"THE ART OF THE NO-DEAL" ON ICE - 1.29.26
Countdown with Keith Olbermann
iHeartPodcasts
4.7 • 4.7K Ratings
🗓️ 29 January 2026
⏱️ 60 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
SEASON 4 EPISODE 54: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (2:30) SPECIAL COMMENT: At this moment, the biggest threat to the future of democracy at this minute is Chuck Schumer.
He and the other members of the milquetoast caucus of Senate Democrats are ready to give away their chance to turn MAGA's panic over the ICE murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti (and Keith Porter Jr) into a forced re-structure of the entire damnable structure. Instead of demanding a new organization with bipartisan control and a blanket ban on any activity near polling places or in fact in the week before an election, Schumer is willing to sell that for four trivial concessions.
He's willing to forfeit the last chance to get these death squads off our streets in exchange for a "uniform code of conduct," the end of "roving patrols," the discontinuation of masks, and the use of body cameras. Because obviously the threat that ICE's next slaughter of an innocent bystander will be captured on video completely kept these Trump Death Squads from killing Alex Pretti.
It's beyond Schumer's usual naiveté. It's criminally negligent. He shouldn't just be ousted as Minority Leader, he should be expelled from the Senate. Trump blames Bovino. Bovino blames Noem. Noem blames Miller. Miller blames Border Patrol. Roger Stone blames Lewandowski. Trump blames the 2nd Amendment. They're imploding, Chuck. Get out of their way, you moron.
ROBERT FICO: Slovakia’s pro-Trump prime minister who last year spoke at CPAC (it's pronounced Fitso) was quoted by five Politico sources as having been shaken after a meeting with Trump on the 17th, alarmed by Trump's "psychological state" and convinced Trump was "out of his mind." Denials all around.
(33:00) BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN: If you didn't know, Saturday he wrote an ICE protest song. Uploaded it to social media yesterday. Calls 'em all out by name, including "King Trump." Chills. With Bruce's kind permission, we're playing it in the podcast. Superb stuff. I wish Bruce were Senate minority leader.
B-Block (40:00) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: A News Nation moron reduces the death of Alex Pretti to a "scrum." Melania doesn't know her icons from her iconoclasts. And Katie Miller insists all Conservative women are far more attractive than all Liberal women. You have to give her credit: who knew she had gotten this far with such devastatingly impaired vision?
C-Block (50:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Just past the anniversary, now 45 years, since a famed New York morning disc jockey responded to something I said on the air one hour by threatening to kill me, and then responded to something I said on the air the next hour by trying to hire me full-time on his station. The Ted Brown Saga - revisited.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is an I-Heart podcast. |
| 0:02.3 | Guaranteed Human. |
| 0:04.4 | Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of IHeart Radio. I don't care if Trump puts the Pope in charge of ice. |
| 0:30.8 | It ends. |
| 0:32.2 | It disbands. |
| 0:33.7 | It is defunded. |
| 0:34.8 | Shut the whole government down if necessary. |
| 0:37.2 | I don't care if they offer body cams. You cannot turn off. It is defunded. Shut the whole government down if necessary. |
| 0:39.8 | I don't care if they offer body cams. |
| 0:41.6 | You cannot turn off. |
| 0:44.9 | And I don't care if they offer UN observers on every raid. |
| 0:46.2 | I want ice gone. |
| 0:48.1 | I want its Gestapo gone. |
| 0:50.4 | I want its headquarters torn to the ground. |
| 0:54.3 | I want to go there in the middle of the night and I want to build a memorial to Renee Good and Alex Prattie and Keith Porter Jr. and all the others on its ashes. The greatest threat to the |
| 1:02.6 | continuation and the safety of this democracy right now this week is Chuck Schumer. Because Chuck Schumer still thinks that somewhere somehow, |
| 1:14.8 | like my poor friend Joe Biden thought, somewhere, somehow the government of this country was |
| 1:20.6 | just going to snap back into its old form. And he could trade a little of this for a little |
| 1:26.2 | of that. And it would never be perfect, |
| 1:28.6 | but we just keep chugging along until the next Senate recess and the next trip to the Hamptons. |
| 1:34.9 | And Chuck Schumer is still the guy who will hear de-escalation and investigation and reset, |
| 1:42.1 | and he will make the unforced, tragic, and fatal error of assuming |
... |
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