arrested, and then of course it turns out the cops are stripper cops, and so they play the music again, and we're all out there dancing and the stripper cops are down to their g strings and I'm trying to dance with the woman and Michael is dancing with them, and then the curtain falls, and I went, oh my god, I'm never doing this again.

They called two weeks later and asked me to do it again, and of course I said, yeah, yes, only this time. Well, I'll tell you the punchline to it. At the appropriate moment, I did say to them I have a better idea for the entrance, and they said, great, we have come up with this idea where a couple of doors open in the middle of the stage and you come out through that and you're holding a handheld microphone, so it doesn't look like a terrorist attack. And I said,

but there's got to be a bit. There's got to be some interruption that matches the interruption in the monologue, because nobody's being told in advance that there is a guest star. Nobody knows this. It's not being built. And in fact, if I remember correctly, they eventually put it in the program. Don't tell people that there's a guest star. First off, some nights they couldn't get a guest star. There's a guest star. Oh, there isn't a guest star.

So I come out with a microphone. The spotlight is on me suddenly as Michael goes, wait, who's that is that? And I come out going this, I do this. Hello, my name is Elder Key. Oh sorry wrong theater, big laugh. It is, of course, the opening words of the opening song from Book of Mormon, the only musical I've ever seen. In fact, I've seen it twelve times. My argument that anybody could sing for three seconds was proved correct. I

sang on Broadway. I had already danced on Broadway. It was time for me to sing on Broadway too, and it was a good way to explain what the hell is happening here audience. And we had another nice conversation, and in fact, some news had just broken that I was able to give him. We were able to act and react to just things that had just happened in trump Land. And then we finished the show with the

whole bit where I came out and danced. And now I'm prepared and I can really dramatically shield the dancer when the stripper cops come out to arrest us. All

but here is the punchline. I had thought about this, and thought about this as I was waiting to go on during the preview, during the first time to dance, that the smell of burning Ham that I could perceive in the Belasco Theater was in fact me that long ago desire to be an actor that I've told you about in a previous episode, when I was instinctively aware of how I could improve a scene in the odd couple while doing it in the moment, I come up with a few lines and a few movements and stares

that got laughs, and the producer of this in high school, who was the high school advisor, to the drama group and to the newspaper in the radio stations, I said, forget all that, f all that go and become an actor. You have instincts none of the rest of us have. We could never teach you. You could become one of the great actors. I'm dead serious. And then in the next time we did the show, the youngest member of the cast froze on stage. We had to bring the

curtain down in the middle of the odd couple. He went off stage and face planted and wailed for fifteen minutes. And I said, I never want to get this close to it again. I never want to see this again, let alone risk it happening to me. So my career as an actor died that day. And here it was coming back and saying, no, you can do it now, Remember you have the gift. Step out in front of the lights. Everything will be fine. And I went and danced with a badfoot and a bad knee and no

ability to dance, and then stripper cops. So now the second time, here's the punchline to it. When they asked me to do it again on Broadway. What did I do? I brought a change of clothes for the second appearance. I had changed into a kind of fusia colored dimpled smoking jacket for the dance scene. That's how much of a burning Ham I really was. The next day, by coincidence, I spoke to my friend, the late Norman Lloyd, the actor, who was then about one hundred and three years old,

who said, oh, you're at the Belasco two points. I made my debut on Broadway at the Belasco. I was in nineteen thirty eight with Awson. He met orson Wells, of course, and he also said, what time was this? I said, well, the dancing part, Yes, the dancing part, What time was that? The singing? I said that was probably about I don't know, nine forty five, so six forty five my time here in La Yes, that explains what I smelled. I had this awful smell coming from the east.

Ray was on the guitars, bass and drums. It was produced by Tko Brothers. Our satirical and pithy musical comments are by the best baseball stadium organist ever, Nancy Faust. The sports music is the 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 except for that three snippet from Book of Mormon. My announcer today was my friend, the new op ed editor

of The New York Times, Larry David. Everything else was, as ever my fault. That's countdown for today. Day ninety five of America held hostage just three hundred and sixty eight days until the scheduled end of his lane duck and lame brained term, unless Musk removes him sooner or the actuarial tables do the next scheduled countdown is Thursday, as always, bulletins as the news warrants, No, this is Thursday.

I was going to mention the fact that I might be a little cloudy because of the medication for my foot, which continues to worsen. I'll say it again. The next scheduled countdown is Monday, unless unless I forget because of the medication. As always, bulletins, as the news warrants, unless I can't do them because of the medication or the fact that my foot is breaking off in small pieces. Remember impeach Trump. It won't work now, it will win

the Democrats the midterms. I want pulling on a presidential recall vote. And by the way, when I walk downhill now, because of this foot, I look like Trump did after that one speech at West Point. Shuffle, shuffle, shuffle. Till next time, if there is one. I'm Keith Oldrimman. Good morning, good afternoon, goodnight, and good luck. Countdown with Keith Olreman

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