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IS KAMALA PULLING AWAY FROM TRUMP IN THE POLLS? - 9.18.24 Sep 18, 2024

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SERIES 3 EPISODE 30: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: The debate bounce is here. And maybe it’s more than that. Kamala Harris may – repeat MAY – caveat MAY – warning even if so keep your foot on the gas…MAY be beginning pulling away from Trump in the polls. She's up by six in Morning Consult, got a six-point swing in Mark Penn's Harris poll.

According to the 538 Average of Polls, yesterday, for the first time since July 2021, her net favorability moved into positive territory: 46-point-6 percent approval to 46-point-5 percent disapproval. It’s about as NOT-a-landslide as you can get but it is an almost unprecedented turnaround. Vice President Harris, whose net approval is plus zero-point-one was on July 14th, -17.

There's also the 538 poll average where she’s up by three and its electoral college model in which Harris wins 61 times out of 100… and the Economist Polling Average… which shows her up by four… and Nate Silver’s OK-Maybe-I-Did-Pull-This-Number-Out-Of-My-Ass model which he acknowledges went from last week giving Trump a two-thirds chance of winning to him saying to Axios that Harris is quote “moving up in the polls enough that the model is converging back toward 50/50 in the Electoral College.”

JD VANCE IS A BLESSING - TO HARRIS: Insists Haitians are from "Haitia." Claims Robert F. Kennedy Junior was assassinated. Is doubling down on Springfield. May be dumber than Trump. And here's good news: the authorities are still investigating Trump's scandal at Arlington National Cemetery.

B-Block (21:35) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Megyn Kelly takes time from her bid to beat Kari Lake in the effort to corner the market in camera filters, to F-bomb Taylor Swift. Turns out at least one of the anti-Ukraine memes Elon Musk tweeted was made by the Kremlin's favorite disinformation creator. And Bill Ackman is so mad about the debate he's referring it to...a top college sports league?

C-Block (33:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: I just re-told this story Monday in real life so I thought I'd bring it up again. 15 years ago this summer Bill O'Reilly sent Jesse Watters to stalk the chairman of GE because I was criticizing Billo and Fox. The chairman's mother called him up and yelled at him, and he of course responded as any true businessman would: he threaten to turn off MSNBC and its $200,000,000 annual profit like a light bulb so Mommy wouldn't be upset.

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TRUMP'S NEW THREAT: "THE BULLETS ARE FLYING AND IT WILL ONLY GET WORSE!" - 9.17.24 Sep 17, 2024

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SERIES 3 EPISODE 29: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Trump’s newest threat: quote: “the bullets are flying, and it will only get worse!” There WERE no bullets on Sunday, other than those fired by the Secret Service. There was no line of sight for any shots. There are thus far no charges other than gun possession and the reality of the case suggests there may never be. The man who voted for Trump in 2016 and wanted to shoot or shoot at hm in 2024 didn’t even make the slightest attempt to resist arrest. Trump knows he was never in real danger. In fact he was genuinely put out that they wouldn’t let him finish the round of golf he was cheating through when the would-be almost sorta kinda assassination attempt didn’t-actually-take-place.

JD Vance then followed with a tortured demand that America either let Trump do what he wants - including blaming the migrants for the security failures around him - including lying about the migrants - including destroying Springfield Ohio - or accept an America in which there's something wrong with falsely accusing beleaguered people with eating pets and those who make such accusations are subject to censorship and censorship inevitably leads to a bullet in the brain. Vance really said all this.

And it all comes back to those ten words: “the bullets are flying, and it will only get worse!” Only getting worse, of course, is exactly what Trump wants. Any similarity between this madman and the president played by Martin Sheen in the Steven King film “The Dead Zone”: “The missiles are flying. Hallelujah, Hallelujah!”

PLUS: Inside the attempts to defend yourself against political violence and the awful truth that you really can't, and based on my experience during 2006 when I repeatedly received mailings of fake anthrax, much of what we assume is security is actually just security theater.

B-Block (35:10) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: The leader of a Trumpler Youth Group named Brilyn Hollyhand thinks Trump was endangered by a "riffle." Speaker Mike Johnson's thumb is fine but Trump seems to be suffering from thumb erectile dysfunction. And his swipe at Taylor Swift may have cost him the support of Patrick Mahomes' wife Brittany because hatred and racism is cool but insulting Tay Tay is a bridge too far.

C-Block (41:45) A SPECIAL SPORTSCENTRAL CENTER UPDATE: Baseball's annual suicide attempt. As the World Series TV audience shrinks to 10% of what it was fun 1978, what does the game need? Giant ADS on BOTH SIDES of every player's batting helmet! Along with a picture of an OSTRICH.

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TRUMP SORTA SHOT AT BY ANOTHER MAGA - 9.16.24 Sep 16, 2024

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SERIES 3 EPISODE 28: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

Republican candidate Domestic J. Terrorist has now broken the record for most sharks jumped in a single day – electric sharks, with frickin laser beams on their heads – and is claiming he was the target of another assassination attempt in which no shots were fired and none of it happened nearer than 400 yards away from him and there’s no video and a preliminary ID shows a career criminal who was posting about his Republican dream ticket of Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy and within minutes Trump was fund-raising off it and trying to erase the memory of a post he’d made earlier in which he declared without context or rationality quote “I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT.”

Meanwhile his running mate Jayvee Vance confessed on national television that he “creates” stories like this lie about a city in the state he represents in the Senate, a lie that has led to the evacuation of schools, a hospital and a university and city offices, and if he cannot be forced to resign his office, there must be at minimum on the Senate floor TODAY, a motion to expel or at LEAST censure him.

Oh and Kamala Harris’s lead over this procession of train wrecks – so many train wrecks that some of them wrecked while still at the STATION, while still in the TRAIN SHEDS – Kamala Harris’s lead has extended to SIX points among likely voters.

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DONALD DUCKS KAMALA; GOP ADMITS DEBATE DEFEAT - 9.13.24 Sep 13, 2024

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SERIES 3 EPISODE 27: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Donald Ducks out of another debate – while inadvertently confirming he lost the last one. The self-destruction of the Trump campaign and fascist political machine – so thorough and unexpected that it looks intentional – has escalated. They used to be evil and clever; now they are evil and stupid. This happened moments after a little-noticed tweet resurfaced from one of his House Elves, Congressman Mike Collins of Georgia. As the debate ended Tuesday night Collins had written “You want to know who won? Find out who refuses to do a second debate.” Literally within minutes… Trump refused to do a second debate.

So burnt out that he RE-USED a line from Wednesday, Trump posted at 3:08 eastern yesterday, “When a prizefighter loses a fight, the first words out of his mouth are ‘I want a rematch.’ Polls clearly show that I won the debate…” They didn’t; but of course were Trump to admit this, I suspect he would die. I mean this literally; if he somehow acknowledged his utter failure, the violent self-destruction of his entire ecosystem would be so damaging that he could no longer exist. So blah blah; confuses political asylum with mental asylums again, again contradicts himself by noting that HE insisted on a second debate with Biden, tries to take the one glimmer of an impact he made during his closing statement about problems not solved during this presidency, then, in all caps so you know he’s especially crazy, quote, “THERE WILL BE NO THIRD DEBATE!”

PLUS: Harris up by FIVE in Morning Consult polls and Nate Silver does something useful: explains why her Debate Bump may not happen for days or weeks. Panic and infighting in the Trump campaign as Lindsey Graham joins Marjorie Taylor Greene in the bid to break up Trump and his newest crush, Laura "Acting Melania" Loomer. A new journalistic outlet has the full backstory of the "Migrants Eating Cats" nonsense and surprisingly enough all the sources are fourth-hand. And how do you make another January 6th impossible? Make it as difficult to get around DC ON January 6th as it is to get around NYC during the UN General Assembly, and even Thump's thugs will give up in frustration and go the F home.

B-Block (21:03) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: The Trump lawyer who defended separating immigrant families at the border insists you can't separate families for the 35 seconds it takes to put the supermarket shopping cart back in the rack. Fox's Rachel Campos-Duffy assumes that because Linsey Davis and Kamala Harris were in the same sorority 14 years apart there's a conspiracy. And the mask falls off: Trump Bigot-In-Chief Stephen Miller gets eaten alive by an immigrant, who gets Miller to confirm he believes Venezuelan Dictator Nicolas Maduro.

C-Block (36:43) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: As brilliant and subtle an insight into a writer's mind as Thurber ever offered. You'd never notice unless I mentioned it, but watch how his imagination could turn a casual overheard remark into a marvelous, self-satirizing, comedic spy story in "The Lady On 142."

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TRUMP CHICKENS OUT OF SECOND DEBATE - 9.12.24 Sep 12, 2024

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SERIES 3 EPISODE 26: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: “In the world of boxing or UFC," writes Trump between his chicken clucks, "when a fighter gets beaten or knocked out, they get up and scream ‘I demand a rematch, I demand a rematch!' Well it’s no different with a debate. She was beaen badly last night. Every poll has us winning – in one case 92-8 – so why would I do a Rematch?”

Actually in the world of boxing or UFC, Trump’s campaign would be in Intensive Care at this hour and the only demand would be to pull it off life support and end its suffering. And actually in the world of debates, it was TRUMP who had demanded additional debates with Joe Biden and then the Vice President so by his own rules Trump just proclaimed he LOST the CNN debate to the President.

It took Trump surrogate and pretend professor Hugh Hewitt more than 19 hours to come up with this second day excuse, quote: “Opinions are settling… Trump was not at his best BUT was usually ok and at some points good, especially on the border and his closing statement.” 19 hours to think up some means of pulling his life-line meal-ticket out of the Burning Trumpster Dumpster and Hugh Hewitt comes up with “he was usually ok.”

If you think that was bad, JD Vance then dismissed the Taylor Swift endorsement by encouraging voters to ignore billionaire celebrities who are out of touch with ordinary Americans.

And there was a cat eaten in Ohio. The woman - a native of the state (represented in the Senate by JD Vance) - the child of Ohio residents - was promptly arrested. She's not Haitian, but the right wing is trying to make her so.

It's going as well as Trump's debate night went.

B-Block (20:59) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Republican Virginia Senate hopeful Hung Cao decides to try a little play on words and has made medallions reading "I Want My Senator To Be Hung." A little moment behind the spin room curtain with the deplorable Tim Murtaugh and the despicable Byron York. And Russia Dave Rubin in a nice passive-aggressive threat against Taylor Swift because she had the nerve to disobey the right wing.

C-Block (27:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Maddow just celebrated her 16th anniversary. She almost didn't make it to her first. The day our corporate overlords threatened to fire her, fire me, and shut the damn network off!

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SO WHO DO THE REPUBLICANS GET TO REPLACE TRUMP? – 9.11.24 Sep 11, 2024

Show notes

SERIES 3 EPISODE 25: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: From the time she reached out to shake his hand and he didn’t seem to know how to do that, to his closing remarks where he basically threatened America with Russian nukes, the debate couldn’t have gone worse for Donald Trump.

Oh – yeah – it could. Afterwards, Taylor Swift formally endorsed Kamala Harris.

The Vice President’s control of the debate and the manipulation and baiting of Trump was so complete that very few fascists even feigned that he’d done well. The best they could do was insist that the moderators were “rigged” against him because David Muir and Linsey Davis did the best job of fact-checking against Trump yet. I mean ever. When Trump repeated his nonsense that babies could be murdered after birth, Ms. Davis simply stated there was no state in the country in which this was legal and then without a breath cut Trump off by evenly saying, “Vice President Harris, you have said…”

Every checklist box Harris had to mark, she aced. She introduced herself, she gave specific policy plans for subsidizing child care and small business, explained how Trump would lie and why – and that was just in the first answer. It was so thorough that I was genuinely surprised that when they came back from the first commercial, Trump was still there.

B-Block (30:30) SPECIAL COMMENT, PART 2: The Swift endorsement was one big accomplishment for the Vice President. The appearance of a bead of sweat above Trump’s upper lip at an hour in – and its dogged determination to stay there – was the other. By then Trump was insisting that Harris would spend your taxpayer dollars to give free transgender care to undocumented immigrants who were eating your pet duck.

C-Block (50:00) SPECIAL COMMENT, PART 3: I answered your questions in the immediate aftermath of the debate. I mean, what kind of questions could there be after a debate about which the New York Times, the Associated Press and other paragons of bothsidesist nonsense had to acknowledge was a Harris romp? What do you ask? “Did she win by 100 points or 200?”

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WHICH TRUMP DEBATES? THE CRAZY ONE? OR THE CRAZIER ONE? - 9.10.24 Sep 10, 2024

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SERIES 3 EPISODE 24: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Will Trump be insane mass murderer Trump at the debate tonight, or just STRATEGIC mass murderer Trump at the debate tonight?

Because the debate transpires against the backdrop of what SHOULD have been the lead story everywhere yesterday and today, the Rolling Stone “effing kill them all story,” but nine years in, our political media STILL can’t process it, STILL thinks – institutionally and individually – that in a reversal of the famous H-L Mencken if they pretend it isn’t true often enough it’ll stop BEING true – that no one could have become president of the United States or try to stay in office extra-constitutionally or eventually become so insane and so damaged that he would openly boast that not only will he imprison in concentration camps millions of immigrants and others he intends to deport but that quote “getting them out will be a bloody story”– and that he SAID that on Saturday only because the self-protective animal-cunning filter that used to STOP him from saying the Hitlerian mass murder “bloody story” part OUT LOUD is now breaking or broken and there is a chance – however small – that it could break a little more tonight and he could make it worse tonight, that if Kamala Harris has the courage to push this particular button she could not only win the debate and win the election but destroy Trump once and for all and maybe even present a scenario in which Joe Biden only becomes the candidate who dropped out merely the SECOND closest to the election.

Bloomberg's resident Trump expert (and victor in a lawsuit Trump filed against him) Tim O'Brien has seven pieces of advice for Vice President Harris. And a British newspaper claims she got Lee Strasberg to play Trump in the simulated debates. He died in 1982. If she can really pull that off, she should be elected unanimously.

Don't forget our live podcast on YouTube immediately following the Harris-Trump debate tonight at approximately 10:30 EDT.

B-Block (22:39) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: David Zaslav tops off his two years of humiliation by being caught seated next to Leon (Elon) Musk. The Russian Stooge scandal sideswipes Marsha Blackburn and Clay Travis. And as RFK Jr warns liberals that they're now on the same side as Dick Cheney, I must remind my former friend that he's now on the same side as our Proto-Hitler.

C-Block (36:51) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Tomorrow's podcast will be devoted entirely to tonight's debate, so I'll do my 9/11 reminiscences here. And instead of trying to recapture how I felt that day and on the days that followed, I will simply present the tapes of my radio reporting from 2001 for KFWB all-news radio in L.A., and the ABC Radio Network.

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TRUMP TO "BLOODY" IMMIGRANTS...AND ARREST YOU - 9.9.24 Sep 09, 2024

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SEASON 3 EPISODE 23: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (2:00) TRUMP TO "BLOODY" IMMIGRANTS - AND ARREST YOU (and reveals the conspiracy theory he will launch against Kamala Harris in tomorrow night's debate).

And next to none of this has been on front pages.

Our nation is dying of an utter, consuming, fatal lack of courage. For eight years I have been talking and writing about Trump’s desire not just to purge America of immigrants – documented or otherwise – also he gets to decide who’s an immigrant and if you try to defend one of his targets you become his NEW target – but to purge them with violence, Concentration camps, swat team raids, informants, military weaponry, bloodshed. And now even HE is saying it, that bluntly. He promises, out loud, that "it will be a bloody story."

If you are an American and you are asking any question about this besides “Is he an insane mass murderer, or a strategic mass murderer,” you are now a Trump enabler.

Yet, Congressman Ro Khanna actually said yesterday that he’s upset his fellow Democrats are calling the Republicans “weird.” “We should lead with respect and make our case through persuasion of having a better vision for the nation.” Fine, Congressman, and when we do that and Trump regains power and he decides that all immigrants are illegal immigrants and anybody whose parents were not born in this country are immigrants, I’ll do what I can when Trump sends the National Guard to imprison you but by then I might already be in prison because of the OTHER thing Trump did over the weekend that nobody is taking seriously even though after Judge Merchan gutted the rule of law Friday here in New York, Trump has decided he can get away with - promising to threaten "lawyers, political operatives, donors, illegal voters, corrupt election officials" and anybody else who opposes him in this election.

And where is our courage? The New York Times' publisher thinks he's being impartial by not acting against Trump. The most vulnerable voting bloc - young women - will have the lowest turnout. George W. Bush won't endorse Harris because he's "retired." And worst of all, Judge Merchan folds in New York and pretends he's avoiding election interference by making sure the electorate doesn't know whether or not one of the candidates is going to be sentenced to prison.

Thus all of this falls to Kamala Harris to prosecute, tomorrow night.

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PENCE MAY GET THE CHANCE TO METAPHORICALLY HANG TRUMP - 9.6.24 Sep 06, 2024

Show notes

SERIES 3 EPISODE 22: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Plot twist!

Judge Tanya Chutkan's rulings on a "mini-trial" regarding the impact of Trump's Concierge SCOTUS ruling on 'presidential immunity' will not only place some of Jack Smith's evidence before the American public before the election, but it may put Mike Pence in the delicious position of getting to testify against Trump for his attempt to foment a violent overthrow of the government of the United States.

Pence's testimony (or at least his sworn past statements) are at the center of a string of October Surprise hearings and deadlines Chutkan put in place yesterday. The first is three weeks from yesterday. She should take her free time to go and pose for the statue now.

I ASK AGAIN: IS TRUMP DYING OR SOMETHING? His performance at a New York speech was so halting, indistinct, moronic, that I continue to believe there is a physical crisis in progress. Plus, he was nice enough to invoke his Arlington National Cemetery scandal, the one he insisted never happened and was entirely made up by Kamala Harris, and now NPR has identified the TWO Trump campaign officials who abused the Arlington staffer - Justin Caporale is now a Trump campaign Deputy Manager and Michel Picard an advance man who was a contact point on January 6.

They both abused the staffer and then Picard shoved her - per Pentagon officials quoted by NPR.

Insert GIF of Sir Patrick Stewart on Star Trek face-palming here.

MORE FROM RUSSIA WITH CASH: So the co-founder of Tenet Media of Stooge-Gate infamy was fired by Glenn Beck, the assumption is she flipped, there may be others to come (a noted Russian disinformation expert has a list) and golly what a shock, Elon Musk amplified one of Tenet Media's tweets as recently as last week.

AND THE SULZBERGER CRIS-DE-COEUR: The New York Times publisher writes an Op-Ed for The Washington Post (what? The Times rejected it?) about the dangers of Trump and the perils of free press and how... he's not going to do a goddamned thing about any of it. Meet A.G. Sulzberger, gutless bastard.

B-Block (28:50) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: MSNBC dayside ignores the entire Russia Stooge-Gate story to cover the irrelevancy that the Hunter Biden case has become. Senator Ron Johnson is so stupid he is not only promulgating a conspiracy theory about the Great Depression being planned but he admits he doesn't understand how the theory works. And Jesse Watters bashes Tim Walz for drinking milk shakes even though Watters' old boss Bill O'Reilly sat there at Yankee Stadium night after night drinking milk shakes with... Donald Trump.

C-Block (41:00) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: I can’t be sure who wrote the first comedic bit about “Well of course when Iwas a kid we had it TOUGH” but it might have been Thurber. This was my father’s favorite Thurber story and it is the definition of subtle hyperbole. The different approach to kids and school in the year 1903, when, as you will hear, Thurber, some of his fourth grade classmates had reputedly REPEATED the fourth grade… every year… since 1883.

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FOLLOW THE MONEY: MAGA INFLUENCERS LINKED TO RUSSIA - 9.5.24 Sep 05, 2024

Show notes

SERIES 3 EPISODE 21: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANNALL-TIME SERIES EPISODE 500

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: "Follow the money," said Deep Throat about Watergate.

Except he didn't..

My friend, the screenwriter of "All The President's Men," Bill Goldman - HE said it. Because they paid him to. The real "Deep Throat," Deputy FBI Director Mark Felt, never said anything like it. Goldman added he threw it in because it sounded more memorable. And it was. Now everybody remembers it as having happened, when it didn't.

Which is kind of the point about what Mark Felt's institutional descendants at the Department of Justice did yesterday about Stooge-Gate: In their indictment of two Russian propagandists THEY never say the Tennessee company through which they funneled money into the American right wing echo chamber is called Tenet Media and THEY never say that Tenet Media was founded by Lauren Chen who also happens to work for Glenn Beck and Blaze-TV and THEY never say that Tenet Media’s YouTube channel got ten million dollars from Putin’s propaganda arm, R-T, to grow and distribute videos about how America started the Russian war in Ukraine, and how it was all Biden’s fault, and vote Trump or die, and how America shouldn’t get trapped in forever wars and how terrorists were coming into the country across the southern border. And they didn’t say that through Tenet the Russians washed large sums of money to scumbags like Tim Pool, Benny Johnson, Dave Rubin, and others to unwittingly do Putin’s work for him.

Some of those folks say they're unwitting victims. I actually believe it. Because if there was an Unwitting Fantasy League, Jesse Watters would be my first choice but I'd certainly be satisfied if I could get Pool or Johnson or Rubin.

My question is: Russia only had a handful of stooges here? I doubt that.

TRUMP GOES SILENT ON ARLINGTON: Possibly after reading polling showing that his standing with veterans, active service members, and their families is vanishing - he's in a virtual dead heat with Vice President Harris among the families.

AND THE RATS ARE LEAVING THE SINKING SHIP and boasting about it to Politico. Eighteen paragraphs about Republicans who are preparing a bunch of different songs to whistle past a bunch of different graveyards, but the lyrics are identical: we WANT Trump to lose, it's the GOP's only chance!

B-Block (25:22) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Mark Robinson allegedly owed the porn guy money, and then his wife owed the Girl Scouts money! The "Tim Walz Family Hates Tim Walz" campaign falls flat when it turns out the terrible story his brother had to tell was about Tim barfing in the car as a kid. And on Joe Scarborough's show, Mike Barnicle asked the fitting question: how did the Republicans get here, nominating a lunatic Trump for a third time? The answer - in part anyway - IS Joe Scarborough.

C-Block (42:37) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: The NFL season opens tonight. Why not look back at the day I had to call in sick as co-host of NBC's "Football Night In America" because I had unknowingly blown out my appendix! Surprise!

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