SERIES 2 EPISODE 41: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Trump has gotten up in Iowa and announced if he again seizes power he will invoke the Alien Enemies Act and declare America has been INVADED and quote “immediately” detain and deport non-citizens of his choice who are older than 14 Not undocumented immigrants.

Non-citizens.

People who are here legally. People who are working TOWARDS becoming citizens. DACA’s and Dreamers and Refugees and Immigrants. At his sole discretion: The Alien Enemies Act gives the president the authority to detain ANYONE – but on the pretext that he is “removing all known or suspected gang members… drug dealers, cartel members from the United States…” Suspected. Suspected by him. So, anybody who isn’t a citizen. Anybody. Anybody. Anybody out of 22,000,000 non-citizens. The president immediately gains this power for himself, when he quote “makes public proclamation” that a quote “invasion or predatory incursion is perpetrated, attempted, or threatened against the territory of the United States by any foreign nation”and THAT is why you hear the Boeberts and Greenes and Stephen Millers talk endlessly of “invasion” and Trump’s rivals climb all over each other to threaten war-by-other-names against Mexico.

Oh but Trump didn't do it last time! History is littered with the bones – literally – of those who thought that because a madman did not do the most mad thing he said he would do… THAT time that he’d never do it. It is its own form of madness to think Trump’s first actual policy statement in nearly three years that wasn’t about the 2020 election is just for show. It is its own form of madness to forget Trump’s promise of retribution, and his own burning, seething, sadistic, animating sense of vengeance.

And where do these detained non-citizens go? These places would in fact be camps, of some kind, and the living arrangements would necessarily be cramped, crowded, congested, confined — oh, what IS the word I’m looking for?

Concentrated!

That’s it! The camps would be concentrated.

Camps. With Concentration.

B-Block (27:12) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: Rupert Murdoch retires to become Chairman Emeritus of Fox and News Corp. This is a man so evil that a dying television playwright with three months to live literally said he named his cancer "Rupert" after Murdoch so he had something to fight, and that if he hadn't wanted to spend his last months creating a new series, he would've murdered Murdoch on behalf of mankind. This was 29 years ago.

This man is Osama Bin-Journalist. Stop rationalizing that he deserves some kind of praise because he dominated his field. So has Trump. So did Hitler. The story of writer Dennis Potter and Rupert - and how Rupert fired me personally, after I followed his rules. And may he burn in hell and the sooner the better.

C-Block (55:20) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: His delightful story of every great dog you had to - and willingly made - excuses for: "The Dog That Bit People."