Episode description

SERIES 3 EPISODE 47: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Trump has now finally OVERTLY threatened to shut down the free press in the country, then repeated that threat in a speech at Detroit, and then descended IN that speech to meandering gibberish, the kind of incoherence that would get you institutionalized whether you were 28 or 78 – like him. “A FAKE NEWS SCAM, which is totally illegal. TAKE AWAY THE CBS LICENSE.” Once again, he MEANS this. The intent is to punish, bankrupt, prosecute, anybody who criticizes him – that includes CBS, that includes me, and like all totalitarians and dictators that threat to destroy critics will soon or late include YOU.

But there is within the threat something almost as frightening. CBS does not HAVE a license. News organizations do not HAVE licenses. Individual over-the-air tv and radio stations HAVE licenses, but if he really managed to take their licenses CBS Television would still exist. So would 60 Minutes. He does not understand this. He is wrong about it. And as we have seen for a decade, when he is wrong, there is only one way out: what he is wrong about, must be CHANGED, so he’s RIGHT about it. What Trump is saying is: if he regains power there WILL BE LICENSES for news organizations, and the constitution be damned.

Trump also descended into ugly bodily noises and the intellectual skill of a Roomba. And to prove he really was Michigan's Man Of The Year in 2004 he finally produced a newspaper article - from 2023. About 2013. Which was immediately corrected to confirm he'd never been given such an award.

A NOTE ABOUT POLLS: If you're panicking, that's part of the plan. There really has been almost no movement in any of the polling averages in three months, and some of the outliers are beyond dubious. The TIPP Pennsylvania poll showing Trump ahead by a point-and-a-half among "likely voters" hides the fact that the data among "registered voters" is Harris by five! How did they doctor that? They cut out almost all the voters from Philadelphia.

B-Block (23:08) A LITTLE INSIDE BASEBALL: What happens when one of our celebrity announcers hears the "Toccata" theme from "Worst Persons" at a New York Yankees Playoff game? (27:23) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Should the part of a radio broadcast where the baseball relief pitcher comes in by sponsored by an anti-choking suction device? Kari Lake has a rough night with initials and genders. And The New York Times is right back to cowering before Trump. He talks eugenics and purging migrants; they talk "fascination with genes."

C-Block (38:00) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: If you ever thought the impossible stupidity began recently - how could people that dumb afford to travel that far - you're wrong. Thurber's 1937 story tells of an American traveler he met in England who was deeply offended when forced to read Macbeth because she was convinced Shakespeare had incorrectly identified the murderer, in "The Macbeth Murder Mystery."

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