SO, NEWS MEDIA, YOU LEARNED NOTHING FROM 2016? - 2.16.23

EPISODE 135: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:42) SPECIAL COMMENT: If you're wondering if the American Political Media Industrial Complex learned something - anything - from its disastrous stenography of Donald Trump's seven-year-long assault on democracy, the answer is here, and the answer is NO. Mike Pence, who refused to testify to the 1/6 Committee because of EXECUTIVE privilege, last night said he was refusing to testify to Special Counsel Jack Smith's grand jury because of LEGISLATIVE privilege and no reporter called him on the impossibility of both things being true, or the fact that he's trying to evade testified about AN ATTEMPT TO MURDER HIM. Getting even more whitewashing and gaslighting courtesy Robert Costa of CBS and Maggie Haberman was Nikki Haley's presidential candidacy announcement. It was barely noted that she was one of the first mainstream Republicans to sell her soul to Trump, and she then did his evil bidding at the U.N., announcing the move of the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem simply to satisfy the religious nuts who believed it was necessary before all the Jews could be converted and all the good little evangelicals can get their asses raptured. Political Media only understands four or five story templates and still won't take sedition and fascism seriously, nor call out the "Republicans" who helped Trump and now are pretending to distance themselves from his evil. It's unconscionable, and if they're not going to call out the Pences and Haleys, I'm going to call THEM out. B-Block (19:30) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: Smith also subpoenas Mark Meadows, and the death of Raquel Welch, which requires the telling of the extraordinary Peter Cook story from his movie with her, "Bedazzled." (22:20) IN SPORTS: The day they tweet $185,000,000 signee Jacob deGrom was "clocking in," he clocked out with the all-too-familiar non-injury injury. And if your team is on a Bally Sports Network: oops, they may be going bankrupt. (25:40) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: The Indiana Congresswoman born in Ukraine has the nerve to compare the NewsMax/DirecTV story to totalitarianism; Same Sex couple parental rights at risk; and the two idiot Tennessee Republicans who want to rename "John Lewis Way" after Donald Trump. C-Block (31:15) EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: Guiness (32:15) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: I was actually asked on a New York street yesterday what the greatest thing my father ever said. So I had to explain. And explain how it then wound up coming out of Jeff Daniels' mouth on the 7th Episode of HBO's "Newsroom." See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.