WHAT THE HELL WITH THESE TRUMP GRAND JURY DELAYS? 3.29.23

SERIES 2 EPISODE 1XX: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: I would've expected Trump to mispronounce "Melania" as "Melanoma" before he garbled Putin's name. Whether Putin is his blackmailer, his benefactor or just his idol, if he called him "Poten," Donald Trump is a desperately sick man. I mean, Jesus H. Christ in a Hatbox. The evidence continues to mount for either the thesis that he has Fluent Aphasia or what veteran Trump health analyst Dr. John Gartner has identified as Phonemic Paraphasias (an Alzheimer's symptom in what regular words are replaced by nonsense that rhymes with them). 

This could also explains Trump, a day after posting his latest bond for the latest money he owes E. Jean Carroll after her latest lawsuit, insisting again that he never met her, and two days after that going live on national television and insisting - as if he has never mentioned before - that he never met her. If his brain is dissolving, he might really have no idea that he met her or raped her or anything else.

The bond in the Carroll case (one of them, I forget the number) brings us back to the other question. It was a bond posted by Chubb insurance (irony unbound) and neither Trump nor Chubb will confirm or deny the 91 million was co-signed by anybody else. Chubb has outlets in Russia, Turkey, UAE, Brasil. Trump met with right-winger Jeff Yass (who owns part of TikTok and now Trump DOESN'T want to ban TikTok) and Elon Musk. Did either of them buy Trump?

And: today's House Judiciary Committee comedy show with Special Counsel Robert Hur hits differently now that Biden put a dagger in the heart of the MAGA Biden Age Plot during The State of the Union, and that Hur has "left" the Justice Department and is testifying as just a corrupt citizen Trump Stooge (which he was all along). If the Democrats begin to set him on fire, the GOP will turn on him on a dime.

B-BLOCK (23:13) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: England's Kate is bad at photoshop and worse at apologizing. Pope Francis just echoed the wartime popes who appeased Hitler, and Marjorie Taylor Greene appears to have given away her plot to sabotage Biden into calling the murder victim "Laken Riley." (28:06) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Funny that Politico, The Washington Post, CNN, the broadcast networks, the AP, New York Times and everybody rushed to the Katie Britt disaster story but almost none of them gave any credit to the independent reporter Jonathan Katz who beat them to it by two days. WaPo actually pretended their guy broke it, and Politico amplified that. It's shameful, and another symptom of broken media. Speaking of broken, there's Mitt Romney, and Bill Maher. We have an explanation for why he turned into an idiot: he reads only the most idiotic political columnists (George Will? Really? I mean other than for baseball?)

C-BLOCK (36:35) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: After the audience for our SOTU special was exceeded by only eight television news operations (each of which has, you know, a news operation) a prominent non-news TV executive asked me why I wasn't back on MSNBC. So I had to tell the Maddow story again. Including the part about the $437 with which I hired her for the network out of my own pocket.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SERIES 2 EPISODE 137: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: For everybody who doubted the Biden Campaign vision of last night's State of the Union as some sort of seminal re-set moment (like me): we were wrong. Biden's first seven minutes were not only the best public seven minutes of his life but they comprised one of the greatest openings to a SOTU in the nation's history.

He not only dispelled any notion that he is no longer up to the challenge in any way, shape, or form, but he kicked Trump's teeth down his throat (and the teeth of MAGA and the GOP with them). Speaking forcefully, rapidly, confidently, and just this side of angrily, he hit them before they realized the fight had started: on Ukraine, on Putin, on January 6, on J6 Denial, and on every major issue.

If it had been a fight it would've been stopped at seven minutes with Biden's hand raised by the ref. But he went on for a total of 68 minutes and continued to score on every issue. Before the speech only 45% in a CNN poll thought Biden's policies would move the country in the right direction. After it the number hadn't just blown up it had gone nuclear: 62%

I devote this entire episode of the podcast to analyzing the speech and its impact and the impacts still to come, summarized by plagiarizing that line from "When Harry Met Sally." I WILL have what he's having.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SERIES 2 EPISODE 136: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: What President Biden should say in The State of the Union tonight is, to declare, simply and directly, that of all the threats to the United States of America the greatest of these is Donald John Trump and thus tonight I am declaring The Biden Doctrine. And in sum, my fellow Americans, the Biden Doctrine is this: we must save our country from madness and vengeance and hate and racism and dictatorship, and to save our country from these evils, we must metaphorically kick the ever-loving shit out of Donald Trump.

Instead, the White House expects Biden to deliver a traditional speech that will re-set the campaign. The problem is, it'll be designed for a major event in the life of the nation called The State of the Union that… doesn’t exist any more. 53 million people watched Bill Clinton’s tension-filled post-Lewinsky State of the Union in 1998. That was 20 percent of the population. Last year? Biden had 27 million viewers and not a whole lot of streamers. 

The other problem is, 538 researched Presidential Approval before and after each SOTU since 1978 and the average change in approval is a microscopic 1.9%. The all-time highest was Clinton's 10% gain after he stared down the Republicans post-Lewinsky. If you really do think this is your last chance to fundamentally re-set the race, then gimme The Biden Doctrine. What IS the Biden Doctrine about? The Biden Doctrine is about the greatest threat facing this nation. And what IS the greatest threat to the nation? It’s Trump. It’s Trump’s Cult. It’s Trump’s madness. It’s Trump’s racism. It’s Trump’s desire to be a dictator. It’s Trump’s next coup.

Do it. If they build statues to President Joseph Robinette Biden Junior it will be for saving this nation from Donald Trump. Twice. There is no reason to back away from the easiest to understand accomplishment. There is no reason to hide from what even HE says is the reason he IS running again: to stop Trump and save representative government. Pound the son of a bitch in the ground, like you did at Independence Hall in September ’22. You'll get ten percent approval growth just for THAT.

And don't forget to join me live on YouTube and Twitch right after the speech for the Countdown With Keith Olbermann State of the Union Post-Game Show. Biden starts about 9 ET, I should start around 10. Be there. Aloha.

B-Block (22:59) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Bill Hemmer says because they cut away from Trump's "victory" speeches CNN and MSNBC should drop "news" from their names. Hilariously, last month Fox News... cut away from Trump's "victory" speeches. Politico and 60,000 other news organizations devoted space to a Democratic presidential candidate who got exactly 51 votes on Tuesday. And Elon Musk a) lied about Biden bringing in foreigners to vote b) lied when he called it "treason" c) probably lied about not helping Trump with financing and d) on the other hand, a candidate he opposed this week won by 2 to 1.

C-Block (33:13) THURSDAYS WITH THURBER: They're all brilliantly written. But "The Car We Had To Push" is brilliantly written to be read aloud. One I've never read you before, from his classic book about his childhood in Columbus, Ohio: "My Life And Hard Times."

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SERIES 2 EPISODE 135: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

Haley was winning Vermont, Uncommitted was doing ok but Biden’s worst margin was about 60 points, and once again Super Tuesday is just a brand name.

But the HEADLINE is: the Supreme Court actually HAS left the door open to disqualify Trump from becoming president again. Seriously.

Turns out that many Constitutional Scholars and even some sitting members of the House, think that in its haste to make sure their pimp Trump got on to the ballot yesterday in Colorado, the Court ALSO left the door open to Democrats and disaffected Republicans challenging the validity of a Trump election if god forbid it plays out like that. There is now a debate over the consequences of the court ruling that the Constitution gives ENFORCEMENT of the 14th Amendment “to Congress.”

Practically speaking: Trump wins the electoral college, the Democrats hold the Senate (slightly unlikely) and take the House (very likely), and they are suddenly going to pass new legislation saying Trump is ineligible because he engaged in insurrection in 2021? Well they don’t HAVE to pass new legislation. They already did that, according to this reading, in 2022. It was “The Electoral Count Reform And Presidential Transition Act” designed to clarify the 1887 legislation through whose loopholes Trump tried to run his coup.

The 2022 clarification closed nearly all of those loopholes, limiting what kinds of challenges lawmakers could make to electoral slates already certified by the states. But they left two grounds for objections challenges and one of them reads “the vote of one or more electors has not been regularly given.” THAT phrase was in the 19th Century legislation and it means, any suspicion that an elector was BRIBED to vote, or was like kidnapped and the guy casting the vote wasn’t the REAL elector, or voted on the wrong day, or… the elector voted for somebody who wasn’t eligible.

Oops. Voted… for somebody who wasn’t elllllligggggggible, you say?

It’s not just a can of worms. It’s a FAMILY SIZED can of worms. Thank you Sam Alito!

ALSO: Trump just publicly contradicted his court filing in New York that he didn’t have the $465 million he owes. Asked about coming up with it on Fox, he answered: “I have a lot of money. I can do what I want to do…I don’t worry about money.”

MEANWHILE: It’s mortifying but it may be a quick fix. A Democratic pollster has analyzed the field of potential Biden voters in three swing states and figured out that only 31% of them had even heard Trump’s top ten worst statements about vermin and deportation and dictatorship, because voters are not immersed in politics and people do move on with their lives. The good news is that the moment they HEAR all of them, Trump’s unfavorable score jumps by five points and individual deficits grow from five to nine points. Solution? More ads reminding people Trump is an anti-dictatorial son of a bitch. Like, you know, one in every commercial break on every television channel and streamer every day until the election.

Oh – and emphasizing it in tomorrow’s State of the Union wouldn’t hurt. Did I mention I’ll be on, live, after it, for our Countdown post-game show, on YouTube and Twitch?

B-Block (23:14) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Roger Stone thinks Facebook conspired to stop his astroturf. Axios still hasn’t fixed its LOLworthy story about Trump pivoting. And the appointment of a Hong Kong native here legally on a pre-citizenship visa to the San Francisco Election Commission to help with translating voting materials into other languages has deranged a bunch of fascists who are treating this as if Mao Tse Dong was just named to the Supreme Court. Maria Bartiromo thinks the San Francisco Election Commission is also the Federal Election Commission. And Michigan House candidate Anthony Hudson says we must have laws saying if you don’t speak English you can’t vote. Which’ll be a problem for Anthony because he can barely SPELL English.

C-Block (33:10) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: We had a president of MSNBC, he had been the president of CNN, and among other things he didn’t have cable in his home and apparently hadn’t watched any night-time show on MSNBC for at least a year. He also lied about his height, and he was – legitimately – 6’4”. Who the hell DOES that?

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SEASON 2 EPISODE 134: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) Trump appears to be suffering from a condition called "Fluent Aphasia."

Victims can verbalize intricate long sentences, and appear to be answering questions or making coherent observations. But frequently all they have is the structure and the cadence of coherence; the rhythm of speech. They do not fully understand what they are hearing, cannot convey what they are trying to through speech, and are almost invariably the victims of strokes or head injuries. All attempts to explain "Fluent Aphasia" (or by its formal name, "Wernicke's Aphasia,") use the phrase "Word Salad."

And after a three-day series of speeches in which, on literally dozens of occasions, he said things that SOUNDED like sentences but were not, the evidence is mounting and the problem is accelerating: the Trump word salad is "Fluent Aphasia" and on top of all of Trump's other mental and ethical problems, it is disqualifying.

He cannot be president. His brain literally does not work correctly,

MEANWHILE: “Course I’m respectable,” says John Huston as Noah Cross in Chinatown to Jack Nicholson as Jake Gittes in Chinatown. “I’m OLD. Politicians, ugly buildings and whores all get respectable, if they LAST long enough.” And then there’s what happens when you’re all three of those things - as the Supreme Court and its justices are all three of those things: Politicians pretending to be justices, working in an ugly building, and as Trump relied upon and was proved correct – they’re all whores.

“Because the Constitution makes Congress rather than the states responsible for enforcing Section 3 against federal office holders and candidates, we reverse,” reads the Court's decision to not enforce the 14th Amendment denying insurrectionists the right to become president or hold other offices. 9-nothing. Except it DOESN’T do that. Section 3, as conservative scholar after conservative scholar has repeatedly stated, is SELF-enforcing. It is automatic. If you engaged in insurrection, you’re out. If you think you’re being ill-treated, Section 3 provides you an override mechanism: you can get the House AND the Senate to each CLEAR you, each by a two-thirds vote. Period. The constitution says NOTHING about an enforcement responsibility.

The Court betrayed democracy yesterday – again: this time by going faster to help Trump. On presidential immunity, it’s going SLOWER to help Trump. Its members, including Jackson and Kagan and Sotomayor, who before folding, stood up just long enough to wave BYE BYE to representative government, overruled one of the easiest parts of the constitution to understand for the benefit of one corrupt politician. Individually and as an entity they have proved themselves inept at basic reading comprehension. They have proved themselves to be corrupt and illegitimate. Its usefulness and relevance is at an end, and whatever replaces it, the immediate need is obvious: The Supreme Court must be dissolved.

The funny part, of course, is that these idiots have inadvertently given the current sitting president (a Mr. Biden, I believe) a kind of qualified, specific immunity from prosecution in case HE wants to illegally overturn an election.

B-Block (25:50) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: Another reporter claims Trump is about to pivot and Trump promptly makes her look like an idiot. Trump's new vaccine promise: I'm here to kill your kids. Trump shortens his National Abortion Ban plan. Jack Smith says no, the DOJ 60-Day Secret Unwritten Rule does NOT apply to cases already filed against Trump. And farewell to my old friend Chris Mortensen go ESPN. (33:50) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Jesse Watters says Biden "licking ice cream" is unmanly and implies he has Alzheimer's. That's before they found the post from five years ago of Watters... licking ice cream. The would-be Republican nominee for governor of Missouri is suing because, he claims, he was only an HONORARY member of the KKK, and Kristin Welker allegedly wins after allegedly graduating from Harvard and allegedly being a White House correspondent and saying Trump "allegedly" tried to overturn the election.

C-Block (41:30) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: My oldest enemy - the one I thought was killed off in the '80s - turns out to be alive and well. My half century battle against "The Auto Train" and its stopped-up toilets of 1972.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SERIES 2 EPISODE 133: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: What happens if the Supreme Court – I’m sorry – Trump’s newest Super-PAC, John Roberts, Treasurer – takes the next step and not only listens to his shroom-high concept of “presidential immunity” late next month in order to stall his trials – but actually CREATES “presidential immunity.” What ACTUALLY happens TO this country, AT that exact moment?

I still do think the STALL is the POINT; not granting all presidents immunity from all prosecutions for all time. But again, the stall itself raises the question: exactly what the hell do I know? But let me present  this grim silver lining in the form of a rhetorical question. You think about it, I’ll think about it. I’ll address it at length at the start of the new week: What happens to the nature of this country – what happens to the nature of our government – what happens to the nature of the presidency, if the Supreme Court actually rules no president can be prosecuted for official acts? What happens THAT instant? And combine that with not a rhetorical question but a simple factual one. The day the Supreme Court effectively turns the President of the United States into a King… WHO will BE president of the United States?

And could Jack Smith's response to the SCOTUS prosecutorial and electoral interference actually be to indict Ginni Thomas and present John Roberts with an insoluble crisis inside his whorehouse? Plus I don't entirely trust the source, but there is startling polling suggesting the Democrats can turn immigration and border security from their biggest liability to a plus-seven in polling by simply making a big deal out of all the immigration and border security compromises they already agreed to - and acting on whatever they can.

B-Block (16:32) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: A good time to bring you his brilliant array of political commentary disguised as fables with birds and bears in them. And a Peacelike Mongoose.

C-Block (31:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: To conclude Baseball Spring Training Week, I am still startled that the game was once so important that a rival guy went on a rival Los Angeles newscast and insisted that though they had just lost the National League Championship Series, the Dodgers were obligated to...go to a judge and get a court order to play in the World Series anyway!

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SERIES 2 EPISODE 132: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:30) RICHARD, IN MEMORIAM: The day I met Richard Lewis, at a Los Angeles Lakers game in 1989 or 1990, we parted calling each other 'Brother.' It has been like that ever since. I want to tell you about my adopted brother, who despite his on-camera persona of dysfunction and self-absorption was in fact the most loving human being I have ever known. His support, his empathy, his caring, was endless. The total number of brothers and sisters he "adopted" was nearly so. I cannot imagine a world without him.

B-Block (26:48) SPECIAL COMMENT: Of course the Supreme Court stepped in to delay Trump's trial for trying to overthrow the government and erase a valid election. It is comprised by five of Trump's judicial whores. It is yet another reason we must defeat Trump everywhere, including at the polls, so that a re-elected Joe Biden can appoint enough additional justices to the court to make Roberts, Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett into living waxworks wailing impotently until they die.

The good news about Trump is, simply, that he had to confess in writing that he is not the billionaire he claims to be but for all intents and purposes insolvent and incapable of paying the $465 million fine (with interest) he owes the state of New York. He offered 22% of his debt; the judge rejected it; the full appeals court almost certainly will, and if it actually leads to practical bankruptcy, that will kill Trump.

And there was a hidden germ of good news inside Trump's underperformance in Michigan on Tuesday night. The former executive director of the state GOP there says ONE county result convinces him Trump - no matter what happens to Biden and protests and anything else - CANNOT win Michigan in November.

Of course you didn't read that in The New York Times or the WaPo or see it on CNN or anywhere else because if there were any remaining doubts, they're gone now. There is a difference between "facts" and "truth." Telling the truth means blowback and controversy and having to stay late in the office. So our legacy media, as we saw again in Michigan, will hide behind meaningless "facts" and perfect its cowardice.

C-BLOCK (49:30) With Richard Lewis at The 92nd Street Y in New York in April 2008, and on Countdown on MSNBC a few days later.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SERIES 2 EPISODE 131: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Trump under-performs AGAIN, falling short of polling by at least 17 points in the Michigan Republican. And Biden OVER-performs AGAIN, and so does the “Uncommitted” protest votes against his Israel-Gaza policy, in what is looking like a gentle rebuke in the Michigan Democratic Primary.

PLUS: LEGACY NEWS MEDIA BREAKTHROUGH: After Trump did a hatful of racisms at “The Black Conservative Federation Gala” (the one that had almost no blacks in attendance) the president of ABC News Kim Godwin emailed people on her staff that “these remarks are as racist as they come…mind blowing. Shocking.” Of course they were NOT shocking and Godwin’s response might as well have been “wait – Trump was PRESIDENT?” and that only underscores the media disconnect from the reality of the evil of Trump.

But the headline is: SHE TOOK A STAND and did so in writing, knowing it would get out. She may have had ulterior motives (she’s been dreadful and loathed on the job; she just got another boss appointed above her; she may be trying to stave off dismissal) and they don’t matter. She SAID something – more than her network or any network actually has. It may have moved the needle a bit.

COMER DOUBLES DOWN: You wouldn’t, I wouldn’t. But he and Jim Jordan – with a new jailed witness replacing the first jailed witness as the primary asset in their President Biden Impeachment/Hunter Biden Smear – have doubled down. They’ve subpoenaed Merrick Garland for all of corrupt Special Counsel Robert Hur’s transcripts, videos, etc. If Garland were smart, he’d fight the subpoena and say that of course while it’s being ajudicated, Hur can’t say anything, especially to the House Committee.

Because it would be useful if Democrats began to ask themselves: What dirty trick would a Republican play in this situation. And apply it not just to a subpoena from some whores in Congress, but to the dilemma in Michigan and, for that matter, at the border. Which leads me to a modest proposal: Biden should steal the issue, control the process, and neuter Trump all in one fell swoop. HE should declare HE is building a wall and destroy the feeble minds of 60 million Trumpists.

A wall can be anything more than six inches long.

B-BLOCK (30:08) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Axios slams Biden for having note cards at fundraisers. Then, a Democratic county chairman finds pictures of the Axios reporter and the Axios co-founder reading questions off note cards. A NewsMax host thinks the DHS Secretary can be impeached for breaking not laws, but laws NewsMax would like to see. And besides the foolishness of the GoFundMe to pay the now $466 Million Trump owes the state of New York, there’s a hidden reveal inside the boilerplate at the website that suggests the right may have another “Moms For THAT Kind of Liberty Wocka-Wocka” scandal in its bed.

C-BLOCK (38:38) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Well we started on baseball spring training yesterday. Let’s continue. Let me tell you the tale of day I paid cash to suppress a story that would have rocked the World Series – the most famous pitcher in the game had gotten within inches of a fight, with a fan of his own team, and I made sure… nobody saw the video.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SERIES 2 EPISODE 130: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Bob Costas has been my friend for 40 years. He has been one of my closest professional friends for a quarter century.

And now, bluntly, Bob Costas needs to shut the EFF up about Joe Biden.

He has launched this extraordinary campaign - first on HBO with Bill Maher, now on CNN with that toad Michael Smerconish - demanding that Biden and his "hubris" be "shown the door" off the presidential ticket. Bob not only has no idea that such a thing is impossible and even if it were justifiable or smart or legal, it would result in a different candidate who would lose to Trump by ten points.

Bob will hear none of this. I tried, behind the scenes, for two weeks. I failed. And I failed to make it clear to Bob that Trump is ALSO trying to get Biden off the ticket and so that all Bob is accomplishing is - he's doing Trump's work for him.

It's heartbreaking, I'll lose his friendship, but Bob Costas needs to shut the EFF up about Joe Biden (and that goes for Jon Stewart, Ezra Klein, and all the others who like Bob don't realize that we have lots of historical evidence of what happens when the Democrats try to do a Julius Caesar on a sitting president. There are two results: you LBJ him and you get Richard Nixon; or you DON'T completely LBJ him and you only wound him - and you get Ronald Reagan).

Bob. Shut the eff up.

B-Block (29:42) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: Oh, nothing, just Joe Biden and his hubris about to get a Gaza Cease Fire while eating ice cream; James Comer's favorite Russian plant will stay in jail so it's "Smirnov on Ice." Kenny The Cheese didn't tell the truth about his plot to overthrow democracy in Michigan; Trump underperformed the polling by EIGHT POINTS in South Carolina (36:52) IN SPORTS: A new explanation for baseball's uniform fiasco; Peter King retires; one of the unheralded heroes of baseball - Jim Hannan - passes away. (42:07) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: It took FIVE NBC reporters to claim Trump is about to "pivot?" Van Jones speaks at CPAC; There's a price on Tucker Carlson's head and bluntly it's humiliatingly low.

C-Block (49:10) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: From the vault, it's my Spring Training Preview - for the year 1978!

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SERIES 2 EPISODE 129: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN:

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: The disgraced Special Hunter Biden Counsel is so terrified about what could happen next to the Russian Plant/FBI "Informant" Alexander Smirnov that he had him RE-arrested yesterday, in a different state, in a second and very unusual bid to deny Smirnov bail.

A senior Republican congressman is so terrified (and enraged) about what could happen next to Smirnov that HE has broken ranks and confirmed that Jim Jordan and James Comer knew from the start that Smirnov's "Form 1023" stank and hadn't been corroborated and Smirnov had more red flags than a May Day Parade - and lied to the public anyway and nearly fulfilled Vladimir Putin's desire to see a president impeached eight months before the American election, and his son imprisoned.

But the Attorney General Merrick Garland - who was so lazy and incompetent that when they brought Smirnov's fabrications to him he fell for them and appointed the Special Counsel anyway - is HE terrified or enraged about what could happen next to Smirnov?

Nope.

He's done nothing. While another Russian-Republican plot to alter the outcome of the election has played out almost entirely in public view. This is largely Merrick Garland's fault. If he doesn't suspend the Biden Counsel, David Weiss, and if he doesn't appoint a new one immediately to grill Comer and Jordan and Weiss and all the others, President Biden must fire him. We're under attack here. It's another coup attempt. It seems to link to Trump or at least Russia's desire to return Trump to power. And Garland is trying to clean his glasses.

And it is absolutely true that this is the most important political story of the moment, and it needs to be framed as Brian Beutler framed it: What did the Republicans know, and when did they know it?

B-Block (22:00) IN SPORTS: Meet Auston Matthews, the Mike Trout of Hockey. It's 44 years since the US beat Russia at the Lake Placid Olympics (I'll report from 1980) and the extraordinary revelation by my friend Jack Edwards, play-by-play man of the Boston Bruins. (30:17) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: C-PAC is back so the Nazi loonies are loonier than ever: Charlie Kirk, Jack Posobiec, General Flynn, Matt Schlapp say stuff like "this is where we end Democracy," and "I'd like to see television killings of Trump's opponents" and "Trump is still president."

C-Block (38:00) EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: You guys! I have now MET Smiles the Bernese! (38:35) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: a collection of his very political, still very relevant Political Fables: “The Mouse Who Went To The Country,” “The Very Proper Gander,” “The Moth And The Star,” “The Owl Who Was God,” “The Birds And The Foxes,” “The Peacelike Mongoose.”

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.