Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. The correct question has been lying there, hidden invisible in the forest for the trees. Mary Trump finally saw it, and she has asked it. Quote, why the hell do they keep giving him cognitive tests? That's it, isn't it? I'll add a corollary, why the hell do they keep giving him cognitive tests? Almost exactly six months apart? He's boasting
again about having passed one. We believe it was three weeks ago Friday, October tenth, that Walter Reid, but who knows, during what they first called his annual physical until somebody realized he'd already had his annual physical last spring when he also boasted about having just taken one April eleventh. That's two cognitive tests April eleventh and probably October tenth. Those dates are six months apart, one hundred and eighty
two days. If they are not giving him pre scheduled cognitive tests every six months, that's a hell of a coincidence. Why the hell do they keep giving him cognitive tests? And I'll add a second carollary to Mary Trump's real question, why did they give him an MRI this time? Is this the first MRI. What was it of I mean, it may be irrelevant. I once had an MRI to see how my sinuses were draining into the back of
my throat. You really can get MRIs for almost trivial stuff, but you do not get cognitive tests for trivial stuff every six months. And we know all this because Trump can't stop himself. He keeps talking about these tests. He keeps thinking he's he's won some sort of game show or scholarship or Nobell cognitive test prize. On board air Force one this week he boasted reporters about acing the MRI and about passing the cognition test three weeks ago.
Trump first tried to insist it was an IQ test so he could insult representatives of Casio Cortes and Crockett. Then he slipped and he admitted it was a cognitive test, and then he described the test. This was this past Monday, a board air Force one.
Have her passed. Like the exams that I decided to take when I was at Walter Reine, I took that was a very hard They really have to do tests, I guess in a certain way. But the cognitive tests let AOC go against Trump, Let Jasmin go against from
why do they get a jazz? And the first couple of questions, there is a tiger an elephant that you have, you know, when you get up to about five or six, and then when you get up to ten and twenty and twenty five, they couldn't come close to answering any of those questions.
And this why do they keep giving him cognitive tests? The audio a little less clear was also from onboard Air Force one from April eleventh, twenty twenty five.
I wanted to be a little different than they took a cocnitive tests.
Yeah, I don't know. I want to tell you whether.
That I got a reanswer, right as I've.
Done about lord times and I've taken I've taken the cognitive tests.
Any four times.
I'm done.
I've got nothing wrong. That's when the American people want.
That was during his twenty twenty five annual physical, his first annual physical. Why the hell do they keep giving him cognitive tests? And it's not like these are the only two person woman man camera TV. That was now five years and three months ago, Like.
You'll go person, woman, man camera TV. So they say, could you repeat that? So I said, yeah, so it's person woman, man camera TV. Okay, that's very good. If you get it in order, you get extra points.
He said he had taken that test recently at Walter Reed recently in twenty twenty. Sometime after that, his own White House physician said that Trump had taken the Montreal Cognitive Assessment in twenty eighteen. Why the hell do they keep giving him cognitive tests? A cognitive test and he has used the word this time A dementia or other brain impairment screening test simple triage on October tenth. That's one.
Then there's the one in April. That's two. He was boasting in January of last year about having passed one, kept boasting about it through the spring. Only the animals they asked him about in that one were different than the ones he just mentioned in the one he just took. Was that a third test? Last year? Throughout Biden's presidency, Trump talked about these tests. In twenty twenty, he repeatedly challenged Biden to take one. He said in twenty twenty
he had recently taken one. That's three or four. We know for sure. He took the Montreal Cognitive in twenty eighteen. That was definitely at least the fourth, probably the fifth. Why the hell do they keep giving him cognitive tests? That's two in the last six months, seemingly time to be six months apart. That is certainly four in the last six years. He has previously said he's taken four of these tests, maybe five, he can't remember. It could easily be five. In fact, it could easily be six.
Anybody remember when he disappeared way back when, around oh decades a labor day after that three and a half hour farewell roast of a cabinet meeting, where was he? Did they test him then? Then he disappeared for another five days at the end of September. Did they test him then? Well, we are deep in the woods again. Let us return to the simplicity of the Mary Trump question.
It is absolutely certain that they keep giving the President of the United States tests to see if he can pass the minimum standard for cognitive capacity, to pass the minimum simplest threshold for not having some form of impairment,
maybe dementia. It certainly is a reasonable inference to suggest that giving them on April eleventh and October tenth suggests they are now scheduling for regular tests, and although he slipped in his rush to try to explain how much smarter he is than Jasmine Crockett or Alexandria or Casio Cortes or whichever elected Democratic woman of color is next on his shit list, it is clear that at some point somebody convinced him, or he convinced himself, that this
was an IQ test and that he's, to quote his own words again, a very stable genius. It says so on the test with the picture of the giraffe on it. Even though the only word in that description of very stable genius that appears to apply is very. We can all agree Donald Trump is very There are two little side points I'd like to make before we drop this for now. I often wonder where he conflated the concept of political asylum and mental asylums. He can't shake it.
He says it every two weeks. He will never be convinced that people were here because they were granted asylum are therefore from asylums. This can be simple, good old
fashioned American stupidity. He deduced this when he was a kid, the way a kid I knew at age thirteen insisted the phrase was for all intensive purposes, and for whatever reason, Trump would not and could not shake his mistake about the word asylum or this asylum stuff is somehow wedged into his mind because it's connected to his own experience with psychological exams, which he must have taken as a kid, since, as his own father euphemistically put it decades ago, Trump
was a rough kid who had to be taken out of the public schools and sent to the New York Military Academy NIMA because well, in my prep school days, when our football and hockey and basketball and baseball teams used to play against NIMA, all the kids at NeiMa were supposedly there because some authority had given Dad a choice. It's there or it's the reformatory. I just keep wondering if the word asylum is stuck inside Trump because he had to face that as a kid. Did the folks
threaten him with it? The second point is less speculative. I hadn't heard this before that clip I played from April. The last time he was boasting about the last cognitive test he passed. He said that at Walter Reed they gave him a thorough physical exam as well, and it showed he had a good heart and a very good soul. You heard me a good song. Your physical showed that your soul is just fine. It's not an irregular soul, and your soul is not hyper extended, and you don't
have Pyrone's soul disease. Why the hell do they keep giving him cognitive tests? I think contained in that last
clip that might be our answer right there. Meanwhile, in another endless topic, Trump has said something that sounds like he's not going to try to stay in office past January twentieth, twenty twenty nine, and since it was preceded by only one full minute of lies about how great the economy is and how he got peace in the Middle East, and how nobody's ever been as popular as he is, Why the hell do they keep giving him
cognitive tests? The nation's most gullible people, the Washington Press Corps, seems to have concluded that he's not trying to mislead, dissemble, or you know, just lie to them again. The British kid, it's always a goddamn British kid, who they supposedly had fired as the editor of the playbook newsletter for Politico months ago, but he's still there. Yesterday, wrote, So even Trump says the Constitution is clear on this point. Can
we all now put this to bed? No, Sonny, we can't because you didn't ask Trump what the word clear means, did you? Huh?
Huh huh.
Persuading for Johnson says that he told you that there's no time to amend the constitution to allow.
You to serve a third term.
Is that an accurate representation.
Of I don't want to even talk about that, because you know, the sad thing is I have my highest numbers I've ever had, and I would say that if you read it, it's pretty clear I'm not allowed to run. Stumid I missed him.
Dear listener, if you would please get out your meme of the guy tapping his head to indicate how smart he is. Can't be accused of trying to run for a third term if you cancel the twenty twenty nine election or make some other extra constitutional violence based attempt to not leave the White House. Huh? There is still
something rattling around in that damaged brain of Trump's. Hi the hell do they keep giving him cognitive tests that assumes there will be some sort of mass uprising by others to keep him in power forever, one that he may or may need to himself stoke or can happen organically. And if you don't believe that, let me ask you
what was January sixth. Trump has specifically said he didn't think he would want to run as vice president and let somebody else occupy the presidency ceremonially while he runs the country. But again, what part of that is a no? I don't think I'd like to do it. Oh I
did it anyway. The Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, taking time off from and acting the passive aggressive dissolving of Congress and taking even more time off from his busy schedule of not knowing anything about the latest news or controversy or the rules of the House, he said he didn't see a path for Trump to serve a third term, quoting, Hey, and I have talked about the
constrictions of the Constitution. Again, where's the no. On the other hand, the only escaped circus elephant in the Senate, Tommy Tubberville, said, if Trump wanted to quote, go round the constitution quote, don't ever close a book on him. And of course, Steve Bannon told the economists that you shouldn't listen to Trump that there is a plan in place to keep Trump in place in office, and quote at the appropriate time, we'll lay out what the plan is.
It's easy to dismiss morons like Tubberville and mentally damaged fascists like Bannon and presume this is all bluster. It is not all bluster if it is not obvious that while you and I and a vast majority of Americans have been raised to believe the Constitution and the laws are, if perhaps not, the sacred documents the Republicans like to pretend they believe they are. We believe they are there
to keep chaos and evil in relative check. But Trump and the snakes he has enabled and supported see them merely as inconvenient impediments. For at least four years, they have been building up the phony resume for the revisionists drawn out of thin air. View of the twenty second Amendment term limits, it's two terms. That's it. Plus you can serve out up to two years of somebody else's unexpired term and then get elected twice. That's it. Two elections.
An absolute hard time limit of nine years and one hundred and eighty three days, not one hundred and eighty two days, because there'd have to be a leap year if you took the end of somebody else's unserved term. The revisionist version of this, of course, is that this only applies to someone being elected to two concective terms. This useful bullshit rationalizes that from the twenty second Amendment point of view, Trump is right now only in his
first term. As I've pointed out countless times, this bullshit also has the invaluable benefit of keeping Obama or Bill Clinton or George Bush, for whatever that's worth, from ever running again. Only Trump. It's nonsense, of course. Presidential immunity is nonsense. Of course, masked anonymous thug probably recruited from right wing militia shooting ministers in the face with tear
gas while calling themselves ice is also nonsense. Actually, thanks to Trump, and thanks to this corrupt decrepit soul is Supreme Court, what sixty percent, seventy percent, one hundred percent of American public life is now nonsense. Go to the Supreme Court with the non consecutive terms fantasy and see
how quickly sam Alito can turn that into law. Still, my gut has always told me that the extra constitutional theft that Trump favors and really dreams about the most is not some loophole shot into the twenty second Amendment by Missus Alito and her flags, nor even a military takeover.
What he wants is for everybody to just agree with him that a he deserves another term because those evil Democrats wasted so much of his first term with the investigation of the Russia Russia Russia truth about his conspiracies with Putin, and that b he deserves another term, maybe a fourth one, because the twenty twenty election was quote stolen from him, even though he was president at the time and all the institutions that supervised the elections and
investigated his nonsensical charges for the last five years were under his control. Either way, Trump does not want to have to be elected again in twenty twenty nine because another election means another chance to lose an election. He wants to remain president because everybody says he's so wonderful that there's no need to even have a vote. He could lose an election. He could lose a coup attempt. Hell son of a bitch, did lose a coup attempt?
Didn't he a simple acclamation though, in which everybody names him homecoming King and scored a perfect score on his acuity IQ test and President again, simple acclamation. That's what he wants. And if you have to do something with that annoying constitution to make that happen, what you do is simply find a way to say, of course he only gets two terms, and of course he knows he can't run for a third one. It says so in
the Constitution. He just said it on tape. But where does it say we can't change how long his second term is. Why don't we just amend that other part of the Constitution that nobody looks at, Article two, Section one, clause one, so that it says a president shall hold his office during the term of four years, but this president shall hold his office during the term of eight
years or twelve or eleveny billion. Also of interest here, Oh, it's more Brits running American news operations into the ground, the one they found to finally complete the destruction of CNN. Went to the White House to kiss Trump's ass and the ass of every Trump staffer, and before he got to his home, there was a tweet from a Trump spokesman mocking him for trying to appease Trump. Congratulations Neville Chamberlain.
But don't worry. CNN is going to be merged into MSNBC, and the right wing has its candidate to run MSNBCNN. It's a former Miss Arizona now studying for a doctorate in Bible studies at Liberty University. Who reads the most Bazooka Joe comic strips shall get the doctorate in Bible Studies at Liberty. You know who this is. They want to run a combined MSNBC CNN Charlie Kirk's widow. Because this is hell, isn't it? That's next? This is Countdown.
This is Countdown with Keith Olberman, who can predict almost anything.
Still ahead on this all new episode of Countdown. All this La Dodgers World Series stuff reminds me to remind you that not only did I correctly predict the Kirk Gibson home run that won Game one of the nineteen eighty eight World Series and then sent them on their way to their upset of the Oakland A's to win that World series, but I did it as the innings started in which he hit it, and I predicted it as part of an answer to a question that my
friend Alexis Denny, who you just heard, asked me, and she was a witness to this impossible prediction that was not at all serious, the Kirk Gibson home run, and I told you so. Next in things I promise not to tell first believe it or not, there's still more new idiots to talk about. The roundup of the miscrants, morons and Dunning Kruger effects specimens who constitute today's other worst persons in the world at the Bonds worse Steve Bannon.
Steve Bannon says Zoran Mom, Danny has quote got to be sent out of the country, that they have to denaturalize him. But think about what would happen if we did this instead, to Steve Bannon, think of how much affordable housing we could be filled in the space that this fat, ugly slob now wastes and occupies. Runner up Rich Greenfield, who is a conservative media pest, identifies as a critic, as quoted by Max Tenney of Semaphore, this is his genius idea. Let's take this a step further.
Merging NBC Universal with Warner Bros. Discovery would combine NBC, MSNBC, and CNN. Under one roof, he writes, We've been thinking about how NBC Universal could completely shift the perceived biased narrative at NBC, MSN NOW and CNN, similar to what Paramount is attempting with its acquisition of the Free Press and appointing Barry Weiss as editor in chief of CBS News enter Erica Kirk, who leads the nonprofit Turning Point
USA and is the widow of Charlie Kirk. What if Comcast agreed to bring Kirk in as editor in chief of the combined news unit upon closing Sure, at first, blush it sounds crazy, by the way, sir, at four three hundred and twenty second, blush, it sounds crazy. Err But Trump loves a deal. F Trump f his deals, and Brian Roberts needs to think big and differently. Yes, kick Trump in the metaphorical nuts. That would be a
different thought. The combined NBC, MSNBCCNN could also add a conservative ombudsman, as CBS News did with Kenneth R. Weinstein. Ombudsman here is used metaphorically. What they have as a snitch, what they have as a a collaborator, what they have as a political officer inside CBS News, who is there to turn in the liberals? Worth noting Comcast made a sizable donation to Trump's White House ballroom renovation, which is unsurprisingly harfy. NBC and MSNBC staff, Well that's because, mister
rich Greenfield, it's a bribe. News organization should not be anywhere near something like this, especially if it's a bribe of a corrupt president leading a corrupt movement full of corrupt people who have no soul and are all going to hell. Have a nice day, maggot, What a great idea. Scowling angry, justifiably angry, mind you widow of an assassinated right wing nutjob who all the members of the right wing think was Jesus or Trump or Jesus Trump or something.
Put her in charge of NBC News slash MS now slash CNN when she has no news experience and all of their combined news organizations are bailing water as it is, and incidentally, they're populated by people connected to me. The anchor of the NBC Nightly News used to be my production assistant. What could go wrong if you are hankering for the day is when there were only three TV networks doing only half an hour of news a night. Hey, we may get back there and damned fast. But this
is the way they think. The presumption on the right is that the left has been making up the news because it contains things the right doesn't like. Therefore it can't be real. It must be some sort of propaganda. They really think this. If they wanted it to be sunny and it turns out to be rain, they will blame the liberal weather man rather than say, oh it's raining.
So necessarily, the solution to a combined NBC, MSNBC and CNN under one roof would be to put a woman with absolutely no experience and nothing but vendettas in charge of the operation, because the Barry Weiss thing at CBS is already going so well. The point is, as has been pointed out here. I read the piece from what was her name, Emily le Pato. I may be getting that wrong, that all Barry Weiss is going to get to do is preside over the end of CBS News
and the firing of everybody there. And if she has
a reputation, it will be destroyed. So if you want to ruin Erica Kirk's life again, put her in charge of NBC, CNN, MSNBC people are too stupid, but our winner, speaking of ruining television news, Mark Thompson of CNN once again, it's funny that the fascists are on this anti immigrant kick when it's clear the most dangerous immigrants to this country are pasty white guys from England or countries that were English colonies, Australia and the Murdochs South Africa and
musk and the other guys the UK and people like Mark Thompson. More impressively, why do so many submissive, loser Trump appeasers from England get put in charge of America news organizations and then promptly give in to Trump and then immediately get humiliated by Trump. A story from our friends at Oliver Darcy's newsletter status. During a trip to DC last week, CNN CEO Mark Thompson made a visit to the White House, where he promoted the network's new
streaming service. He wanted to get members of the Trump administration up to speed on what the new CNN streaming operation. I remember the last guy they put in charge of CNN. His big deal was getting rid of the new CNN streaming operation. Now we have a whole new approach, which is another new CNN streaming operation, which the guy who succeeds Mark Thompson can then turn down because that's what
works in management. What did the last guy do? He invented an elixir that gives everyone eternal life, Let's burn all of it. What don't we want? Who wants eternal life? My policy is what shortened lives? Anyway, Mark Thompson went into the White House and tried to sell the Trump people on being nicer to CNN, on appearing on CNN more,
on promising that CNN would be nicer to Trump. After every move they've made towards Trump since twenty twenty two, when Chris licked my whatever began this process, every move CNN has made has destroyed what was left of CNN. Let's do more of that. Not only that. I will buy CNN eternal life under the Trump administration, and all of the MAGA will watch CNN and it's not a trap, and it's not stupid, and you're not appeasing the Hitler of America. No, you're not doing any of those things,
Mark Thompson. The tweet from Oliver Darcy's status with This scoop about Mark Thompson's visit to the White House was retweeted by Stephen Chung, the mincing Trump spokesman, who simply retweeted it with the purple devil smile. In other words, even Stephen Chung knows that Mark Thompson was brought in so that he could obey in advance to Donald Trump, and they immediately rewarded him by humiliating Mark Thompson online.
As George Conway put it, they're laughing at you, and they are because Mark Thompson, pasty white guy thrown out of England, now the head of CNN promoting the streaming service. The last guy killed off is today's worst person. And the exact anniversary anniversary number thirty seven of Kirk Gibson's famous home run to win Game one of the nineteen
eighty eight World Series has long since passed. But before we get too far away from the idea of Kirk Gibson's La Dodgers in the World Series, I wanted to tell this story once again. Only a couple of times in my life have I been visited by the muse
of prediction. I once correctly predicted that Bucky Dent of the New York Yankees would hit a home run to win an American League playoff game between the Yankees and the Red Sox in Fenway Park when my friends sitting next to me, the Red Sox fan was expressing premature jocularity that a Yankee had flied out to center field with the tying runs on base and said, oh, thank
goodness that it's no home run threat. I then spent five minutes explaining to him why Dent would necessarily now hit a home run to win the game and the pennant, which he then did. The other time was the Kirk Gibson story in nineteen eighty eight, and this was in direct response to a question asked to me by a
friend of mine then and now named Alexis Denny. So just sit back and I say this and tell you this story with the full awareness that these two predictions of titanically important baseball events must be taken in the context of the probability that the number of times I had similar ecstatic visions of things that were about to happen that did not happen, including say, the New York Yankees winning the nineteen sixty eight World Series, when they
finished I think sixth. The number that did not happen is one thousand or more. The number that did happen is two. But Kirk Gibson was among them. Half of the Dodgers starting lineup that had won the National League Pennant was hurt and the other half was not that
impressive to begin with. National League Most Valuable Player Kirk Gibson had nearly destroyed his left hamstring in Game two of that playoff series that David Cohne had written about, and Gibson had ripped up his right knee in Game seven.
He was assumed to be out of the World Series, but he was still on the Dodger roster, and the joke was that was only because the Dodgers literally did not have any other healthy players under contract, and their only other option was to activate sixty one year old manager Tom Lesarda. Anyway, the Dodgers had actually led Game one against the powerful Oakland A's to nothing after the first inning, but by the ninth they were trailing four to three, with literally three of the worst hitters in
the National League due up, and then the pitcher. I was there covering the game for KCBS Channel two in LA and my pal Alexis Denny, news and sports producer for CBS Network News in Los Angeles, made our way together down to the tiny alcove from the press box, the alcove between the clubhouses, from which we could see just a sliver of the field, pretty much just the pitcher and the batter, framed by a hot dog stand
as the Oakland relief ace. Dennis Eckersley warmed up to pitch the bottom of the ninth, and he had given up exactly nine hits in his previous eighteen games, in fourteen of which he had recorded saves. Alexis asked me, simply and appropriately, so what are we going to ask Eck after this game is over? And, matter of factly, without any emotion, certainly without any sense of predicting anything, I said, We're going to ask Eck about this game losing home run he's about to give up to Kirk Gibson.
Alexis looked at me. Funny, I mean, funnier than usual. What Gibson's not playing? He's hurt. I looked at her with mild annoyance. Oh, come on, you know it has
to happen. I can only describe my feeling at that time as being exactly what had been a decade before, at another playoff game in Boston, with the Red Sox leading the Yankees to nothing in the top of the seventh, with two Yankees on and New York shortstop Bucky Dent coming up, and my best friend, the Red Sox fan, exhaling when the last batter had popped out and saying,
thank goodness, Dent is no home run threat. And I began to speak in tongues, and what I was saying was about how his hubristic remark about Dent would now necessarily cause to happen next. What would happen next? A three run home run by Bucky Dent, and it would be all his fault, and then Dent hit the homer. Neither the Dent nor the Gibson home run predictions were really predictions. I felt no sense of investment in it.
I didn't race to put down a bet. I suppose that at some other games I had made equally impossible announcements of events that did not happen, but I have never been given to that, so if I did do it, it was only a couple of times. My batting average is like four or five hundred on these and anyway, these weren't calculations or analyzes on my part. I just felt like I was running about five minutes ahead of
the rest of the world. And these things. Danse home run in nineteen seventy eight, Gibson's home run in nineteen eighty eight, these things had already happened. AnyWho, Mike Davis of the Dodgers walked stole second base with two outs. Gibson, to the shock of everybody except me, managed somehow to climb up the three steps of the Dodger dugout and waddle out to home plate, and then, on a three
to two pitch, hit the game winning home run. Like I said, as Dodger Stadium shook and we prepared to go into the clubhouses, Alexis Denny gave me a look that I still can't really describe. But thirty five years later, I know that since that night she has not been fully convinced that I am of this earth. I got it right. I've done all the damage I can do here. Thank you for listening. Most of our countdown music was arranged,
produced and performed by Brian Ray and John Phillips. Schanel our musical directors of Countdown, and it was produced by Tko Brothers, mister Ray on guitars, bass and drums, mister Chanelle on orchestration and keyboards. Our satirical and pithy musical comments are by the best baseball stadium Gonnest ever in Nancy Faust. The sports music is the Olderman theme from ESPN two, which was written by Mitch Warren Davis Curtesy of ESPN Inc. Some other music was arranged and performed
by the group No Horns Allowed. My announcer today is my friend Alexis Denny Witness. Everything else was, as always my fault. That's countdown for today, Day two hundred and eighty four of America held hostage again, just seventy nine days until the scheduled end of his lame duck and lame brained term unless he's removed sooner by Maga and Epstein, or that pavement patch on his hand, or the tail and hall or his jet made out of poop, or the r K he's building, or the next cognitive test.
The next scheduled countdown is Monday. Until then, I'm Keith Olderman. Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and good luck Hit, the post, hit, the post, oh Hit, the Post. 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.