THEY FINALLY INDICT THE PROVERBIAL HAM SANDWICH - 3.31.23

Published Mar 31, 2023, 4:09 AM

EPISODE 166: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:41) SPECIAL COMMENT: Manhattan District Attorney's Office Confirms: Trump has been indicted. Improbably, Hannity sums it up best. And the breadth of reported counts (34?) suggests the range of charges could include really dangerous ones like tax crimes or lying to banks. In confirming he'll be brought in, Trump makes two outstanding bloopers. Sean Spicer has to announce it on Newsman. And maybe the most important consideration: life teaches us that in anything controversial, the toughest thing is to go first. Today it's twice as easy for Fani Willis or Jack Smith to indict him than it was yesterday afternoon.

Plus: just for fun I'll read you Trump's 2014 fan letter to me. No - seriously. Talk about a blooper!

B-Block (19:46) COULD TRUMP PASS A SANITY TEST, Part 1: An updated version of the 2016 Vanity Fair piece and video that forever linked me to the Oompa Loompa.

C-Block (44:00) COULD TRUMP PASS A SANITY TEST, Part 2: The conclusion and the final score and guess what...he COULDN'T.

Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. Impossibly, it was Sean Hannity who said it best. Quote. A grand jury can indict, as we say, a ham sandwich, especially if that ham sandwich is Donald J. Trump. No person in the history of humanity, guilty or innocent, confessed or framed, has ever better defined the cliche of the indicted ham sandwich than has Trump on whitebread. By the way, indicted on a widely reported thirty four counts, which if even one exaggeration, would confirm an investigation much wider and much more thorough touching, much more than just Stormy Daniels, you should excuse the expression than anybody had reported or thought. First Trump confirmed it happened. Then so did a spokesperson for the Manhattan DA, Alvin Bragg, quoting this evening, we contacted mister Trump's attorney to coordinate his surrender to the Manhattan DA's office for arraignment on a Supreme Court indictment, which remains under seal guidance will be provided when the arraignment date is selected. Unquote Tuesday. Reportedly, this is all quote related to business fraud, per CNN, including quote documents that have been uncovered during the probe but are not yet known to the public. Slash been reported both financial records and communications between key figures per CBS, but motly nobody yet actually knows anything. The indictment or indictments are under seal, and we have no other idea if there's one of them, or thirty four or three hundred and thirty four, or if it's business fraud or campaign finance violations or falsified records, or given that reported volume of indictments, if it was something even worse for Trump, like tax crimes or false statements to banks, either of which would necessarily include accomplices and thus could easily include accomplices who have turned state's evidence, And sang, we don't know if it's just Stormy Daniels or also Karen McDougall, who was invoked by a Wall Street Journal report just hours before the indictment news broke. We don't know if Trump's terroristic threats of death and destruction on social media relating to da Bragg might have produced additional charges by themselves. We think we know that Trump will be arrested and indicted Tuesday, so give credit where credit is due. He never said which Tuesday did he. We also know pretty reliably from Maga Haberman on CNN that the Trump camp had convinced itself that the entire case had collapsed, and that the Manhattan District Attorneys Office had yesterday announced a nearly month long hiatus in meeting for the grand jury because Alvin Bragg was looking for a climb down. I said nothing about this here because, as I was told Tuesday, the Stormy Daniel's case had not been dropped, but merely delayed. No other explanation offered. CNN summed this up with an anonymous quote from somebody close to Trump. Is this a shock today? Hell? Yes, we do know that. When Trump himself began the rumor that he was to be arrested on Tuesday, March twenty first, he also leaked that he would turn himself in and so a boast that seemed to be lifted directly from the Norma Desmond character in Sunset Boulevard. He said he would enjoy the glare of the camera lights during his purp walk, and he was debating which look he should put on his face. And then the DA's office leaked that there would not be a purp walk, but there would be fingerprinting and a mug shot, mugshot, mugshot, mugshot, hugshot. But turning himself in part turns out to impact Trump's main rival for the twenty twenty four Republican nomination, Ron de Santis, a small man in high heeled shoes, continuing to founder on any stage bigger than the woke Finocchi swamp, immediately announced last night quote Florida will not assist in an extradition request, which is rather unfortunate because a, you do not need to extradite somebody who is turning himself into the authorities and be Article for Section two of the Constitution requires every state to honor the extradition request of every other state. So DeSantis, who graduated from Harvard Law but apparently never went to class there, doesn't have a goddamned thing to do with this. Other reaction to the news as it broke did produce a series of absolute howlers. The guy who happened to be on the air on Newsmax when the story Sean Spicer, Trump's first press secretary, otherwise remembered only because he was portrayed on Saturday Night Live by an actress Melissa McCarthy. The Daily Show congratulated Trump on finally winning a majority of votes. Somewhere as the news broke on Fox, some of its five propagandists in the studio gasped audibly. Stormy Daniels tweeted that there had been so many messages of support that she couldn't respond to them, a quote also, don't want to spill my champagne. That added to her reaction from Sunday, when somebody had tweeted President Trump wouldn't touch you with a ten foot poll, and she subtweeted, true, he used a three inch one. And Eric Trump, who at last report was supposedly Donald Trump's son, actually responded to the indictment news by saying, of his father, quote at some point, the guy deserves a pass, which is about as far away from he's not guilty as you could get without saying, yeah, he's guilty. Way to go, Fredo. Nearly all of the rest of the reaction fell into impotent, vague rage worthy of King Lear. Tuesday, the Way Out whack Doodle Wayne Root had written an article which Trump then disseminated, threatening that were Trump to be indicted, fascist state and city district attorneys would then indict Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, George Soros, doctor Anthony Fauci, and Eric Holder. And you know, if they paid off porn stars to keep quiet during their presidential campaigns too, I'd have to say I approve. In addition to calling Trump a ham Sandwich, Sean Hannity referred to the opening of Pandora's box, and there was a lot of genuine surprise and shock from the likes of Tucker Carlson and other thwarted three year olds. In his own reaction, Trump himself committed two outstanding bloopers that make the whole experience worthwhile. Trump referred to the pending indictments inevitably as a quote witch hunt, which remains an entirely different kind of analogy when you stop to think that in the three centuries ending about seventeen fifty that right or wrong courts in Europe and colonial America convicted at least thirty five thousand witches, thirty of them in Massachusetts alone, and in a self own far less depressing than the whole burning at the State thing, Trump posted on social media that quote these thugs and radical left monsters have just indicated the forty fifth president, which is in fact literally true. But you keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means. Indicated. One thing Trump will never be accused of by any district attorney is being too smart for his own good. Rather remarkably, there was an astonishing number of basic questions that followed that one would have assumed everybody already knew the answers too. Yes, he can still run for president when indicted. Even if convicted, he can run while in prison, the labor leader Eugene V. Debs did in nineteen twenty. Debs had been convicted of sedition in September nineteen eighteen for encouraging people to dodge the draft for World War One that he was serving ten years in the Federal penitentiary in Atlanta, Georgia, Irony. There when he was nominated for president for the fifth time by the Socialist Party, Eugene V. Debs got nine hundred nineteen thousand, seven hundred ninety nine votes for president, which doesn't sound too impressive except that was a tenth as much as the Democratic loser James Cox, and thus it was the equivalent of about seven million, four hundred thousand votes today. Compare that to what Jill Stein got in two sixteen, only a million four The only thing Debs would not do in nineteen twenty was vote for himself or for anybody else, which might also be true for an incarcerated Trump in twenty twenty four. Even if convicted and imprisoned and elected, Trump could still assume the presidency, it would require a compliant House and Senate to not immediately impeach him on January twenty five, and for some reason, I wouldn't put it past the Republicans to provide that kind of compliance. Trump could even theoretically pardon himself for any federal convictions, another reason why the state prosecutions in New York and maybe Georgia are so important, And who knows, if Trump were convicted just of state crimes, not federal ones, he could shoot the works. He as a restored president, could order federal troops to extricate himself from a state prison. Of course, by now, in this particular bit of political science fiction, we are almost certainly in the middle of a civil war. But if it happens, don't say I didn't warn you. Clearly the Constitution anticipated crooked men, but not this crooked. The other practical question I was actually asked, in various forms by various people last night, what about those stolen classified documents? What happens to them now? What about January six what about the thing in Georgia? I had to explain that the indictment at arrest in New York did not preclude indictment and arrest in Georgia for trying to falsify the election results there, and that the classified documents and January sixth federal cases were still alive and well in pending the action of the Special Council Jacksmith in DC. But it was shocking how many well educated, generally well informed people did not know this. It was a little less shocking, but not that less, that so many of Trump's defenders seemed to think that because he will be arrested for the New York case, he now somehow cannot or will not be arrested and charged and tried for the Marilago and Fulton County and the coup attempt cases. Pro Tip, he sure can. Lastly, I would suggest that the real importance of this story is contained within one other reaction to the indictment of Trump that came from a man named Yusef Salam, And if his name is not immediately recognizable, Yusef Salam was a member of the Central Park five, the kids whom Trump tried to railroad to capital punishment more than three decades ago. Yusef Salam he issued a one word statement, and that one word was karma. And the point to that is that somebody somewhere in authority finally did something yesterday. Somebody finally said Trump broke the law. Trump erased the guardrails of our democracy. He destabilized our society. And I don't care if it was for trying to overthrow the government or we're stealing a million dollars worth of Hamburgers. He must face justice. Somebody somewhere acted, and the action is the essence here. I would argue that all of this indictments in Georgia and by the Special Council, and indictments that would make those of Alvin Bragg seem like a parking ticket, are now twice as likely as they were yesterday afternoon. Because if life should have taught you one thing, it is this. In almost any subject of importance, or controversy. Nobody likes to go first. Nobody. We all like to invoke pioneer Americans stock and Americans pushing the envelope and American plock. But being the second district attorney or special counsel to indict Donald Trump will be far easier than being the first. What is the first thing's success in any field, or just survival in any field produces imitation. I will tell you a story that I confess is largely a humble Bragg, but is actually presented here to support my thesis that Alvin Bragg just made it phenomenally easier for Fanny Willis or Jack Smith or anybody else in authority to now indict Trump as well. At the World Series in two thousand and seven, I was waiting in a snake line at Fenway Park in Boston, waiting to pick up my tickets, and they're approaching me from the other direction. Was John Kerry. When he looked up and saw me, he threw out his hands and said congratulations. And I said thanks, And then I said for what? And John Kerry said for winning us the mid terms last year. And I was appropriately and sincerely really dubious about that. And he said, don't you realize how much cowardice there is in American politics. We all thought that Bush was manipulating the terror alert system and arresting this guy and revealing this fake plot just to score political points with terrorism. But you were the only one who actually went out and said it. And when you said it, and not only didn't you get shipped to Gitmo, but your network gave you a new contract and a raise. All the rest of us said, well, now we can say it too, And it turned out America was sure of it too. And then we won the house in the state and I said, wait, aren't you the guys who are supposed to be the ones to say it first? And Carry said you would think so, wouldn't you, But we didn't either way. You were the one who crashed his head through the wall. We just followed you through the hole. So thanks for winning the midterms. Enjoy the game. That's what it was. That's the key to it. Alvin Bragg put his head through the wall last night. We're more accurately, Alvin Bragg put Donald Trump's head through the wall last night, still ahead of us in this edition of Countdown. Lead us to say this edition is all Trump. I'd like to get personal and give you a little of my history with Trump. I am linked to him by two stories. One is about selling my condo in a Trump apartment building here because A I could no longer bear to see his name over my front door anymore, and B I realized that whether or not he won or lost in twenty sixteen, his name alone would crash the value of my apartment. The second story to which links me, I'd like to update it for you. It's a little piece I did in twenty sixteen called could Trump pass a sanity test? The answer is it's less likely now than it was in twenty sixteen. But first let me read you something dated March twenty eight, twenty fourteen. I was still working at ESPN. I had just done a profile on the man who's daring launched my TV career, Ted Turner, the founder of CNN, and this was in my mailbox. Dear Keith, your piece on Ted Turner and the Lifetime Achievement award was fantastic, and you're right when you say he should get two of them. Keep up the great work, with best wishes, sincerely, Donald Trump. Donald Trump was a fan letter from Donald Trump to me. I bet he'd like to have that one to do over again. Could Trump pass a sanity test? That's next? This, siscountdown Bee a bit much. Take two. So I have told you what we know about Trump's indictment, and I had told you my Trump origin story, and I've read to you Trump's fan mail to me, and I've given you a lot of the early highlights. But honest to God, there was a time when I was known for SportsCenter, or if we're just talking news, my name was linked with President George W. Bush, or in a different sense, with Bill O'Reilly. This all changed in twenty sixteen, like so much of the life we knew then. By August of that year, I was doing a video series where GQ called The Closer, and after Trump won, another series called The Resistance, and I forget the final play count, but it was like one hundred and seventy episodes and three hundred and fifty million plays. CBS News reported that one episode got the most engagement on Facebook all year. Quote. Political pundit keithal Roman found a way to channel concerns about mister Trump. He started hosting a series of political commentary and special interviews titled The Resistance with keithal Wrooman, with the first episode featured on GQ on November sixteenth, twenty sixteen, reaching fifty four million people, equivalent to one in six Americans. All right, I'd like to hear about the other five please? Anyway, that's when I was kind of free christened the anti Trump guy and the thing that started me on that path. While you're selling my apartment to get out of a Trump building. But ultimately it was a piece I wrote for Vanity Fair, which we then did a really long, very well photographed video four called can Donald Trump Pass a Sanity Test? There ain't no santy clause one wee changes I'm going to give you from the original. There's some dates and timing are corrected for clarification, and there's two editors notes. So here goes. Can Trump pass a sanity test? Short answer, according to the facts, probably not. First several important caveats. There is little worse and nothing cheesier than questioning the psychological stability of a public figure, especially a candidate for president. Even in this case, except that in his year of campaigning, Donald Trump called Lindsey Graham a quote nut job, Glenn Beck a quote real nut job, and Bernie Sanders a quote wacko. Trump has insisted Ben Carson's quote got pathological disease. He asked to Barack Obama, is our president insane? He called Ted Cruz unstable, unhinge, a little bit of a maniac, and crazy or very dishonest. He also called the entire CNBC network crazy. He called Megan Kelly crazy at least six times. Respectful reticence about aspersions and cliches and mental health questions in a time in which mocking was seemingly slowly maturing into concern died a long time ago in the twenty sixteen presidential cycle, and it died at Donald Trump's hands. Moreover, if the question is asked seriously and not gratuitously, just the examination might explain how Trump has seemingly survived dozens of moments that might each have been campaign enders for almost everybody else. Why have we not asked if a given presidential candidate might be disqualified from office due to psychological reasons? Because we not only cannot see this forest for the trees, but each time we try, there are even more trees blocking our view than when there were before in the twenty four hour news cycle. Each successive John Yurky's Iceland from the Manchurion candidate moment is not registered cumulatively. It merely supplants the moment from last week, where from yesterday or from this morning. This could also explain Trump's seeming imperviousness to his own mind bending campaign. Surely it must be exhausting to attack the Pope February eighteenth attack, President Clinton, May eighteenth, attack, John McCain July eighteenth, attack, Mexicans June sixteenth, attack, Muslims December eighth attack. Candidates to use a teleprompter May twenty six just before you give a speech using a teleprompter, May twenty sixth. It's got to be exhausting, unless, as the old joke goes, no pain, no gain, but also no brain, no pain anyway. The actual sanity test I found is called, by delicious coincidence, the Hair Psychopathy Checklist Revised Introduced by a Canadian criminal psychologist, Robert D. Hair H a r E. In nineteen eighty. It is still in use, though with ever more diffuse and specific mental health diagnoses. It is not without its critics. However, as a practicing therapist who walked me through this test agreed it serves as a kind of triage device to separate the injured from the tripping from the psychopathic. And about that word, we seem to have completely muddled up sociopath and psychopath. Sociopath by definition, think Ted Kazinski, the unibomber, living out there in his shack in the woods, feeling nothing for other humans and unable to interact with them, literally mailing it in psychopath think Bernie made Off, feeling nothing for other humans, but having long ago learned how to expertly mimic relationships by being whatever he needed to be to whoever he needed to use. As the former FBI profile where greg O McCrary told The New York Times made Off matched the psychopathic rates of quote lying, manipulation, the ability to deceive feelings of grandiosity and callousness toward their victims. And neither the psychopath nor the sociopath is automatically physically dangerous. So to the test for each of the twenty items on the hair psychopathy checklist, and if anybody's hair has ever been psychopathic, it certainly his Thank you very much. You're supposed to assign the subject a score a zero, A one, or two. The highest and most dangerous score is forty. In the United States, the accepted minimum score for possible psychopathy is thirty. So those are the rules. Let's play the feud one glibness slash superficial charm. I had interviewed Donald Trump as long ago as nineteen eighty three, and I'd always thought him a horse's ass. But after running into him when we both worked at NBC, and then in the lobby of one of his apartment buildings in which I lived, I was stunned to encounter a quiet, succinct, seemingly sincere co worker and in essence landlord. In one role, he described himself as an anti Bush pro Obama Liberal. In the other, he urged me to contact him personally with any problems or suggestions about the building. Then he got onto the campaign stage in two fifteen, and boom, he was America's newest Mussolini impersonator. For a while, I was flummixed as to which of these mutually exclusive personalities was the act and which was the fact. Then I was reminded that it didn't really matter which that having multiple personality should by itself preclude one from having access to multiple nuclear warheads. I was explaining this on Bill Maher's show in November of twenty fifteen when Bill suddenly got so g whiz that I I almost didn't recognize him. Me too, he exclaimed boyishly. Bill Maher cynical to such a degree that he makes me seem as earnestly faithful as the Pope said he had been just as convinced and thus just as stunned by this hydra of different Trumpian personas now I can easily imagine myself being taken in by a con artist like Donald Trump. I mean Trump wrote me that fan letter, but mar mar who called me a corporate sellout in nineteen seventy eight when I was nineteen years old, when I had to that point earned about five hundred bucks from all the corporations in the world combined. He fooled Bill Maher so glibness and superficial charm, but at professional grade points awarded two running score two out of a possible two test number two on the hair test. Grandiose sense of self worth quote. I feel like a supermodel, he said on June eighteenth, twenty sixteen, in Phoenix, except like Times ten. It's true. I'm a supermodel. I'm on the cover of these magazines. I'm on the cover of the biggest magazines. This stuff about supermodels was stated by the first umpa lumpa American to ever run for national office. He is bright orange. He was then a seventy year old man affecting a hair color and style that would have been rejected by the eighties synth pop group A flock of seagulls. I served with supermodels. I knew supermodels. Supermodels were friends of mine. Donald, You're no supermodel? Points awarded two running score four out of four point number three. Need for stimulation, proneness to boredom, acknowledging that a lot of us get a point to here, I certainly do not. All of those job changes were their fault. Let me first quote the introduction from Trump's book, Think like a billionaire, don't take vacations. What's the point? Have a short attention span? Most successful people have very short attention spans. It has a lot to do with imagination. Here's some of the wide ranging businesses Trump's short attention span has dragged him into real estate, vitamins, rentals, books, condos, chocolate, bars, golf courses, pro football, beauty pageants, stakes, board games, television hosting, bottled water, universities, men's where, professional wrestling, mortgages, airlines, fragrances, coffee restaurants, energy drinks, vodka, search, engines, your analysis, and of course, bicycle racing, the Tour to Trump, in which contestants raced three hundred laps around his ego. And then we have the whole President thing that happened after I wrote this. Points awarded two running score six out of six Top at four. Pathological lying June eighteenth at the Woodlands in Texas. Quote. If some of those wonderful people had guns strapped right here, right to their waist or right to their ankle, and this son of a bitch comes out and starts shooting, and one of the people in that room happened to have it and goes boom, you know what, that would have been a beautiful, beautiful site, folks. That would have been a beautiful, beautiful sight. June twentieth on Twitter, when I said that if within the Orlando club you had some people with guns, I was obviously talking about additional guards or employees. Can I stop there or should I walk you through the hot and cold running lies alternating with the admissions of the Times in the nineties, he pretended to be his own spokesman, John Miller and John Barron, or any of the twenty seven pants on Fire recognitions that had been awarded by PolitiFact to Trump for merely his most egregious lies from the time he announced for the presidency through winning the Republican nomination. Points awarded two running score eight out of eight. Topic number five conning slash manipulative. I'm just going to assume this was how Trump got Paul Ryan to commit professional Harry Kiri. There are many different personality problems which include almost supernatural one on one manipulation skills in the Trump cannon see fools mar and fools Ulderman. Points awarded two running score ten out of ten. Item six on the hair test lack of remorse or guilt. Asked about his faith at the Family Leadership Summit in Ames, Iowa by the moderator Frank Luntz in July of twenty fifteen, Trump said, quote, people are so shocked when they find out I am Protestant, I am Presbyterian, and I go to church, and I love God and I love my church once followed up with a softball of literally biblical proportions. He wanted to know whether Trump has ever asked God for forgiveness for his own actions. Quote, I'm not sure I have. I just go on and try to do a better job from there. I don't think so. I think if I do something wrong, I think I just try and make it right. I don't bring God into that picture. I don't. Trump then explained that Holy communions sufficed for that, quoting again, when I drink my little wine, which is about the only wine I drank, and I have my little cracker, I guess that is a form of asking for forgiveness, and I do that as often as possible because I feel cleansed. I think in terms of let's go on and let's make it right, the art of the deal. Indeed, Trump picked up the thread with Jake Tapper in January of twenty sixteen. Again the subject was religion. I like to be good. I don't like to have to ask for forgiveness. Tapper then asked about a rival, presumed to be Ted Cruz, who was conducting field research into the efficacy of questioning Trump's religious convictions as part of his campaign against Trump, Trump said he shouldn't be doing that, very unethical. Within a few weeks, Trump attacked Cruiz's religious convictions instead. On February twelfth, he tweeted, how can Ted Cruze be an evangelical Christian when he lies so much and is so dishonest. You shouldn't talk about religion. You shouldn't talk about my religion. Not a week after that, Pope Francis answered a question about Trump's overall tone in the campaign and said a person who thinks only about building walls wherever they may be and not building bridges is not Christian. Within hours, Trump responded by slamming the Pope. He fantasized about an ISIS attack on the Vatican that only he could stop, and he concluded this remarkable circle of the illogic by writing, for a religious leader to question a person's faith is disgraceful. He's a religious leader who's going to question a person's faith? If not a religious leader? Huh? And this was right after trumpet question a person's faith after he twice admitted that his faith included the option to not ask forgiveness and to not bring God into that picture. And just four months before he would go back to the well and question Hillary Clinton's religious faith points. Awarded two running score twelve out of twelve. Item number seven on the Hair Psychopathy Checklist shallow affect. Now I had to have this one thoroughly explained to me by my analyst friend. In some its tone deafness when it comes to explaining relationships between people. For instance, if somebody got up on stage for the sake of argument, say it's Billy Joel at Madison Square Garden, and Billy Joel insulted you by sarcastically dedicating to you his song The Entertainer as a way of saying you weren't a leader or a politician even but merely an entertainer. You might take umbridge or at least recognize the dig or complain that Billy only sings the same twelve songs every couple of weeks in every concert he's had for forty years. But not if you are suffering from shallow affect, you wouldn't quote thank you, Billy Joel, Trump tweeted on May twenty seventh. Many friends just told me you gave me a very kind shout out at MSG. Appreciated love your music. Another example of shallow affect would be a kind of approach to how people influence each other's lives that could be diagrammed as event B followed event A. Therefore event A caused event B. If say, a prominent athlete ignored you in some other tangential way interacted with you before failing or being injured, with shallow affect, you might think in passing that you jinxed him, especially if you were still nine or ten years old, but you probably wouldn't publicly claim it, not unless you were really suffering from shallow affect. Quote Derek Jeter had a great career until three days ago. Trump tweeted on October fifteenth, twenty twelve, after the former Yankees captain shattered his ankle during a playoff game when he sold his apartment at Trump World Tower. I told him not to sell karma. The answer this chain letter or many ankles will get broken theme was not some early passing expression of the now familiar syndrome we might describe as TWT tweeting wild. Trump five days later, quote Derek Jeter broke ankle one day after he sold his apartment in Trump World Tower. And just to finish this topic, off. Another aspect to shallow affect would be an unwillingness to acknowledge reliance on others. In other words, it's just you. It's always you, It's only you. On March sixteenth, Trump was asked about which foreign policy consultants he was speaking to. I'm speaking with myself number one, because I have a very good brain, he said. Seriously, I know what I'm doing, and I listened to a lot of people. I talk to a lot of people, and at the appropriate time, I'll tell you who the people are. But my primary consultant is myself, and I have a good instinct for this stuff. On June twenty fourth, twenty sixteen, in Scotland, he again described his dream consultant, saying he spoke to quote foreign policy advisors all the time, but the advice has to come for me. The advice has to come from me. Points awarded two running score fourteen out of fourteen. Item eight on the hair Psychopathy checklist callous slash lack of empathy. Oh yeah, you already know this. One June twelfth, twenty sixteen, hours after the last shots were fired at the Pulse Club in Orlando, quote, appreciate the congrats we're being right on radical Islamic terrorism. I don't want congrats. I want toughness and vigilance. We must be smart. As a reminder, you cannot give fifteen hundred points for one item on the hair checklist, even if that total is seemingly deserved. Points awarded two running score sixteen out of sixteen, number nine. Parasitic lifestyle. This is not as I originally thought, living materially off mom or Dad or others, although that can be a minor component, especially if you know Dad gave you a million dollar loan circa nineteen seventy, and then you've got nine million more from a bank on the promise of your inheritance, and ultimately you got about forty million upon your father's death, and you considered all this just a small start. It has more to do with taking credit for the work of others to the degree of erasing all record of their contributions and slapping your name on their efforts, often in transactions in which you are literally renting the use of your name as a brand and nothing else. You know, like Trump Palace, the Tour to Trump, Trump Stakes, Trump taj Mahal, Donald Trump, the Fragrance and of course, Castle trumpula, and just as in court, a wife cannot be forced to give evidence of parasitic lifestyle against her husband. Despite Milania Trump's twenty sixteen convention speech, lots of which seemed copied from Michelle Obama unless Hubby wrote that speech. Points awarded two, running score eighteen out of eighteen. Well done, Donald, Item ten poor behavioral controls, Well, he had poor behavioral controls, But everybody agrees he's going to dial it all back this time right after he pivots pivots towards dialing it back. Right Judge Gonzalo Curiel, right, Don King, Joel Austine, Ben Roethlisberger, Pete Rose, or anybody else who Trump claimed that endorsed him when they had not, Or the Hispanic ABC reporter he'd called a sleez, or the losing Republican presidential hopefuls he mocked in a video the day after insisting he would unite the Republican Party, or you know, everybody in the world since not twenty seventeen. Points awarded two, running score twenty out of twenty. Item eleven on this test is promiscuous sexual behavior. And if I ever heard a better moment, in any thing I have ever written to say. I'll be back after this. It's eleven promiscuous sexual behavior. I'll finish off the score of Donald Trump on the could he pass a Sanity test test right after this to resume that piece of work which originally tied me to Donald Trump for life, the twenty sixteen Vanity Fair article could Trump pass a Sanity Test? We had gotten through the first ten points on the hair psychopathy test and judging whether or not literally Trump could pass or would fail this literal sanity test through ten which was poor behavioral controls, he had a running score of twenty points out of a possible twenty points. So if you're going to wager now on how he did on the whole exam, you better get your bets in now, because point number eleven on the hair psychopathy exam is promiscuous sexual behavior. I've told you this before. When I was a young radio sportscaster, I was given the great opportunity to interview by telephone a famous athlete who had just been suspended from his own sport because he had gone to work for casino. The athlete was Willie Mays, and he was expecting my call and this, as near as I can remember, it was the transcript of the start of the call, ring ring voice sounding kind of like Hattie McDaniel, the Academy Award winning actress from Gone with the Wind. Mister Mays's residence. Me Hi. Milton Richmond from UPI gave me mister Mays's number and said he would be willing to give me a brief interview. May I speak with mister Mays please, voice sounding kind of like Hattie McDaniel, the Academy Award winning actress from Gone with the Wind. Who's calling please me? My name is Keith all Ryman from UPI Radio, voice suddenly changing to voice of Willie May's. This is Willie. As silly as the story of the whole fake Trump spokesman was. Of course he has invisible friends, and of course they are pr flacks. Lost in the laughter were three important details. Firstly, as my conversation with Willie May's in nineteen seventy nine and his imaginary housekeeper suggests, ordinary people do do this, but secondly, when they do it, they usually try to disguise their own voice. Thirdly, rarely do they assume other identities in order to provide the second component to what we categorize as sexual promiscuity, besides multiple partners, which is according to psychiatrists boasting about it nineteen ninety one, John Miller, Trump spokesman who sounded exactly like Trump talking to Sue Carswell, then of people and now of vanity fair quote. Trump is somebody that has got a lot of options, and frankly, he gets called by everybody, gets called by everybody in the book. In terms of women, I mean they call, they just call. He's living with Marla and he's got three other girlfriends. This was before the Access Hollywood video. By the way, Points awarded two again because we couldn't award two million. Running score twenty two out of twenty two. Category twelve. Early behavior problems. Now, when I was a kid, probably four or five, I twice hit a friend of mine in the back of the head with a metal toy. I remember shock blood, but no stitches, and family meetings. We talked, and then folks got professional advice, and they got me into organized sports and into exercise. And I quickly realized that just because I was frustrated with somebody, that was not a good reason to hit them with a toy. Truck regardless, and I had my analyst friend run the hair psychopathy checklist on me. I insisted she give me a point on this because hitting a kid in the back of the head with a toy truck and then later a magnet was at minimum an indicator of the potential for early behavior problems. So if you give me a point for that out of a possible two points, how many points would you give to a child who attacked one of his own teachers. Quote I actually gave a teacher a black eye, Trump wrote in the Art of the Deal in nineteen eighty seven, barely concealing his retroactive glee. He placed the assault in the second grade, likely making him seven years old. Quote I punched my music teacher because I didn't think he knew anything about music, and I almost got expelled. What kind of kid punches an adult in the face. I mean, think back to being that age. You're in the second grade. The one universal I can recall was that no seven year old ever dreamt of trying to physically take on an adult, for the simple and unavoidable reason that virtually any adult was several times your own weight. If you pick the wrong adult, they might do more than just defend themselves. Even knocking an adult down could be an exercising self destruction if he fell on you. The most reality challenged of my classmates the kid who once ran headfirst into the side of a moving school bus for reasons that still remain unclear. Nine presidents later, he would never have hit an adult. There is a second version of the same story from a Trump biographer. He did indeed give the teacher a black eye, but not with a punch. He threw an eraser at the teacher and hit him just right. Well, because that's way better, huh. Regardless, the version Trump tells is of the four foot tall edition of himself punching what was at least a five foot tall adult in the eye hard enough to give the man a shiner. The only argument against calling this early behavior problems is that the first word implies that it stopped at some point. Points awarded again two running score twenty four out of twenty four, number thirteen. Lack of realistic long term goals here the streak ended so far, mister Trump has theoretically aced our exam, which is not a good thing. But reality now invades our idyllic scene. There could be a thousand things psychologically wrong with the process by which Trump ends up with a low score on this one. I mean, in the big picture, you would have never thought Mussolini was less crazy just because he left Italy for Switzerland in nineteen o two in part to avoid military service, and exactly twenty years later he became head of the Italian state and often dressed up in a military uniform. But tests or tests, and if you say, this guy Trump so lacks realistic long term goals that he thinks he can become president and he winds up with the nomination of a major party. The long term goals turned out to be not that unrealistic. Huh. Still, he gets only partial credit here because once again he boasts about having the very thing psychology says is a warning sign in the preface to think like a billionaire. Trump quotes author Richard Coniff. Almost all successful alpha personalities display a single minded determination to impose their vision on the world, an irrational belief in unreasonable goals, bordering sometimes on lunacy. I get a point here too, It's one of my four or five points because I've always thought I would make a great prime minister of the United Kingdom. I have never been to the United Kingdom. Points awarded one running score twenty five out of twenty six editors, note number one. When I wrote this in twenty sixteen, I gave Trump one point because I knew that while he had breeze to the Republican nomination, there was no way it would actually become president. So if you hadn't heard, he did become president. So I have to take this point away. I mean, becoming president cannot be considered an unrealistic long term goal if you become freaking president, no matter how you did it, no matter which country did it for you. So his score reverts to twenty four out of twenty six, and I'll use that corrected score going forward, all right back to the original piece fourteen. Impulsivity. Impulse Civity is like the old judicial definition of pornography. You may not be able to define it, but you're supposed to know it when you see it. Even the Wall Street Journal editorial board, which seems not to have approved of anything newer than Napoleon, took it for granted that Trump defines the word impulsive. It wrote on June first, twenty sixteen, mister Trump, needs to convince millions of skeptical voters that he's more than an impulsive bully who poses too big a risk in the oval office unquote. Yet one man's impulsiveness might be another's recognition of the perfect moment to act. Former colleague of mine met a woman on a date proposed to her a week later. She immediately said yes. Were they being impulsive or just visionary? What about my other colleague who met a woman on a date proposed to her the next day? She took a day to think about it and said yes. The first couple have now been married for thirty six years. The second couple got it annulled at about thirty six hours. Impulsiveness, as we layman use it tends to be results based and devolves rapidly into twenty twenty hindsight. But in March of twenty sixteen, writing in Psychology Today, doctor Glenn Gaihor offered a different definition of impulsiveness. It's not necessarily the same as rashness or its positive twin quick thinking. True impulsiveness usually leaves fingerprints of edgy, though not automatically pernicious behavior. Rather, it makes one do these things in the wrong place, at the wrong time, like as mister Gayre was analyzing discussing the size of your penis during a presidential debate. Gayor did not include the other examples where the context turns the behavior or the language from borderline to impulsive. I mean, you might appropriately bring up that topic in bed, or at a bar, or even at your tailors, like saying a female presidential candidate had been schlonged in a primary, Like criticizing the face of one of your female rivals during speech, like crudely referring to a network television figures menstruation while on a rival television network like the Hollywood tape. The what was that? Line? Again grabbed them by the points awarded two running score twenty six out of twenty eight. Item fifteen of twenty irresponsibility. This is another seemingly easy item that is actually difficult to nail to the wall. What is irresponsibility not crediting John McCain's heroism because he got captured when you yourself avoided the military draft four or five times? Is irresponsibility shown by taking a position on guns in nightclubs that's so extreme that the president and legislative director of the National goddamned Rifle Association condemned. It is irresponsibility, at least to the millions of lost souls who actually thought you would make a great American president, rather than merely the last American president to even make a joke. If it was a joke that if you were offered five billion dollars to drop out of the race quote, I guess we'd have to think about it. Is the word more applicable or less applicable if it comes out the next day that during May your campaign spent more than twice as much at businesses you own than it did on payroll. The problem with this heading irresponsibility is that so much of what fits vaguely into irresponsibility, promiscuity, bankruptcy, punching out your teacher when you're a kid, fits like jigsaw pieces, into the other categories in the hair test. It doesn't mean the examples are ineligible, just that they are imprecise. But it does mean we have to score conservative. I'm afraid points awarded one running score twenty seven out of thirty items. Sixteen failure to accept responsibility for own actions. Again, you can't give more than two points in any category. I'm sorry Both of my favorite examples here involved interviews with the Washington Post. On May twenty fourth, sixteen, Trump was caught having not yet donated the money from the purported veterans fundraiser that he staged as counter programming to the January twenty sixteen Republican primary debate that he bailed out of. The Post quoted his remarks at the fundraiser, which was televised nationally. We just cracked six million dollars, right, six million, Trump replied to the Post, I didn't say six The somewhat startled Post staffer said it was on tape. Play it for me, Trump replied, because I'd like to hear it, the Post reported. Trump then manipulated the conversation to another topic, including the playing of the video in which he said six eleven days earlier, the tape of him speaking in his own voice but pretending to be spokesman John Miller had been revealed when during a phone interview, a Washington Post reporter brought up the proof. This time, Trump simply hung up. Points awarded to running score twenty nine out of thirty two seventeen. Many short term marital relationships, well, this depends on numerical definitions. Despite the falling of religious barriers against divorce and the rise of the pre nup during Trump's lifetime, the mean is still around just one point two marriages per American and the number of men who marry more than once is still only about fifteen percent. But Trump's marriage is still total only three and stormy Daniels or no Stormy Daniels, their lengths fourteen years, six years, and eleven years. There hardly in the annulled by sunset range. So points awarded none running score twenty nine out of thirty four. Coming down the stretch eighteen juvenile delinquency. Not every student at Trump's high priced alma mater, New York Military Academy NEEMA, was automatically the son of rich parents who had been afforded a choice, not offered their less affluent fellow troubled kids military school or reform school. That would be a cliche, but the one on the record, firsthand assessment we have of Trump as child cuts through cliches and reputations. He was a pretty rough fellow when he was small, said Donald Trump's father, explaining why he had to pull him out of a traditional prep school in their Native Queens and ship him away to New York Military Academy NIMA. There are plenty of classmates at the military boarding school who paint a picture of a it always throwing hands. On June twenty third, twenty sixteen, The Washington Post Trump profiled the NEMA inmate Trump quote stuck with a broomstick during a fight. He tried to push a fellow cadet out a second floor window, only to be thwarted when two other students intervened. Maybe that's where the Russians got the idea about windows. The paper also quoted one of his pre NEMA teachers. He would sit with his arms folded with this look on his face. I use the words surly, almost daring you to say one thing or another that wouldn't settle with him. The Post also quoted a younger neighbor named Dennis Burnham. Once, when she left Dennis in a playpen in a backyard adjoining the Trump's property, Martha Burnham returned to find Donald throwing rocks at her son. She saw Donald standing at the fence. Dennis Burnham said, using the playpen for target practice. That is the sort of stuff that would make a bully flinch. Plus we have the boast from little Donnie Trump about that seven years old blackening the eye of an adult hist music teacher. Do we have records of the police being called now? Nor does the category heading ask for them, And that becomes a critical importance as we come down towards the nineteenth and twentieth topics. Points awarded two running score yeah, thirty one out of thirty six. Nineteen The penultimate number revocation of conditional release. Well, how many times have you brought that topic up? Don't be worried if it confuses you. Confusion only means you're not a parole officer. This is legal lingo for getting your parole revoked or your probation converted into jail time because you were just caught doing that illegal thing that had gotten you in trouble in the first place. It is very specifically a criminal record issue, and we're not there yet. He only got indicted yesterday. It's not even official yet. Points awarded zero, running score thirty one out of thirty eight. So to the final one, twenty criminal versatility. The psychological professional and I got into a big debate about this one. She argued that criminal in this sense is not necessarily meant literally here that if you scammed charities, stole money from grandmothers via a phony university, and directed about twenty percent of your campaigns monthly spending towards companies you own, and the reimbursement for travel by your children, that all qualified whether or not it was literally criminal. But my point was the word criminal is used, not dishonest, not unethical, not nefarious, not giving your kids money capital ce criminal and the purp walk or the mug shot or the multimillion dollar five and restitution, which that implies not that that couldn't be the end result of Trump University, but it isn't, not yet points awarded zero. Final score thirty one out of forty. Editor's note number two. He was impeached once, now he's being indicted. He's on deck before two other grand juries. They think we can give him the two points. So the adjusted final score on this exam, this sanity test, where the low score is better, the Donald Trump's score is thirty three out of forty. He petered out towards the end there, but with thirty points being the marker at which professionals could present a diagnosis of psychopathy, the implications are clear. Our Trumper's new clothes media rightly sees the latest Trump event, whatever it is this time, as one of the most unbelievable developments in American political history. But the mechanics of following, reporting, and writing the proverbial new high in low every single day means that they could be missing one overriding truth about the health of the most remarkable presidential candidate since at least the year eighteen sixty four. In short, our amateurs exercise with the very professional hair psychopathy checklist suggests that if you were betting on it, you would probably want to bet that Donald Trump couldn't pass a sanity test, even if it was open book. And now, having slogged through this inventory of the citizen Kane storage unit of bizarre presidential conduct, go look at social media, because in the time it has taken me to read this to you, the odds are pretty good. He's just done something new that will actually raise his score. Okay, I've done all the damage I can do here. Thank you for listening. Here are the credits. Most of the music was arranged, produced, and performed by Brian Ray and John Philip Channel, who are the countdown musical directors. All orchestration and keyboards by John Philip Chanel, guitars based and drums by Brian Ray, produced by Tko Brothers. Other Beethoven selections have been arranged and performed by No horns allowed when we use it. The sports music is the Olberman theme from ESPN two, written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN, Inc. Musical comments when we have them by Nancy Fauss, the best baseball stadium organist ever, and everything else, of course, is pretty much my fault. So let's countdown for this, the eight hundred and fifteenth day since Donald Trump's first attempt coup against the democratically elected government of the United States. Arrest him now while we still all right they are, so arrest him again while we still can. The next schedule countdown is Monday, but if the mugshot drops before then, you can anticipate a special edition Boocket Dano till then. I'm Keith Olverman. Good morning, good afternoon, goodnight, and Happy Trump mess. Countdown with Keith ol Reman is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts,

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