SEASON 2 EPISODE 42: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Now we get the just-before-midnight answer to the Gag Order request, as insane as anything else since Friday, written not for legal purposes but to please Trump. Quote: “the proposed Gag Order is nothing more than an obvious attempt by the Biden Administration to unlawfully silence its most prominent political opponent, who has now taken a commanding lead in the polls. Keenly aware that it is losing that race for 2024, the prosecution seeks to unconstitutionally silence Trump’s (but not President Biden’s) political speech on pain of contempt)." Trump’s ambulance chasers slipstream behind his threats against NBC, referring to “President Biden and his surrogates (including those in the corporate media.” They dance along the lines of absurdity. There has been no intimidation of witnesses because quote “no witness has suggested that he or she will not testify because of anything president Trump has said.”

It is impossible to believe their rhetoric will have any impact on Judge Chutkan. It doesn’t have to. It was written so Trump could get excited by it. Jack Smith has until Saturday to answer.

And the late response was only the last of a string of insane moments by Trump or on his behalf. Yesterday - ten days after Hunter Biden was indicted for buying a gun when he was legally ineligible to do so… Trump in South Carolina bought a gun or tried to, when he was legally ineligible to do so.

And all THAT followed worse. Under 18 US Code 4241 a prosecutor can request that the judge order that the defendant must undergo a psychiatric or psychological examination to determine if he’s competent to stand trial and unable to aid in his own defense and when it is proved that he isn’t, the judge can order him institutionalized and Jack Smith should make the request and Judge Chutkan should grant it because in the 72 hours before his lawyers were supposed to submit an argument against issuing a gag order on him as they did with exceptional lameness just before the clock struck midnight eastern last night after he’d threatened the court and tried to poison the jury pool, Trump demanded that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff be executed, insisted NBC News was guilty of something he made up called “Country Threatening Treason” because it had published a poll about him that he didn’t like, promised that as president he would make it and other news organizations “pay a big price,” and argued that the homes of all Democratic Senators be raided just cause, and bought a gun or tried to, and conflated the Bush Brothers and I don’t mean Billy.

B-Block (22:45) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS (28:08): The gold bars are funny but isn't the issue with Senator Menendez the, you know, spying? Fox News was kind enough to just disprove the Hunter Biden/Joe Biden/Burisma phony story. And after she gets 35,000 people to register to vote in one day, a GOP propaganda site attacks... Taylor Swift? AND her fans? THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD (28:08): Congresswoman Sage Steele? The district they want her to run in wraps around but excludes the ESPN campus. Last year the Congressman won a Family Award. This year his missus says he's abandoned his family. And Kathleen Parker, who infamously wrote it'd be ok even if Trump won, tops herself: insisting Trump is "well-dressed."

C-Block (33:25) THE FINAL WORDS ON DAVID BROOKS AND HIS $78 WHISKEYBURGER TWEET. Obviously, whose words would be better to use, than Brooks' own?