← Countdown with Keith Olbermann
Countdown with Keith Olbermann
TRUMP'S NEW EPSTEIN COVER-UP; WHY WAS PATEL DRINKING 'ON THE JOB' - 2.26.26
01:05:45
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What if mind control is real?
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If you could control the behavior of anybody around you, what kind of life would you have?
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Can you hypnotically persuade someone to buy a car?
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When you look at your car, you're going to become overwhelmed with such good feelings.
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Can you hypnotize someone into sleeping with you?
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I gave her some suggestions to be sexually aroused.
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Sometimes AT&T business Wireless Connecting Changes Everything Countdown with Keith Olbermann is a production of iHeartradio. Donald Trump should be in jail for life over Epstein. He should be in prison just for his role in the COVID up of that part of the Epstein files that are about him about Trump. The accusations are against Trump. The memos are about Trump. The investigations are of Trump and they are missing. There is a law demanding that Trump must produce the files, all the files he has not. That is by definition a cover up, by definition a conspiracy to bury evidence, evidence that just happens to be about him, even if it somehow clears him in the most generous interpretation of the facts as we know them. Now, Trump is criminally responsible for an extraordinary conspiratorial cover up. A cover up that violates a law just specifically passed to prevent and criminalize exactly such a cover up as that. A cover up of what Epstein did and what Trump's own Department of justice would be easily capable of obtaining indictments on today, unless Trump and his law and order bureaucracy was devoting itself to making sure that the guilty remained free and the victims remained freshly victimized and cowered and intimidated and terrified anew. Because the corruption only emanates from Trump and it afflicts Attorney General Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Blanch and FBI Director Patel and whichever blogger is the FBI deputy director this week. For Trump, this is no longer a question of malfeasance or graft or theft or impeachment. It is a question of how many dozens of crimes he is guilty of on Epstein, on the Epstein cover up alone. He is the Boss Tweed of the Epstein scandal. He is the Bernie Madoff of the Epstein scandal. He is the John Wayne Gacy of the Epstein scandal. That Trump is the most corrupt individual in the history of the United States of America is apparent to anyone who is currently black breathing. But that the others around him on that list fill out nearly all the other spots on the top 100 is a subtler truth that sometimes escapes our consciousness. More of them later, more particularly of this Patel, whose own crimes are not just of thinking being FBI director means never having to say you'll pay the check. His greed and wastefulness, it proves, are now suspected of actually indirectly impeding the FBI investigations of the Charlie Kirk killing and the shooting at Brown University. And then there is the question of whether or not he was drinking on the job of Mr. Patel. More later, but to focus first on Trump and Epstein and what we know today, which has now moved slowly from the independent journalists like Roger Sullenberger and Nina Burley to NPR and, and now the New York Times. And rather than rewrite Mike Baker and Roger Gold of that newspaper, I will quote them directly the release of the Epstein files by Trump. The half release, to be more accurate, quote, failed to include some key materials related to a woman who made an accusation against President Trump. According to a review by the New York Times, the materials are FBI memos summarizing interviews the bureaus did in connection to the claims made in 2019 by a woman who came forward after Mr. Epstein's arrest to say she had been sexually assaulted by both Mr. Trump and the financier decades earlier when she was a minor. That is a very legalized, cleaned up way of talking about the rape of a child. Investigators viewed her and her claims as having had enough credibility to merit interviewing her four times. The interviews have not been released. They were each summarized. Three of the four summaries are missing. The Department of Justice has already changed its excuse about that once from those were privileged or duplicates to or part of an ongoing investigation. Trump has changed his excuse from protecting victims to I released everything to I'll release the Epstein files to I have been completely exonerated. And if you have heard Trump talk more than three times in your life, you know damn well that in his crooked mind, exonerated may include a process by which evidence against him might have been removed, filleted, secreted, destroyed, burned or eaten. But the point is, even if they did exonerate him and were not destroyed in a cover up, Trump has still broken the law. The only parts of the documents he is legally permitted to not release are the identities of victims. They can be redacted, nothing else. Congressman Robert Garcia says he was shown the unredacted version of the files Monday. The same summaries are missing from them. Quoting him. The DOJ appears to have illegally withheld FBI interviews with this survivor who accused President Trump of heinous crimes. What little information we have is that the victim claimed Epstein hired her as a babysitter when she was 13. There was no child to sit. He raped her. She says there is a gray area. But according to Sullenberger's story and the Nina Burley report, this victim's biographical details closely match those of a woman identified in other Epstein files and court filings who claims Epstein repeatedly assaulted her and took her to New York and exposed her to, quote, wealthy older men as, quote, fresh meat. One of them, this woman alleged, was Trump. She claimed he assaulted her and punched her in the head. National Public Radio, quote, the Justice Department has withheld some Epstein files related to allegations that Trump sexually abused a minor. And NPR investigation finds it also removed some documents from the public database where accusations against Jeffrey Epstein also mentioned Trump. Some files have not been made public despite a law mandating their release. These include what appear to be more than 50 pages of FBI interviews as well as notes from conversations with a woman who accused Trump of sexual abuse decades ago when she was a minor. Roger Sullenberger's story. I've learned that in one previously unreported document the DOJ initially published the name of the Epstein victim who told the FBI that Donald Trump sexually assaulted her when she was a child. That document has since been properly redacted, but another identifying detail pertaining to the Trump accuser's case on another document is still unredacted in the database. Irrespective of those accusations, Trump is already breaking the law. At this moment, Trump, Bondi, Blanche, the rest of the Department of Justice, most of the Trump administration are currently engaged in a conspiracy to cover up the Epstein files and Trump's part in the Epstein files. Period. A quick day after day after State of the Union update and as the old bromide goes, that which was true is not new and that which was new is not true. The best parts of Trump's State of the Union address It's over, right? The best parts. The speech was surprisingly lame Duckish. It polled terribly. 38% of the audience had a very positive reaction to it. Per CNN polling last year, Trump scored a 44% on that. Even in 2019, Trump somehow got 59% very positive reaction. It also scored the lowest among any State of the Union ever polled. The true highlights of the night Trump prostitute Troy Nels trying to get Trump to sign his tie, then declaring afterwards Trump was the greatest president of his lifetime, providing a new definition to the cliche born yesterday. Still, nothing will ever top Congressman Al Green's Black people are an Apes sign, a copy of which all Democrats should have been carrying. Or perhaps they should have all been carrying signs with different condemnations of Trump. God knows there would have been a different Trump scandal for every Democrat present. As to Greene's sign, Senator Markway Mullen, one of the true clowns of that House, strode up to snatch the sign away from Al Green. Mullen lunged, stared daggers, missed and nearly toppled over ass upright. Mark Wayne Mark wayne Mullen is 48 years old. Al Green is 78, uses a cane. Mullen is a bully. But happily he showed the world he is an incompetent bully and as an aside, an online bully. The Johnny Maga account on Twitter X the one that declared the Obamas as apes video Caroline Levitt says Trump himself posted a quote masterpiece. Wired Magazine reports it is run by Garrett Wade, a member of the White House Rapid Response Team. Because of course Trump supporters who don't hide their identities nearly face plant while trying to assault a 78 year old man with a cane. So if Kash Patel was at the Olympics working, why was he drinking? Security doesn't drink. Security officers don't drink. Security managers don't drink. Security planners don't drink. Security executives don't drink. Security FBI directors don't drink. That's the point. That's the point made by Juliet Kiam that expands the Cash Patel scandal and adds to the reasons he must be impeached and removed as FBI director. Juliet is an old colleague, used to be one of my security experts on msnbc and she says often when she has worked security, security does not drink is in her contract. If somebody sent Cash Patel to the Olympics in any official security capacity, he is not allowed to drink until the entire event is over. And the Olympics was not over until the closing ceremonies on Sunday night. The hockey game, after which Kash Patel paid to be there, he says, to coordinate with local authorities on security for Americans, including the hockey players, the athletes and the fans got drunk in the locker room on the clock, drunk in the hockey locker room on Sunday morning of an event he was there to provide security for. That did not end till Sunday night. Patel's schedule in Milan is a public document. The New York Times reviewed it. He got there Friday, he left Sunday. He had one hour long meeting with local security leaders on Friday, then drinks Saturday. He had a 20 minute meeting with the Olympic security team, then a half hour tour of the Olympic security center, then a private lunch with an unnamed individual. No confirmation of drinks Sunday, no meetings, just drinks. The Democratic campaign message for the midterms and for 2028 is now shockingly simple. And it parallels word for word what the Democratic legislative message must be for right now, Trump and his gang are stealing your money and protecting criminals and not doing their jobs. And there is a living and breathing symbol of all this. A slow moving, stupid, pathetic looking man, the proverbial, as the kids say, most punchable face in the room. It is Cash Patel. And they should loudly and endlessly, metaphorically batter him into submission at congressional hearings and in speeches from now till doomsday. He could not be doing more to represent the Trump cult of corruption and incapacity were he a paid Democratic operative. The fiasco in Milan at the Olympic hockey exhibition turns out to be just the obvious, easy to digest easily. Scorn, hypocritical, greedy, moronic drinking, display of trash, suddenly finding a way to steal money, government money, taxpayer money, your money. A Democratic congressman should announce a measure to impeach Kash Patel today. Another congressman should announce a separate measure to impeach and prosecute Cash Patel. Tomorrow a third should announce a measure to impeach and center a week of hearings upon the Drinking on the Job by Kash Patel next Monday. The House Democratic Caucus should then announce a conference to unify the three impeachment investigations of Kash Patel next Tuesday. The hockey part of this hockey farce in a moment. And with it the trail of evidence that would lead to his conviction that he was clear eyed enough and far looking enough and visionary enough to personally leave for us in all its imbecilic cash, Patel in glory. He left a trail a mile wide. But it turns out his fraudulent trip to Milan to see a hockey game and hand you and I the bill and drink on the job is really just the comic relief. His repeated misuse of FBI aircraft for his own personal pleasures and his mistaken belief that he is doing us a favor by being the inert, inactive, inadequate head of the FBI turns out to have had disastrous real life consequences for things that matter a lot goddamned more than the Olympics. Per whistleblower information obtained by the Senate Judiciary Committee, when the right wing agitator, stochastic terrorist and white supremacist Charlie Kirk was killed by one of his own Maga crowd last September 10, one of the FBI's most valuable units, the shooting reconstruction team lost an invaluable, irreplaceable 24 hours of time on the ground because the FBI plane and the FBI pilot needed to fly that shooting team to Utah was unavailable. Guess why? Quoting Senator Durbin's letter to the Government Accountability Office, because of a Bureau plane and pilot shortage caused by the Director's priority personal flights. Where and how Kash Patel wasted the plane or planes and the pilot or pilots last September has not yet been revealed. It is certainly available to anybody with a little time and a little Internet and a little OSINT open source intelligence. The task is sorting out which of Patel's dozens of personal trips using FBI pilots and planes was the one he wasted this plane and pilot on so the shooting reconstruction team couldn't get there in time. Google tip. You can start your search with Patel's girlfriend, who is a country singer and is certainly not a foreign honey trap of the second time actual FBI officers and agents needed one of the FBI planes as opposed to this trash, slob, fanboy, jock, sniffer, joyrider Patel and a hockey game of the second time we know much more. Dick Durbin's same whistleblower indicates that in the aftermath of the mass shooting at Brown University In Providence on December 13, the FBI Elite Evidence Response Team was not only delayed because Patel had an FBI jet in Florida where he was Reportedly visiting his parents. They live there because they are the kind of immigrants MAGA doesn't hate. Yet the evidence response team was, according to the whistleblower account and three other sources, it was not only unable to fly to Rhode island on an FBI plane, it was unable to fly at all. Because Patel had put a hold on the other available FBI jet to get the hostage rescue team from Virginia to Providence because he just guessed that there must be hostages to rescue at Brown. There were not. Even if there had been, it evidently never occurred to this idiot Patel that if there were hostages, it would be imperative to get a rescue team there immediately. And maybe the one in Boston, a 55 minute drive away from Providence would have been the choice. Goddamn cash. Patel could have called an Uber for them. Naturally he would have called and we would have paid. Nope. He held one FBI plane because he went to see mommy and Daddy Patel. And he held the other FBI plane to fly the wrong hostage team from the wrong place to negotiate for hostages who did not exist. The specialists from FBI headquarters who were actually needed to be in Rhode island and urgently. They had to drive to Rhode island from Quantico, Virginia in a snowstorm just to get there the next day. Hours late, woefully late. Patel's misappropriation of public funds, that's what it is. The requisitioning of the FBI jet for private personal travel unrelated to work is no longer just the issue of the embarrassment of the Olympics fiasco in which Patel and Trump and the unskilled dilettantes who occupy the office of the Commissioner of the National Hockey League, Gary Bettman, managed to poison the first moment of 2026 and maybe of 2025, when America didn't feel a kind of collective suicidal impulse. It is more than just the spoiling of 30 seconds of good vibes before Trump pissed on is public corruption of the oldest and simplest kind. It is stealing public resources. It is perverting one of those few moments when government's role is not only clear cut, positive, but not reproducible by any other entity, when it's absolutely essential to solving crime and potentially protecting the life and the safety of a citizen or citizens who, bottom line, are paying for that protection and Trump and Kash Patel are stealing what Americans are paying for and using it to indulge their own pleasures, lusts and stupidities. And speaking of lusts and stupidities, I haven't even gotten to Kristi Noman, Corey Effing Lewandowski. Which brings us back to the hockey dressing room Sunday morning. In Italy. And what we now know was not just classless and corrupt, but the end result of a series of lies by Cash Patel. CNN phrased his defense of his joyride to the Olympics thusly. Per Patel. He didn't fly to Milan for the Olympics. He flew for some unrelated meetings in the city. The gold medal game happened to be taking place. It's plausible. Could happen. Oh, except of course, Patel had already Pre confessed last July 3rd.Pre confessed that that other plausible solution to this wouldn't be true. Last July 3rd, he could not resist. He tweeted, quote, NHL agreed to let the boys play in the next Olympics this coming winter. Quote, first time in over a decade quote, team usa, I'll see you there. Flag emoji, hockey stick emoji, unquote. Well, that's a hell of a coincidence. Seven months to the day before the second United States Olympic hockey game in Italy, Patel publicly promised to be there. And then what are the odds he shows up in their locker room swilling beer same day agents had to shoot and kill a MAGA Trump supporter trying to get into Mar a Lago with a shotgun, Evidently because he was angry over the COVID up of the trumpstein scandal. While the Savannah and Nancy Guthrie tragedy is still playing out. While every day America traveled a little bit further towards hell in this Trumpian handbasket of ours, then it wasn't just on Twitter that Patel had pre confessed. Back to Dick Durbin's letter. Another whistleblower is quoted. Durbin, quote, says a source revealed Cash Patel previously said in an FBI field office meeting, quote, if you have golf, hockey, fishing or hunting and beautiful sights, quote, you're going to see a lot of me again. He keeps telling people he's gonna be at big events. Not because he's skilled at security or law enforcement or investigation or abides by the rules about not drinking. Not that he's skilled at anything in particular, but because he wants good seats and great fishing, he's not gonna pay a lot for that muffler. And then, what a coincidence. The event takes place. And there he is, violating security protocols, taking figurative and literal space that could be actually given to actual security personnel and making an entitled jock sniffing dick out of himself and drinking on the job while FBI shooting teams can't get to the site of the assassination of a right wing troublemaker or a nightmarish shooting at a major university or anywhere else if Director Richie Rich needs the jet. You've heard of the hotel chain that used to advertise itself as America's host Meet Cash Patel, America's guest. And now more on the sports ball aspect of this, the hockey and Trump's misogynistic insults towards the actual U.S. hockey Olympians who won gold. The women's team, the ones Trump insisted during the State of the Union, will be honored at the White House just as the men were. Firstly, as of late yesterday, the women's team said it had not been invited, not been asked, not been reached out to, even informally. No invite, no nothing. Just another Trump lie. Just Trump exploiting women again, as to the despoiling of the hockey gold medal when they put it around Trump's neck. And the men's Olympic hockey team, and especially the Kachuk brothers and the Hughes brothers and this Tage Thompson idiot from the Buffalo Sabres, Tage Thompson, who actually posed in a full Make America Great Again hat alongside our Goebbels in a blonde wig. Caroline Levitt, please note. I leave out the goalie Connor Hellebuck of the Winnipeg jets, the only political prop Trump named during the State of the Union Tuesday night because Hellebuck's experience in the playoffs is so nightmarishly unreliable and ineffective that this Trump Award of Freedom and Hamburgers, or whatever he gave him during the speech that's likely to be the only championship trophy that Conor Hellebuk ever wins. As to the others F em, a month ago these were among the most admired of National Hockey League players. Now they are at best the victims of Trump's insatiable desire to take credit for things other people have done. And now they are the victims of Cash Patel's insatiable desire to stand next to naked athletes and hope some of their successful sweat will rub off on him or something. Will say nothing of the free beer. And now they are the victims of impossibly bad guidance by their agents and by the people their professional teams nominally employ to keep them from self destructing when they all decide that we really need to keep politics out of sports. Except if it's the politics that they Jack Eichel, Quinn Hughes and the others agree with. Patel, who has no business being in that dressing room, gets Trump on the phone, who has no business being in that dressing room, just as no politician has had any business being projected into any dressing room since Ronald effing Reagan started to prostitute players for his personal political gain in the 1980s. Trump makes a sick, cold, misogynistic, cruel joke about the American women's Olympic hockey gold medal winning team. Actual Olympians who actually sacrifice careers and income and jobs and families to play for America not like the men who played for America for two weeks because they thought a gold medal would look nice up on the wall next to the copies of their $14 million paychecks. Trump makes a sick joke by phone. All the players laugh. They all dishonor those women, medalists, their supposed teammates. They all participated in the new rise of the hateful male jockocracy. And then Jack Hughes, who should have a free pass in this country for the rest of his life after he scored the medal winning goal. Jack Hughes urinates on the moment by saying everything is so political. Everyone is giving us backlash for all the social media stuff today. People are so negative out there and they're just trying to find a reason to put people down and make something out of almost nothing. That's Jack Hughes who joined in as a cheap politician. Cash Patel barged into his team's celebration, bringing an even cheaper politician in Trump into the room by phone. Then Jack Hughes joined the cheap politicians insult against women athletes. Then Jack Hughes flew overnight not to go back to work, but to become a political prop in the White House wearing a MAGA style USA cap. Everything is so political. Jack Hughes, you volunteered, you over coddled twerp. This Tage Thompson, the one who posed in the MAGA hat, not just the USA cap in MAGA style lettering, but an actual MAGA hat. He's kind of lost his comments yesterday as he returned to the Buffalo Sabres. Well, he didn't just keep digging. He managed to dig a second hole next to the one he was already neck deep in. Quoting Tage Thompson. Everyone in that locker room is a patriot. We love the country. Anytime you put on that jersey, it's the best feeling in the world. Representing your country and playing for the men and women who fought and served for your country. A hockey game and people getting their arms blown off to defend this country have nothing to do with each other. You are hockey players. You have no connection to this. Get their names and traumas out of your little chicken shit athlete mouths. We get to enjoy such great lives here and it's because of those men and women. I couldn't be more proud to be an American and do it with the group of guys that we had. Obviously going to the White House is such an honor. It was a very cool experience and something that I'll probably never get to do again. Well, there's the second hole. That latter point, announcing he's probably never going to get to go to the White House with the championship hockey team again. That will probably come as an unwelcome surrender of the next, what, 15 years or so to the fans of his Buffalo Sabres or to the fans of whichever team they trade him to, if they're smart. John Hines, the coach of Quinn Hughes of the Minnesota Wild, Jack's brother, made an extraordinary assertion that it's not a political thing on the team. There's Democrats, Republicans. It's more about the celebration of the team and I think the life experience for the players to be able to do what they were able to do, which is go to the White House, meet the president, be at the State of the Union, doesn't really have anything to do with politics. Coach. If it's not about politics, why did they all wear Trump hats? John Hines was fired as coach in New Jersey six years and three months ago. He was fired in Nashville as coach just under three years ago. This is his third job in seven seasons. And if that were me, you'd be saying that Olbermann keeps getting fired from every job he's ever had. A moment here to shout out the actual passive heroes of the US Men's team. Maybe if the cards fall correctly, we can legislate away the gold medals of everybody except Jake Ottinger of the Dallas Stars and Brock Nelson of the Colorado Avalanche, Kyle Conner of the Winnipeg Jets, Jackson lacombe of the Anaheim Ducks and Jake Gensl of the Tampa Bay Lightning. They didn't go to the White House to whore themselves out for Trump. Maybe they didn't go because it was political, maybe because it was travel, maybe because they were tired. I don't care at this point. They didn't do the wrong thing. Maybe later I'll have to change my opinion on this, but right now I don't need to read your conscience doing the right thing. I just need to see you not doing the wrong thing. You want to make it not political. Stay the f home. Because they were just about the only ones who did the right thing, or even close to it. This is the political world Jack Hughes complained about while he was busy signing up to join that political world as the equivalent of a two dollar hooker. The unstable Wisconsin Congressman Derek Van Orden, who might have ptsd, might have cte, might have every acronym except iq. Van Orden announced in full seriousness on television that, quote, if Canada had taken Donald Trump on his offer to become the 51st state, the Canadians would have had gold. Also, as Jack Hughes said, people are just trying to find a reason to put people down and make something out of almost nothing. Almost nothing like what's in Congressman Van Orden's head. The National Hockey League responded brilliantly to this symbolic mine cave in of their supposed publicity bonanza of America watching Olympic pucks. And of course not watching hockey ever again, not at least for four years, because the Olympics never, never, never foster the growth of of any pro sport. It's the other way around. The NHL responded by blasting out videos of players with their daughters, just doubling the misogyny, just underscoring that the women in the lives of the league's players are just there to be exploited during a public relations crisis created by a spasm, another spasm, another in an endless series of spasms of hockey's brutality towards women and every minority group. This is, after all, the only pro sports league to first loudly proclaim that its game is for everyone and to stage 31 Pride nights and manufacture endless pride uniforms worn pre game until half a dozen player bigots, mostly players imported from Russia, decided to go homophobic. The NHL is the only pro sports league ever to quietly discontinue Pride night and discontinue Pride jerseys and tell the LGBTQ community to go F itself. It is thus entirely deserving of the comedy writer Madison Sinclair, who joked about the heated rivalry hockey soap opera TV series, though this is less funny and more pathetically and metaphorically true. Each time you read or hear her joke, people will be like, have you seen the new gay hockey show? And it's just a video of the entire US Hockey team blowing the president. But of all the aspects of the Olympic hockey disaster, the absolute worst. Worse than Jack Hughes, worse than Patel drinking on the job, worse than the crowd of props filing into the State of the Union to be victimized by Trump. All of them still days, maybe years away from realizing that it is that and not some medal at some Olympics which will lead their obituaries, hopefully decades upon decades from now. Worse, perhaps even than the greed and the profligate wastefulness of sending US money to carry this turd, Patel there worse than all of it, perhaps, is the saga of Austin Matthews. On Sunday, Austin Matthews was in that room with Cash Patel laughing as Trump made his nauseating joke about the other American gold medal winning hockey team, the real one, the women. Tuesday afternoon, Austin Matthews stood grinning directly behind Trump as an Olympic gold medal was defiled by being placed around the neck of Trump. Trump, the culmination of whose athletic career was reached when, as a high school baseball player, he batted.138. Auston Matthews yesterday said that joke about the women was kind of unfortunate, but he's not a Political person. Austin Matthews is not just the captain of the Toronto Maple Leafs team, the baseball Blue Jays notwithstanding. The Toronto Maple Leafs, still and forever Canada's team and symbol of its long suffering. But politely and patiently worn and most undeserved second placeness as Canada has not won a Stanley cup since 1993, Toronto Maple Leafs have not won one since 1967. And that is so long ago that I may be the youngest sports media person alive to have reported on it in real time when I wrote it up in the school newspaper. I wrote it up in my fourth grade homeroom school newspaper. But more importantly, Austin Matthews is the son of Brian Matthews and his wife, Emma. Emma Matthews. Emma Garcia Matthews. Mrs. Matthews is originally from Hermosillo, Mexico and she moved with her husband to Arizona where their son Austin broke all kinds of barriers, barriers put there by political people. Austin, you have been political since you were born. Emma's son Austin is a Mexican American. He is the captain of a Canadian hockey team. Donald Trump, a cheap two bit corrupt politician with a broken brain, threatened to invade the country in which the fans of Austin Matthews team all live. Donald Trump, a politician, threatened to invade the country in which the relatives of his mother in which his own relatives live. Donald Trump threatened Mexico. Donald Trump threatened Canada. And Donald Trump's masked gestapo, his secret police, his paramilitary, would happily and without a second thought in this country put Austin Matthews mother in a cage. And Austin Matthews stood there behind Trump and grinned from ear to earth because he's not really political. May your creator forgive you. May your mother's country forgive you. May your ancestors country forgive you. May your new adopted country to the north forgive you. Because it and if they didn't know who he was, and I hate to break this to somebody who's not political, but in Trump's America, they no longer stop to find things out like who you are here in this Austin Matthews actual country, his home country, this country. They won't forgive Austin Matthews for being what they see, Mexican, Canadian. And they don't care if you're political or not. Austin, the people you stood there grinning with will happily put you in a cage too. Also of interest here, the self destruction of Senator Mike Lee, Internet troll, outraged that Democratic representatives heckled Trump during his racist rage during the State of the Union, three years after he himself heckled Biden during his 2023 State of the Union. And that's just the start of Mike Lee's problems. That's next. This is Countdown.
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What if mind control is real?
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If you could control the behavior of anybody around you. What kind of life would you have?
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Can you hypnotically persuade someone to buy a car?
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When you look at your car, you're going to become overwhelmed with such good feelings.
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Can you hypnotize someone into sleeping with you?
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I gave her some suggestions to be sexually aroused.
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Can you get someone to join your cult? NLP was used as on me to access my subconscious. Nlp, AKA Neuro Linguistic Programming, is a blend of hypnosis, linguistics and psychology. Fans say it's like finally getting a user manual for your brain.
- [45:21]
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It's about engineering consciousness.
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Mind Games is the story of nlp, its crazy cast of disciples and the fake doctor who invented it at a New age commune and sold it to guys in suits. He stood trial for murder and got acquitted. The biggest mind game of all, nlp, might actually work. This is wild. Listen to Mind Games on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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China's Ministry of State Security is one of the most mysterious and powerful spy agencies in the world. But in 2017, the FBI got inside. This is Special Agent Regal, Special Agent Bradley Hall. This MSS officer has no idea the US government is onto him. But the FBI has his chats, texts, emails, even his personal diary. Hear how they got it on the sixth Bureau podcast? I now have several terabytes of an MSS officer, no doubt, no question of his life. And that's a unicorn. No one had ever seen anything like that. It was unbelievable. This is a story of the inner workings of the MSS and how one man's ambition and mistakes opened its vault of secrets. Listen to the 6th Bureau on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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In 2023, a story gripped the UK, evoking horror and disbelief.
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The nurse who should have been in charge of caring for tiny babies is now the most prolific child killer in modern British history.
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Everyone thought they knew how it ended. A verdict. A villain. A nurse named Lucy Letby.
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Lucy Letby has been found guilty.
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But what if we didn't get the whole story?
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The moment you look at the whole picture, the case collapses.
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I'm Amanda Knox and in the new podcast podcast Doubt the Case of Lucy Letby, we follow the evidence and hear from the people that lived it to ask what really happened when the world decided who Lucy Letby was. No voicing of any skepticism or doubt.
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It'll cause so much harm at every single level of the British establishment of this is wrong.
- [47:38]
B
Listen to Doubt the Case of Lucy Letby on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you're an H Vac technician and a call comes in, Grainger knows that you need a partner that helps you find the right product fast and hassle free. And you know that when the first problem of the day is a clanking blower motor, there's no need to break a sweat. With Grainger's easy to use website and product details, you're confident you'll soon have everything humming right along. Call 1-800-GRAINGER click granger.com or just stop by Granger for the ones who get it done.
- [48:18]
A
This is Countdown with Keith Olbermann. Still ahead on this volume of countdown, as you may have seen, the guy destroying CBS News on behalf of Trump, David Ellison sitting at the State of the Union with Lindsey Graham, the guy who already destroyed himself for Trump as you read reports by Oliver Darcy in status of the woman destroying CBS News on behalf of Trump, Bari Weiss, thinking that maybe her next morning anchor could be Michael Barbaro, who actually managed to take an unsinkable idea like a New York Times podcast and sink it. Or Chris Christie or some woman named Timf who I never heard of. I'd just like to remind you that network news is getting more screwed up by the minute. But Noah did not just start getting screwed up. We are nearly three decades out from the day I went cold at my first real understanding of how bad it was then I thought it was to be my admission to the club. My first day inside the brain trust. The night that me and the head of my first MSNBC newscast and the president of NBC News and the head of the Ms. Microsoft part of msnbc, we would all sit down at dinner and hammer out what to do in my brand new TV newscast as the entire vista spread out before me with an endless horizon and endless time and endless promise. And it turned out the meeting was just the NBC guys telling me how to humor the Ms. Microsoft guy and get him to shut up because all they wanted out of Microsoft was the money. The beginning of the great disillusionment. The beginning of the end at NBC. Sadly, far from the end of the end at NBC or anywhere else. September bloody 1997. Next in Things I Promise not to Tell first, however, we always have more new idiots to talk about the 2026 versions. It's the roundup of the miscreants, morons and dunning Kruger effect specimens who constitute today's other worst persons in the world, the Bronze. Worse, Jesse Waters DEI hire at Fox after Governor Newsom of California mentioned that he as a kid had overcome dyslexia and reading problems. Quote Jesse I don't want a president who struggles to read. There is I don't want a president who struggles to read, says Jesse Waters. There is reason to suspect that Jesse Waters and Doug J. Balloon, you know him as the New York Times pitchbot, that Jesse Waters and Doug J. Balloon are one and the same person. I don't want a president struggles to read. He doesn't struggle. He can't do it at all. Runner up Werser A Threadzer a Threadsian identified as Red Pepper King. The account is paulmanfrey. All we know about Paul is he's a grandfather. He claims to be a veteran according to the pictures he's posted. He has an old fro, you know, like the after pictures of Dorian Gray, that kind of hair. And if Paul hasn't already lost it, he's beginning to quote has anyone notice that the only time the USA men's hockey team gets the gold medal is when we have a great President? First Reagan also misspelled now Trump when you put America first. Americans respond. Okay, obviously the 1980 U.S. olympic hockey team, which he's referring to, is the other one that had most recently won gold medals as opposed to 1960, the 1980 U.S. olympic hockey team, which was a an actual team, it played 68 games. It was not created for a two week tournament and then dispersed. That's called an all star team. And B the 1980 U.S. olympic hockey team consisted of actual amateur Olympians. They beat the Soviets 46 years ago last Sunday. Then they won the gold 46 years ago this past Tuesday. And on both of Those days in 1980, Jimmy Carter was president, not Ronald Reagan. That Red Pepper King misspelled Ronald Reagan was not president. Jimmy Carter was president because elections are in November, not February. Although he's right. Great president in 1980. But maybe of greater interest, the Gallup poll for Republican voters choice to be the Republican nominee for 1980 as of the day the US Olympians won the gold medal in 1980 Ronald Reagan 34% Gerald Ford 32% as many people in the Republican Party wanted to run Gerald Ford again instead of Reagan and the leader in convention delegates through the three primaries by that date when the US Olympic hockey team won gold in 1980 was George Bush the elder. Last look. Red Pepper King's post is still up there, by the way, but the winner, the worst. Speaking of social media, Senator Mike Lee of Utah, it grows increasingly evident that as various countries begin to restrict access to social media sites for the vulnerable, the challenged, the slow, the young, the susceptible to addiction, the Jesse Waters types, they may need to broaden the scope of that restriction to include folks who have disappeared down the rabbit hole, like Senator Mike Lee of Utah. His non senatorial count is named Based Mike Lee, which is the first sign that somebody needs to shake him until he acknowledges that the world is actually out here. Out here, boy. He posts conspiracies, he believes bots, he endorses fiction over fact. He dips into QAnon every once in a while. Plus when he's not sick, he's MAGA. But Mike Lee hit a new high and low the other day, indicating he has moved from paranoia to actual self owns. Defending the masking of the ICE Gestapo to protect Trump's paramilitary from identification and responsibility and prosecution for the next one of us they shoot. Lee went over the edge of the cliff. He posted video of the Mexican gangs raging over the death of the drug kingpin there by blowing up an ordinary gas station in that country. And then Mike Lee added this economically worded priceless self conviction quote, cartel hitmen wear masks. Masks. Leftists aren't complaining. Then you see the men in the masks produce machine guns and blow up a gas station. And even the right wingers immediately realized Mike Lee had just A compared ICE to the members of the Mexican drug cartels and B suggested to anybody who was just scrolling past his based Mike Lee feed and who didn't read too carefully that the guys in this video who are suddenly whipping out the long guns and blowing up civilians at a very midwestern looking gas station were in fact members of ice. Oops. Based like Mike Lee. Deleted it about seven hours later. Senator based Mike. Maybe we need to restrict access to social media by the vulnerable, the challenged, the young, the susceptible to addiction, and the bald moronic republican senators from Utah. Lee, today's other worst person in the world.
- [57:37]
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What if mind control is real?
- [57:40]
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If you could control the behavior of anybody around you, what kind of life would you have?
- [57:43]
B
Can you hypnotically persuade someone to buy a car?
- [57:46]
A
When you look at your car, you're going to become overwhelmed with such good feelings.
- [57:51]
B
Can you hypnotize someone into sleeping with you?
- [57:53]
A
I gave her some suggestions to be sexually aroused.
- [57:57]
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Can you get someone to join your cult? NLP was used on me to access my subconscious. Nlp, AKA Neuro linguistic programming is a blend of hypnosis, linguistics and psychology. Fans say it's like finally getting a user Manual for your brain.
- [58:13]
A
Brain. It's about engineering consciousness.
- [58:15]
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Mind Games is the story of nlp, its crazy cast of disciples, and the fake doctor who invented it at a New Age commune and sold it to guys in suits. He stood trial for murder and got acquitted. The biggest mind game of all, NLP might actually work. This is wild. Listen to Mind Games on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.
- [58:42]
A
China's Ministry of State Security is one of the most mysterious and powerful spy agencies in the world. But in 2017, the FBI got inside. This is Special Agent Riegel, Special Agent Bradley Hall. This MSS officer has no idea the US Government is onto him. But the FBI has his chats, texts, emails, even his personal dialogue diary. Hear how they got it on the Sixth Bureau podcast. I now have several terabytes of an MSS officer. No doubt, no question of his life. And that's the unicorn. No one had ever seen anything like that. It was unbelievable. This is a story of the inner workings of the MSS and how one man's ambition and mistakes opened its vault of secrets. Listen to the 6th Bureau on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [59:39]
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In 2023, a story gripped the UK evoking horror and disbelief.
- [59:45]
A
The nurse who should have been in charge of caring for tiny babies is now the most prolific child killer in modern British history.
- [59:53]
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Everyone thought they knew how it ended. Average a villain, a nurse named Lucy Letby.
- [60:00]
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Lucy Letby has been found guilty.
- [60:03]
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But what if we didn't get the whole story?
- [60:05]
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The moment you look at the whole picture, the case collapses.
- [60:08]
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I'm Amanda Knox, and in the new podcast, the Case of Lucy Letby, we follow the evidence and hear from the people that lived it to ask what really happened when the world decided who Lucy Letby was. No voicing of any skepticism or doubt.
- [60:25]
A
It'll cause so much harm at every single level of the British establishment of this is wrong.
- [60:31]
B
Listen to Doubt the Case of Lucy Letby on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Nancy Glass, host of the Burden of Guilt season two podcast. This is a story about a horrendous lie that destroyed two families. Late one night, Bobby Gumprite became the victim of a random crime.
- [60:56]
A
He pulls the gun, tells me to lie down on the ground.
- [61:00]
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He identified Jermaine Hudson as the perpetrator. Jermaine was sentenced to 99 years.
- [61:09]
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I'm like, lord, this can't be real. I thought it was a mistaken identity. The best lie is partial truth.
- [61:17]
B
For 22 years, only two people knew the truth until a confession changed everything.
- [61:26]
A
I was a monster.
- [61:28]
B
Listen to Burden of guilt season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [61:44]
A
On the night of Wednesday, September 24, 1990, I was told to show up at 6:30pm at the apartment of Phil Griffin on Central park west in Manhattan. Dinner with Phil and his wife Corey and Andy Lack and his wife Betsy and Jeff Zucker and Merrill Brown was at 7pm But I was supposed to be there at 6:30. One week and 90 minutes later, we were all launching my new newscast on msnbc, and it didn't get much newer than this. I had done some newscasts in college as recently as 18 years prior, twice in local news I had been pressed into service as a news field reporter and once in LA when our married newscaster anchor couple Jim Lampley and Brie Walker were late coming back from dinner. I had to do the live tease for Channel 2 Action News at 11, right in the middle of the airing of the show Falcon Crest on cbs, and I started it by saying, hi, Jim and Bree can't come to the TV right now. Now here's what they'll have for you at 11. But I had not done more than 15 minutes of news in a row in my life. One week later, I would become the linchpin in the lineup on msnbc, which itself had only been doing news for a year and nine weeks. So when Andy Lack, the president of NBC News, and Zucker, then the executive producer of the Today show and unofficial chief executive of msnbc, and Griffin, executive producer of my new newscast called the Big show, said show up at 6:30 Olbermann, I just assumed we were gonna have some final discussion of what we should be doing during the series, or at least during the first show, or at least during the first segment, because we were a week out and I really didn't have any clue as to what they expected the show to look like or what they expected me to say. I kept mentioning that I was fascinated by something called the Mandelbrot set, which is, in real layman's essence, a mathematical formula which if you keep running it long enough in a computer, eventually turns into the shapes of all the leaves and the tails of sea lions and everything else from nature. When I mentioned the Mandelbrot set to one of the show producers, he nodded enthusiastically and smilingly and then said in evident seriousness, great, we can do that after we do the first half an hour on the murder of JonBenet Ramsey. I had just moved into my new apartment 10 blocks south of Griffin's. I had left ESPN, a perfectly successful time for me in a nice enough but very remote place called Bristol, Connecticut, which didn't really have sidewalks. And so I walked uptown with a mixture of pride, excitement, and apprehension, and on sidewalks. By the time I was within five blocks, I was hoping I'd be able to talk them into one show a week where we talked about stuff like the Mandelbrot set. I arrived right on time, got great handshakes from Griffin and Lack and Zucker, and a kiss from Griffin's wife, who I knew. And then the two ladies excused themselves to go out onto the balcony somewhere, and I noticed it was just those three guys and me, the seventh person at this dinner, this Merrill Brown, who I did not know, was not there. I soon found out why. When the women were out of the room, News President Lack barked first, so you're here early so we can talk about this Merrill Brown. Zucker looked away from me. He muttered, freaking Merrill Brown. Griffin said, we need to tell you about Merrill Brown. Buddy Lack began to pace up and down Griffin's living room. He had unruly, thinning hair, and he kept running his hands through it like he was checking to see if it was still there. This goddamn Merrill Brown. Lack suddenly stopped and began to look angrily at Merrill Brown. You're here so we can make sure you never listen to Merrill Brown. Three thoughts rocketed through my mind. One, this felt like a scene from a bad movie, like something they cut out of the Fugitive or maybe Wall Street. Two, these guys, in ascending order, Griffin, Zucker, Lack seemed to be crazy. And three, if only we were rolling tape on this, it would make a great segment for the first show, and then we'd talk about the Mandelbrot set. Zucker apologized. Look, we already had part of this meeting at 30 Rock, so we're pretty worked up about this. There's nothing for you to worry about here. You. You didn't do anything wrong. You probably don't have any idea who Merrill Brown is. I joked to my three bosses that I was beginning to think Merrill Brown was just a renamed version of Goldstein from George Orwell's 1984. To my horror, nobody laughed and nobody corrected me. Lack resumed, a little calmer this time. Merrill Brown used to write for the Washington Post, and somehow he helped start Court tv, and now he's the TV guy at Microsoft, and Microsoft thinks they own msnbc. And Merrill Brown. Freaking Merrill Brown thinks he runs msnbc. He doesn't run msnbc, goddammit. I run msnbc. There was a brief, dangerous silence. Then Lack amended his remark. Well, I run it with Jeff and Phil. Phil. Griffin spoke up now. I had known him 16 years. He had been my producer on literally my first day in television. And now coincidence would make him my producer on literally my first day in television news. We're just a little worn out by Merrill, buddy. He sends all of us emails and messages every day. Lack now interrupted Griffin. All day. He sends them all day like he invented computers. He can't do anything out there in Redmond freaking Washington except watch MSNBC and tell us have to change it. Like I wasn't the man who saved NBC News and he wasn't working in Redmond freaking Washington. This was the first I had learned of the contempt in which the NBC people held the Microsoft people. I would hear of it again every hour or so for the next year. It was symbolized by their blind hatred of the otherwise pleasant town that was home to the Microsoft operation. Redmond, Washington. The two companies had, quote, partnered to create msnbc. This first synergy between a major television company and the earliest giant of computers and the Internet. That's why it was called MSNBC, Ms. for Microsoft. NBC for NBC. They were a team. No, they weren't. Lack was still fired up. Christ almighty. We only brought these Microsoft idiots in on this deal for their money. They don't have editorial input. They're here to put in the money and they're wiring. That's it. Zucker took over. Here's why we wanted to talk to you in advance of Merrill Brown getting here. He's asked to sit next to you during dinner. He wants to share his. His vision for the big show. What we want you to do is listen carefully to him. Nod, laugh, agree, say, that's very interesting. But don't say what you might think would be good to say, like, Andy, what do you think of this? Andy interrupted again. Because I'll goddamn tell you what I think of it. It's crap. Crap from Redmond, Washington. Crap from guys who are only supposed to give us money and computer terminals. That's it. Don't tell me what we have to synergize cable television and the Internet with whatever the hell the Internet is this network is so we can train talent and amortize expenses and give Brian Williams some place to anchor until Brokaw leaves. And another thing. Phil Griffin's Central park west apartment building intercom buzzer suddenly went off. His wife raced out of wherever she and Mrs. Lack had been hiding and where, I hoped, they were secretly recording all this, and she answered the call from the building's lobby desk with a series of huhs. She looked at her husband and said with some fear, merrill Brown is on the way up. God damn it. Shouted Lack. He pointed again at me. Okay, not a word of what you've been told. Just humor him, humor him, humor him, humor him. And don't ask me or Zucker or Phil because there could be bloodshed here. Dinner catered was spectacular. Merrill Brown was charming, well informed. He had ideas about, well, that's the word synergy between TV and the Internet. About eventually getting viewers to watch TV via their computers, especially when the computers would one day be handheld, seriously, and maybe even interacting with the shows as they were being televised or watching them whenever the viewer wanted some sort of delay system. It was interesting and forward looking, and to make sure I could not see the anger barely being suppressed by Lack and to lesser degrees by Griffin and Zucker, I took my glasses off mid meal. Finally, Merrill Brown said he had to go. He knew the rest of us needed to talk over some details about the launch of my show. He wished me luck. Silently, I wished him luck. Lack and Griffin showed him to the door and actually waited there until Merrill Brown made it down the hallway and into the elevator. Before he even closed the apartment door, Lack shouted, and that's another thing. We have all the goddamn synergy between TV and the Internet already. Tell him, Phil. Tell him, Phil. Griffin looked at me sheepishly. Zucker took over for him. We figured out how to mesh between cable TV and the Internet. Phil figured it out. The name of the show. That will be your lead in. This is the kind of synergy we want. Tell him, Phil. Tell him the name of the show and how it combines the Internet and nighttime tv. Phil looks slightly past me. It's. It's. It's called. It's called internight. He paused. It's. It's called internight. See, it's. It's, it's Internet plus, you know, Night internite. Got it, buddy. At that exact moment I knew that on MSNBC we would never, not once, not even in passing, make the slightest reference to the Mandelbrot set. And yes, that is the same Andy Lack who I invoked last week, who posted about the day Jeff Bezos collared him when Lack was still running NBC News the second time running it into the ground the second time Bezos yelling at Lack for not standing up to Trump in 2018. And lack now posting last week that he doesn't understand why Bezos did this rather than just sell the Washington Post Post Because Andy Lack's super genius doesn't understand that Bezos is doing this deliberately to destroy the Washington Post. The same way the Ellisons and Bari Weiss and everybody running CBS are doing this to destroy CBS News. Because this pleases the furor, Andy. It's being done deliberately. Not even you could screw it up accidentally this badly. I've done all the damage I can do here. By the way, I worked for his brother John lack2@espn2. He was not only the opposite of Andy, he was a nice guy who actually knew what he was doing and had the presence of mind to get the hell out of ESPN2. Unlike the third day we were on the air, it's like, where's John Lack? He'll be able to solve this. He resigned. He's in Bermuda while we're all here in Bristol. I like this guy. I've done all the damage I can do here. Thank you for listening. Our musical directors of Countdown are not Lack brothers. They are John Philip Chenale on keyboards handling orchestration as well Brian Ray on guitars, bass, drums and of course the vibes. And their work is produced by TKO brothers. Nancy Foust, the best baseball stadium organist ever, is responsible for the satirical and pithy musical comedy. When we play sports music, it is the old Olbermann show. 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 is my late friend Howard Feynman because I just needed to hear his voice. This program was produced by Ted. Everything else was, as always, my fault. So that's Countdown for today. Day 403 of America held hostage again, just 1,060 days until the scheduled end of his lame duck and lame brained term. Unless he is removed sooner by, I don't know, gets hit with a Olympic gold medal or something, I don't know. Or by our friends at the Supreme Court. One other note about Howard Feynman. He joined us on that MSNBC show that I just referenced. January of 1998 conversation he and I once had about Andy Lack. I literally cannot repeat. The next scheduled countdown is Monday bulletins is the news merits until the next one. I'm Keith Olbermann. Good morning, good afternoon, good night and good luck. Countdown with Keith Ulberman is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [75:29]
B
This is an iHeart podcast.
- [75:32]
A
Guaranteed Human.