IS TIME ALREADY RUNNING OUT ON SPEAKER MIKE JOHNSON? - 10.26.23

SEASON 2 EPISODE 61: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: House Republicans have fully embraced Dementia J. Trump's tiny, ugly, Johnson. And even as Speaker Mike Johnson checks all the denialist nihilist boxes - he's homophobic, he wants to put abortion providers in prison, he wants to make gay sex illegal, he wants to spend taxpayer money on religious projects, he is so obscure that Senators Barrasso and Collins had no idea who he was - are the seeds already in price for his eventual dethroning? On January 6th, during the insurrection, on Fox News, Mike Johnson CRITICIZED DONALD TRUMP. One can only assume that nobody has played the clip for Trump or said "Are you aware, sir, that he blamed you for not doing more to stop things, SIR?" In the short term there is new reporting that Johnson was far more involved in the insurrection than originally known. He was the point man in the House's Amicus Brief to the Texas lawsuit to throw out the electoral results from Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Washington (a brief so controversial that other Republicans said Trump should preemptively pardon all the Congressmen who signed it). But now it turns out he briefed other Congressmen on January 5th on how to rationalize blocking the certification of Biden's victory on bullshit "constitutional" grounds. Meanwhile: when will a judge in this country do the right thing and put Trump in jail the way he would put you or me in jail? During the lunch break at the civil fraud trial yesterday, Trump AGAIN attacked Judge Arthur Engoron's clerk. The judge merely assessed a $10,000 fine. If you're not going to have the balls to put him in prison, at least get his attention. The fine should be $1,500,000,000. See what he does about that. B-Block (19:43) IN SPORTS: Dusty Baker ends his baseball managerial career, while the only manager to commute with me on the New York Subway system shifts from San Diego to San Francisco. And Baseball's Hall of Fame announces ten nominees for its annual recognition of one great broadcaster and I've worked with three of them and four of them are good friends and good grief I'm old. (26:17) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Tommy Tuberville may have been thwarted by Senate Democrats. There's a Clarence Thomas money scandal (no, a DIFFERENT one), and here we go: Eric Adams says he was made mayor of New York City by God. Only this time it gets translated in real time into Spanish. C-Block (32:47) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: America lost something when the intricate, rehearsed, multi-person practical joke vanished. 41 years ago this month I was fortunate to play a minor role in the greatest practical joke I ever witnessed, when we at the NFL player strike negotiations convinced a reporter from The New York Times that he had just missed the biggest story of the year. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.