Trump Is F*cking Crazy (This Is Not a Joke)

by Keith Olbermann

  We are the majority!

  ANOTHER MESSAGE TO HIS SUPPORTERS—IT’S TIME FOR TRUMP TO RESIGN

  Post date • MONDAY, JANUARY 23

  It’s time for Donald Trump to resign as president.

  Admittedly, it’s been an interesting couple of days.

  But for any patriotic American capable of adding two and two and not getting one and a half million, this is enough.

  If you voted for Trump or you support him now or are saying, “Give him a chance”—again, I’m not going to yell at you or call you names. I’m not going to try to argue policies. I’m not going to debate the size of his crowds, nor your conclusions about Saturday’s marches. In fact, I’m going to compliment you on your generosity toward him, and the sincerity of your belief in his promises, and your natural and commendable desire to see him—and thus our country—succeed.

  But this man is not of sound mind.

  In office, faster and more frighteningly than at any point in the campaign—over the span of just a long weekend, really—Trump has proved that not only will he lie to America about anything big or small, but that, just as important, he will lie to himself about anything big or small. And more troubling yet, he will compel men weaker even than himself to lie on his behalf about anything big or small.

  And worst of all, the lies will convince some people, and they will convince one especially dangerous person in particular: himself.

  Because what Trump does not believe cannot be true.

  And this way lies madness, and every evil imaginable, including the end of this country, in a literal sense—and perhaps the end of civilization, because, like somebody strung out on drugs or somebody living in a complete dreamlike state caused by profound, pulsating narcissism, he will not believe that the outcome of any of his actions could be failure or disaster or even something that could be harmful to himself.

  A man who could accuse the Central Intelligence Agency of trying to undermine him and ask rhetorically of the conduct of that agency, “Are we living in Nazi Germany?” . . . a man who could do that and then, ten days later, go and stand in front of the shrine of its fallen agents and insist, with a straight face, with every word he said and motion he made suggesting he really believes this: “They sort of made it sound like I had a feud with the intelligence community. And I just want to let you know, the reason you’re the number-one stop is exactly the opposite—exactly.”

  A man who could insist—to those same men and women at the CIA—that it got sunny the moment he started to give his inaugural address, when you saw the rain falling on him . . .

  That is the kind of man who could convince himself that it would be fine to start a nuclear war, because of course he would survive the retaliatory attack, and so would his family, and so would whatever people he thinks are his friends—or, to use his word, his “fans”—of course they would all survive the retaliatory attack . . . because he’s Donald Trump, and bad things cannot happen to Donald Trump.

  *

  At the CIA, Trump told the agents there that he has “a running war with the media.”

  He does not have a running war with the media.

  He has a running war with reality.

  His reality is what he says it is.

  He has an adviser who came out and said Sunday that the opposites of factual truths aren’t lies or deceptions but, quoting her, “alternative facts.”

  You try “alternative facts” in your life, for one hour.

  Drive on whichever side of the road you want to. Stop wearing the safety glasses. Let the kids use the stove and the power tools. Write checks against money you don’t have. Because ignoring the warnings and instructions isn’t courting disaster—it’s just a set of “alternative facts.”

  This is . . . crazy.

  And even if—God willing—it never gets to the point where this kind of delusional thinking is employed during an international crisis, or here at home during some kind of threat or disaster—even if Trump’s ability to turn off reality like a light switch never actually threatens us and our children and all we know . . .

  What does it mean about the key promise that he made to you?

  To unrig the system?

  To level the playing field?

  To defeat the candidate from Goldman Sachs?

  Like he promised.

  Like he seemed to promise.

  Before he hired three people from Goldman Sachs and one from Wells Fargo and one from Rothschild Investments.

  *

  You knew this before that speech at the CIA or this crazy argument about how big the crowds at his inauguration were, or whether it was sunny and only he could see that it was sunny.

  You may have even known this before you voted for him, and just hoped it was going to go away when he took over.

  But it isn’t going away.

  It’s getting worse.

  He’s. Crazy!

  We will all be lucky to survive having had him in charge.

  Even if we do survive, it will still be the greatest crisis of our lives. All our lives.

  *

  Look—I don’t want a President Pence.

  But I’ll take him. And his policies. And I’ll fight the policies. But the man? We can debate that in 2020. In the election. This isn’t about policies or conservative or liberal or rigged systems or marches or making America great again.

  This is about a man not in his right mind . . . who has nuclear weapons.

  It is the greatest crisis of our lives, right now.

  But together we can fix it, peacefully.

  He just has to resign, or, if he won’t, there are provisions for the Republicans to remove him because he is so sick.

  We can fix it.

  And then we can sleep at night again.

  And you and I can go back to yelling at each other and enjoying ourselves again.

  Thank you for listening.

  THE MEDIA IS GOING TO HAVE TO RETHINK ITS RELATIONSHIP WITH TRUMP HERE

  Post date • WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 25

  Kellyanne Con Job says if the media continues to call the press secretary’s lies “lies”—and, by extension, if it continues to call the president’s lies “lies”—“we’re going to have to rethink our relationship here.”

  Fine.

  Do not interview Kellyanne Con Job.

  *

  Press Secretary Spicer comes out for what is allegedly a White House press briefing and shouts a bitter, angry statement at the media, then refuses to take questions?

  Stop carrying his press briefings live on television.

  *

  Trump says the media “are among the most dishonest human beings on earth, right?”

  Stop covering his speeches live.

  Use a delay, employ a team of fact-checkers, play his rants, and each time he lies, stop the tape and state the facts. Resume the tape, wait for the next lie, stop the tape again, state the facts again.

  *

  Do not participate in Trump’s propaganda game.

  And do not reply that you are obligated to, because otherwise you could be accused of delegitimizing the presidency.

  It is impossible to “delegitimize” something that was never legitimate in the first place.

  And do not reply that you must cover these liars because of the marketplace of ideas, or because of commercial competition. In short order, nobody who believes Trump or Conway or Spicer or any of the other gangsters will be watching ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, BBC, MSNBC, C-SPAN, or anything similar anyway.

  *

  In a time when democracy is being rapidly sabotaged by a lunatic president and his amoral flying monkeys, like Conway and Spicer, your market—and, incidentally, your obligation as citizens in that bleeding democracy—your market and your obligation are identical: to identify the lie
s and refute them, twice as often as they are told.

  The hard-core Trump crowd—the fascists, corporatists, racists, and authoritarians—they are going to watch Fox News and read Breitbart and watch and read the new ones, Worse-Than-Fox and Worse-Than-Breitbart, that are going to pop up in the weeks to come, and there isn’t eff-all you can do about it.

  This was the exact scenario in the bygone days when George W. Bush was still widely believed about Iraq and every television news operation decided it was going to wave the flag just like Fox News—or try to outdo Fox; one of them put Michael Savage on TV!—and every one of them got smoked in the ratings, and then some guy at MSNBC said, “The emperor is not wearing any clothes,” and all of a sudden the truth started pouring out and the hundreds of millions of dollars of profit started pouring in.

  The danger to the society of for-profit journalism, especially in television, has been evident ever since the FCC equal-time rule—and, more important, the community-service provision—were repealed. That was when you could begin to say as much as you wanted on TV or radio, about any controversial topic, without ever being obligated to offer Floyd R. Turbo two minutes of airtime to give an editorial reply.

  But the blessing to the society of for-profit journalism, especially in television, has been evident ever since the backlash against Bush a decade ago. Being state-run television is profitable. Being anti-state-run television is nearly as profitable.

  To paraphrase the immortal Bill Hicks: The Gaslight Channel? Oh, they’re going for that Gaslight marketing dollar. That’s a good market. They’re very smart . . . Wait . . . the Anti-Gaslight Channel? “Ooh, you know what Keith’s doing now? He’s going for the righteous-indignation dollar. That’s a big dollar. A lot of people are feeling that indignation. We’ve done research—huge market. He’s doing a good thing.”

  *

  It would take a conscious—and conscientious—decision to leave those news consumers who believe an administration elected on, built on, and trading on nothing but lies.

  But it is also practice for a worse time.

  The previous Republican administration exploited a terrorist attack. It took the natural tendency of liberals at times of crisis to put aside party divisions and the natural tendency of conservatives at times of crisis to exacerbate them, and then multiplied it by their Fox-led Republican media echo chamber, and they insisted on something they branded “patriotic bipartisanship” but which was in fact mono-partisanship in which they were to make all the decisions and the role of Democrats was to acquiesce to them or be branded disloyal—and if they are given or they fabricate another such crisis, they will play the same card. You know, something, to quote Trump, that “I alone can fix.”

  Thus, now and especially later, there must be channels and sites and newspapers that devote huge swaths of their resources to blasting back the truth, toward the Trump Lies Factory. It must report the lies about health care, the release of tax returns, the inevitable attempts to use the mighty mechanisms of government against Trump’s critics. It must report the truths about broken promises to release tax returns, and falsified government statistics, and passive-aggressive influence peddling.

  It must learn, and it will learn, how much the Russians swung the election, even if it takes four years to learn it. And: how many acts of war the Russians directed against us and how much they had on Trump and how much they expect him to deliver and how many of the mainstream Republicans will remain loyal not to the Constitution of the United States but to Vladimir Goddamned Putin!

  And until all that is found out, it can simply report all day—every day—that the investigation is still ongoing. Exactly the way Fox News spent nearly three years—all day, every day—insisting that Obama’s birth certificate was an open question.

  *

  Those who own the news media—especially in television—are timid types and by nature conservative . . . until being either threatens their investments. Well, fellas, Trump has decided to destroy your investments. If you tell the absolute truth, he will try to bury you. If you tell his version and give airtime to his supporters but you also have others there to fact-check him . . . he will still try to bury you.

  Appeasement will produce what appeasement always produces: the victims’ wasting the resources and time that they should have used defending themselves.

  The good news for the news media is, in fact, this little garage-band kinda series right here.

  As of this one, we will have done sixty-five commentaries under the banner of either The Closer or The Resistance, and as of number sixty-three, last week, we had crossed the threshold of a hundred million views. That’s a minimum of around 1.6 million views per commentary. And 1.6 million views of anything suggests there is a ready audience for the product in question, whether it’s anti-Trump politics or learning how to tie your shoes; an average audience of 1.6 million is larger than the average audience at CNN or MSNBC.

  So remember that thing before the election? “Trump TV”?

  Well, it is now time for Anti-Trump TV.

  It’ll make somebody at least half a billion dollars in profits in the next four years—if he lasts four years.

  And, yeah, oh, by the way, it also might be one of the few chances we have to stop the United States of America from descending fully into fascism.

  *

  You know. In case that still matters to anybody.

  THE APOLOGY

  Post date • MONDAY, JANUARY 30

  To the people of Syria and Iraq . . .

  And France and Germany . . .

  And Mexico and Canada and . . . the world . . .

  Permit me to apologize, on behalf of the citizens of the United States of America, for the unforgivable actions of the man who has assumed power here.

  I speak for those of us who—unlike Trump, unlike the sycophants who surround him, unlike the hate-filled souls and conscience-optional bigots who applaud him, unlike the Russian puppeteers who manipulate him—I speak for those of us who have not forgotten and will not forget that we are the descendants of the immigrants—often the refugees. We are the modern equivalents of those whom this pig Trump has just banished and degraded and, in many cases, likely literally sentenced to death.

  Our greatness and, more important, our goodness have, since the cliché of the arrival at Plymouth Rock, stemmed entirely from people who came here from elsewhere. The only true “natives” of this continent have been the victims of persecution and marginalization and genocide. If this gargoyle Trump really believed in “America First,” he would lead the deportation of those who brutally stole these lands from their rightful inhabitants.

  Indeed, if there is anything this country can offer as mitigating evidence against our original sin, it is that the land our forefathers invaded became a place of freedom, a destination for those who literally had no other place to turn. We became great and greater and greatest because to these shores came a world of brave men and women who could not be certain it would be better here but who knew it could not be worse than where they were.

  They gained a sanctuary, and we gained their courage and their dedication and their hard work, and their belief that if life would not be better for them, it would be better for their children. In us, in this place, they saw the light of the world. And because of them . . . we became that light.

  And now Trump . . . has extinguished it.

  He has extinguished the light of the world not because it was necessary, not because it was protective—because it will indeed prove the opposite—but because many of those who support him cried out for scapegoats, and for people to hate because they believe a different religion, and for people to blame because they look different. And he, without conscience, soul, morality . . . he saw in their hate—his power.

  He has extinguished the light of the world not because he wanted to prevent terrorism, nor reduce the flow of would-be t
errorists, but because the political currency of twenty-first-century America is making the gullible afraid. Of convincing them that a foreigner lurks around every corner, when the risk of death to Americans is other Americans who have guns. Period.

  The seven countries to whose residents visas will not be issued are Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen. From data researched by the libertarian think tank the Cato Institute: the number of Americans killed in terrorism on American soil by people from those countries from 1975 through 2016 was . . . none.

  The countries of the Middle East against which Trump did not act include the home nations of all the 9/11 hijackers, and those of the San Bernardino attackers—Pakistan and the United States—and, most cynically of all, those countries in which Trump has business dealings.

  *

  None of Donald Trump’s grandparents were born in this country. Virtually none of his supporters who style themselves as “real Americans” are not the descendants of immigrants or refugees. The nation they know, the things here that have given them life—all of this has been built, entirely, by the children and grandchildren of exactly the kind of people whose banishment and punishment they now cheer.

  My great-great-grandfather was a blacksmith, and he came here from Hamburg, Germany, and became a naturalized American citizen in 1854.

  Donald Trump’s grandfather was a scared teenager, and he came here from Bremen, Germany—sixty miles from Hamburg—in 1885.

  Trump’s grandfather was born with the name Friedrich and, once here, changed it to Frederick.

  My great-great-grandfather was born with the name . . . Friedrich, and, once here, he changed it to Frederick.

  A hundred twenty-five years after Frederick Olbermann got here, I became the first of his direct descendants to be able to afford to go to and graduate from college, and this is with me daily, and I consider myself the child of immigrants, and my eyes well with prideful tears that transcend time when I think of his sacrifices and efforts and the abuse he bore and the fact that I got to enjoy the fruits of his struggle.