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Countdown with Keith Olbermann
JAIL KRISTI NOEM AND TOM HOMAN FOR CONTEMPT OF COURT - 4.14.25
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Welcome to today. From back to school to tackling your to do list, the Today show is your best start to the day. It's a new season and every morning we're here to help you take it all on as the forecast calls for football all across the country, blockbuster stars, live concerts, and so much more. Wake up to where it's all happening.
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Watch the Today show weekday mornings at 7am on NBC. The U.S. electric grid is approaching a breaking point as demand soars from data centers and home energy use. Our aging infrastructure can't keep up and the Department of Energy warns that without action, blackouts could surge 100 fold by 2030. The good news? One solution is already here. Propane. It's American made, stored on site and always ready, powering homes and businesses with cleaner, reliable energy. Energy that doesn't depend on the grid or the weather. Learn more@probane.com hello, it is Ryan and we could all use an extra bright spot in our day, couldn't we? Just to make up for things like sitting in traffic, doing the dishes, counting your steps. You know, all the mundane stuff. That is why I'm such a big fan of Chumba Casino. Chumba Casino has all your favorite social casino style games that you can play for free anytime, anywhere with daily bonuses. So sign up now@chumbacasino.com that's chumbacasino.com no purchase necessary. VGW Group void we're prohibited by law 21/ terms and conditions apply Countdown with Keith Olbermann is a production of iHeartRadio. The director of ICE, Tom Homan, and his boss, the Secretary of Homeland Security, Kristi Noemi, must be arrested for contempt of court. It should be Trump being arrested for contempt of court, potentially for ignoring the orders of the Supreme Court. But we already know how the laws of this land have already been corrupted to protect the greatest criminal in our history. That it cannot be him will simply hasten the latest iteration of the constitutional crisis created by a lawless chief executive who still has the military behind him. We are headed for a flashpoint, perhaps as soon as today. To summarize, Trump believes he is God. But in the interim, it is time for U.S. district Judge Paula Zinnis to send this rogue government a message, a warning. In fact, it is well past time. Time was two days ago at 5 o' clock in the afternoon. Noem and Homan are now in contempt of that judge's orders. In the case of the no Home Homan ICE abduction, the disappearing of a Maryland man already under the protection of the government of the United States, Kilmar Abrego Garcia. They are in contempt of the orders, not of some judge, as the fascist idiot Stephen Miller and his brown Shirts call any representative actual law and order. They are in contempt of the laws of the United States of America. It is not some judge. They are in contempt of the nation. And they are on the verge of being in contempt of the Supreme Court. This timeline, in its briefest form. Trump's death squads admitted they had seized and deported the wrong man to El Salvador. Then they collectively made the shrug emoji. He's out of our hands. He's under the sovereign control of another nation. Too bad. In other words, we kidnap them, you keep them. First, Judge Zinnis ordered Mr. Abrego Garcia to be returned from El Salvador. And the torture there gave a deadline. Government blew it off. They went to the Supreme Court, which ordered last Thursday that Mr. Abrego Garcia's release at least be facilitated by Trump's gangs. Judge Zinnis ordered updates. The delicacy here was, you don't want to interfere with U.S. foreign policy. It's irrelevant. But apparently it is in the books. And then came the first of two curveballs. Friday, President Ted Bundy, Trump told his hand picked stenographer reporters aboard Air Force One, quote, if the Supreme Court said bring somebody back, I would do that. I respect the Supreme Court. I have great respect for the Supreme Court. As usual, Trump showing his mental illness, saying something, then reordering the same words and thinking he said something new. This erased his own lawyer's argument that this country could do nothing itself to bring this man back from El Salvador. Trump bluntly said if ordered to by the Supreme Court, he would bring Mr. Abrego Garcia back, which necessarily means he and his thug government can bring him back. So when his lawyers sue simply said that same thing again. No, we can't. He's El Salvadoran now. Only they said it louder on Saturday. They looked like championship idiots. Well, Trump wasn't gonna make that last. He rushed to make sure that if anybody's gonna look like the championship idiot of this government here, it would be him. Quote, looking forward to seeing President Bukele of El Salvador on Monday. Our nations are working closely together to eradicate terrorist organizations and build a future of prosperity. President Bukele has graciously accepted into his nation's custody some of the most violent alien enemies of the world, and in particular the United States. These barbarians are now in the sole custody of El Salvador, a proud and sovereign nation. And their future is up to President Bee and his government. They will never threaten or menace our citizens again. The enemies of the world, in particular the United States, are Kristi Noem, Tom Homan, Stephen Miller, and especially Donald trump. In the flippant 180 contained in that post, Trump is either lying now or he was lying aboard Air Force One on Friday when he said he would obey a Supreme Court order to bring him back is the potential for an actual constitutional stalemate that could tear the country apart from not later, not in 2028. Now. Trump has now corrected his original willingness to go along with the Supreme Court and in passive aggressive form, he has explained in that post that he has the right to seize anyone in this country, citizen or not, criminal or not, accused or not, and not just expel them. But then to pretend that nevermind jurisdiction, he can't even ask his co conspirator, this tin pot dictator Bukake, to do him a solid and fix what might otherwise go into our history as a near fatal skid out of which the nation and even Trump somehow steered. No. The likeliest outcome is of course, that Trump's concierge Supreme Court never does order him to return Abrego Garcia to his family. Never says that in so many words. So Trump doesn't have to ignore their order. That's why you own the Supreme Court court, why you pack it with lunatics who have ecstatic religious visions or who drink or who take bribes so they can spend all of their time finding that fine line along which they do not destroy their own court and their own phony baloney jobs, but also don't challenge you in even the slightest, mildest way, shape or form because inside the White House, the crisis here is that this happened because somebody working for Trump admitted a mistake a week ago today, this expanding, burgeoning, unchecked, immoral, incompetent, impaired terrorist government of President Ted Bundy. Trump admitted it had completely screwed up and should not have seized this man, should not have sent him to a torture chamber in El Salvador. The government insisted it no longer had any influence on Mr. Abrego Garcia because El Salvador now has jurisdiction on but it also admitted it screwed up. The pirates working for Gnome and Homan would only tell the court over the weekend that Mr. Abrego Garcia is alive and secure under the quote, sovereign domestic authority of El Salvador. Tough shit Kristi Noem, get on a plane and go get him or you go to jail. Or Holman, go see your idiot boss and have him slap a tariff on El Salvador. Noem and Homan and their Gestapo have not only refused to comply, but ignored the judge's deadline 5pm two days ago to supply any information about how they will proceed to return their victim from El Salvador and why they have stalled even though this real life version of Kafka's the trial began a month ago Saturday, March 12th and Judge Zinnis first ordered him released 10 days ago. These arrogant fascist bastards Homan and Gnome are in contempt of court, as is the DHS official Michael Kozak who signed the evasion of Judge Zinnis's order and submitted it to her on Saturday. They may all be in contempt of the Supreme Court, the entire Trump Gestapo the number of violations of Mr. Abrego Garcia's rights they are responsible for is probably already in the dozens. Arrest them today. I don't care if they're freed in 20 minutes. Arrest them today. Put some fear into these people. To quote President Nixon in a just America, only when Abrego Garcia is returned to his family and his pregnant wife and his autistic son should Garden Gnome be able to go home to her closet full of action adventure Barbie outfits and should home and go home to his presumably bottle. Not before this has been going on for a month. A real life version of Kafka's the trial where the defendant is never told what he's charged with or by whom. March 12 those who did this should spend a year in jail for every day Abrego Garcia has been brutalized in our name Put Kristi Noeman, Tom Holman in jail today for contempt. They kidnapped this man based on fabricated, imaginary bullshit evidence that they will not produce. Trump's gangsters pulled him out of his car in an IKEA parking lot and disappeared him in front of his terrified 5 year old boy. They held him for 3 days, violated all of his rights, denied him legal representation, shipped him off to a hostile country run by power mad Latino. Trump didn't bother to tell his family what had happened to him. Let him call his wife to say goodbye only three days later. Let her find out where he was by seeing photos him days after that in the Gulag in El Salvador. She saw it on the news. The government of the United States, the real one, the legal one, the one with judges and laws and right and wrong. Not this bullshit gang of Trump bullies who I hope I'll live long enough to see one day on trial at the International Court of Justice at the Hague. The real government of the United States. The laws ordered him released 10 days ago and it has not happened and I want people to burn in hell for it. And this is a case in which the Trumpists admit they disappeared an innocent man and made an administrative error. How many others are there? That's the point, not how many others there are. The administrative error part is the real issue here. Not the idea that these brutal, incompetent morons set up a system in which they had no emergency cord to pull when they effed up in case they effed up and targeted a victim and not a perp. This is dragging on deliberately. Kristi Noeman, Tom Homan and the gutless corporate lawyers who represent them and this administration, the most gutless lawyers, in which the terms gutless and corporate lawyers have become synonymous. They are dragging this on because they had to admit this was a mistake. And now they see an opportunity to exploit even that admission that they screwed up, to deliver the message passively but still aggressively, that even when they are wrong, they are still right. Because even when they are wrong, what do you think you are going to be able to do about it? If they are going to ignore the Supreme Court or just the federal courts or the district courts, what do you think you are going to be able to do about it, Mrs. Abrego Garcia? What do you think you are going to be able to do about it, Judge Zinnis? What do you think you are going to be able to do about it, America? What do you think you are going to be able to do about it, Nicole? Michael, do you know who Nicole Michaoni is, she is another potential victim of what Trump's worms will doubtless call an administrative error in the middle of the night. This following email from a no reply address at Homeland Security Kristi Garden Noem Secretary appeared in Nicole Micharoni's inbox. 4112025 Notice of Termination of Parole it is time for you to leave the United States. You are currently here because the Department of Homeland Security paroled you into the United States for a limited period pursuant to 8 USC 1182 D5A and 8 CFR 212.5 E. DHS is now exercising its discretion to terminate your parole unless it expires sooner. Your parole will terminate seven days from the date of this notice if you do not depart the United States. If you immediately, you will be subject to potential law enforcement actions, etc. Sent to Nicole Micharoni Nicole Micharoni, who was born in Newton, Massachusetts, which is still in the United States unless Trump has ordered it traded for Greenland. Newton, Massachusetts Nicole Michelini's family has been in the United States for four generations. She is an immigration lawyer. She posted the email on social media almost lightheartedly. She wrote some personal news. The Department of Homeland Security has given me seven days to leave the US does anyone know if you can get Italian citizenship through great grandparents? Her assumption, the baseline assumption of those reacting in horror to that email is still that this is a mistake, another administrative error, a slip of some sort, her name going into their system there among the brown shirts for disappearance instead of one of her clients. That was my first reaction. Ha ha. She's lucky Trump only wants to deport her, not slap a tariff on her. I no longer think this. It is absolutely plausible they just screwed this up. They screw everything else up. And it's absolutely plausible they screwed up the Kilmar Abrego case. Hell, they got Elon Musk working for them and this brain damaged bully Tom Homan and Kristi Noem, who by now has the exact identical molecular composition as an inflatable backyard swimming pool, or these are mistakes made on purpose. Doesn't matter. Either way, they want to leave you with the impression that not only are they rounding up a few actual criminals along with thousands of people whose only crime was the mistaken belief that even Ted Bundy Trump's America was a good place, a better place, a place worth risking your life to get to. You know what our ancestors thought. Not only are they rounding up people who are guilty or might be guilty, they may just round up people who could not Possibly be guilty like Nicole Micheroni of the Newton Micheronis or Keith Olbermann of the Bronx Olbermanns. Or you. Or as it turns out, thousands of native born Americans and naturalized U.S. citizens born in other places and green card holders and people under the protection of the government as ordered in the courts. Because sending them like Kilmar Abrego Garcia to a place like El Salvador can or will get them killed. Thousands and thousands of administrative errors. Thousands of conceivably, maybe even likely intentional errors to scare them and scare you. Keep your head down. Don't make waves. Be like the television networks. Be like the law firms. Be like Columbia University, to borrow the bully. Speak of the tariffs. Don't retaliate. You wouldn't want to be accidentally sent to El Salvador because your folder was next to some actual target. You wouldn't want to go to a rally or a protest. Your photo could wind up next to that of Mahmoud Khalil. Arrest Tom Homan and Kristi Noem for contempt of court today. Maybe we will get lucky and their prison stay will get sucked into the phones of Mike Waltz and Elon Musk and instead of one hour in the cleanest holding cell in Washington D.C. they'll get disappeared to the Panama Canal. Oh, I'm sorry, Christy. You know how it goes. Just another administrative error. I invoked the name Mahmoud Khalil and if he does not sound familiar to you, Mahmoud Khalil can be removed from the United States even though he has broken no laws and the entirety of the case against him is that little shit Marco Rubio. Marco Rubio, who embellished a story about his own father as a political refugee from Cuba. And a two page memo that he promulgated. A two page memo that is worthy of the Tom Cruise movie Minority Report in which you can be arrested for pre crimes in which they calculate you're going to do something bad, so they're going to arrest you now. A two page memo in which Rubio confirmed Khalil's pro Palestinian protests at Columbia University were otherwise lawful, but insisted that letting him stay here as outlined by, you know, the laws, would undermine U.S. policy to combat antisemitism around the world and in the United States, in addition to efforts to protect Jewish students from harassment and violence in the United States, condoning anti Semitic conduct and disruptive protests in the United States would severely undermine that significant foreign policy. Object. I got bad news for you, Marco. By that standard, by the antisemitism standard, Trump, whose own wife said he kept a book of Hitler's speeches on a bedside table in their home. Trump needs to be expelled as a dangerous anti Semite before nightfall and the Secretary of Defense and Vodka Pete Hegseth under whose Reich? At the Pentagon. The Pentagon has thrown out Toni Morrison's books from the library at the Naval Academy, but it has kept at the Hegseth Naval Academy library the two copies they have there of Mein Kampf. Under these same rules, Hegseth needs to be on a slow boat somewhere by the end of the week. We are moving into pre crimes and future crimes and thought crimes and these the Khalil case and in a tangential but real way, the Kilmar Abrego and Nicole Micheroni cases, too. They are harbingers of a Trumpian rush to not only break all the laws and all the morality in this country, and not only to criminalize dissent, but to try to scare you out of even thinking about dissenting. Trump doesn't just want Khalil out of Colombia. He hasn't just demanded Colombia, under my old friend Acting President Claire Shipman, kowtow to Trump's political demands. Trump wants legal control of Columbia University, the Wall Street Journal reports. Trump wants a consent decree. A consent decree, A ruling giving a federal judge the legal authority to enforce whatever promises the spineless morons running that university made in order to not lose $400 million in grants out of an endowment of 15 billion. These words are not used in the Wall Street Journal story, but essentially the threat is clear. Agree to our demands. Agree to the consent decree, or we will blackmail you into it. You can challenge this decree in court. And every day you challenge this decree in court, we will find more federal funding to cancel. We only have $15 billion. How could we afford the loss of 400 million? They don't teach math at Columbia anymore, evidently. And if Columbia folds on this, and frankly, all Columbia has been doing for the last year is folding, I mean, its administration and more importantly, its board are making its infamously bad football team look like national champions. Others will follow. We've already seen Harvard cave and, frankly, Cornell wobble. We're gradually moving towards the moment Columbia's already there, when the nation's campuses are such laboratories of cowardice, such greenhouses of spinelessness, where their only hope of survival may be the students on those campuses, reading in extensively on how they all settled things like this in the 1960s. If a place like Columbia becomes nothing but a Trumpist factory under the control of a Trumpist judge and some kind of department of universities, Columbia, Harvard, elsewhere it is time for the students to. And I mean this metaphorically, of course, it is time for the students to burn it all down. By the way, the acronym for my new hypothetical department of universities, Columbia, Harvard, elsewhere would be Douche. Elon Musk can be poster boy of that too. Oh yeah, Musk. I am in charge of Douchebag. Douche is moving rapidly on all sides towards Orwell's thought crime. I think Khalil is an idiot, having seen similar protests to his in the streets of my own hometown. I cannot think of any group in my lifetime that has done more damage to its own cause than the pro Palestinian protesters in New York. If they planned to make themselves and their case look worse, they couldn't have done more. And he still must be defended or the nation is dead. He must still be defended because Trump literally wants one of his own former employees prosecuted for refusing to lie for him. Prosecuted. Chris Krebs was appointed to head the cybersecurity and infrastructure security agency CISA to address foreign threats, including against elections. October 2020. He did his job. No threats, no tampering, no rigging. Now Trump has issued an executive order demanding the DOJ investigate Chris Krebs for criminality for not lying. Krebs, through CISA, falsely and baselessly denied that the 2020 election was rigged and stolen. I think that deserves to be read again. Krebs falsely and baselessly denied that the 2020 election was rigged and stolen. I hereby deny that the 2020 election was rigged and stolen. I hereby confirmed Donald Trump is crazy. And most of all, I hereby confirm Donald Trump lost the 2020 election and trafficked with the Russians for the 2016 election. Falsely and baselessly denied that the 2020 election was rigged and stolen does not get more Orwellian than that. But of course, the essence of Trump's bullshit is the man Trump appointed to make sure the election was legit said the election was legit. The election took place under the aegis of the Trump administration. Trump was president then. Election integrity was the responsibility of Trump and his administration. Trump's appointee, part of Trump's administration, found that nothing was rigged. So Trump wants him prosecuted for saying the Trump administration handled the election honestly. Somewhere, Orwell and Kafka are bidding for the rights to this story. And the story's not over. Ice. That, again, is the home and garden gnome group whose leaders should be jailed for contempt, posted to X and Instagram. That it would stop any ideas that tried to enter the U.S. illegally. You heard me. Yes, you that idea in the red Buick. Pull over. The posts were deleted per Rolling Stone. Sent without proper approval was the quote from the spokesman. The excuse was they meant not ideas, but intellectual property. That's a cover story. I will say it's an unexpectedly plausible one from this group of defective brains and high school dropouts. One of them things called again ideas. You ever had one? No. No. What are they like? Or it's just another unintentional intentional slip up. Ask Mahmoud Khalil about the illegal entry of ideas. Temporal juxtaposition. A judge in Delaware rules in the Dominion lawsuit against Newsmax for defamation. Says the propaganda feed made false and defamatory statements against Dominion. The judge said that Another triumph for their lawyers. Same lawyers as in the case against Fox. $785 million. Same lawyers, Sussman Godfrey. Later that day, Trump issued another executive order. He uses more of them than he uses toilet tissue. Revoking security clearances and pulling federal contracts from Sussman Godfrey. Stephen Miller quote, this firm is very involved in the election misconduct. Again, a reminder, the election misconduct this worm Miller refers to is refusing to pretend there was election misconduct. They are now trying to prosecute the truth out of existence. The humorous relief is now the tariffs. When the lightest news of the day is the destruction of the world economy. We may be in a bad place. If you haven't noticed, the tariff effect on the bond market also drove mortgages up to 7.1%. And I'm going to need to see Howard Lutnick's government id. Even in this government of the idiots by the idiots for the idiots. I am not convinced this guy is actually employed by Trump. It may be a very well constructed, complicated delusion on his part. First they had tariffs on everything. Then they suspended the tariffs on the smartphones and the laptops. Caused Tim Apple. Then Lutnick went on this Week on ABC yesterday announced there will be new tariffs on smartphone and laptops. Also remember Trump's little hint he's going to raise drug prices. Just cuz Lutnick semiconductors and pharmaceuticals will have a tariff model in order to encourage them to reshore the tariffs. Clap on, clap off, clap on, clap off the tariffs. I don't believe Lutnick really works there. In fact, I do not believe his name is really Lutnick. I think he's just Maury Kessler, the toupee salesman from Goodfellas. And yes, of course the tariffs and Trump's 9:37am post that day were market manipulation. CNN asked Representative Carlos Jimenez of Florida, this is a great time to buy. Is that market manipulation? Jimenez's answer? A denial that he did not realize was actually a confession. Quote, no, he said, actually, we had lunch with a major stockbroker from New York, and we were talking to him about tariffs, and one of the things he said was, it's time to buy. Congressman, that's. That's evidence of what you just denied. I'd like to amend my remarks. Consumer confidence craters, down 11% this month. 50.8. That's the second lowest reading since the University of Michigan started to do this in 1952. It is lower than it was during the Great Recession. It is down 30 points since Trump was elected. In short, Americans felt better about buying stuff, felt better about our future. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, somebody set fire to the official home of the governor of the fifth most populous state in the nation early Sunday morning with him in it and his family. Significant damage. Family evacuated, nobody hurt. Twelve hours later, not a word from the president. From Attorney General Pam Blondie, from Homeland Security, Secretary Garden Noem, nobody. Washington Post put the story low enough on its front page. Had to scroll down one whole page to find it. The New York Times required you to scroll down four screens. It was between the Jon Hamm story and the story on fashion at the Masters golf tournament. It was three screens below the story about Saturday Night Live's latest parade of the. Not at all funny. Well, we don't know the motive yet. We don't need to know the goddamned motive. A governor's mansion was set on fire. China halts exports lead. New York Times story is not as meaningful to this country's future as somebody trying to burn down a governor's home with him and his family in it. Motive. You're waiting for motive. That it happened is not enough. A coincidence in which a pyromaniac selected a random building in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and the governor just happened to be inside. That wouldn't be enough. And I haven't even mentioned it was Governor Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania. During Passover. We got this great story about John Hams. John Ham. Happily, the Democratic Party is pushing back against all of this. Senator Schumer, the majority leader. Forgive me, the minority leader. Forgive me, the minority guy, Senator Schumer, forgive me. Chuck has a tweet. Chuck Schumer, Thursday, quote, history will remember April 9, 2025, as America's actual Liberation Day. The day that President Trump backed down from his ridiculous tariff fiasco. Oh, it's like a joke of some sort. You had a team working on this for a day team social media 71 consultants. I think we should play off the actual Liberation Day now that the tariffs have been have been delayed is not funny, not insightful, not witty, not relevant, and as it turned out, not factually accurate. Within an hour, it was all changed again. I am surprised by one thing. Chuck Schumer put out a, a tariff mocking Trump's Liberation Day. We here at the New York Times, how is it we're not putting a story about this on the front page? I mean, I know I'm breaking all the rules here, but shouldn't this be higher than the Jon Hamm story? I'm sorry to drag Jon Hamm into this. Nice man. College classmate of the last line, producer of Countdown on msnbc. Nikki. Nice man. Good actor. Also of interest here, bad actor. Bill Maher provides a propaganda video for Trump. But of course he does. His bosses want him to. What he doesn't realize is that all the nice things Trump did for him that he recited like a hostage in the video, all those things, all those things he praised Trump for, he already praised Trump for them 10 years ago. You know how I know this? Because Bill told me on the air on his show how impressed he was in 2016 with Trump, how he then felt betrayed by Trump. Bill, he's betraying you again right now. Bill, you're an idiot. That's next. This is Countdown.
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Welcome to today. From back to school to tackling your to do list, the Today show is your best start to the day. It's a new season and every morning we're here to help you take it all on as the forecast calls for football all across the country, blockbuster stars, live concerts, and so much more. Wake up to where it's all happening.
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We're getting back to all of it, and the best way to start is together.
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Watch the Today show weekday mornings at 7am on NBC. The U.S. electric grid is approaching a breaking point. As demand soars from data centers and home energy use. Our aging infrastructure can't keep up. And the Department of Energy warns that without action, blackouts could surge 100 fold by 2030. The good news? One solution is already here. Propane. It's American made, stored on site and always ready, powering homes and businesses with cleaner, reliable energy that doesn't depend on the grid or the weather. Learn more@probane.com hello, it is Ryan. And I was on a flight the other day playing one of my favorite social spin slot games on chumbacasino.com I looked over the person sitting next to me and you know what they were doing? They're also playing Chumba Casino. Everybody's loving having fun with it. Chumba Casino's home to hundreds of casino style games that you can play for free anytime, anywhere. So sign up now@chumbacasino.com to claim your free welcome bonus. That's chumbacasino.com and live the Chumba Life, sponsored by Chumba Casino. No purchase necessary. VGW Group Void where prohibited by law 21 + terms and conditions apply. This is COUNTDOWN with Keith Olbermann. Still ahead on this edition of countdown, does the show seem a little ragged to you? Seems a little ragged to me. I'll explain with an announcement about the future of this show. I mean like the immediate future. Like this week. First, believe it or not, there's still more new idiots to talk about. The roundup of the miscreants, morons and dunning Kruger effect specimens who constitute the latest other worst persons in the world. There's so many of them this week I had to do dedications and the induction of a Hall of Fame member of the worst persons pantheon. The dedication is to ABC's this Week, which actually put out this lineup yesterday. As the old joke goes, this was on TV right now, ABC's this Week commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. Howard is an idiot. Not only that, but they don't tell Howard anything. So he always talks about things that were true or at least being sold six days ago. Howard is six days late. There's Senator Elizabeth Warren. Fine. The other guests, Stephen A. Smith panel, Donna Brazile Reince Priebus, who was one of the Republican fascists who started all this. Rachel Bade of Politico. And there's plenty I could say about her, but the worst I could think of is of Politico and Sarah Isger, who works for ABC News and pretends to be neutral when she is in fact a conservative jackass. Somehow in booking a panel, Donna Brazil, Reince Priebus, Rachel Bates, Sarah Isger. With Stephen A. Smith as your expert, they managed to not book Wile E. Coyote, Professor Erwin Corey and Max Effing Headroom. Please, somebody tell Stephen A. Smith he needs to do some homework. Stephen spent his time ranting about how if any Republican supports Trump running for a third term, he doesn't want to hear them talk about the Constitution ever again. Stephen doesn't get it. Stephen hasn't been paying attention. Stephen doesn't know what he's talking about. The Republicans have been talking about Trump running for a third term actively, publicly, in what counts for their version of intellectual journals since 2023. And they mean it and they will do it and they will pervert the Constitution to achieve it. They are working on it now. The point at which you say don't talk to me about it again or I never want to hear you talk about the constitution was like 1970. You are not Steve, arguing about the Minnesota freaking Timberwolves with that half wit Christopher Russo on ESPN here. These people are out to take your vote. Your vote, Stephen A. Smith's vote away from you and to deport any of your friends who were not born here. Get serious about this or stop wasting everybody's time. You might as well be telling the Republicans they need to be better citizens. They have long since burned that boat. Stephen A. And the Governor's mansion. I'm not objecting in the slightest to sportscasters talking politics or converting to becoming political commentators or political figures. I'm the last person on earth to say that. But walk in with 2025 information, don't come in here arguing 1974 to me, Jesus, make us all look bad. I mean a two week training program and you could be up to date at least and not say stupid things like that. I don't want to hear them talk about the Constitution ever. They don't care about the Constitution. The Constitution is there for them to twist it and warp it and send it through the Supreme Court. They own that's already made shit up like presidential immunity, which is nowhere in the Constitution, is nowhere in any of the Federalists papers, is nowhere in anything resembling a document from the founding of this nation. No Founding Father believed in presidential immunity. None of them. If you could find one, the answer to that would be okay. One of them did. Out of the 2 or 300 people who made the Constitution what it is today, don't talk to me about the. Don't talk to me about Republicans not talking about the Constitution. They think they own it. Don't talk to me about. Don't talk to me about the Constitution. This is literally a topic they got past in the 20th century. The Republicans can rationalize anything. Stephen, you are behind the curve here. Take a two week course and figure it out. As I said, we also have a Worst Persons hall of Famer to announce. This is from last Wednesday, so I'm sure you saw it or heard it already. It's a little old, so I'm not putting it in the list, but yes, this is true. Linda McMahon misses wrestling. The secretary of Education. So stupid. She used to be married to Vince McMahon, selected a secretary of Education because she doesn't have one and thus doesn't understand why it's not okay to eliminate education going forward or the Department of Education. But she has proved she's just right for the Trump administration. If everybody who's been appointed to a cabinet position is there to destroy the United States of America, they got their dame right here. Linda McMahon is the greatest Secretary of Education of all time. She will make sure that she stamps out education in this country better than anybody else possibly could. At an event, she twice referred to the future of artificial intelligence in schools by calling artificial intelligence A1, as in steak sauce A1. Well, we need more A1. Where would A1 be? This puts her in the Worst Person's Mispronunciation of Numbers exhibit next to Senator Roger Marshall of Kansas, who is an OB GYN who still thinks the terrorist attack from 2001 is called 9 11. If only we'd had a one on 9 11. On the other hand, the steak sauce people are delighted by this. Finally, to the nominees for today's worst Persons awards, the Bronze Worse Bill Maher. I know I've been talking about my college classmate a lot recently. I would make him worse persons again. But first off, you're bored of that. Secondly, I'm bored of that. Thirdly, Bill is shrinking so rapidly into obscurity that I wonder, by the time I got through two other stories before telling his I wonder if anybody would still remember who he was. As you know, at the insistence of Bill's new friend, Kid Rock, who may be the first person Bill's ever considered a friend who had better morals than Bill does. Kid Rock took him to the White House to meet Trump, and Bill came out of it fully Kool aided. Everything I've not liked about him was, I swear to God, absent. At least on this night with this guy, I never felt I had to walk on eggshells around him. And honestly, I voted for Clinton and Obama, but I would never feel comfortable talking to them the way I was able to talk with Donald Trump. Make of it what you will. What I make of it is, Bill, you're going senile. You are forgetting that you said more or less that exact same thing in the year 2016. I know this because it was during a conversation you and I had on your show about Trump, about how extraordinary it was that the Trump we had met was this generous, all about you talk about anything, gracious guy. And then he came out and started talking about basically wanting to kill all the Hispanics. We couldn't figure out this disparity. I said, we don't have to figure it out. They're two Donald Trumps who are both absolutely plausible and convincing. And we can't have a president who has more than one personality. Sorry. You said you felt he had deceived you. Guess what, Bill, he had. And guess what? The other day at the White House, he deceived you again. You know why? Because you're gullible. Because you want to be flattered. Because that's all he does. Because he found your button and he pushed it and pushed it and pushed it. And he got you to put out quotes that they have now used and got you to put out a monologue on your dying show on television, which they have used to sell the idea that he is a good president and a good person. They are using you, Bill. On the other hand, somebody's watching your video. You're a moron now. And I know that, as I say that Maher added millions of liberal sphincters, just tightened. The only sphincter around here, Bill, is Bill Maher. And you have long since ceased to be liberal. I've had so many conversations with prominent people who are much less connected, people that don't look you in the eye, people that don't really listen because they just want to get to their next thing. People whose response to things you say just doesn't track. None of that with him, Bill. He's a narcissistic sociopath, possibly a narcissistic psychopath. Bill. He's Ted Bundy he's President Ted Bundy. Trump, this is what he does. He uses people. He looks them in the eye. He figures out what it is they're most susceptible to and does it to them. And then they think he's just wonderful and he's theirs. And that the real Trump is the one they saw, not the one who is bundling Americans off the streets and sending them to torture chambers in El Salvador or stochastically encouraging terrorism inside the United States against his political opponents. People that don't look you in the eye. He looks you in the eye and tells you he had a copy of Hitler's speeches on his nightstand in 1990. People that don't really listen because they just want to get to their next thing. Next thing is subverting the Constitution and serving a third term and then claiming we don't need any more elections because he's doing a great job. People whose response to things you say just doesn't track. None of that with him. No. They're putting out press releases saying he's healthy and the evidence of being healthy is that he won another one of his golf tournaments at his course where he's allowed to cheat. Bill, he used you again. Somehow, nine years ago, you figured it out. Since then, you've forgotten. Stop forgetting you have some small remaining responsibility here. Use that. Not that Bill Maher wasn't seeking to be used. I may be guilty of overthinking this whole thing. Bill Maher works now for the same fascists at Warner Bros. Discovery, led by this guy David Zaslav, who took over and corrupted cnn. They let the people who would collaborate with them, who would appease Trump, people like Jake Tapper, they let them stay and fired everybody else. They said, to hell with the ratings. We're not in it for the money. We're here to neutralize and neuter cnn. And we're here to neutralize and neuter what had been a boring but rather reliably liberal show every Friday night on hbo. I want to know what they're gonna try to do to John Oliver. But John Oliver is made of something. I have known Bill Maher since 1978, and he was a shameless, self interested opportunist with no real principles then. And he's gone downhill since then. This may not have been the primary motive for what he did, which is to provide the Trump camp with promotional material, with propaganda, with propaganda videos. This may not have been his primary goal, but it was maybe his secondary goal. He did this so he can keep his show on hbo. And if there's no HBO show, there are no Bill Maher stand up specials. There are no Bill Maher events anywhere. There's nobody in the audience cheering for Bill Maher. I've been in front of that audience. It's intoxicating. They have a nice room that creates a nice bounce. What's probably 300 people, sounds like 3,000. You get addicted to that pretty quickly. Then you remember it's 300 people. I'm going to try to stop talking about Bill Maher now. Our runner up, Worser Trump. CBS News reports that on March 3rd, the cell phone of retired Lieutenant General H.R. mcMaster rang. Used to work for the White House. He was the national Security advisor for the first 13 months of the first Trump Reich. So needless to say, he was surprised when the voice on the other side said, it's the White House calling for you. I assume he said something like, which White House? Our. Our White House. A day earlier, on March 2, Trump had in fact insulted H.R. mcMaster, blasted him on social media as a weak and totally ineffective loser. McMaster had just appeared on CBS on 60 Minutes. He had voiced skepticism about the Trump overture towards Putin and Putin's supposed willingness to end the war in Ukraine, which Trump believed does not apparently believe now, but may soon resume believing when he needs to change the subject again. Anyway, the phone, according to CBS with their sources. I think we can guess who the source was who could recount the phone call. The phone call began with Trump saying, henry. Henry is how Trump opened the call before launching into the conversation. According to two sources who were not authorized to discuss private conversations, the former national security advisor, Mr. McMaster, interrupted, Mr. President, this is H.R. mcMaster. Trump then asked dismissively, why the F would I talk to HR McMaster? And then Trump launched into a scathing critique of his former aide, two sources said. According to cbs, the call was brief. The explanation for this is because the White House is really good and this administration is really good at screwing up elemental communications like signal chats and phone calls. He was trying to reach the former governor Henry McMaster, and they presumably would be in the Rolodex at the White House, the electronic equivalent of a Rolodex. Henry McMaster. Henry McMaster, HR perhaps. Since he only hires idiots, let's look at the press secretary as an example of this. Since he only hires idiots, let's look at the Attorney General Blondie for a moment. Since he only hires idiots, perhaps the person thought H.R. mcMaster and Henry McMaster were the same person in Any event, this was not some fifth dimensional chess in which Trump got to call up H.R. mcMaster and abuse him. He doesn't have the guts to do that. The last line of the CBS report is the best one here. The call was brief, as is our winner, Judge Jeanine Pirro, former our very brief senatorial candidate from New York, one of the hosts of Fox News. And although it is an extraordinary competition and each day is like watching the finals of some Olympic event day after day after day, Every day since 1996, Jeanine Pirro is possibly, I mean, there's Jesse Waters there, the other people on in the Morning, Brian Kilmeade. But it's very possible that Jeanine Pirro, if I had to pick just one Jeanine Pirro, would be the person I chose to be the stupidest person ever on Fox News. And I have dated people who worked at Fox News. Jeanine Pirro. Something adds to the veneer of Janine's stupidity that is not there with, say, Harris Faulkner, who pretends to have some sort of veneer of sophistication. Jeanine Pirro resembles and sounds like every substitute teacher I had in the fifth grade in the public schools of Hastings on Hudson, New York. Okay, class, I'll be back in a minute. I gotta go smoke. You sit here, don't you? Don't light the building on fire. Ow. Ow. Janine Pirro. We found out there are people who are between the ages of 1 and 4 who are getting Social Security. Jeanine Pirro said she was thereupon interrupted by Jessica Tarlov, the liberal on the whichever, the five, the outnumbered moron today, whatever the show is called. Jessica Tarlov, who I can only assume is either serving some sort of public service work release program from some past crime or perhaps has been sent here by some deity that is making her serve out something that she did in a past life. It must have been something really, really bad. She's the one out there who has to somehow not turn around when Jeanine Pirro says, we found out there are people who are between the ages of 1 and 4 who are getting Social Security and not ball up her fist and give her a roundhouse right to the jaw? Jessica Tarloff does not do this. People always said, why do you not have a Republican on your show, Keith? Why do you not have a foil who can debate you and point out when on occasion you are mistaken? Why do you not do this? The answer is because eventually, no matter how many years I might go through without it, I would ball up my fist. Or more likely I'd simply throw some water. Or maybe the script. Or just smack somebody with a script. Jessica Tarloff does not do any of these things. It is to her great credit. I admire her greatly. As much as I admire her insight and her honesty, I admire more than anything else her ability to simply spew facts to spit the fire of truth at flammable risk. Like Jeanine Pirro, we found out there are people who are between the ages of 1 and 4 who are getting Social Security. Jessica Tarlov that's the benefit for kids whose parents are dead. Jeanine Pirro Ignored that. Just talked right through it. Never even heard it. Because I'm just gonna guess here if she's like those teachers that I had in the fifth grade because Chardonnay. Janine Page 10 must be here somewhere. Hold on, let me get page 10 of my speech. Do you have page 10? Page 10's gotta be here somewhere. Just hold up the news conference. I'll find page 10. We'll get it done eventually. Piro Today's worst person in the world.
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VGW Group void where prohibited by law 21 + terms and conditions apply. I've done all the damage I can do here. Thank you for listening. As I mentioned a segment ago, I think the show's been a little ragged today, possibly because three quarters of it has been ad libbed and I believe this will be the only episode this week I have mentioned that I am on some heavy duty antibiotics for a digestive issue and they are working well, really well. The problem is essentially gone and I don't know how many different presidential administrations that problem has been there. That's how bad a problem this is. That's going well. However, the further along the drugs get, the more side effects there are. The problem is essentially gone. So is my stamina, my sleep schedule, occasionally my voice, and as you could hear in worse persons, any self restraint I might have whatsoever. So it's probably a good idea if I don't do a second episode this week because who the hell knows what I would say then I edited stuff out of the second segment, thank you very much. Anyway, if I can. To be serious, although I did do the edits, I'm going to skip Thursday's episode. If something changes or the news demands it, or if I'm up in the middle of the night and I just Want to Record 45 to 60 Minutes About Bill Maher or Stephen A. Smith, I'll do it. I'll post something. If there's a news bulletin, I'll post something. Even if it's five minutes. But otherwise I need to actually just not do this for a week or anything for a week. If I can get away with it. So don't be surprised if there is no episode Thursday. I have to rest this voice. It may sound wonderful and mellifluous to you. It's a real strain to get this out right now. Anywho, enough about me. What do you think about me? Brian Ray and John Philip Chenale, musical directors of Countdown, arranged, produced and performed most of our music. Mr. Chennail handled orchestration and keyboards. Mr. Ray was on the guitars, bass and drums. And it was produced by TKO Brothers. Our satirical and pithy musical comments are by the best bass player stadium organist ever, Nancy Foust. The sports music is the Olbermann Theme from ESPN2 written by Mitch Warren Davis, courtesy of ESPN Inc. Other music arranged and performed by the group no horns allowed. My announcer today was my friend John Dean. Everything else was, as ever, my fault. You know, if there's no episode on Thursday, it just occurred to me for the first time. I'll have to ask Nancy Faust this by correspondence. Maybe we could just put on 45 minutes of Nancy's greatest recordings for this show, of which there is at least a bank of 45 minutes. Quite seriously, most of it less than a minute each. All of it marvelous. Just put that on. Say hi, this is Countdown. This is Keith Alderman. And now. Oh Nancy. And just play all the stuff I have in the file. It's an idea. Just joking around. That's Countdown for today. Just 1,378 days until the scheduled end of his lame duck and lame brained term. Unless Musk removes him sooner or the actuarial tables do. Remember, impeach Trump. It will not work now. It will win the Democrats the midterms. And I want polling on a presidential recall vote to put pressure on the 14 Republican senators and four Republican representatives who could save our asses. And by our I mean the American nation. This is why I don't like to ad lib. Until next time. I'm Keith Olbermann. Good morning, good afternoon, good night, screw Bill Maher and good luck. That Countdown with Keith Olbermann is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
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