COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN - SEASON 5 EPISODE 9

A-Block (SPECIAL COMMENT): You heard me. Trump wrote me a fan letter - but he hates me.

Yet here's something I never write: but this is not about me! We'll get to it later. It's important because it is a metaphor for what's happening to the Republican Party as the midterms speed towards us: all of their candidates are vulnerable because their base is sick of the war and sick of Trump and especially sick of a guy who on the same day launches a tax-payer tirade concluding "America will never become a Communist country!" and then hours later is holding a State Dinner for the number-one ranked communist in the world. Even for a man who has never held the same thought in his head for two days in a row, it's bad.

The De-Trumpification is picking up speed. ANOTHER Republican Trump Darling has scrubbed Trump from his site. The small-c conservative Cook Report has moved fifteen House races towards Democrats. An Iowa religious broadcaster says all the House candidates there have been told they are vulnerable, even if Trump won their district by 15 points.

It. Is. Happening.

B-Block (33:00) OK, the story of the fan letter from Trump and my other encounters with him, that date back to December 1983 (and which was followed by me walking in silence and then blurting to my camera crew the still-unanswered question 'WHAT THE EFF WAS WRONG WITH THAT GUY?"

C-Block (58:00) WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Succession? The fourth best TV show of the century? I worked for the Murdochs. "Succession" is laugh out loud bad. Then there's the National Hockey League trying to manipulate history, and why the newest craze of paying half a million or two million or three million for an active athlete's trading card is madness. It's simple: what if he gets hurt, and you just paid $500,020 for his card, as some fool just did for a card of football's Jaxson Dart.