← Countdown with Keith Olbermann
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This is an iHeart podcast. Nothing in life is free except this $10 that better picks is offering. Download the Better app, Pick more or less on your favorite player stats, watch the games and win some cash. It's that simple. Must be 21 or older in a jurisdiction where Better Picks operates terms and conditions black. Better Picks Sports just got better. The US 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 sur 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 Take a deep dive into the stories making the news headlines across the world. The News Agents we're not just here to tell you what's happening, but why? From me, Emily Maitlis and me, John Sopel with Global's award winning podcast the News Agents Dropping daily covering everything you need to know about politics and current affairs and the newsagents USA listening to the newsagents on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Open your free iHeart app and search the newsagents to start listening. Hey, Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. Now I don't know if you've heard, but Mint's Premium Wireless is $15 a month. But I'd like to offer one other perk. We have no stores. That means no small talk crazy weather we're having. No, it's not. It's just weather. It is an introvert's dream. Give it a try@mintmobile.com Switch upfront payment of $45 per three month plan. $15 per month equivalent required. New customer offer first three months only, then full price plan options available, taxes and fees extra. Seemintmobile.com Countdown with Keith Olbermann is a production of iHeartra. The President is unhinged. He is unwell. The President is unwell. Representative Madeleine Dean of Montgomery County, Pennsylvania with perhaps the most important 11 words in the past decade. Perhaps the most important 11 words in the history of this country. Certainly the most important 11 words for the future of this country. And if any, the President is unwell. We have at least one, probably two presidential health crises in full flower at the same time right now. And as near as I can tell, only Representative Dean is talking about them. Representative Dean and Governor Pritzker of Illinois anyway, whose diagnosis was 16 words long, and his was just as important. Quote, there is something genuinely wrong with this man. And the 25th Amendment ought to be invoked. The two crises are obvious. At his insane speech to the generals Tuesday, Trump sounded as if his charger had been left unplugged for three weeks. His voice was husky, indistinct words slurred and slowed and trailing off. And what he did say made next to no sense. Pritzker suggests dementia, which could explain both the rapidly declining mental capacity and the audible collapse. And why Trump was invisible yesterday. And why he had to send JV Vance to try to and fail to bully the White House press corps on day one of the government shutdown that Trump orchestrated. Where the hell was he? It would all also explain that missing week around Labor Day and the Cabinet meeting, the last televised Cabinet meeting in which his departmental slaves shoveled twice as much laudatory bullshit as usual, as if it were a going away roast for Trump. Maybe it was. The president is unwell. Congresswoman Dean did not just say that. She said it directly to one of Trump's most shameless political prostitutes, Speaker Mike Johnson. She said it with video rolling down a House corridor. The audio fights for your attention, but it's there. She said it. She said it. Thank God some Democrats said it to some Republican. Seriously, and carrying enough weight to convey the risk the nation. Not just the Democrats, not just the immigrants, not just the people who are not in on Trump's corruption, not just the blue states. The risk the nation is at because the president is unwell. It was recorded from afar and the audio hurts your ear and hurts your brain, but the words are there. Here is just a few seconds of them, plus the remarks from Pritzker. The president is unwell. How about the tweet last night with Hakeem and Schumer? It's disgraceful. It's bigoted. It's racist. You should call it out. Is it racist? You put a sombrero on a black man who's the leader of the House. You don't see that as racist? We need to desperately to leave. It appears that Donald Trump not only has dementia set in, but he's copying tactics of Vladimir Putin sending troops into cities, thinking that that's some sort of proving ground for war, or that indeed there's some sort of internal war going on in the United States is just frankly, inane and I'm concerned for his health. There is something genuinely wrong with this man, and the 25th Amendment ought to be invoked. The rest of the tape is only intermittently clear. Representative Dean was confronting Speaker Johnson about Trump's deranged and rambling speech to the generals summoned to Virginia by the equally unwell Secretary of Defense Pete Brilcream. Hegseth quote, the President is unhinged. He is unwell. And later, from the Congresswoman. Oh my God, that performance in front of the generals. The President is unwell. He said the military should use American cities as training grounds. He said America is under invasion from within. He appeared on the stage in Quantico Tuesday morning and he was expecting applause and didn't know what to do when he didn't get it. And he then begged for it because the President is unwell. And Congresswoman Dean, bless her, said it out loud, said it without spin, said it without any of the soul sucking, rehearsed add ons like and. And he should be focused on helping Americans and just saying it. Just saying in essence. No, no, no. The rest of this is trivia. The President is unhinged. The President is unwell, yet the President is still in charge. And the speaker, he answered by telling the Congresswoman he didn't see Trump unravel in front of the generals, which could be true, but I bet it's not what he told Trump. Johnson also said the AI racist video of Schumer and Jeffries was just a joke and asked Dean if it really was racist, which could be true, but I bet that's not what he told himself. Once you live one lie Mike Johnson, the next 50,000 are easy. The President also posted a nauseating, racist, demeaning AI video. It had a fake Chuck Schumer and a fake Akeem Jeffries. And the fake Akeem Jeffries had a sombrero and what is commonly referred to as a mustache, an exaggerated mustache added onto his head. Trump did this after having posted a nauseating, deceptive, dangerous AI video with a fake Fox News report supposedly narrated by his own daughter in law, in which he essentially promised Americans immortality in special hospital beds that don't actually exist. Early yesterday afternoon, his Renfield in this equation, Vance mocked those who called the racist video, you know, racist. Said he didn't understand why a black man would find a fabricated video of himself wearing a sombrero racist. Late yesterday afternoon, someone acting in Trump's name made sure we all got the point that the Trump White House is this close to having Press Secretary Levitt or somebody else wear blackface. It began to play Trump's sombrero video on a loop on monitors in the White House press briefing room in Other words, Trump did just about the usual number of insane things or others did them on his behalf that a functioning but still insane man will do every day, as he's done for most of the last 10 years. Only. Only these days have been different, and that day was totally different. It was only a start, but it was a start. Dean said something, Pritzker said something. What it could mean in a moment, what it has meant in the last decade. In a moment. First, those receipts from Quantico, and then one more time from Representative Dean. I've never walked into a room so silent before. This is very. Don't laugh, don't laugh. You're not allowed to do that. You know what? Just have a good time. And if you want to applaud, you applaud. And if you want to do anything you want, you can do anything you want. And if you don't like what I'm saying, you can leave the room. Of course, there goes your rank. There goes your future. And I told Pete we should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military. National Guard, but military, because we're going into Chicago very soon. That's a big city with an incompetent governor. Stupid governor. Stupid. They threw him out of his family business. He was so stupid. I know the family. He becomes governor, he's got money. Not money that he made, but he ran for governor, he won, and now he criticizes us all the time. And last month, I signed an executive order to provide training for Quick Reaction Force that can help quell civil disturbances. This is going to be a big thing for the people in this room because it's the enemy from within and we have to handle it before it gets out of control. It won't get out of control. And this is going to be a major part for some of the people in this room. That's a war, too. It's a war from within. The president is unwell. I have literally grown old insisting the president is unwell. When I started, he wasn't even president. I have been the boy who cried wolf because there has been a wolf at the door since 2015. And it's Trump's mental instability. And it has been getting worse, which is pretty bad because it started at narcissism and self obsession and not really human like. And now, now it's 10 years later. Plus whatever is physically wrong with him, whatever that is, seems to be on the way to its victory. And you are not hearing about this on the news. Right wing news, understandably. Why would they want to talk about this. But for the rest of it, you're not hearing about it. Because the entirety of the mainstream political media in this country is still equipped only to cover about eight kinds of stories. And a desperately mentally ill or desperately physically ill president is not one of those eight kinds of stories. Government shutdowns, about which the media always, always, always looks into the wrong end of the telescope, are one of the eight. That one of eight or so is also about how many American citizens have even the slightest awareness of or interest in a shutdown, certainly in its first week. That's just a coincidence. I can't speak to what's wrong with Donald Trump physically, but it's not good. And you and I have already gone through the clues that have escaped from the pavement, like gray skin on the hand that he covers up with the other hand whenever he can, to the makeup atop the plastic wrap used on that hand, to the often indistinct and slurring voice, the slurred words, the eyes for some reason reduced to slits. But if we all live through this, the subject that will surprise historians the most is for how long. It was clear this man was mentally incompetent and nobody did anything about it. Ordinarily, I would say my conscience was clear about this, because I first brought it up in June of 2016 on the Chelsea Handler show on Netflix. Yes, there was one look it up. Then the next month, Vanity Fair published a piece I did called Could Trump pass a Sanity Test? And we made a video of it. Apparently I didn't talk loud enough on the Chelsea Handler show, or the article wasn't long enough, or we didn't make enough videos. I'm going to take the Could Trump pass a sanity test? Article and read it again, now virtually unchanged, with a few notes, because it's all still true, only way worse. But it was all there when this article came out 111 months ago. 111 could Trump pass a sanity test? July 21, 2016 short answer? Probably not. First, several important caveats. There is little worse and nothing cheesier than questioning the psychological stability of a public figure, especially a candidate for president. Even in this case. Except that in his year of campaigning, Donald Trump has called Lindsey Graham a nut job, Glenn Beck a real nut job, and Bernie Sanders a wacko. Trump has insisted Ben Carson's got pathological disease and asked about Barack Obama. Is our president insane? He called Ted Cruz unstable, unhinged, a little bit of a maniac and crazy or very dishonest. He also called the entire CNBC channel crazy. He called Megan Kelly crazy at least six times. Respectful reticence about aspersions and cliches and mental health questions in a time in which mocking was seemingly slowly maturing into concern that died a long time ago in this presidential cycle of 2016, and it died at Donald Trump's hands. Moreover, if the question is asked seriously and not gratuitously, just the examination might explain how Trump has seemingly survived dozens of moments that might each have been campaign enders for almost anybody else. Why have we not asked if a given presidential candidate might be disqualified from office due to psychological reasons? Because we not only can't see this forest for the trees, but each time we try, there are even more trees blocking our view. In the 24 hour news cycle, each successive John Yerkes Iceland moment is not registered, but cumulatively it merely supplants the one from last week, or yesterday or this morning. This could also explain Trump's seeming imperviousness to his own mind bending campaign. Surely it must be exhausting to attack the Pope February 18, attack President Clinton May 18 attack John McCain July 18, attack Mexicans June 16 attack Muslims December 8 attack Candidates who use a teleprompter May 26 just before you give a speech using a teleprompter May 26. It's got to be exhausting. Unless, as the old joke goes, no pain, no gain. Also, no brain, no pain. Anyway, the actual sanity test I found for this article is called, by delicious coincidence, the Hair Psychopathy Checklist, revised, introduced by a Canadian criminal psychologist named Robert D. Hare in 1980. And that's H A R E. It's still in use in some quarters, though with ever more diffuse and specific mental health diagnoses. It is not without its critics, however. As a practicing therapist who walked me through it agreed it serves as a kind of triage device to separate the injured from the tripping from the psychopathic. And about that word we seem to have completely muddled up. Sociopath and psychopath. Sociopath? Think Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, living out there in his shack in the woods, feeling nothing for other humans and unable to interact with them, literally mailing it in. Psychopath? Think Ted Bundy, feeling nothing for other humans but having long ago learned how to expertly mimic relationships by being whatever he needed to be to whomever he needed to use, killing at least 30 women, serving as his own counsel and cross examining a female witness proposing marriage to her while she was on the stand and getting her to say yes for each of the 20 items on the Hair Psychopathy Checklist, you're supposed to assign the subject a 01 point or two. The highest and most dangerous score is thus 40. In the United States, the accepted minimum score for possible psychopathy, meaning you might be nuts, is 30. So those are the rules. Let's play the Freud. The test begins with an assessment of charm that is superficial Forced charm, Faked charm. May I dare say this Trump charm. I had interviewed Donald Trump as long ago as 1983, and I always thought he was a horse's ass. But after running into him when we both worked at NBC and then in the lobby of one of his apartment buildings in which I lived, I was stunned to encounter a quiet, succinct, seemingly sincere co worker and in essence, landlord. In one role, he described himself as an anti Bush, pro Obama liberal. In the other, he urged me to contact him personally with any problems or suggestions about the building in which I lived. And then he got on the campaign stage and boom. He was America's newest Mussolini impersonator. For a long while, I was flummoxed as to which of these truly mutually exclusive personalities was the act. Then I was reminded that it didn't really matter which, that having multiple personalities should by itself preclude one from having access to multiple nuclear warheads. I was explaining this on Bill Maher's show in November 2015 when Marr suddenly got so gee whiz that I almost didn't recognize him. Me too. He exclaimed boyishly. Marr, cynical to such a degree that it makes me seem as earnestly faithful as a pope, said he had just been as convinced as I was, and thus just as stunned by this hydra of Trumpian Personas. He'd always been nice to me. I can easily imagine myself being taken in by a con artist like Donald Trump. I mean, Trump wrote me a fan letter once, but Maher. Maher, who called me a corporate sellout in 1978 when I had to that point, earned about $200 from all the corporations in the world combined. He fooled Bill Maher. So if you're giving out points about fake charm, Trump gets both of them. The next topic was an excessive sense of self worth. No kidding. I feel like a supermodel, he said on June 18, 2016 in Phoenix. Except, like, times 10. It's true. I'm a supermodel. I'm on the COVID of these magazines. I'm on the COVID of the biggest magazines. This was stated by the first Oompa Loompa American to run for national office. He is bright orange. He is an old man affecting a hair color and style that would have been rejected by the 80s synth pop group A Flock of Seagulls. I served with supermodels. I knew supermodels. Supermodels were friends of mine. Donald, you're no supermodel, but that is two more points for you. The test moves on. To ask if the subject can't mentally sit still, must he always try to make things happen, good, bad or otherwise? Not easily bored, but almost impossible to focus. Acknowledging that a lot of us get a point or two here, I certainly do not. All of those job changers of mine were their fault. Let me first quote the introduction from Trump's think like a billionaire. Don't take vacations. What's the point? Have a short attention span. Most successful people have very short attention spans. It has a lot to do with imagination. Here are some of the wide ranging businesses Trump's short attention span has dragged him and the world into Real estate, vitamins, rentals, books, condos, chocolate bars, golf courses, pro football, beauty pageants, steaks, board games, television, hosting, bottled water, universities, menswear, professional wrestling, mortgages, airlines, fragrances, coffee, restaurants, energy drinks, vodka, search engines, urinalysis and of course, bicycle racing. Bicycle racing. The Tour de Trump in which I noted at the time contestants raced 300 laps around his ego. As a 2025 aside, can we add crypto and flags and bibles and merch and 2016 hats and 2020 hats and 2028 hats and 2032 hats and mugshot merch and. And influence peddling and. And and two more points. The test now gets heavy. Is there lying involved again to June 18, 2016 at the Woodlands in Texas after the horrible Pulse Club shooting. Quote if some of those wonderful people had guns strapped right here, right to their waist or right to their ankle and this son of a bitch comes out and starts shooting and one of the people in that room happened to have it and goes boom. You know what? That would have been a beautiful, beautiful sight, folks. That would have been a beautiful, beautiful sight. June 20th. Two days later on Twitter when I said that if within the Orlando club you had some people with guns, I was obviously talking about additional guards or employees. Can I stop here or should I walk you through the hot and cold running lies alternating with the admissions of the times in the 90s, he pretended to be his own spokesman, John Miller and John Barron, or say virtually every other thing he said since this article came out nine years ago. Another two points on your scoreboard, please. The test then asks if the patient is manipulative or cons people. You think I'll add today from the perspective of 2025, who should we ask to write the guest essay on this question here? Mike Pence, Maybe Trump's own daughter, Ivanka. I'm giving another two points here. Next, we remove to the absence of any sense of guilt or regret. Asked about his faith at the Family Leadership Summit in Ames, Iowa, by the moderator Frank Luntz In July 2015, Trump said, People are so shocked when they find out I am Protestant, I am Presbyterian, and I go to church, and I love God and I love my church. Luntz then followed up with the softball of literally biblical proportions. Whether Trump has ever asked God for forgiveness for his own actions. I'm not sure I have. I just go on and try to do a better job from there. I don't think so. I think if I do something wrong, I think I just try and make it right. I don't bring God into that picture. I don't. Trump then explained that Holy Communion sufficed. When I drink my little wine, which is about the only wine I drink, and have my little cracker, I guess that is a form of asking for forgiveness. And I do that as often as possible because I feel cleans, I think in terms of let's go on and let's make it right. The art of the deal Indeed, Trump picked up this thread with Jake Tapper in January 2016. Again, the subject was religion. I like to be good. I don't like to have to ask for forgiveness. Tapper then asked about a rival, presumed to be Ted Cruz, who was conducting field research into the efficacy of questioning Trump's religious convictions. He shouldn't be doing that. Very unethical. Within a few weeks, Trump attacked Cruz's religious convictions. On February 12, in fact, he tweeted, how can Ted Cruz be an evangelical Christian when he lies so much and is so dishonest? Not a week after that, Pope Francis answered a question about Trump's overall tone. A person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges is not Christian. Within hours, Trump slammed the Pope, fantasized about an ISIS attack on the Vatican that only he, Trump, could stop, and concluded this remarkable circle of illogic by writing, for a religious leader to question a person's faith is disgraceful. This was right after he questioned a person's faith, after he twice admitted that his faith included the option to not ask forgiveness and not, quote, bring God into that picture and just four months before he'd go back to this well and question Hillary Clinton's faith again. That's two more solid points. The next item had to be explained to me thoroughly from my analyst friend. It's the psychological jargon term shallow affect. In sum, it's tone deafness when it comes to explaining relationships between people. For instance, if somebody got up on stage for the sake of argument, we'll say it's Billy Joel at Madison Square Garden and that person insulted you by sarcastically dedicating to you his song the Entertainer as a way of saying you weren't a leader or a politician, but merely an entertainer, you might take umbrage or at least recognize the insult. Not if you are suffering from shallow effort. Thank you Billy Joel, Trump tweeted on May 27, 2016. Many friends just told me you gave me a very kind shout out at msg. Appreciate it. Love your music. Another example of shallow affect would be a kind of approach to how people influence each other's lives that could be diagrammed as Event B follows Event A. Therefore, Event A caused Event B. If, say, a prominent athlete ignored you or in some other tangential way interacted with you before failing or being injured, you might think in passing that you had somehow jinxed him, especially if you were still 9 or 10 years old. But you probably wouldn't publicly claim it. Not unless you're suffering from shallow affect. Derek Jeter had a great career until three days ago, Trump tweeted on Oct. 15, 2012, after the baseball player shattered his ankle during a game when he sold his apartment at Trump World Tower. I told him not to sell karma. The answer this chain letter or many ankles will be broken theme was not some early passing expression of the now familiar syndrome we might describe as TWT tweeting while Trump five days later Derek Jeter broke ankle one day after he sold his apartment in Trump World Tower. And just to finish this off, another aspect to shallow affect would be an unwillingness to acknowledge reliance on others. On March 16, 2016, Trump was asked about which foreign policy consultants he was speaking to. I'm speaking with myself, number one, because I have a very good brain, he said, apparently. Seriously, I know what I'm doing and I listen to a lot of people, I talk to a lot of people, and at the appropriate time, I'll tell you who the people are. But my primary consultant is myself, and I have a good instinct for this stuff. As an aside, is the narrator anywhere to no, he's off. It's his break. On June 24, 2016 in Scotland, Trump again described his dream consultant, saying he spoke to, quote, foreign policy advisors all the time. But the advice has to come from me. The advice has to come from me. The effect is shallow. The point score is not like that last statement. There's two of them. Then it's on to lack of empathy. How much lack of empathy can you have? June 12, 2016, hours after the last shots had been fired at the Pulse Club in Orlando. Appreciate the congrats for being right on radical Islamic terrorism. I don't want congrats. I want toughness and vigilance. We must be smart. As a reminder, you cannot give 1500 points for just one item on the Hair Psychopathy checklist, even if that total is seemingly deserved. Just two more here. Then there's a lifestyle question. Does the subject of your exam live his life as, you know, a parasite? This does not mean, as I originally thought, living materially off mom and dad or others. Although that can be a minor component. Especially if dad gave you a million dollar loan circa 1970 and you get 9 million more from a bank on the promise of your inheritance. And ultimately you got about 40 million on your father's death and you considered all that just a small start in life. No, it has more to do with taking credit for the work of others to the degree of erasing all record of their contributions and slapping your name on their efforts, often in transactions in which you are literally renting the use of your name as a brand and nothing else. You know, like Trump palace, the Tour de Trump, Trump Steaks, Trump Taj Mahal, Donald Trump the fragrance, and of course, Castle Trumpula. And just as in court, a wife cannot be forced to give evidence of parasitic lifestyle against her husband, despite Melania Trump's convention speech fiasco in 2016. Unless her husband wrote or stole that for her. Remember that where her speech sounded suspiciously like Michelle Obama's? Again, just two points. The midpoint two point question asks if the subject had poor behavioral controls. Well, what's your definition of poor As a 2025 aside, I'd like to note the next sentence was written by me in 2016. Well, he had poor behavioral controls, but everybody agrees he's going to dial it all back this time. Right after he pivots. Pivots towards dialing it back. Right? Judge Gonzalo Curiel. Right. Don King, Joel Osteen, Ben Roethlisberger, Pete Rose, or anybody else who Trump claimed had endorsed him when they had not. Or the Hispanic ABC reporter he called A sleaze or the losing Republican presidential hopefuls he mocked in a video the day after he insisted he was going to unite the Republican Party. So we are at the halfway mark of this 2016 exam and the article I wrote, Could Trump pass a sanity test? 2 points per topic. 30 or 35 points is real trouble. So far, he's been graded for a possible 20 points, and he has 20 points the rest of it. The next topic is promiscuous sexual behavior. O that's next. This is Countdown. Back with the second half of the July 2016 Vanity Fair article I wrote, can Trump pass a Sanity test? Where with the help of a therapist, I tried to score how nuts he was even then, from afar. All this in light of Congresswoman Dean's pithy and quick observation the President is unwell, and Governor Pritzker's invocation of invoking the 25th Amendment to remove him from office because there's something really wrong with him. Now, to remind you, you're supposed to give the patient no points, one point or two point per topic. That's it. No variations. So far, we've done half of the topics, 10 of them. He's gotten 20 points. That's not the flex that he would think it would be if you told him to resume with the test. Is the individual sexually promiscuous? Ahem. When I was a young radio sportscaster, I was given the great opportunity to interview by telephone a famous athlete who had just been suspended from his sport because he had gone to work for a casino. The athlete, now deceased, but we'll still use a pseudonym, we'll call him Jimmy Smith, was expecting my call. This, as near as I can remember, it was the transcript of the start of that call. Ring, ring. Voice sounding kind of like Hattie McDaniel, the Academy Award winning actress from Gone with the wind. Mr. Smith's residence. Me. Hi. Milton Richmond from UPI, gave me Mr. Smith's number and said he would be willing to give me a brief interview. May I. May I speak with him, please? Voice sounding kind of like Hattie McDaniel, the Academy Award winning actress from Gone with the Wind. Who's calling, please? Me. My name is Keith Olbermann from UPI radio. Jimmy Smith. This is Jimmy. As silly as the story of the whole fake Trump spokesman was, of course he has invisible friends. Of course they're PR flacks. Lost in the laughter were three important details. Firstly, as my conversation with Jimmy Smith and his imaginary housekeeper suggests, people do do this, but secondly, when they do it, they usually try to disguise their own voice. Thirdly, rarely do they assume other identities in order to provide the second component to what we categorize as promiscuity. Besides multiple partners boasting about it. 1991 John Miller to Sue Carswell, then of people as of 2015 with Vanity Fair, for whom I wrote this article, quote, quote, he's meaning Trump, somebody that has a lot of options and frankly, he gets called by everybody. He gets called by everybody in the book in terms of women. I mean, they call, they just call. He's living with Marla and he's got three other girlfriends, unquote, Trump in his own voice pretending to be somebody else, talking about Trump and the women he bedded. That that'll be two more points next. The test asks if there were conduct problems early in the subject's life. When I was a kid, probably four or five, I twice hit a friend of mine in the back of the head with a metal toy. I remember shock, blood, no stitches. And then a series of family meetings. We talked. The folks got some professional advice. They got me into organized sports and exercise, and I quickly realized that just because I was frustrated with somebody, that was not a good reason to hit them. Regardless, when I had my analyst friend run the hair psychopathy checklist on me, I insisted she give me a point on this, because hitting a kid in the back of the head with a toy fire engine and later a magnet was at minimum, an indicator of the potential for early behavior problems. So if you're giving me a point for this, how many points would you give a child who attacked one of his own teachers? Quote, I actually gave a teacher a black eye, trump wrote in the Art of the deal in 1987, barely concealing his retroactive glee. He placed the time of the assault as the second grade, likely making him seven years old. I punched my music teacher because I didn't think he knew anything about music. And I almost got expelled. What kind of kid punches an adult in the face? I mean, we hear about punching up, but think back to being that age. 7. The one universal I can recall was that no 7 year old ever dreamt of trying to physically take on an adult for the simple and unavoidable reason that virtually any adult was several times your own weight. If you picked the wrong one, they might do more than just defend themselves. Even knocking an adult down could be an exercise in self destruction if he fell on you. The most reality challenged of all of my young classmates, the kid who ran headfirst into the side of a moving school bus for reasons that still remain unclear. Ten presidents later, he would never have hit an adult. There is a second version of this same story from a Trump biographer. He did indeed give the teacher a black eye, but not with a punch. He threw an eraser at him and hit him just right, because that's way better. Regardless, the version Trump tells is of the a four foot tall edition of himself punching what was at least a 5 foot tall adult in the eye hard enough to give the man a shiner. The only argument against calling this early behavior problems is that the first word implies that it stopped at some point. Two more points. The test, you will have noticed, bounces around a bit from topic to topic. From early behavior, we switch back to long term goals. Does the patient lack them? So far, Mr. Trump has theoretically aced our exam, but reality now invades our idyllic scene. There could be a thousand things psychologically wrong with the process by which Trump ends up with a low score on this one. In the big picture, you would never have thought Mussolini was less crazy just because he left Italy for Switzerland in 1902, in part to avoid military service. And exactly 20 years later, Mussolini became head of the Italian state and often dressed up in his military uniform. But tests are tests. There are rules here. And if you say this guy Trump so lacks realistic long term goals that he thinks he can become president and he winds up president twice, the long term goals turned out to be not that unrealistic, huh? As I look back at this article from 2025, I desperately want to give Trump a point on this one here, because once again he boasts about having the very thing that psychology says is a warning sign. Except, you know, he was right. He became president. In the preface to Think Like a Billionaire, Trump quotes the author Richard almost all successful alpha personalities display a single minded determination to impose their vision on world an irrational belief in unreasonable goals bordering sometimes on lunacy. And it worked for him. So on this one, Trump you'll get nothing and you'll like it. He could have 26 points. He only has 24. Next, is the patient impulsive? In March 2016, writing in Psychology Today, Dr. Glenn Geher offered a different definition of impulsiveness. It's not necessarily the same as rashness or its positive twin, quick thinking. True, impulsiveness usually leaves fingerprints of edgy, though not automatically pernicious behavior. Rather, it makes one do these things in the wrong place at the wrong time. Like as Dr. Gaher was analyzing, discussing the size of your penis during a presidential debate he didn't include the other examples where the context turns that behavior or that language from borderline to impulsive. You might appropriately bring up that topic in bed or at a bar, or even at your tailors. But it's like saying a female presidential candidate had been schlonged in a primary. Like criticizing the face of one of your female rivals during a speech. Like crudely referring to a network television figure's menstruation while on a rival television network. Back to two points out of two. Here down the stretch we come. This is another seemingly easy item that is actually difficult to nail to the wall. What is irresponsibility? Not crediting John McCain's heroism because he got captured when you yourself avoided the military draft and service four, maybe five times? Is irresponsibility shown by taking a position on guns in nightclubs that's so extreme that the president and legislative director of the National God damned Rifle association condemned it is irresponsibility, at least to the millions of lost souls who actually thought you'd make a great American president rather than merely the last American president. Is irresponsibility to even make a joke if it was a joke that if you were offered $5 billion to drop out, quote, I guess we'd have to think about it. Is the word more applicable or less applicable if it comes out the next day that during May your campaign spent more than twice as much at businesses you own than it did on payroll? The problem with this heading is that so much of what fits vaguely into irresponsibility, promiscuity, bankruptcy, punching out your teach fits like jigsaw pieces into the other categories in this test. That doesn't mean the examples are ineligible, just imprecise. But it does mean we have to score conservatively. So let's give him one of the two points. We are asked next to assess whether the patient accepts responsibility for their own actions. Again, you cannot give more than two points in any category. Both of my favorite examples here involve interviews with the Washington Post. Remember the Washington Post? On May 24, 2016, Trump was caught having not yet donated the money from the purported veterans fundraiser he staged as counter programming to the January Republican debate that he bailed out of. The Post quoted his remarks at the fundraiser, which was televised nationally. We just cracked $6 million, right? $6 million, Trump replied to them. I didn't say six, the somewhat startled Post staffer said. It was on tape. Play it for me, trump replied. Because I'd like to hear it, the Post reported. Trump then manipulated the conversation to Another topic precluding the playing of the video 11 days later, the tape of him speaking in his own voice but pretending to be his spokesman John Miller, was revealed when, during a phone interview, a Post reporter brought up that proof, the John Miller tape. Trump simply hung up the phone. Two more points Next. There's a question here about wedding vows. Lots of marriages, short ones. This depends on numerical definitions. Despite the falling of religious barriers against divorce and the rise of the prenup, the mean is still around just 1.2 1.3 marriages per American, and the number of men who marry more than once is only about 15%. But Trump's marriages still total only three, and their lengths 14, six and now nearly 21 years are hardly in the annulled within 32 hours range I mentioned earlier. So no points here. Okay, once again, we swing. We swing. Back to youth. Was the guy or gal ever a juvenile delinquent? Now, not every student at Trump's high priced alma mater, New York Military Academy Nima, as we used to call it when I was in high school and our teams played, theirs was automatically the son of rich parents who had been afforded the choice not offered their less affluent fellow troubled kids. Military school or reform school? That would be a cliche, but the one on the record firsthand assessment we have of Trump as child cuts through cliches and reputations. Quote, he was a pretty rough fellow when he was small, said Donald Trump's father, explaining why he had to pull him out of a traditional prep school in their native Queens and ship him away to Nima. There are plenty of classmates at that military boarding school who paint a picture of a kid always throwing hands. On June 23, 2016, the Washington Post profiled Trump as Nima inmate. Quote struck with a broomstick during a fight, he tried to push a fellow cadet out the second floor window, only to be thwarted when two other students intervened. The paper also quoted one of his pre Nima teachers. He would sit with his arms folded with this look on his face. I use the word surly almost daring you to say one thing or another that wouldn't settle with him. The Post quotes a younger neighbor named Dennis Burnham. Once, when she left Dennis in a playpen in a backyard adjoining the Trump's property, Martha Burnham returned to find Donald throwing rocks at her son. She saw Donald standing at the fence, dennis Burnham said, using the playpen for target practice. This is the sort of stuff that would make a true bully flinch. Plus we have the boast from little Donnie Trump. At about 7, blackening the eye of an adult. Do we have records of the police being called? No. Nor does the category heading ask for them. And that applies to the next question, too. Has there been revocation of conditional release? The what now? Revocation of conditional release. Now, don't be worried if this confuses you. Your confusion only means you are not a parole officer. This is legal lingo for getting your parole revoked or your probation converted into jail time because you were just caught doing that illegal thing that had gotten you in trouble in the first place. It is very specifically a criminal record issue. It's tempting, based on what's happened since he left office the first time, to give him a point here, but I'm going to do it because that's not what the record says at the moment. We'll Revisit this in 2029, if there is a 2029. Finally, is there true criminality and is it multifaceted? Not just the same crime over and over again as in the previous question, but lots of different kinds of crimes. The psychological professional and I got into a big debate about this one. She argued that criminal is not necessarily meant literally here, that if you scammed charities, stole money from grandmothers via a phony and directed about 20% of your own campaign's monthly spending towards companies you own and the reimbursement for travel by your kids, it all qualified. My point was that the word criminal is used. Not dishonest, not unethical, not nefarious, capital C criminal. And the perp walk or multimillion dollar fine and restitution, which that implies, not that that couldn't have been the end result from Trump, you. And then came, you know, his presidency and stealing all those, you know, espionage kind of document stuffs. And the Eugene Carroll case and the other Eugene Carroll case and January 6th and all the convictions. And, and, and this just proves, take heart, young man, no matter how old you are, you still can get crazier. Give him the two points for a final score of 33. So there you have it. Trump peters out towards the end there. But with 30 points being the marker at which professionals could present a diagnosis of psychopathy. You're a psychopath. The implications are clear. Our Trumper's New Clothes media rightly sees the latest Trump event, whatever it is this time, as one of the most unbelievable developments in American political history. But the simple mechanics of following, reporting and writing the proverbial new high in low every single day means that they could be missing one overriding truth about the mental health of the most remarkable presidential candidate ever. In short, our amateurs exercise with the very professional Hair Psychopathy checklist suggests that if you were betting on it, you'd probably want to bet that Donald Trump couldn't pass a sanity test. Open Book and now, having slogged through this inventory of the Citizen Kane's storage unit of bizarre Presidential candidate conduct, go look at social media. Because in the time it has taken you to listen to this podcast, even if, as Congresswoman Dean says, the President is unwell, he's probably just done something new to raise his score, hasn't he? Let's be real. Life happens. Kids spill, pets shed and accidents are inevitable. Find a sofa that can keep up@washablesofas.com Starting at just $699, our sofas are fully machine washable inside and out, so you can say goodbye to stains and hello to worry free living. Made with liquid and stain resistant fabrics, they're kid proof, pet friendly and built for everyday life. Plus, changeable fabric covers let you refresh your sofa whenever you want. Want neat flexibility? Our modular design lets you rearrange your sofa anytime to fit your space, whether it's a growing family room or a cozy apartment. 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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 Take a deep dive into the stories making the news headlines across the world. The News Agents we're not just here to tell you what's happening, but why? From me, Emily Maitlis and me, John Sopel with Global's award winning podcast the News Agents Dropping daily covering everything you need to know about politics and current affairs and The News Agents USA listening to the News Agents on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Open your free iHeart app and search the newsagents to start listening. I've done all the damage I can do here. Thank you for listening. Most of our Countdown music was arranged, produced and performed by Brian Ray and John Philip Chenale, our musical directors of Countdown. It was produced by TKO Brothers. Mr. Ray was on the guitars, bass and drums. Mr. Chenal handled orchestration and keyboards. Our satirical and pithy musical comments are by the best baseball stadium organist ever, Nancy Foust. The olderman Theme from ESPN2 written by Mitch Warren Davis, courtesy of ESPN Inc. Is the sports music other music arranged and performed by the group no horns allowed. The test is copyrighted by the people from the test. The article Some of that's mine. Some of that belongs to Vanity Fair. Whatever they want $10. I'll send them $10. Everything else was, as always, my fault. That's Countdown for today. Day 246 of America held hostage. Just 1,217 days until the scheduled end of his lame duck and lame brain term. Unless he is removed sooner by MAGA and Jeffrey Epstein or the pavement on his hand or stuck escalator or the Psychopathy test or Tylenol or the President is unwell. The next scheduled countdown is Monday. Till then, I'm Keith Olbermann. Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and good luck. 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Open your free iHeart app and search the newsagents to start listening. Hey, Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile. Now I don't know if you've heard, but Mint's Premium Wireless is $15 a month. But I'd like to offer one other perk we have have no stores. That means no small talk crazy weather we're having. No it's not. It's just weather. It is an introvert's dream. Give it a try@mintmobile.com switch upfront. Came in a $45 for a 3 month plan, $15 per month equivalent required. New customer offer first 3 months only, then full price plan options available, taxes and fees extra. See mintmobile.com this is an iHeart podcast 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 podcast.