Episode description

SEASON 3 EPISODE 32: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: So the next North Carolina Poll will be, what, conducted by Morning Consult for NudeAfrica-dot-com?

Nobody's surprised but everybody's shocked? Trump’s crazed choice for governor of North Carolina – and remember if he’s the nominee or presumptive nominee and you take him off, that’s a coup, Trump says so – said he was a black Nazi, supported reinstating slavery, loved transgender porn, loved a porn site called Nude Africa, and declared he was a perv. And then according to CNN there was the GROSS stuff.

And almost nobody's surprised.

This kind of behavior (run for office and threaten all the people who do the things you have secretly enjoyed for decades) is more common than it seems. There is a reasonably straightforward psychological explanation. I'll do my best to translate it.

MEANWHILE: THE TEAMSTERS WON'T ENDORSE except a majority of the 1,300,000 Teamsters have already endorsed Kamala Harris via their local Teamster chapters. Curious. I wonder how much somebody like Trump would know about bribing a union boss.

AND THE POLLS: Once again, The New York Times is the outlier - but even its poll is in line with two hugely important throughlines: the momentum is all on Harris's side, and she is ahead in Pennsylvania. Oh and it probably won't last but Colln Allred is ahead of Ted Cruz in Texas.

B-BLOCK (27:28) THE BREAKING NEWS: At an anti-Antisemitism event at the American Israeli Council last night, Trump shortened the distance between him and Hitler still further. We already knew him as an antisemite who spread the trope that Jews were loyal first to Israel and then whatever country they were in. Now, he has blamed Jewish Americans - in advance - for his potential loss. It is staggering, and confirms every previous warning that the Hitler comparison is apt, and terrifying: "If I don’t win this election, and the Jewish people would really have a lot to do with that if that happens because at 40%, that means 60% of the people are voting for the enemy."

C-BLOCK (34:43) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: His most famous story remains so famous that 85 years after it was published, the name of its hero remains in the dictionary as a verb: The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty.

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