SERIES 2 EPISODE 165: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Justice Samuel Alito should wake up tomorrow in Gitmo. Or in a hospital prison ward being examined for illness, mental or otherwise.

He and the other Conservative members of the Supreme Court are as dangerous to the future of this country and its citizens and its freedoms and its representative form of government, as any terrorists who have ever lived. If presidents knew they might be prosecuted for little things like trying to overturn a valid election and illegally staying in office, Alito told the lawyer representing Jack Smith, they would be way more likely to try to overturn a valid election and illegally stay in office. So, if you want to preserve democracy, you CAN’T prosecute a former president for trying to overturn a valid election and illegally staying in office.

THAT is the constitutional position of the leading justice on the Supreme Court, the ones Trump’s sheep follow, echoing almost word-for-word, things that the mad traitor Trump has posted on his social media feed about persecutions and retributions and retirements. This is Samuel Alito telling you that the way to insure peaceful transitions of power is: you can’t prosecute a lame duck president who partially – and nearly FULLY – disrupted the peaceful transition of power.

It sounds like something Joseph Heller CUT from his novel Catch-22 as too stupid to be useful as political satire.

And it just went downhill from there. They asked Trump's lawyer if assassination of the opposing presidential candidate or a military coup might be considered a president's "official acts" and he said yes. 

Ultimately, what the six conservatives on this destructive, fascist court hinted at yesterday, was how far they would go to prostitute themselves to rule FOR Trump in any case that comes before them. We’ve already seen them erase the clear mandate in the 14th Amendment because they felt it would deny American democracy the right to vote itself out of existence. We have now heard them try to cobble together any bullshit they had in their brains to immunize Trump for his countless crimes. But we have also been forewarned that if a case comes before THIS court relative to THIS election, they will figure out what is best for Trump and make up the reasons why.

They WILL.

After yesterday, you and I now KNOW this.

ALSO: The gag order Trump keeps violating in New York will require another hearing with Justice Merchan. But not until next Wednesday. Because we all know we have all the time in the world. On the other hand, Trump addressed all his many legal cases late yesterday and sounded terrible. Breathless. You know how old he sounded? 206!

B-Block (24:50) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: For the first time they all come from one newspaper, for misdeeds revealed in one article. They are New York Times Washington Bureau Chief Elizabeth Bumiller, writer Peter Baker, and publisher A.G. Sulzberger, and they are the vindictive little shits who could help cost us democracy. Because as Politico reports, Sulzberger has ordered the paper to fixate on Joe Biden's age as payback for Biden refusing to give The Times a one-on-one interview. Apparently Sulzberger thinks when Trump comes to round up the liberals, intellectuals, and reporters, everybody at The Times will be issued a pass.

C-Block (38:50) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: Deliberately chosen to have nothing to do with Trump or politics or The Times, his wonderful story of a loathed practical jokester: "Meet Birdey Dogged."