Keith Olbermann (11:23)
32 days. See, he's great because he bombed Iran and the war is shorter than Vietnam. Well, I'm sold when it ended. After every cliche except your mileage may vary and employees must wash hands, Trump said good night and then forgot to leave the podium. He may still be standing there, by the way, about having this country, you know, America is stupid, says Trump, about having this country pull out of NATO because none of our NATO allies decided to join in on this. And incidentally, although he did take a shot at them, he didn't mention NATO or pulling out of it once. He didn't mention NATO at all. I hate to break it to the isolationists, but this whole question of us pulling out of NATO may be too late. The British Prime Minister Keir Starmer already said flat out, this is not the United Kingdom's war. Now from the inewspaper in England comes word that the British are holding back intelligence from this country because they do not trust America with it. The Germans, the Italians, the French, the Czechs have already either refused to participate in Trump's folly in Iran or they are shying away from this intel question Right now. There is no NATO. Or worse yet, there is a NATO and we are not in it anymore because of Trump. That's the same Trump who said on Tuesday that Iran wasn't even shooting back at us. It is clear the story with which I led this program a week ago today about the video they show him every morning that that story was correct. That two minutes of highlights of American aircraft blowing stuff up in Iran, that's all he sees of this war, all he knows about it. That and how many days it's been. Look, he's an imbecile and a sadist and because they didn't send him to jail instead of the New York Military Academy, he thinks he's a general when my dogs literally have a better understanding of battle than he does. But on top of this, it is obvious they are keeping reality from him. They have not shown him the AWACS command and control craft, the flying radar destroyed on the ground in Saudi Arabia. They have not told him his multi million dollar missiles are being wasted trying to shoot down $20,000 Iranian drones. And why would they tell him? What would that get Hegseth other than the crazy old guy shouting at him and saying we are the only country in the world stupid enough to have Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Anything. Instead, Hegseth humors him and shows him the videotape and Trump thinks we're winning when we are in fact still losing. And then Hegseth goes and calls off track war betting or whatever it is Hegseth does in his spare time. Three other things to note here before we get to the boobs in Trump's cabinet, so to speak. Approval disapproval. UMass Amherst poll. He's down to one third of this nation. He is at 33% approved, 62 disapprove. That is 29 points underwater. And this would be the point where the Baywatch crew says, dude, we did the best we could. Same poll a year ago. He was 44 approved, 51 disapproved. He's lost 22 points in exactly one year. No wonder he issued another executive order that reeks more of panic than of fascism. Demanding the creation of a federal list of citizens, demanding that the post office then only send mail ballots to people on the list. Check each envelope against this list of 300 million people. One assumes the reaction at the US Post Office is you want it when? This November? How about the the midterms in the year 2054? Also, Alderman will have that envelope from your accountant at your house no later than next January. February latest. There's also the fact that such a list, such unconstitutional theft of the authority over elections, which is the state's authority, is incredibly illegal. Also, just to ratchet up the larfs, who does Trump want to make the list? He wants Homeland Security to do this. Homeland Security where John Wayne Gacy Mullen now presides and where the poor new secretary is presumably discovering very unfortunate things in the nooks and crannies of his office that were left there by his predecessor and her family. Why the hell's there being so much balloons in my desks? One bit of international news now. He could completely cancel the election there or find other ways to alter this. He is the role model for Trump after all on this. But all the polling says the Hungarian would be dictator. Viktor Orban will get his clock cleaned in the elections there on the 12th. His opponent, Peter Magyar, surrounded by enthusiastic crowds. Or Orban pretty much has just Trump and Tucker Carlson showing up. Magyar has grown his lead to 56 to 37 in the polls. Magyar has added a net five points to his lead in the last three weeks. The problem here, of course, is Orban is about three years ahead of Trump in killing off the lingering melody of democracy in his country. So no lead is automatically safe. And now back to Trump, that Paula White, the smarmy evangelical who is this close to snake handling while serving as Trump's religious fluffer, whose gnome or Gates or Patel, like scandal, has yet to be revealed. Get your bets in now. Will it be girlfriends? Will it be a chain of abortion clinics that she has money in? Will it be a tape of her sleeping with atheists Will it be three husbands? Oh, wait, I'm sorry, she's had three husbands. Anyway, yesterday, Paula White made the big leap on behalf of the evangels. Trump, it turns out, is Jesus Christ. Mr. President, no one has paid the price like you have paid the price. It almost cost you your life. You were betrayed and arrested and falsely accused. It's a familiar pattern that our Lord and Savior showed us. Jesus H. Christ. So Trump is the equivalent of Jesus video or it didn't happen. Time for our regular check in on the perverts in the Trump administration. Hacked video of Cash Patel sound sashaying around a room in short shorts. Still pictures of Lindsey Graham at Disney World, aged 70 by himself, no kids, carrying a bubble wand. Press secretary Caroline Levitt getting Getty Images to delete a photo taken of her at a White House Thanksgiving photo op where she was the host for the photos, where photographers were encouraged to take photos where she was dressed as a pilgrim. For the photos, the photo was shot from a low angle. There was a turkey, there was Levitt, and I guess she thought it was difficult to tell the difference. In the photo, Rubio impaired means as yet unidentified, insisting there is no birthright citizenship. Under the Constitution, your parents have to be citizens. Even though his parents were not citizens and he is a birthright citizenship citizen. And of course, the cornucopia of images of Kristi Noem's husband and his extramarital fetish for women who have had plastic surgery out of proportion with all reality. I mean, we're talking about women who now look like they were constructed out of Legos. And also images of Kristi Noem's husband in drag wearing balloons under a T shirt to simulate enormous women's breasts. Again, so cartoonishly sized that someone wrote that those puppies were so big, it's a surprise Christy didn't shoot them. Or as the great Frank Dakova cried on F Troop, it is balloon. So anyway, turns out both members of the gnome marriage like to pretend to look like a woman. Realistically, this may force us to reassess why Kristi Noem has had her body redesigned more often than a Cadillac. To say nothing of why Mr. Noem was at Noem's career ending house hearing where she sat next to Corey Lewandowski while Mr. Noem sat behind them watching them. On the other hand, it raises the interesting reality that she turns out to have had only the second most augmentation in her own family. So Graham Patel, Noem, Marco Rubio, and then there's Trump himself, unveiling his memorial library and hotel. He says what? According to the video released by one of his idiot boys, his sons. I forget which one looks like a 200 story tall building in Miami. I'm thinking it will eventually be built rather in Caracas. Anywho, the highlight of the thing is a statue of Trump in the lobby. Apparently it's about 60ft tall. Making a fist pump gesture. It is gold head to toe. And it's interesting, his head in real life has been gold, his buildings have been gold. Yet this a giant 10 times life sized statue of him. This being gold. This is the first time the gold has made me think of this. The statue looks like Trump just really peed himself. Just saying. Seriously. Of course, the gnome story, like the Patel video and the Graham images and the sound bites of poor Rubio underscore three things about this administration and the entirety of maga and the cult part of the Trump cult, say nothing of a lot of human nature. One of these things is obvious. We may never know how blackmail fits into Trump's nomination, support, election, the conversion of Lord knows how many formerly reasonable or at least intelligent and critical conservatives. Graham was always a frontrunner throughout his life, but he did predict Trump would destroy the Republican Party. Rubio almost took a swing at Trump once and instead these people have become unstoppable advocates and enablers for Trump, to say nothing of the judges, probably some of the Supreme Court justices, God knows how many media figures who are his virtual slaves, certainly his whores. But the Patel video and the Mr. Gnome story certainly would seem to confirm the blackmail is in play here and always has been. Before Jeff Bezos gave in to some kind of pressure from Trump in the last few years, Bezos not only defied Trump, but he revealed on the record the attempt by Trump's ex crony David Pecker and the National Enquirer to force Bezos to turn the Washington Post pro Trump. In 2018 and 2019, they tried this on him by attempting to coerce Bezos over his extramarital affair with his now second wife. My ex colleague Lauren I look a lot like Kristi Noem Sanchez. As I noted then and I will note again, do you expect anybody to believe that the first time somebody tried to blackmail somebody else on behalf of Donald Trump, they ran into the one guy out of thousands who would say, f you, I'll just give my wife all the money in the divorce settlement? Really? The first would be blackmail. Victim said no, that's not how blackmail works. That's not why blackmail works. So once again how could Trump get loyalty from the Cash Patels and Kristi gnomes that rivals that which was given to Dracula by his guy Renfield? Wow, I haven't the faintest idea. Does it start with a B and end with male? There's the second part of this. Of course, Trump's primary currency is less the threat than it is the pardon. There isn't another political figure in America who would trust RFK Jr. Long enough to pose for a selfie with him. Yet there he is in the Cabinet. We forget now, but Trump's choice for Attorney General was Matt Gaetz, who now says that the government not only has aliens from other planets in its possession, but is breeding them with humans. He didn't ask how young they were. How many members of the Trump circuit have you looked at? Especially as they have fumbled to kiss their wives or awkwardly patted their children on the elbow and said the number of closets in this administration may be infinite. It's not just the question of blackmail or exposure. It's Trump pardoning that behavior. He's not gay, she's not lesbian. They just have same sex sex. Sure, whatever. You can now become secretary of whatever in my administration. I'll help you keep your lie going. Your lie to the public, your lie to yourself, or you failed at everything. Your spouse is a crook, your heroes are Hitler and Ted Bundy. Your beliefs are just Internet conspiracies. Cool, cool, I'll back you up. I'll legitimize you. Hell, I'll put you in charge of protecting Israel or prosecuting criminals. Just serve me. Just do whatever I tell you to do. I will protect you from jail, from humiliation, from exposure, and most importantly, I will protect you from your own conscience. Why does this work? Why is every Trumpist accusation a confession? Why is there a chicken in every maga pot and a skeleton in every maga closet? And why is the skeleton often a drag queen? I turn to A friend of 28 years, a psychological professional doctor, why do these people who get abortions for their mistresses and hire gay hookers and do coke in their bathrooms, why are they the ones who are the most loud, the most angry, the most vindictive about trying to criminalize abortion, about trying to punish homosexuality, about trying to send people to jail for life for doing drugs, why are they serving Trump a nihilist who believes in nothing and believes in none of this? Her answer was not what I expected. I had studied some of this stuff in college. I assumed, maybe you still assumed that it was projection or compensation or a Desire to get caught and maybe even to force their own hands and get help or anything else. That was psych speak for every maga accusation is a confession. No, not at all. She called this the scoreboard theory of personal behavior. Say you have been taught since childhood that sex out of wedlock is wrong and abortion is wrong, and you've had sex out of wedlock like 350 times and there have been a dozen pregnancies and you've talked the women into and paid for half a dozen abortions and you're a conservative congressman and your constituents are every day getting a little lighter on that forgiveness of the Lord stuff, but they're getting a little heavier on that wrath of God stuff. And to make it worse for your own sanity, maybe you really believe sex out of wedlock is wrong. Maybe you really in your heart believe abortion is wrong. And yet here you are, you are, the local distributor of sex out of wedlock and of abortions in your own congressional district. Your unconscious, my shrink explains, hits on an ingenious solution. You have 350 sexes out of wedlock and six abortions on your scoreboard. You can make that number irrelevant, virtually wipe it away, make it look like nothing. Simply act and Talk and legislate 3,000 anti abortion things, persecute the doctors, encourage neighbors to rat out people who help women in need, accuse the other side of killing viable infants after birth, or take it to the final step, accuse them of pedophilia and eating babies, and run for office on a platform of exposing those secret baby torture chambers in the basements of the pizza restaurants that not only don't have torture chambers but don't even have basements. Why, that proves you can't be an adulterer and an abortionist. You're an anti adultery, anti abortion activist. You can't be an adulterer. Well, maybe once or twice in your life, or 356 times, you made a simple human error that God long ago forgave you for. You heard him. But look, you've closed a thousand abortion clinics. You've forced a thousand women to give birth. You've accused a thousand liberals of eating babies. That's a score of 3,000 to 356. See, on this scoreboard you are so anti abortion it's as if those abortions you paid for never happened. 3,000 to only 356. And that, my shrink friend said, is the gist of works on almost anything that society shies away from, from balloons under your shirt to sex with your own gender or somebody dressed as the other gender or just it works on failure and embarrassment. Pam Bondi, Kellyanne Conway, Roger Stone, you name em, they were punchlines. Failure works though. Secret sex lives give Trump more to work with. If Trump says, I know you're gay, but your public self is so homophobic that it erases all that, so you're not gay. You are his for life. Which brings us back to the idea that the threats and the pardons may not actually be coming from Trump. This is a very sophisticated idea. Even if Trump did figure it out years ago when he still had a lot of his brains to work with. It just sounds really too complicated from him. And then if it's not him, who are these ideas coming from? Who is this rather complicated and kind of clever exploitation of people's weaknesses? Who is this coming from? Not from Trump, but from somebody above him. The threats and the pardons may be coming from somebody who is right now still forever, not only blackmailing the Kristi Gnomes of this world and the Lindsey Grahams, but somebody who is right now still blackmailing Trump. Also of interest here in all time, a married couple makes worst persons. I'll give you a hint as to their identities. One of them anchors the CBS Evening News and the other one asked me to marry her. That's next. This is Countdown.
