SERIES 3 EPISODE 45: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: It is safe to extrapolate that Donald Trump killed at least one American in order to instead send the Covid testing machine that might have saved them to Vladimir Putin. Bob Woodward’s book says Trump "secretly sent Putin what were then rare Abbott Point of Care test MACHINES for the Russian’s personal use.” From the supply meant for American citizens then faced with a rapidly-spreading virus for which there was no vaccine, no cure, and next to no treatment. To save Putin and his fellow scumbags, even if it killed Americans.

May Donald Trump burn in hell – and the sooner the better. We know with certainty that Trump stole American testing machines from American hospitals and other crisis health facilities to give to Russia’s dictator between March 31st 2020 and May 7th 2020. The earlier date is when Abbott says was “we began distributing our rapid point-of-care Covid-19 tests for our ID NOW system.” On May 7th officials in Russia and Russia’s branch office at the Trump White House said “some (Covid) testing equipment as well as ventilators” had been sent to Russia.

March 31st. That was the day Doctors Fauci and Birx tried to warn the country that the best case scenario was between 100 thousand and 240 thousand American dead. By April 10th there were more than 18 thousand Americans dead and more than half a million cases – 160,00 of them here in New York state. Our outside date on this window of infamy is May 7, by which point there were 72-thousand dead. 10-thousand more Americans would die in the next week… the latest possible date that someone could not get a test because Trump prioritized Putin’s life over yours.

AS TO THE OTHER BIG WOODWARD HEADLINE: We know Trump is STILL Putin’s asset. Woodward quotes an unidentified Trump aide as saying the two creatures have spoken at least seven times since Trump was exiled from Washington. “In early 2024,” the Washington Post writes, “the former president ordered an aide away from his office at Mar-a-Lago… so he could conduct a private phone call with Russian leader."

It got lost at the time, but at the debate against Biden in June, Trump confirmed that he talked to Putin between our exit from Afghanistan (August 2021) and Putin's invasion of Ukraine (February 2022). He has been in contact with an enemy dictator. Were Trump an FBI or CIA agent with such contacts he and his lawyers could at this moment be negotiating a plea deal so he could avoid the death penalty.

B-Block (24:00) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Who's the worst person to speak to the future of legacy news media at The New York Press Club? No - none of my ex-girlfriends. Guess again. Joe Kernen is big mad at me, at Andrew Ross Sorkin, at Frank Luntz, at his own ferret toupees. And news chiefs Cesar Conde and Rebecca Blumenstein at NBC - Nothing But Cowards - now move into Catch-and-Kill mode, burying a movie critical of Trump until AFTER the election.

C-Block (33:15) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Of all the politicians I've met since I first went into the field in 1997 one stands head and shoulders above the others in terms of the ability to take a joke at his own expense. I thought I'd heard him at the high point of his self-deprecation. Then, last week, he topped himself, making such a joke HIMSELF.