EPISODE 228: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:42) SPECIAL COMMENT: Trump may have done the one thing that would force the ENTIRE Republican party to repudiate him: The Israelis Intelligence Corps and the Mossad reportedly think Donald Trump has damaged the security of the state of Israel. “Top brass in the Israeli defense establishment,” writes the intelligence and strategic affairs correspondent Yossi Melman in the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz, “are concerned that secret documents seized from (Trump) include material whose exposure has damaged Israel’s security.” Melman quotes two senior Israeli defense officials, one from the Mossad and the other from the Intelligence Corps as saying, quote: “It’s an absolutely reasonable possibility that some of the documents are about Israel and its capabilities, maybe even its nuclear program,” unquote. And reading between the lines, Melman and his sources never once mention the story of Trump reading the details of the Mark Milley plan to attack IRAN to Mark Meadows’ ghost-writers, so presumably what Israeli Intelligence fears is that Trump has damaged other elements of their nation’s security.

So ANOTHER fault line opens between Trump and Republican Sacred Cows: Trump versus Troops, Trump versus Law And Order, Trump Versus… Israel. Damaging the 21st Century Republican Party’s supposed allegiance to Israel is the most sacred of its cows because it is viscerally important to the party’s fanatical religious base. Polling from as recently as 2018 confirms that at least HALF of the Evangelicals don’t give two actual spits about ACTUAL Jews or the NATION of Israel. It is simply a tentpole belief of their cult that before all the bible-thumpers can go to Heaven in a rapture, all the Jews have to be in Jerusalem and be converted or die. The Republicans pretend allegiance to Israel in order to maintain ownership of the Evangelicals who need Jerusalem preserved so they can be converted when the alarm goes off at Rapture O’Clock.

Plus Pence takes a Nikki Haley style Trump-Endangered-The-Troops climbdown, Ryan Goodman thinks Smith has a backup play in New Jersey just in case things come acropper in the Florida trial, Judge Cannon has exactly 14 days of active Judge Stuff, Trump turned down a chance to make all this stuff go away.

And the story of the British TV producer who shouted "President Trump? Are you ready to go to jail?" during his creation of a false victory narrative at a Miami Cuban bakery after the arraignment Tuesday, takes a strange twist. The guy who got in her face and called her a "Stupid B----" has self-identified, and he's a former member of the Trump Government AND was involved in image polishing for Putin in America, Michael R. Caputo.

B-BLOCK (18:20) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: To finish off the Michael Caputo story and his world-class exit quote from the Trump Regime in 2020. Plus the Archives are mad at Trump AGAIN. Lindsey Graham makes another threat. And Fani Willis officially says she isn't postponing anything. (24:45) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Elon Musk wants America to have a dictator who'll kill everybody; The New York Times and Fox News share dishonors over Trump's Tuesday; and why do all these supposedly anti-pedophilia right wingers say such creepy things about kids and kids' characters and sex? Why did Ben Shapiro talk about Bert and Ernie wearing "assless chaps"?

C-BLOCK (33:30) EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: All the strikes are against 10-year old Slinky in the New York pound (35:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: The day in 1974 that I didn't go to Boston University because of...Howard Stern.