THE PHOTO THAT COULD SEND TRUMP TO PRISON - 2.16.24

after she gave birth was legal expenses. The New York trial will start thirty four counts as planned March twenty fifth, And obviously the implications are that Trump trial Air traffic Control will now be waiving the Stormy Daniels Trump case in for a landing first, and it just told the Trump election subversion case in DC to go round and

try to set down later. The Trump Georgia eleven eighty votes trial is encountering some turbulence, even though the only witness claiming any evidence of anything improper between Fannie Willis and the extra prosecutor cannot remember how or when she found out about the affair. And remember, the whole purpose of this is the same purpose it always is, stalling.

The Trump business fraud case has already landed and might have deplayed yesterday in the same court building as the Trump what did you do after your son was born? I did Stormy Daniels case, but it didn't. We may hear from Judge Arthur and gern with the final count and the amount in the second New York trial as early as today, and now the punchline to this brief resume of all the criminal trials and other trials that Trump is currently facing. None of that, None of that

is the current Trump legal headline. You do not get to survive to become a seventy seven year old, deranged, malignant narcissist without being really good at controlling your own image. Trump's brain does not work right to him. Other people are just furniture that can move on its own. He has no courage, no conscience, and no conception that the

world was not created solely for him. But he's good at controlling his own image, or at least he was until he made what could ultimately be a fatal mistake if the rest of us just jump on it, because as he yelled at cameras at Manhattan Criminal Court on Center Street in New York yesterday, he made a terrible logistical decision. Whenever Trump has talked to the media that has been separated from him, even by those cold, imposing silver police barricades, the one that looks like the bottom

half of a jail cell. Trump has always managed, in that situation to position himself in a way in which it is clear that it is the media that is behind the half jail cell barricades and not him behind them. It's simple, really, You stand parallel to those barricades, and you make sure you are doing so in such a way that only barricades in front of you are visible. Even the taller barricades will only go up to the belt line of even an average size man as long

as they are in front of him. Photographs of Trump will therefore be cropped often, and even if they are not, the barricades just look like ordinary railings. But something happened to Trump yesterday in court. Those police barricades were in front of him and also behind him in a kind

of loose octagon shape. Suddenly there were these half jail cell bars in front of him as usual, but also half jail cell bars behind him in the distance, so that almost every photo of him and every video of him showed the ones in the back, and thanks to the laws of perspective, they were even with his shoulders or somewhat higher than his shoulders, and basically what looked like jail cells could not be cropped out of every

photo of Trump. Just to make it worse, Trump, the incredibly good orchestrator of his own image, exacerbated the problem somehow. His lawyer stood behind the barricade that was placed perfectly parallel to the two men, and Trump stood to the lawyer's left, and perhaps without ever realizing it, he put himself in one of the corners where the front barricade

angled backwards. So if you have not seen the picture, bars in front of Trump, a second set of bars to the side of Trump, stretching from where he stood to back behind him, and to the right of him, a third set of bars which sloped back from there in Trump's direction, and then the pista resistance, the fourth set of bars, unmistakable and unavoidable, at the height of

Trump's shoulders. Trump behind bars several times. Trump even put his hands on the railing in front of him, and he might as well have been shouting, get me out of this prison, yall lousy screw. In fact, there is one set of images. The photographer was named Timothy Clary of Ajen's Franz Press, and he must have put his camera over his own head because in his shots those back bars are literally appearing as if they were above

Trump's head. The show is so wide that you see perhaps two dozen people leaning against walls and standing staring at Trump, and then in the middle bars suggesting jail behind him, above his head, bars suggesting jail to his right, bars suggesting jail in front of him. Looking left to right, you see the cop outside the barricades, Trump inside the barricades,

lawyer inside the barricades, second cop outside the barricades. Even if it is just on an unconscious level, the photograph screams Trump in prison, Trump behind bars, Trump guilty, Trump the criminal, Trump indicted, Trump so indicted. Wait, so indicted.

over an issue fifty million dollars. And one of the things my very good lawyers for that deposition hammered into me for use in the deposition and any other time I encountered other lawyers, it was a very simple warning, whatever you do, try not to look guilty. And in the picture, God does Trump look guilty. I don't know if Nicki Gley's campaign can license that image. It merely proves her last honest point of her campaign that a

Trump candidacy will be nothing but him in court. It's like five hundred bucks to license the rights to use a photo like that off Getty Images, but for a campaign would probably be way higher. However, the Biden campaign ought to buy that photo and the rights and the camera and any piece of video shot from that damning angle, and hire the cameraman and plaster it everywhere. Trump on trial,

you know he's guilty, your Republican nominee. Only with nominee crossed out and defendant written above it in read on this photographer Tim Clary led pipe cinch Pulitzer prize that sound effect. That's what the picture looks like. Meanwhile, a California grand jury has indicted James Comer's and Sean Hannity's

and Grandpa Grassley's key FBI informant against the Bidens. He did make all that stuff up, the infamous FD one zero two three form that Grassley released and Comber tried to sell as real about Barisma and bribing the Bidens. And when they went back to the informant and they said that a Barisma official told him in twenty fifteen, according to his story, that he'd bribed the Bidens. Turned out this guy had not met with anybody at Brisma until two years after that, that the timeline didn't work.

It was obvious he'd made it up. He just repeated his crap, which was or sounds awfully like Kremlin composed dis info and James Comer and Chuck Grassley and Sean Hannity served as to facto Russian agents in spreading it. And now Alexander Smirnoff faces twenty five years in prison for lying to the FBI in Russia. FBI sues you.

If they were Democrats, James Comer would have been stripped of his chairmanship by right now, possibly forced out of the House already, and Chuck Grassley would have been in jail years ago. So now Joe Biden's legal problems have been reduced to just the one. Unfortunately, that one is having an idiot for his attorney general. How Merrick Garland

has not resigned yet is beyond me. I assume it's just because, as we saw in the Trump prosecutions, he does nothing quickly or in normal time, or even slowly. I presume he cannot go to the bathroom without a six month long series of meetings and consultations. First. Well, now Garland's got to act fast and spit or get off the pot, and if he won't, Biden has to

fire him again. This political prostitute, Robert Herr, the Trump appointee and now apparently de facto Trump campaign surrogate, the centerpiece in what Politico aptly named the Biden Age plot, her is revealing more and more of his plans to try to sink the president, violating all legal ethics both of them by including his neurological guesswork about Biden's memory inside a special Council investigation that oh, by the way, cleared Biden, that wasn't enough damage to do, That was

a enough prostitution to perform on behalf of Donald Trump. This bastard her, as I keep repeating here, is actively and not even secretly, arranging to testify to at least the House Judiciary Committee. It is now next month. CNN and The Times reported yesterday HER's congressional testimony is set for March twelfth, and somebody on HER's side of this equation has spun HER's tawdry, subhuman question about the president's late sun Bo as justified because it was Biden and

not her, who first brought up Bo Biden. Axios also reports that her quote has been in discussions with Sarah Isker, the head of public affairs and a senior counselor to Trump's deputy attorney general during the Mueller investigation, to help

him navigate a congressional hearing. Sarah Isker. Sarah Isker is the federalist phony who attacked Trump in twenty sixteen for having threatened to prosecute Hillary Clinton, and who bashed CNN as fake news, and first went to work for Trump as the spokesperson for Attorney General Jeff Sessions, all the while pitching herself for a job with MSNBC and CNN, and finally being hired by CNN, which she had called

fake news, as political editor. They blew her out quickly over there, and she was last seen at ABC News before she signed on as Robert Hur's assistant henchman in the aptly titled biden Age plot. And now besides this, there is a new twist to the biden Age plot. The New York Times reported that before it was released, the White House pushed back on that report, but did not take any of the actions it or the DOJ could have done to censor that report. Nobl not smart,

but noble. The day before the report was released, the dojy's senior career official, a man named Bradley Weinsheimer, wrote back that HER's amateur doctoring and his other political opinions inserted into his report quote fall well within the department standards for public release. The Times does not tell you who this Bradley Weinsheimer is. They describe him as the department's senior career official or non political appointee. That's bullshit.

He is hardly that. He was appointed by George H. W. Bush to the Department of Justice, and he was elevated to his current non political position under Trump. There is nothing stopping Merrick Garland from stopping them all dead in their tracks, denying the House Judiciary Committee any material at

hers testimony. There's nothing stopping him except Garland's own sluggish trees instead of the forest phony piety about the Department of Justice and Law with a capital L. Eric Garland already missed his chance to redact her as utterly uninformed and politically poisoned conspiracy theories. And now we have this Weinsheimer guy involved in this, and this Isker involved in this, and it is a little miniature right wing conspiracy. Your

Department of Justice, mister Garland. It just produced a document in which some idiot from the Federalist Society was permitted to speculate on the President's acuity. James Comy and then Bill Barr had already turned DOJ and its branches into a political whorehouse, and this clown Robert Hurr just turned it into a free political whorehouse once again. Garland has to shut this down, or Biden has to fire him and take the fallout for doing so. Unless I don't know,

Jack Smith has threatened to quit if Garland goes. Unless it's something like that, there is no reason to continue to trust Merrick Garland a foolish, naive man, not just to do the right thing, but to do anything. Remember when I said that actor their Sunday Shows deceptively edited quotes from the non brain parts of her report, edited them like you would edit the phrase not guilty into dot dot dot guilty. That they needed to fire their

anchors and their anchors bosses. This is probably a coincidence, but ABC News is president. Kim Godwin just discovered, Hey, there's another ABC News president above her. Deborah O'Connell has been promoted to president News Group and Network's Disney Entertainment. She has more words in her job, so that means she's boss. This is not necessarily cause in effect. I would actually guess it's not cause and effect. Godwin was reportedly hated at ABC, and evinced no earthly clue that

she knew what she was doing. But the news president positions the producers and management at the key shows they put those people there and keep them there, and it's usually their favorites. Not so much with the talent, but definitely the producers of shows like Meet the Press and This Week are the people that the Kim Goodwins of this world want there. So those producers, the ones particularly at This Week, all have to be scared right now

because their boss is no longer the boss. And by the way, after how they screwed up her story Good two other TV stories. The Washington Post has made a million arteries run cold a nice little feature on biden game strategy for the election and why nearly three percent of the one hundred and thirty million dollars Swing States ad buy that they have arranged is going to go for Joe Biden's spots in Omaha, Nebraska three million, seven hundred thousand dollars worth of Biden commercials and Biden ad

and Biden's streaming stuff in Nebraska. Well, in the second district of Nebraska that state splits its electoral votes. Four are awarded from the deeply read first district. One is awarded from the deeply Omaha second district. It's kind of blue there. It's a city. I'll just read the rest

of the little post story. Under a scenario where Biden wins the three northern swing states and the other uncontested Blue states, a loss in Nebraska's second district, well, that could result in a two hundred and sixty nine two hundred and sixty nine tie, kicking the selection of the president to the House, where Republicans currently have an advantage in the number of state delegations they control. And remember, if God help us, the House ever has to decide

who's going to be president. Each state gets one vote, and right now the Republicans control twenty six state delegations. So you're going to spend three point seven mili in

the Omaha market? Are we sure that's enough? And a year ago today, Tucker Carlson was already in negotiations with Speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy, remember Kevin McCarthy, to unleash the greatest blockbuster in the history of American television, the real January sixth tapes, which of course turned out to be several days worth a video of empty hallways, so didn't wind up being a full length Zuppruder film.

But we didn't know that then. A year ago today, and Where's Tucker Carlson now filming inside a Moscow supermarket explaining that Russia is far better than the United States because the prices in the supermarket are so low, without ever noting that the prices are still two to three times higher than the average Russian can ever afford in

his lifetime. Moreover, if you thought Carlson's flatulent lap sitting interview with the Russian dictator Vladimir Putin was useless, I hope if you saw how it was trashed by a critic named Vladimir Putin. Putin said, I honestly thought he would be aggressive and ask so called sharp questions, but he chose a different tactic unquote. What's he implying there?

What's the opposite of sharp? Dull? Soft? Worst? Yet, Putin made Carlson release their interview unedited, and then when it appeared on the Russian government's official site, they had edited out the really dull parts, which turned out to be many of Tucker Carlson's questions. One day, you're in the middle of the Kremlin praising Putin to his face. The next day you're praising the prices in the Borsch department

at the Moscow win Dixie. So I'd like to congratulate Tucker Carlson, the first broadcast to my knowledge, who has been fired by CNN, PBS, MSNBC, Fox News and now by the KGB. Also of interest here, how many different things does Marjorie Taylor Green not understand? I mean, I suppose the answer is infinite. I mean, she has spent several days congratulating herself now on being named one of the impeachment managers for the trial of Secretary Majorcis in

the Senate. Blithely unaware or blithely too stupid to be aware that there is not going to be a trial of Secretary Majorcas in the Senate. The stunt is over. But yesterday Marge went back to one of her favorite gaps in her knowledge back things and she got called out for it. Crushed. Thank you, Congressman Robert Garcia of California. That's next. This is countdown. This is countdown with Keith Auberman. Aberman still ahead of us on countdown. It's Fridays with Thurber,

and we'll get back to the beginning. To my mind, it is the quintessential Thurber story. It's the one I heard the actor William Windham recite on public television in nineteen seventy seven in his One Man Thurber Show, And I thought, I wonder if I could ever have a job that would let me read Thurber stories out loud for an audience. The perfection of a box to hide

in coming up first. Yes, it's the daily roundup of the misgrants, morons and Dunning Krueger effects specimens who constitute two days worse Parsons in the world, the bronze worse Nike and Major League Baseball. Nike is the new supplier of baseball's uniforms, and thus they are the people who have brought everybody in the game into rare agreement. Everybody in the game loves to disagree. That's the point about baseball. It's about to end. Somebody says, oh no, it's never

been better, says somebody else. Now we all agree. Young fans, uniform nerds, old reporters now in their seventh decade of going to games, and the players themselves, they are all saying the same thing this February, the new uniforms suck eggs. As spring training begins, everybody can see the obvious, the numbers and the player names have been shrunk to near illegibility. Outfielder Taylor Ward of the Angels says, they look like replica uniforms. Somebody else said, yeah, they look like replicas

at TJ Max, but it's worse than that. The hefty and large Angels reliever Carlos Estevez pointed out to reporters that the white in his team's pants does not match the white in his team's shirts, and Estebez says he can't fit into his pants and they will not let him tailor his pants. I feel like I'm wearing someone

else's pants. The blue in the Cubs uniforms, according to a Cubs player, does not appear to be the same blue the Cubs have worn since the mid nineteen fifties, and they have screwed up the fabled script Dodgers uniforms of the Los Angeles Dodgers. The shirt used to open used to button between the OH and the middle D in the word Dodgers across the chest. Now it opens in the middle of the OH. So if an LA player has his top buttons on button, it really looks

like his uniform reads Dudgers, Dodgers, Dudegers. The next complaint will come from the fans when they find out that the price of one of these replicated uniforms has risen to about four hundred dollars. The runner up worser Marjorie Taylor Barney Rubble, please get your deviated septum fixed. Green, the first congress person dumber than Rosie the robot from the Jetsons.

for all of journalism in the month of February. The headline of a story analyzing Congressman elect Tom Swase's victory in the special election in the New York Third quote, Democrats cheered New York win as good omen for November. Is it enough to calm anxiety over Biden? Ah the Associated Press. I swear to Jesus if Kamala Harris discovered a pill guaranteeing everybody eternal life, and she was handing

them out to everybody on the street. Here take two, somebody would write, Democrats cheer public reaction to their immortality pill. But is it enough to calm anxiety over Biden? Today's worst persons in the world. It's been a long week. And every time I find myself thinking it's been a long week, I like to turn to my book of James Thurber, and it's Fridays with Thurber. And it's been a few Fridays since I've done any James Thurber. And

so let's start at the beginning. As I've mentioned many times. I read this story first aloud in a class in college in nineteen seventy nine, and a friend of mine came up to me and said, you should forget that sportscasting thing. You should read Thurber for a living, and I said, yeah, that'll ever happen. This is, for some reason salvation for me, Catharsis, and every other emotion that is appropriate after it has been a long week. A

Box to Hide In by James Thurber. I waited till the large woman with the awful hat took up her sack of groceries and went out, peering at the tomatoes and the l us on her way. The clerk asked me what mine was. Have you got a box, I asked, A large box. I want a box to hide in. You want a box, he asked, I want a box to hide in. I said, what do you mean? He said, you mean a big box. I said, I meant a big box big enough to hold me. I haven't got any boxes, he said, only cottons that cans come in.

I tried several other groceries and none of them had a box big enough for me to hide in. And there was nothing for it but to face life out. I didn't feel strong, and I'd had this overpowering desire to hide in a box for a long time. Well, what do you mean you want to hide in this box, one grocer asked me. It's a form of escape. I told him, hiding in a box. It circumscribes your worries in the range of your anguish. You don't see people either. How the hell do you eat when you're in this box,

asked the grocer. I don't the hell do you get anything to eat? I said, I had never been in a box and didn't know, but that that would take care of itself. Well, he said, finally, I haven't got any boxes, only some pasteboard curtains that cans come in. It was the same every place. I gave up when it got dark and the groceries closed, and hid in my room again. I turned out the light and lay on the bed. You feel better when it gets dark. I could have hit in a closet, I suppose, but

people are always opening doors. Somebody would find you in a closet. They would be startled, and you'd have to tell them why you're in the closet. Nobody pays attention to a big box lying on the floor. I'd stay in it for days, and nobody'd think to look in it, not even the cleaning woman. My cleaning woman came the next morning and woke me up, and I was still feeling bad. I asked her if she knew where I could get a large box. How big a box you want, she asked, I want a box big enough for me

to get inside of, I said. She looked at me with big, dim eyes. There's something wrong with her glands. She's awful, but she has a big heart, which makes it worse. She's unbearable. Her husband is sick, and her children are sick, and she is sick too. I got to thinking how pleasant it would be if I were in a box now and didn't have to see her. I'd be in a box right there in the room,

and she wouldn't know. I wondered, if you had a desire to bark or laugh when someone who doesn't know walks by the box you were in, maybe she would have a spell with her heart. If I did that would die right there. The officers and the elevator man and mister Grammage would find us funny. Dog Gune. Thing happened at the building last night, the doorman would say to his wife, I led him this woman to clean up tenf and she never come out. See she's never

in there more in an hour, but she never come out. See. So when it got time for me to go off duty, why, I says to Krenik, who was on the elevator, I says, what the hell you suppose this happened to that woman cleans tenf. He says he didn't know. He says he never seen her after he took her up. So I spoke to mister Grammage about it. I'm sorry to bother you, mister Grammage, I says, but there's something funny about that

woman cleans TENF. So I told him. So he said we better have a look, and we all three goes up and knots on the door and rings the bells sea and nobody answers. So he said we'd have to walk in. So Credic opened the door and we walked in and here was this woman cleans the apartment, dead as a herring on the floor, and the gentleman that lives there was in a box. The cleaning woman kept looking at me. It was hard to realize she wasn't dead.

It's a form of escape. I murmured, wat say. She asked, Dully, you don't know of any large packing boxes, do you? I asked, now, I don't. She said, I haven't found one yet. But I still have this overpowering urge to hide in a box. Maybe it will go away, maybe I'll be all right, Maybe it will get worse. It's hard to say a box to hide in. By James Thurber, I've done all the damage I can do. Here. Here

are the credits. Most of the music was arranged, produced and performed by Brian Ray and John Phillip Schanel, who are the Countdown musical directors. All orchestration and keyboards by John Phillip Shanel, guitars, bass and drums by Brian Ray, produced by Tko Brothers. Other Beethoven selections have been arranged

and performed by the group No Horns Allowed. The sports music is the Olberman theme from ESPN two and it was written by Mitch Warren Davis and appears courtesy of ESPN, Inc. Musical comments from Nancy Faust the best baseball stadium organist ever. Our announcer was John Dean, and everything else is pretty

much my fault. So that's countdown for this, the eight hundred and sixty fourth day since Donald Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically elected government of the United States. Don't forget to keep arresting him while we still can. The next scheduled countdown is Monday, and until then, I'm Keith Oldriman. 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.