Countdown with Keith Olbermann

SEASON 4 EPISODE 72: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (2:30) SPECIAL COMMENT: Trump has started World War 3 and has no idea how to stop it - and he doesn't know he's LOSING World War 3.

How could he NOT know this? Because reportedly every morning they show him two minutes of highlights of "stuff blowing up" in Iran. His own personal SportsCenter

Conflagration in the Middle East. Trump insisting Iran is dead. And yet Iran has struck Tel Aviv. Putin has sent a Russian oil tanker to Cuba just to remind us he can. Trump has now handed Iran de facto control of the worldwide price of a barrel of oil. Iran now controls 30 percent of worldwide fertilizer distribution. Because of Trump’s World War 3, the Philippines declares an energy emergency and Slovenia institutes energy rationing and United Airlines raised airfares twenty percent. Trump insists peace could be imminent and sends thousands more troops there. He mumbles about a peace proposal. It may be LAST year’s peace proposal and he's confused. Ukraine-Russia continues. Now the PAKISTANIS think they are mediators about Trump’s World War 3. Trump's World War 3, which is apparently being conducted, so crooks can make billion dollar bets on oil futures. And in the ultimate insanity: the military POINT of Trump’s World War 3 is to reopen the Strait of Hormuz after the Strait of Hormuz was closed by… Trump’s World War 3.

All this while Rupert Murdoch insists if Trump DOESN’T put boots on the ground in Iran it will mean “American collapse.” World War 3 (TRUMP’S World War 3) in the new Thursday Countdown dropping at midnight.
IT IS ALMOST SCAPEGOAT TIME: He's beginning to give Hegseth way too much of the credit he normally gives himself. That's what he's always done when he's about to fire somebody. He did it to Noem. Hegseth could be next. Or maybe MarkWayne Mullin, he's been on the job two days and already made an idiot out of himself (again). And talk about scapegoats: who's going to get it at CBS where the morning show's target audience is now 33% smaller than the target audience I had the last week I did Countdown on MSNBC.
B-Block (26:00) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: When Patel's federally-funded girl friend Alexis Wilkins trashes Mike Flynn, Candace Owens, Tucker Carlson and Joe Kent - this must be some list: The Blaze, Glenn Beck, Scott Jennings, and Lauren Boebert,
C-Block (40:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: A new baseball season is underway and this might be our last Opening Week until 2028 or later. My career began with covering the two most calamitous sports strikes in American history: MLB 1981 and NFL 1982. Of a drunken night with the football guys, and a broadcast in which a then-prominent sports columnist called them all communists (for the same kind of proposal OWNERS now offer TO players).
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SEASON 4 EPISODE 71: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (2:30) SPECIAL COMMENT: Trump is paying Iran to try to kill Americans.
$14 billion, he’s giving them. Fourteen billion for oil Iran can now sell, per Trump. What’s that called again? If you’re ‘adhering to our enemies, giving them aid and comfort’? And that fop Scott Bessent defended it yesterday as "jujitsuing" Iran, using its money against it.
In fact Trump is using Iran's money against American troops.
Trump, who is garbage - who celebrated the death of Robert Mueller just as he celebrated the death of Rob Reiner - who Friday said the Strait of Hormuz would open itself and then Saturday said he would destroy Iran’s power grid unless Iran opened it - who then compared the majority political party of this nation TO Iran - who announced he is sending his ICE terrorists into the airports because ANYBODY can be a TSA agent and apparently he forgot about his mass deportation thing – and who has had some sort of hallucinatory dream in which he decided this was quote “the death of Iran” when Iran is not only winning but most Americans recognize that Iran is winning... Trump has freed up $14,000,000,000 of Iranian oil because that will lower the price of a barrel of oil by like a dollar for like a week.
Oh and remember when he made that joke to the Prime Minister of Japan about Pearl Harbor? Turns out President S-Stain didn’t know what HAPPENED… AT… Pearl Harbor.
BY THE WAY the Iranians say if Trump does attack their energy infrastructure, that'll black out much of the Gulf, and they'll hit Israel's energy infrastructure, and all the neighboring nations' desalination plants.
Good plan, Grampa Garbage.
B-Block (36:00) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Twitter-X user Chris950003 has invented a new "eggcorn." Is Peter Navarro sticking to his prediction that Trump's war would lower energy prices? And the sabotage of CBS is nearly complete: Bari Weiss and the Ellisons have not only destroyed the birthplace of American broadcast journalism (Edward R. Murrow's CBS Radio) but she actually wants to have Stephen A. Smith host the CBS morning show.
C-Block (50:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: I am an alum of CBS Radio - at KNX in Los Angeles and for the radio network as a sportscaster and reporter in the '80s - and I bleed for its murder. But my connection is even more personal. The head of its all-news operation in New York personally validated, personally made tangible, my career aspirations. With one note he turned my possibility into a reality. The story of the Lou Adler Letter.

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SEASON 4 EPISODE 70: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (2:30) SPECIAL COMMENT: We are all looking at it backwards: That was Tulsi Gabbard’s passive-aggressive mini-coup against Trump - about Iran, and the elections.
That's what she did in her Senate testimony – and what her deputy Joe Kent did when he resigned, a day earlier (and you think THAT was a coincidence of timing?) In a kind of bizarre code, through omission and not commission, they called Trump a liar about Iran and nukes. Not nobly or bravely. But they did it. They left no other conclusion that Trump was and is lying about Iran. Under oath.
And THEN Gabbard passive-aggressively called Trump a LIAR AGAIN about the seized ballots in Georgia. Under oath. She testified that HE sent her. It might be a break in the damn; it might be trivial. It is NOT nothing. Because everybody has a moment in which they realize that they have to protect their own assets - and this might've been theirs.
Lord knows all the allies have found theirs. Trump literally has no support from anyone, and the EU just started talking to Iran about a deal to get its ships through the Strait of Hormuz. Trump is neck high in quicksand that he ordered and installed - and he's run out of people to blame.
Plus I'll explain what the hell Trump meant when he said “DIG WE MUST" instead of "drill baby drill." (It was his brain defaulting back to 1962 and it's a really bad sign).
B-Block (26:00) SPORTSBALL TONIGHT: Are there ANY good feelings left from the US Olympics Men's Hockey Gold? Now the scorer of the winning goal, Jack Hughes, is demanding they give him the puck rather than enshrine it forever at the Hockey Hall of Fame, and an ESPN commentator is demanding we ignore "politics" and admit Russia to the next international tournament (while Russia is aiding Iran, who we are - like it or not - at war with).
(34:00) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Newt Gingrich falls for an internet troll who wants to create an instant Trump Canal in the Middle East using nukes. Rachel Maddow becomes the umpteenth commentator to insist HER favorite Trump scandal should be getting more attention than the others. And not only did the Los Angeles Dodgers desecrate Dodger Stadium by slapping a sponsor name on it - but they then lied and said they HADN'T sold the naming rights.
C-Block (56:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: My great grandfather not only turned down stock - circa 1907 - in the company that would become General Motors, but according to family lore he gave the owner the idea for the NAME "General Motors." We are not businessmen.
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SEASON 4 EPISODE 69: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (2:30) SPECIAL COMMENT: Trump is not qualified to continue as commander in chief.
Not for another five minutes. He has to resign at least that role, immediately.
Trump is personally LOSING THE WAR IN IRAN. Trump is personally TURNING IRAN into INSTANT PROCESSED VIETNAM. Never mind the politics, never mind his assault on democracy, never mind his instability, never mind his corruption, never mind the details: Just MILITARILY. Just MAKING DECISIONS THAT WILL KILL AMERICAN TROOPS - Trump is NOT qualified to continue as commander in chief and he needs to resign AT LEAST his command TODAY.
A week ago Trump mocked England for trying to join the war after he 'won it.' Now Trump is BEGGING England and half a dozen other countries to send ships to save him from this disaster at the Strait of Hormuz. A week ago Trump insisted Iran would NEVER CLOSE the Strait of Hormuz. Now it turns out the Iranians directly WARNED HIM they would close the Strait of Hormuz - warned him in 2019. Because it’s not just a ten dollar gallon of gas that’s coming, it’s a ten dollar STRAWBERRY. Because a third of the world’s fertilizer goes through the Strait of Hormuz, where shipping is down ooh just 97-point-4 percent.
Trump is the Commander-in-Creep.
Trump is the Commander-in-Cheap.
Trump is the Commander-A-Sleep.
He needs to turn military command over to somebody else. Because Iran could never in a million years harm this country as much as Trump is harming it right now.
THE GOOD NEWS: Dick Durbin has inadvertently produced the succinct message for all Democrats and everybody else opposing Trump and the Republicans' attempt to disembowel our elections, the bill they call with bitter irony 'The Save Act.' As he explains in less than a minute, it will disenfranchise roughly 10 percent of all American voters - and generally speaking the poorer ones. This is the line we must take, and sell. Just when you thought Democratic Senators weren't worth the proverbial price of the oil required to burn them in hell. Thank you, Senator Durbin.
B-Block (30:00) SPORTSBALLCENTER: How could a team retire the uniform number of a former player they had to fire as manager because of his personal moral failings ON THE FIELD OF PLAY? And yet the New York Mets are doing exactly that. (35:00) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Cornelius Rudd warns you of the upcoming 'Raptor.' The CBS tire fire produces hilariously bad stories about David Ellison (and Epstein), Tony Dokoupil (and a new job somewhere else), Joe Rogan, and Jeff Shell (about to get fired from yet another network presidency). And then we have one of the greatest name mistakes of all time when Brian Kilmeade gets Markwayne Mullin's stupid first name completely wrong, Pilgrim.
C-Block (46:00) EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: I'm making a special request for your help finding a home for two bonded senior Malteses, apparent survivors of a puppy mill, named Mai Tai and Soraya. (49:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: And at the opposite end of the moral spectrum, there's the upcoming 25th anniversary of the day Rupert Murdoch fired me from Fox for following the exact instructions his office gave me.


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SEASON 4 EPISODE 68: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (2:30) SPECIAL COMMENT: Trump doesn’t REALIZE that he’s screwed in Iran. He can't decide if he's won and we should applaud now, or if he'll win later and we should applaud then - when the reality is, he's in a quagmire and about two weeks from handing the Democrats a majority that even White House strategists think might be enough to impeach AND remove him next year. Key Republicans and everybody behind the scenes in MAGA are looking for off-ramps. Does Trump know? Will he be temporarily not-a-moron and take one of them?
Is Trump in a fugue state?
Dissociative behavior? Temporary amnesia? No awareness that there are consequences? You know – his normal state – only WORSE. First about Iran he said “any time I want it to end, it will end." Now about Iran he says it will continue indefinitely until they quote “literally could never build that country back.”
Is there a strategy? A plan? Anything? In the most important document of the war, Senator Chris Murphy told us what he could of a semi-confidential briefing about Iran by the administration. They seem to think all they have to do is destroy all of Iran's armaments and they'll never ever find a way to replace them.
And while he’s demanding the world bend to his will, again he is helping the Russians help the Iranians try to kill our people and our allies. Monday I mentioned it was the Russians locating American Assets in the middle east for Iran's benefit. Now Trump is indirectly funding Russian advisors helping Iran with its drone strategy.
Is Trump even aware he is awake?
And what the hell is this with him trying to guess the shoe size of his cabinet members and buying them shoes that were already out of style in 1966?
PLUS what is it with Pete PTSD Hegseth? He has now BANNED all outside photographers from Pentagon briefings because he thought the Associated Press images of him were unflattering. But ALL images of Pete Hegseth are unflattering.
B-Block (32:00) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Poor Adnan Virk misses by an inch after trying to out-sing Michael Buble. Bill Maher gets run over at an NBA game. Alina Habba brings us her umpteenth malapropism; she can't tell her Cahoots from her Cajones; and the Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee can't tell the difference between 1947 and 47 years.
C-Block (45:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Hardly that. Things I found on an ancient cassette. A bunch of radio sportscasts I did in my first 90 days in this business - just the other day (in 1979). Enjoy, or skip them, I won't be offended either way.
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