BREAKING: TRUMP'S LAWYERS FILE INSANE ANSWER TO GAG ORDER DEMAND - 9.26.23

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Under 18 U.S. Code 4241, a prosecutor can request that the judge order the defendant undergo a psych eval, a psychiatric or psychological examination to determine if he is confident to stand trial or unable to aid in his own defense, and when it is proved that he is not, the judge can then order him institutionalized. And Jack Smith should make that request and judge Tanya Chutkin should grant it, because in the 72 hours before his lawyers were supposed to submit an argument against issuing a gag order against him, as they did with exceptional lameness just before the clock struck midnight eastern last night, after he threatened the court and tried to poison the jury pool. In that last 72 hours, Trump demanded that the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff be executed, insisted that NBC News was guilty of something he had made up called country threatening treason, because it published a poll about him that he didn't like, promised that as president, he would make NBC and other news organizations quote, pay a big price, and argued that the homes of all Democratic senators be rated just cause he bought a gun or tried to, and he conflated the Bush brothers, and I don't mean Billy. Then came the just before midnight answer to the gag order request, as he insane as anything else since Friday of last week written not for legal purposes, but to please and a rouse Donald Trump quote, the proposed gag order is nothing more than an obvious attempt by the Biden administration to unlawfully silence its most prominent political opponent, who has now taken a commanding lead in the polls keenly aware that it is losing that race for 2024. The prosecution seeks to unconstitutionally silence Trump's but not president Biden's political speech on pain of contempt. Trump's ambulance tracers slip streamed behind his threats against NBC, referring in the document to president Biden and his surrogates, including those in the corporate media. They dance along the lines of absurdity. There has been no intimidation of witnesses, they say, because quote, no witness has suggested that he or she will not testify because of anything president Trump has said. It is impossible to believe that their rhetoric will have any impact on Judge Chutkin. It doesn't have to. This was written so Trump could get aroused by it. Jack Smith has until Saturday to answer, and that late response was only the last of a string of insane moments from Trump or on his behalf. Yesterday, 10 days after Hunter Biden was indicted for buying a gun when he was legally ineligible to do so. Trump in South Carolina bought a gun or tried to when he was legally ineligible to do so. That audio tweeted with video by his spokesman, Stephen Chung, who wrote President Trump purchases a Glock in South Carolina exclamation point, which would be an inarguable violation of Trump's bail. You cannot buy a gun while under felony indictment. You do it, you do it, bail is revoked, you go inside. Chung deleted the tweet, denied the purchase was completed, it will now have to be investigated. And then Trump went on to continue his mental deterioration personal tour. He has already warned Biden may start World War two. He claimed he ran against Obama in 2016. And now in Iowa, he has decided that George W. Bush and Jeb Bush were the same person. And after two terms as president, they came back to run against him seeking the third term in the Iowa primary of 2016. When I came here, everyone thought Bush was going to win. And then they took a poll and they found out Trump was up by about 50 points. Everyone said, what's going on right here? They thought Bush, because Bush supposedly was a military person. Great. You know what he was a Miller? He got us into the, he got us into the Middle East. How did that work out, right? But they all thought that Bush might win Jeb. Remember Jeb? He used, he is the word Jeb. He didn't use the word Bush. I said, you mean he's a Trump is not mentally competent. And we have been tiptoeing around this obvious fact for the last eight years. In fact, probably for the last 75 years. So while this reality that his occasional bouts of seeming clarity are, in fact, just careful and skilled impersonations of human behavior, while that is nothing new, the patience of a nation has been exhausted. The window is closing during which we might yet roll back, Trump's introduction of violence and the threat of violence as components of our political ecosystem, as common as bribing Clarence Thomas or making up stories about litter boxes in grammar schools. And all legal measures available to defeat him, destroy him, remove him and send his cultists scurrying back into their sewers must be utilized before the gates slam shut. And we turn the United States of America permanently over to a lunatic with the sole of a terrorist and the conscience of a mass murderer who is also now bent on universal retribution. Trump is insane. He is more than likely criminally insane. His mental stability is clearly declining now from week to week. And it's not like he started the year with very much of it left in the first place. Every single day judges institutionalized people far less dangerous to others who have made far fewer threats or issued carefully phrased stochastic calls for violence and public disorder. Every day and now one of them must institutionalize him. You cannot metaphorically stand before a crowd of violent armed thugs who have proved again and again that they await your commands and say of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff that he has committed, quote, an act so egregious that in times gone by the punishment would have been death. You can't do that nor should Trump be allowed to do that. More practically, there is every reason to believe that General Milley is on the witness list in both federal cases against Trump and Trump's threats by proxy against him are another direct violation of the terms under which Judge Trutkin granted him bail in the election fraud trial in Washington and the terms under which Judge Cannon granted him bail in the classified documents trial in Florida. Milley was a witness before the January 6th committee. He testified, Trump had privately admitted he had lost the election and essential element of Jack Smith's case in Washington. And it was Milley's Iran document which Trump waved around to Liz Harrington and Mark Meadows publishers in what became the 32nd count against Trump in the indictment in Florida. Trump has directly threatened a witness directly in times gone by the punishment would have been death. It's not just poisoning the jury pool. It is a call to kill a witness who may testify against him. Al Capone would have cleaned this up and the witness happens to be chairman of the joint's chiefs of staff. There are no circumstances in which such a threat can be tolerated by this country. However, lame the arguments Trump's lawyers made against a gag order yesterday. Jack Smith's answer is due by Saturday and it should be he named one of the witnesses and suggested that the witness should be punished by death. A gag order is now insufficient. You must revoke his bail and detain him. And by the way, he's clearly not competent to aid in his own defense at trial. And he is a manifest danger to the lives of this witness and all the other witnesses and yourself your honor. So under code 4241, I request a pretrial competency test. Hell Smith can just write, damn straight. You should grant a gag order literally put a gag at his mouth and put him in a straight jacket. Whatever we cannot normalize Trump's behavior any longer and we cannot permit Trump's behavior anymore. And in the tragedy unfolding in the background, the most obvious barometer of how sick a society is. It is at the flashing red alert stage of dangerous sick normalization of Trump and his murderous psychotic threats because on Friday night, Donald Trump threatens the life of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the witness against him, Mark Milley. And on Monday morning, CNN publishes an article headlined, Mark Milley leaves a controversial legacy as America's top general. And Politico headlines its coverage in its morning newsletter of Trump's attempt to talk somebody as crazy as he is into killing Mark Milley, quote, speaking of threats. And Politico devotes exactly 11 lines to it while it gives 23 lines to letting us know the really important news from Washington, the 35 members of the media political complex whose birthday it was. And then Mike Allen and Axios somehow do even worse for its newsletter, its headline, 48 hours after Trump's threat against Milley was Trump dodges threat. No, I'm not making that up. Trump dodges threat, referring to Axios's inexplicable conclusion that Trump does not have to worry about the 14th Amendment anymore, because several state secretaries of state are saying they will not use it to keep the murderous psychopath off the ballot. They will let the juries do that if the juries want to. Mike Allen, John Harris, Daphne Odinser, Sarah Goe, Nick Johnson, when Trump writes, I say up front openly and proudly that when I win the presidency of the United States, they and others of the lame stream media will be thoroughly scrutinized for their knowingly dishonest and corrupt coverage of people things and events. Who the hell do you think he's threatening? Just the times in the post? They are a true threat to democracy and are, in fact, the enemy of the people. Don't worry, he's only talking about mother Jones there. The fake news media should pay a big price for what they have done to our once great country. Now that's unfortunate, but happily he's just mad at NBC and ABC. We here at Politico and Axios will be fine. We publish those devastating analysis of how weak the resistance was. And of course, Mike let his email by attacking the 14th Amendment. And he and Trump had burgers together once. We're on his good side. In the bursts of violence, vengeance, fantasies that dance across the cesspool of his brain as he composes these nightmare-ish posts. Trump envisions crowds, dragging you. Mike Allen and the others, dragging you out of your offices by your feet and killing you. Killing you. Or if he's in a good mood, just having the crowds take you to some camp where you will find already behind bars me. And oh, by the way, says our con day from NBC and President Kim Godwin from ABC and Chuck Todd and Kristen Welker. And here's the best case scenario for you guys. You'll have to listen to me screaming. I told you so between our respective trips to the torture block. Because two weeks ago, I guarantee you that more than one person inside the surprisingly non-descript executive offices of NBC News beamed at the thought that not only would a Trump interview guarantee Kristen Welker, a terrific debut number as the host of Meet the Press. But it would get NBC back in the good graces of Trump and secure a debate and maybe just maybe a Republican primary debate to say nothing of the advantages if Trump were to regain the White House. And one week and 10 hours after they've platformed him and softballed him and didn't fact check him in real time, he called them the enemy of the people in all caps guilty of country threatening treason. Nice work, Kristen Welker. And of course, the craziest thing about Trump's explosion against NBC, is if we really had to pick just one craziest thing, was the assumption that when he threatened them, it meant NBC had to be working on some really devastating new story about Trump or was about to drop something new and explosive and everybody missed the reality of the thing. Trump was angry about NBC's poll from Sunday. That's it. There's no NBC scoop coming. Trump didn't get wind of anything. He's not attacking them before they can attack him. The NBC poll story began three quarters of voters say they're concerned about President Joe Biden's age and mental fitness. But Trump didn't notice that. He noticed the next half of the same first sentence. Quote, while nearly two thirds are concerned about the multiple trials former President Donald Trump faces. And he noticed 47% have either major concerns, 34% or moderate concerns, 13% about Trump at age 77, not having the necessary mental and physical health to be president. That is the country threatening treason that Trump referred to to merely acknowledge that people are concerned about Trump's mental health. And by the way, the accurate number is 60% major moderate or minor concerns. And we see shaved the number to make Trump look better because they're not going to let their dividends drop when this country goes fascist. No, sorry, Bob. A poll. Trump went ballistic about a poll. If you think I'm mistaken, his attack on NBC and MSNBC was posted at 753 PM Eastern on Sunday at 950 PM Eastern on Sunday. He gave it away, attacked ABC about its poll, which showed him up by 10 points. But they didn't mention the 10 points enough to satisfy Trump's unquenchable need for validation. Quote, they spend millions of dollars on these polls. And then if the result isn't what they want it to be, refuse to properly report the result. What is properly? It's whenever underlines, Trump is as he is so often and so pathetically or first to himself, your favorite president, me. And who decides whether it is or isn't properly? You already know the answer to that one. He's insane. He's declared his desire to get Mark Millie killed and Governor Shapiro Pennsylvania because voting is Marxist and Latisha James and Judge Engeron of New York. We went after yesterday afternoon mostly because they said he had less money than he says he has and the people at NBC news and the people at ABC news and CBS and Fox and Politico and Axios and anybody who thwarts him and anybody who disagrees with him and anybody who points out that when he tells the striking auto workers, quote, I will keep your jobs and make you rich. He sounds like the text content of an email from another human being who, like Trump himself, does not actually exist. The proverbial fictional Nigerian prince. He threatened by proxy to get the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff killed. He threatened directly to punish the news media, NBC and ABC in particular. He demanded the Republican party shut down the government because he is under the delusion that that will shut down the office of the special counsel. He bought a gun while under felony indictment. There are witnesses. There is video. There is a tweet from his spokesman. Revoke his bail. Send the marshals. Let the chips fall where they may. And if there is a gag order, go ahead, make it a literal one. Put a god damned gag in his mouth and put him in a straight jacket where he belongs. We have a fascist takeover to stave off. And this guy is the fascist. Oh, by the way, Cassidy Hutchinson's first lawyer, Trump's ambulance chaser Stefan Pasantino, he has sued the lawyer and talking head Andrew Weisman for libel assault by talking mean slander for claiming Pasantino coached Hutchinson to lie to the January 6th committee. And it's hilarious enough that the minimum amount that he wants for damage to his reputation is $75,000. And who thinks it's a good idea for anybody to tell the world that his own reputation is only worth $75,000. But now, on top of that, for Stefan Pasantino comes the day new month. Stefan Pasantino's suit against Andrew Weisman has been assigned to Judge Tanya Chutkin. Also of interest here on an all new edition of countdown, Fox News just proved there is no Ukraine case against President Biden. Republicans cleverly attack Taylor Swift and her fans. And if you thought we were all done roasting David Brooks for the airport burger tweet, I'm not done. I'm going to let David Brooks destroy himself with his own words. That's next, this is countdown. Hey, this is Mike Wright from the fantasy footballers dynasty podcast. You heard that right. The fantasy footballers have officially entered the dynasty space. Every week we bring you the same in-depth analysis and entertainment you've come to expect from the fantasy footballers only now from a dynasty perspective. Maybe you've been living in the dynasty fantasy football space for a while. Well, we're here to take your game to the next level. Maybe you love fantasy football. You've been feeling that itch to jump into the dynasty format, but it feels a little bit intimidating. No matter where you're coming from, the fantasy footballers dynasty podcast has something for you and you're going to have a great time listening. I promised. Join me and the rest of the crew every Wednesday for a new episode. Listen to the fantasy footballers dynasty podcast on the iHeartRadio app Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. Hey, got 10 minutes. Then you'll have time for the new podcast. 10 takes with Kyle Brent. That is exactly what I'm going to give you. 10 takes, 10 rants, 10 diet tribes, 10 opinions, all of the above. However, I'm going to give it to you in just 10 minutes. Is there anything worse that when you click on an interesting looking show or podcast in your little phone says one hour 36 minutes? Come on. Give it to me quick. I've given it you in 10 minutes. You can listen to this on your cigarette break on your commute. You can listen to it in the bathroom any time you want. 10 takes in 10 minutes. This whole show is going to be like we're dismantling a bomb. Like we're Jack Bauer. We have an actual clock. If I run out of time, that's on me. It's over. The thing will blow up in my face. Kyle Brent. 10 takes 10 minutes. It's on iHeart. It's on Apple Podcast. It's wherever you get your podcast. Like everybody always says, you know how to get a podcast at this point. 10 takes. Get that one. What's up people? This is Cam Jordan. All pro defense have been with the New Orleans Saints. You might know me from sacking your favorite quarterback. There's pressure and he'll go down. That is going to be Cam Jordan. Now get ready to go off the edge with me on my new podcast off the edge with Cam Jordan. In episodes each week, I'll bring you a different perspective of the game through the lens of my 12 plus years in the NFL and I'll have all of the games biggest stars join me to help you become a smarter football fan. That's good stuff. But it's not all just ball here. Yes, I'm the son of a former NFL player, but I'm a husband. I'm a father for and I got 34 years of life experience to share with you people. So come see me right here on the off the edge with Cam Jordan podcast. Your ultimate playbook for all things football and not football. Listen on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcast. Are you not entertained? This is Countdown with Keith Oberman. Most scripts to the news, some headlines, some updates, some snark, some predictions, date line, union, city, new jersey. I don't know about you. I'm kind of indifferent to the money part of the Bob Menenda scandal. In fact, the idea that he took gold bars is kind of epic. See, my problem is that the senator from this vantage point sure seems like he was, what's the word, spying for what's the word, Egypt, while chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee may have been tipping them off about what questions the Senate would be asking about the Egyptian part of the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. And maybe when they arrange him tomorrow, you know, if he was supplying information to another country sensitive American information, confidential information, maybe he should not be released on bail. Also, the idea that you keep in the event of emergencies, $480,000 in cash around the house, withdrawn a little bit at a time over the course of seven or eight centuries, I guess. I mean, what were the emergencies? All right, getting arrested for accepting bribes. I'm sorry. Were those, Bob, were those emergency gold bars too? I mean, as opposed to a regular stash of gold bars that you kept in a bank or a fort or somewhere? Thank you, Nancy Faust. Smooth, criminal, indeed. Dateline 6th Avenue, New York, some more of them. Fox really screwed up, really screwed up. Brian Kilmeade put on the fired Ukrainian prosecutor, Victor Shokin, who claims he was fired when then vice president Biden demanded it because Shokin was getting too close to Hunter Biden. You know, all the crap that was just proved seven years ago, seven years before Trump bought a gun under exactly the same circumstances as Hunter Biden. Oops. Instead of doing that, just sticking with that, having the bullshit interview on, they then had Kilmeade interview the former president of Ukraine, Petro Poroshenko for reaction. And president Poroshenko called Victor Shokin, quote, a completely crazy person and added there's something wrong with him. And then at the end, Kilmeade asks Poroshenko, Shokin didn't get fired because of Joe Biden. And Poroshenko answered, he was fired because of his own statement. And Kilmeade hurriedly says, all right, Mr. President, thanks so much. I have to go. My grandmother is on fire. All right, I made the last part up about the grandmother, but it is an absolute shock that Fox did not fire Brian Kilmeade or the producer after that segment. Just play the tape on a loop the next time somebody asks about Hunter Biden, like Jim Jordan. And date line Washington, a week ago today on National Voting Day, Taylor Swift posted a message encouraging people to register to vote at the nonpartisan vote.org and 35,000 people registered to vote. She could decide the presidential election if she wanted to or win it. So what appears on the right wing site, the federalist yesterday, 2600 impenetrable words by Molly Hemingway's husband, Mark, under the headline, Taylor Swift's popularity is a sign of societal decline. And I'd love to tell you why this idiot decided to represent the Republican party as it attacked the most popular entertainer in America and her fans. But all I got out of reading this was something, something me music, something, something she's no Tom Petty. And just to add to the stupidity, the article begins quote, after Taylor Swift's massive eras tour, he misspelled Taylor. It reads Teor Swift, T-A-Y-O-R. Please, everybody on the right, please continue to attack Taylor Swift and her fans every day. And whenever you can, remember to misspell her name. Still ahead on countdown, instead of things I promise not to tell, something a little different. Remember the whole thing with David Brooks and the Newark Air port, and the whiskey, and the other whiskey, and the other whiskey after that, and the $78 burger? I'm going to let David Brooks metaphorically hang himself with his own words, because here's the little secret about David Brooks in 20 years of the New York Times. He's an idiot. First, time for the daily roundup of the Miss Greens morons and Dunning Krueger FX specimens who constitute today's worst persons in the world besides David Brooks. The bronze. When you sit there and you ask rhetorically, how could this freaking timeline get any worse, and somewhere in the universe? A god, or an algorithm, or something hears you say that, and it says, oh, okay. Connecticut Republicans are reportedly trying to recruit a former media figure to run for the House of Representatives in the Connecticut Fifth District. Former Sports Center anchor Sage Steel. The biggest news here is that when asked by the Indianapolis Star newspaper if this were true, my least favorite co-anchor, this century anyway, replied, no comment on this, but I appreciate you asking. This marks the first time Sage Steel has ever not commented on anything. One note here, the Connecticut Fifth Congressional District is drawn really weirdly, even for a congressional district, kind of like a rabbit standing on its head. Dan Burry at the southwest corner, Avon at the northeast, Nupri- and Plainville, Plainville, Connecticut at its southeast, but it wraps around weirdly so that it does not include the ESPN campus in Bristol Connecticut, which is literally walking distance of Plainville, Connecticut. But it's smart that they did that because she would lose 1,700 to three there. The Connecticut Fifth, however, does include Palliacci's restaurant in Plainville on East Street, a highly recommended, where the ESPN elite meet to eat. The runner-up, this is the kind of House Republican they think that Sage Steel would fit in with. Congressman Jeff Duncan of the South Carolina Fifth, 2022 winner of the Friend of the Family Award from the Faith and Freedom Coalition, and 20 months later, Mrs. Duncan, mother of his three adult children, has filed on him saying he's had multiple affairs, and he moved out of the house to go live with one of the Hussies. Duncan is a member of the Freedom Caucus, and based on how they've been doing lately, we now know what it's freedom from, it's freedom from, personal responsibility, and ethics. But our winner, Kathleen Parker of the Washington Post, as the post continues to cover itself in glory, or cover itself in something, you thought her famous column before the 2016 election, insisting everything would be okay, no matter who was elected, was a career-ender, evidently not, evidently she's still writing for the post. It's amazing. You thought her turn as co-anchor of CNN's 8PM newscast might have done it? Now she survived, although, to be fair, the CNN 8PM hour did not. Now, Kathleen Parker has joined this mindless assault on John Fetterman and the relaxation of Senate dress rules. As little as I have loved Republicans these past few years, she wrote, coinciding with the rise of our own little autocrat, at least Donald Trump knows how to dress. I can't imagine that even he would demean his office or his country by dressing down. What? Donald Trump knows how to dress, wouldn't dress in depth. What? The baseball cap is knowing how to dress, the cheap kind with a plastic extender in the back, spraying Rustolium Gold number 24521 on his hair, is knowing how to dress, wearing a tie that hangs 12 inches below his belt, so you don't look at his gut. That's, that's knowing how to dress. The rotating selection of 35 suits that he bought in bulk from Rochester Big and Tall. I don't want to go out on a limb here, but I'm beginning to wonder maybe Kathleen Parker isn't qualified for her job. Kathleen knows how to dress, Parker knows how to dress. I've seen cadavers dug up by court orders six months after burial that look better dress than Trump has on his best day. Today's worst, Parker in the world! Hey, this is Mike Wright from the Fantasy Footballers Dynasty podcast. You heard that right. The fantasy footballers have officially entered the dynasty space. Every week we bring you the same in-depth analysis and entertainment you've come to expect from the fantasy footballers, only now from a dynasty perspective. Maybe you've been living in the dynasty fantasy football space for a while. Well, we're here to take your game to the next level. Maybe you love fantasy football and you've been feeling that itch to jump into the dynasty format, but it feels a little bit intimidating. No matter where you're coming from, the fantasy footballers dynasty podcast has something for you and you're going to have a great time listening. I promised. Join me and the rest of the crew every Wednesday for a new episode. Listen to the fantasy footballers Dynasty podcast on the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcast. Hey, got 10 minutes. Then you'll have time for the new podcast. 10 takes with Kyle Brent. That is exactly what I'm going to give you. 10 takes, 10 rants, 10 diet tribes, 10 opinions, all of the above. However, I'm going to give it to you in just 10 minutes. Is there anything worse than when you click on an interesting looking show or podcast? In your little phone says, one hour 36 minutes. Come on! Give it to me quick. I've given it you in 10 minutes. You can listen to this on your cigarette break on your commute. You can listen to it in the bathroom anytime you want. 10 takes in 10 minutes. This whole show is going to be like we're dismantling a bomb like we're Jack Bauer. We have an actual clock. If I run out of time, that's on me. It's over. The thing will blow up in my face. Kyle Brent 10 takes 10 minutes. It's on iHeart. It's on Apple Podcasts. It's wherever you get your podcasts. Like everybody always says, you know how to get a podcast at this point. 10 takes. Get that one. I'm James Palmer and I'm Steve Weich and we're the host of a new podcast, the NFL report. We'll use our decades of experience covering football and inside sources from all 32 teams to not only dissect the biggest topics, but the overlooked issues surrounding the league to make us all more educated on the game we love. Twice a week every week, listen to journalists that won't insult your intelligence with hot takes. Instead, we'll pull back the curtain and tell you how journalists get their information and feature appearances from NFL Network expert analysts, reporters, and all star guests from around the league. It's real football talk for real football fans, but also keeping the league you love in check. So is it a time for something different? The NFL report podcast every Monday and Thursday. Subscribe now and listen now on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Let's close with something different today. Instead of my favorite topic, me, I'd like to look instead at the favorite topic of everybody else from the last week. The David Brooks Airport tweet, you know, this meal just cost me $78 at Newark Airport. This is why Americans think the economy is terrible, and then there's a picture of a burger, fries, a lot of salad, two or three hundred empty catch-up packets, and what must have been David Brooks's 19th Scotch. Let me note briefly that I don't think of David Brooks the way most people seem to as that kind of passive, largely benign conservative who only disgraces the New York Times every couple of weeks. And thank how much it could be worse than this. He's a liar and a propagandist and a con man and a bad writer and the worst kind of each of those categories, the punctuous suck up kind. He's in fact much more dangerous than the other kind because when he lies as he did in that tweet, unless he was drunk enough to risk spontaneous combustion, who did he think he would be fooling with the idea that that cost $78? He lied to advance an agenda that the economy is worsening rather than improving despite corporate America's manipulations to the contrary. He lied. Like the columns are all lies, they may be smooth, they may be stupid, they're full of lies. And he has been doing this subtle, respectable face of fascism, crap at the New York Times for 20 years now. I am indebted to the author of the great Nixon Land book, Rick Pearlstein, for pointing out the column that got David Brooks his job at the Times more than 20 years ago, it was in the weekly standard April 28, 2003 and I'm not reading the whole thing. It's 3,000 words. He could have written the same thing in about 400 words, but I'm going to read a lot of it because frankly, it's so bad, it's so condescending, it's so wrong that it should have been the end of a career and they should have built a monument to it. Don't do what he did in this column. It should have been the end of a career, not the entree to the New York Times. The collapse of the dream palaces by David Brooks, April 28, 2003, 12,000. George Orwell was a genuinely modest man. All right, I'm going to enter up periodically here. His name was Eric Blair. George Orwell was his pen name. That was the the name of the character who wrote the books in a manner of speaking. I understand it's clunky to explain that in the first sentence, but saying George Orwell was a genuinely modest man. Well, well, no, there's no George Orwell. It's like starting your very serious column on this subject by saying Batman was a genuinely modest man. I knew him. George W. Batman. All right, I said this was not going to be about me. It was going to be about David Brooks, but he knew he had a talent for facing unpleasant facts. That doesn't seem at first glance like much of a gift, but when one looks around the world, one quickly sees how rare it is. Most people nurture the facts that confirm their worldview and ignore or marginalize the ones that don't, unable to achieve enough emotional detachment from their own political passions to see the world as it really is. Well, that's kind of a good sentence because he's confessing. He's not confessing. Listen to this. Again, April 28, 2003. Now that the war in Iraq is over, we'll find out how many people around the world are capable of facing unpleasant facts. This is after the mission accomplished crap. Now that the war in Iraq is over, yeah, yeah, wrong on that by about 12 and 19 years and 11 months and 29 days. For the events of recent months confirm that millions of human beings are living in dream palaces. There is the first dream palace of the Arabists. In this dream palace, it is always the 12th century and every Western incursion into the Middle East is a crusade. The Americans are always invaders and occupiers. Yeah, David 2003. I have this question for you. So it's a one word question. Afghanistan. Then there is the dream palace of the Europeans. In this palace, America is a bigger threat to world peace than Sodom Hussein. America is the land of rotting cities, the electric chair, serial killers, gun crazed hunters, shallow materialists, religious nuts, savage capitalists, the oil lobby, the military industrial complex and bloodthirsty cowboy presidents. Well, I mean, that's the Trump administration there except for the cowboy president part. In this dream palace, the Hollywood cliches are taken to be real. George Bush really is Rambo Clint Eastwood and John Wayne rolled into one. Well, we see what happened to Clint Eastwood after this. John Wayne was already dead. Rambo is a fictional character. American life really is NYPD blue and Baywatch. Those cultural references held up, David. In this dream palace, Oliver Stone is as trustworthy as the Washington Post. Michael Moore accurately depicts the American soul. Dr. Strange love is a textbook of American government and Noam Chomsky tells it like it is. You see where he's going here? The point of this piece in April 2003 was to insist that George Bush was right and everybody else was wrong and it had been decided for all time and now don't you feel stupid. April 2003, we already knew there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. David Brooks was pretending it was proof case closed. 78 dollar Scotch and burger. Finally, there is the dream palace of the American Bush haters. Oh, hi, this is my part of the article, huh? In this dream palace, there is so much contempt for Bush that none is left over for Sodom or fraternity. Whatever the question, the answer is that Bush and his cronies are evil. Yeah. What to do about Iraq? Bush is evil. Yeah. What to do about the economy? Bush is venal. Yeah. What to do about North Korea? Bush is a hypocrite. Yeah. I don't see how this works to your advantage or your argument, David Brooks. In this dream palace, Bush, Cheney and a hunt of corporate oligarchs stole the presidential election, then declared war in Iraq to seize its oil and hand out the spoils to Haliburton and Bechtel. Well, just Haliburton. In this dream palace, the war amongering Lecudniks in the administration sit around dreaming of conquests in Syria, Iran and beyond. Yeah, pretty much. In this dream palace, the boy genius Carl Rove, this was written a long time ago, Hatches schemes to use the Confederate flag issue to win more elections. Yeah, that's also kind of prophetic, David, but not the way you must have thought when you wrote this, starting off with the words. George Orwell was a modest man. Ah, the boy genius Carl Rove Hatches schemes to use the Confederate flag issue to win more elections. John Ashcroft wages holy war on American liberties, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and his cabal of neo-conservatives long for global empire. In this dream palace, every story of Republican villainy is believed and all the windows are shuttered with hate. Well, you got the names wrong, but you tell me if you said Trump wages holy war on American liberties and Putin longs for global empire, it becomes instead chilling prophecy. Except Brooks is, well, this is all a $78 burger to him, isn't it? These dream palaces have taken a beating over the past month, as the scientists would say, they are conceptual models that failed to predict events. David doesn't know what that phrase means, but as we try to understand the political and cultural importance of the war and Iraq, the question is this, will they crumble under the weight of undeniable facts? Will the illusions fall on the political landscape change? My guess is that the Bush haters will grow more vociferous as their numbers shrink. Well, he sure got that right. Our numbers truly shrank so much that within three years of this piece being written, Bush had completely spent his entire post 9-11 universal benefit of the doubt mandate and he got wiped out in the midterms. Even progress in Iraq will not dampen their anger because as many people have noted, hatred of Bush and his corporate cronies is all that is left of their leftism. Oh, see, that's clever. Left of their leftism. Hire this man for the New York Times. In fact, he'll let him write all of the opinion columns in the New York Times. That's not what a sentence that is. All that is left of their leftism. And all that is right of their rightism. I'm sorry, that's your next column. Oh, I'm sorry, David. And this hatred is tribal, not ideological. And so they will still have their rallies, their alternative weeklies and their Gore-Vidal polemics. They will still have a huge influence over the democratic party. Perhaps even determining its next presidential nominee. Who would that turn out to be, David? I forget 2008. Who is that guy? What happened in? In other words, there will be no magic aha moment that brings the dream palaces down. Even if Saddam's remains are found, even if weapons of mass destruction are displayed, even if Iraq starts to move along a winding muddled path towards normalcy, no day will come when the enemies of this endeavor turn around and say, we were wrong. Bush was right. Probably because we were right, Bush was wrong. We didn't find Saddam Hussein's remains because this terrible evil monster who could never be defeated was hiding in what amount of to an underground outhouse. And then we executed him. And there were no weapons of mass destruction to display. Let me know when Iraq starts moving towards normalcy. Also, let me know the name of any Republican, any Republican, not just Trump, any Republican of 2023 who will now say, Bush was right about Iraq. But there is another larger group of people whose worldviews will be permanently altered by the war in Iraq. Members of this group were not firm opponents of the war. What lessons will they draw from the events of the past month? How will the fall of Saddam affect their voting patterns, their approach to the next global crisis? One way to think about this is to conduct a thought experiment. This was written for money. One way to think about this is to conduct a thought experiment, invent a representative 20-year-old. Joey Tabula Rasa. And try to imagine how he would have perceived the events of the past month. Oh my god, Joey Tabula Rasa. Oddly enough, the guy who served David Brooks's 78-dollar burger at Newark Airport. Joey Tabula Rasa. From Nuttley. Joey doesn't know much about history. Not much biology either, I believe, according to the song. He was born in 1983 and was only six when the Berlin Wall fell. He really has no firm idea of what labels like liberal and conservative mean. But now he is in college and he's been glued to the cable coverage of the war and is ready to form some opinions. Over the past month certain facts and characters have entered his consciousness like characters in a play he is seeing for the first time. The first character is America itself. He sees that his country is an incredibly effective colossus that can drop bombs onto pinpoints, destroy enemies that are already even aware they are under attack. So why everything is so good in Iraq and Afghanistan today? He sees a ruling establishment that can conduct wars with incredible confidence and skill. And of course lying about Pat Tillman, or what was her name? Private Blair. Wasn't it Blair? No Lynch. Private Jessica Lynch. Blair was George Orwell's name. Did I mention that? George Orwell was a modest man. Well back to Joey Tabula Rasa. He sees a federal government that can perform its primary task, protecting the American people magnificently. Except for 9-11 of course. The second great character and Joey's mind is the American soldier. When Joey thinks of youthful idealism he doesn't think of college students protesting in the streets. He thinks of young soldiers risking their lives to liberate a people. These are the men and women Joey saw interviewed by the dozen on TV. They seem to enjoy being in the military. They seem to believe in their mission. They seem to be involved in something large and noble even at a young age. They seem to not realize they're going to get PTSD and struggle with it for the rest of their lives. When Joey looks at the talking heads on TV he begins to form judgments about this country's political divides. First he sees the broad majority of people who support the war, who it seems to him deserve to be called the progressives. These people talk optimistically of spreading democracy and creating a new Middle East. How's that going? How are we doing spreading democracy to Israel for instance? They have a very confident approach to what America can achieve in the world. People in this political movement include Christopher Hitchens, Dennis Miller, Dennis Miller, Paul Wolfowitz, Joseph Lieberman, John McCain, Richard Holbrook, Charles Crowdhammer, the staff of Fox News, Bernard Lewis and George Bush. Let's see Hitchens drunk and then dead. Dennis Miller professionally dead. Wolfowitz, I don't know what happened to Wolfowitz. Lieberman, still out there trying to get Trump elected. McCain lost humiliated by Trump. Holbrook, you know, CNN wanted him to co-anchor mornings with Paul Azon and Fox News. Yes, they're the progressives, aren't they? The second group, Joey Cs, he calls the conservatives. These people are far more skeptical of the war and grand endeavors of that sort. They emphasize all the things that could go wrong. They see more prudent and less idealistic or visionary. They were not necessarily implacably opposed to the effort in Iraq, but they thought it imprudent. People in the conservative camp include Brent Scowcroft, Joe Klein, the State Department, John Kerry, Chris Matthews, Robert Novak, and most of the press corps. George Orwell was a modest man. When Joey listens to these conservatives, he thinks they raise some valid concerns. They serve as a useful break on the progressives, but they're not exactly inspiring or hopeful and their prognostications on Iraq proved more wrong than right. I'm now going to say something I don't know that I've ever said before. I think I was pretty much right about Iraq and was one of the first ones to say anything about Iraq. But you know what, Chris Matthews' predictions about Iraq were actually eventually, not immediately, but eventually. Correct. He jumped off the ship too. Took him a little longer, but I'm actually complimenting Chris Matthews. The whole point of this article in my reading it to you is it's April 28th, 2003, and David Brooks is writing this as if these events had happened a thousand years ago, and nothing had changed. Well, I guess things are stable now. We can just write this as history, and it's never going to check. Back to Joey Tabula Rasa. Joey likes to think of himself as fundamentally independent. He looks at the people living in their dream palaces, the Arabists, the European elites, the Bush haters, and he knows he doesn't want to be like them. He doesn't want to be so zealous and detached from reality. He wants to have a $78 burger. He's not even into joining political movements at home, but he is less independent than he thinks. He has started to acquire certain assumptions over the past months, which will shape his thinking in years to come. As a rule, these assumptions are the exact opposite of the assumptions he would have formed if he had been watching the Vietnam War unfold. His politics will be radically different from those of the Vietnam generation. Joey isn't one of a kind. There are millions of joys and variations on Joey, inevitably then in ways subtle and profound. The events of the past month will shape our politics for the rest of our lives. Wait, that's it. Not even something in here about in conclusion. Iraq is a land of contrast. Turns out it did not shape our politics for the rest of our lives. David Brooks got everything wrong that he could get wrong in this piece. And there's another 1,500 words I did not read everything. And he got a job with the New York times out of this at which for two decades, he has lied about big things and he has lied about small things like $78 burgers at Newark Airport. And I think we should never let him forget everything he writes every time he appears in public, somebody has to offer him a $78 burger and 62 whiskies. Plus, Joey Tabula Rasa. You know what I think this explains? I think the times hired David Brooks in 2003 after this column because his imagery and his characters were actually dumber than mooring doubts. I've done all the damage I can do here. Thank you for listening. Just had to get that off my chest. We'll do that periodically as David Brooks columns appears. Countdown has come to you from the studios of the Olderman Broadcasting Empire. The music you heard was for the most part arranged and produced by Countdown musical directors Brian Reinge on Philip Chanel. Brian Rehandled the guitar's bass and drums. John Philip Chanel, the orchestration and the keyboards produced by T.K. Overs. Other music, including other Beethoven tuneage, arranged and performed by the group No Horns Allowed. Sports music is courtesy of the SPN Inc. It was written by Mitch Warren Davis. We call it the Olderman theme from the SPN too. Our satirical and pithy musical comments, which we resumed, thankfully, in this episode, are by Nancy Fauss, the best baseball stadium organist ever. Our announcer today was my friend Howard Feynman and everything else was pretty much my fault. Let's count down for this the 994th day since Donald Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically elected government of the United States. Convict him now while we still can. The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow, Bolton's as the news warrants till then. For Joey Tabula-Rossa and the rest of the staff, I'm Keith Olderman. Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and good luck. George Orwell was a genuinely modest man. Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.