EPISODE 234: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:42) SPECIAL COMMENT: He’s behaved like a lot of things before but until now Trump has NEVER sounded so desperately scared. “CONGRESS WILL HOPEFULLY NOW LOOK AT THE EVER CONTINUING WITCH HUNTS AND ELECTION INTERFERENCE” it began.“CONGRESS, PLEASE INVESTIGATE THE POLITICAL WITCH HUNTS,” he begs. All caps. “THE ONLY WAY THEY CAN WIN IS TO CHEAT. STOP THEM NOW!,” he pleads. ALSO all caps. It’s everything but “Mommy I’m scared. They caught me.” What caused this? I mean, apart from the insanity? Via Discovery, he’s received much of the Department of Justice evidence supporting the 37 counts against him, including all the audio tapes – the vainglorious interviews he gave which are apparently peppered with references to documents and secrets and I-can’t-tell-you-this-but-here-goes. Plus: if he didn’t before, HE now knows WHO testified against him and what they said.

There is another Sam Alito All-Expenses-Paid-Vacation scandal. It is not nearly as startling and quid pro quo-ish as taking a 100-thousand dollar private jet trip to Alaska courtesy of a Hedge Fund Guy and then years later voting for a Supreme Court judgment that gave Hedge Fund Guy two billion, 400 hundred million. CNN got on-the-record confirmation from the director of the Notre Dame University Religious Liberty Initiative that her group did INDEED pay the traveling expenses for Alito to go to its conclave in Rome last July and give a speech mocking anybody who dared criticize him. No laws were broken, only the basic tenets of judicial honesty. The Notre Dame University Religious Liberty Initiative has a legal clinic, and since its founding in 2020 it has filed a series of “Friend Of The Court” briefs on cases being heard by… the Supreme Court. Happily, Sam Alito always has another hair he can split. Quote: “My understanding is that Notre Dame Law School’s Religious Liberty Initiative has a number of components, only one of which is a clinic that, like the legal clinics at many other law schools, files amicus briefs in the Supreme Court. I was not invited to speak in Rome by the CLINIC.”

And Marjorie Taylor Greene has extended the “Marjorie Taylor Greene called Lauren Boebert a quote “Little Bitch” unquote” story another day. She was good enough to explain to Semafor News WHY she called Lauren Boebert a quote “LITTLE BITCH” unquote. “She has genuinely been a nasty little bitch to me.” Greene re-told the story as witnesses had broken it to The Daily Beast: Anna Paulina Lunatic was talking about impeachment when Boebert came over to Greene to complain about Greene’s recent remarks. “I told her exactly what I think about her.”

B-Block (15:10) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: Oh cool two more Republican presidential candidates. Moms For Liberty backs down, then backs down again, after quoting Hitler about how to own children and thus the future. Jeff Zucker's CNN journey could go from getting fired to buying the place. Or, since it's in The New York Post: maybe not. (18:40) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Canadian Member of Parliament Matt Jeneroux addresses his nation's crisis. He wants an "official grievance" filed against Taylor Swift for not coming to Canada on her next tour. Why don't you try The World Court At The Hague? The lesson of the lost Titanic Submersible? Charlie Kirk says it's don't hire black pilots. And there are bigots and cowards and homophobes. But if you FOLD to homophobes for money and pretend you're not folding to them but doing it to protect the people you just abandoned, you are worse than all the kinds of homophobes put together. And that is National Hockey League Commissioner Gary Bettman.

C-Block (26:05) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: His bizarre but compelling story of a handyman with an accent and his own pet thunderstorms: "The Black Magic of Barney Haller."