Episode description

SERIES 2 EPISODE 204: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: If Joe Biden had been pulling his punches in fighting back against the Trump/Supreme Court conspiracy to subvert democracy, he stopped doing so last night. To my mind he should take the Court's unprecedented decision to transform our form of government into a monarchy by the fabrication of something called 'presidential immunity' by showing how it works, announcing he was adding six seats to the Court by Executive Order, and daring SCOTUS to stop him.

But as a start, Biden took off the gloves, insisting the American people should join him and Justice Sotomayor in dissenting from the Court immunity decision. Biden attacked Trump by name, said that because the Supreme Court had done “a terrible disservice to this nation” by preventing a Trump trial on January 6th before the election, that therefore the people “must decide” on Trump, and acknowledged “there are virtually no limits to what a president can do."

It was a clear declaration of war on the Supreme Court; it was a clear re-positioning of Trump from an unprincipled political opponent to a menace to our form of government. “Any president will be free to ignore the law.”He closed with “may god help preserve our democracy.”

The Supreme Court has thrown out 248 years of American history – more really – at the start of the week in which we CELEBRATE that 248thbirthday. As Sotomayor also noted, Alexander Hamilton was specific about the necessity to have a FORMER president be subject to possible prosecution for any crimes he committed, IN OFFICE, because THAT would be one of the key differences between the new United States and the Kingdom of Great Britain, from which we had to stage a revolution to free ourselves. THEIR king was “sacred and inviolable.” OUR president would be subject to “personal punishment and disgrace.”

As to the nomination uncertainty: the polls continue to be inconclusive and the tightrope just gets longer. I remain agnostic on the outcome (I want whatever wins). But I want to suggest that the logical extension of calling for Biden to drop off the ticket because you don't think he's sharp enough to win re-election and/or serve another term, is to say he's not sharp enough to be president NOW - and should resign. If you're going to be cynical enough to force him out of office later, why not now, when you could still offer new president Kamala Harris as the incumbent on Election Day?

B-Block (31:40) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Ken Dilanian of NBC, Matthew Belloni of Puck, and Ben Smith of Semafor all miss the point of the Biden candidacy story. Ralph Nader blames Hillary for the Chief Justice appointed the president who is Nader's fault. Worst Persons Hall of Famer Bill O'Reilly makes up a story about Biden quitting (but it must be true! It's from the Bill-O'Reilly-Dot-Com-News-Headquarters!)

C-Block (42:10) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Another 4th of July falling in the middle of another week, just like it did the year I started my professional career in network radio simply because... the 4th of July was falling in the middle of another week and they needed somebody unemployed, cheap, and immediately.

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