Left-wing newscaster Keith Olbermann has declared that once Donald Trump is voted out of office, the president and his supporters must be convicted of crimes and “removed from our society.”
The video: Speaking on the second episode of his new YouTube show on Thursday, Olbermann, a former firebrand MSNBC pundit, listed some of the types of Americans he believes need to be purged.
- “Trump can be, and must be, expunged. The hate he has triggered, Pandora’s boxes he has opened, they will not be so easily destroyed,” he said.
- “So, let us brace ourselves. The task is two-fold: the terrorist Trump must be defeated, must be destroyed, must be devoured at the ballot box, and then he, and his enablers, and his supporters, and his collaborators, and the Mike Lees and the William Barrs, and Sean Hannitys, and the Mike Pences, and the Rudy Gullianis, and the Kyle Rittenhouses and the Amy Coney Barretts must be prosecuted and convicted and removed from our society while we try to rebuild it and to rebuild the world Trump has destroyed by turning it over to a virus.”
The 15-minute episode was entitled “Trump’s Plan to Nullify the Election.”
- Olbermann at one point opined that Trump’s controversial dispersal of protesters outside the White House on June 1 was “less about clearing paths than it was about gauging the use of future force. It was about seeing whether or not the military would support Trump staying in office regardless of the outcome of the election. Would they do anything Trump asked?”
An American patriot?: Olbermann announced on Tuesday that ESPN had agreed to relieve him from his duties as a “SportsCenter” host so he could “serve my country” by returning to political commentary.
- His YouTube show, called “The Worst Person in the World,” focuses on the president.
- “You didn’t really think I was going to sit out this election, did you?” he laughed in a promotional video.
Obermann told the Washington Post in a Tuesday interview about his departure from ESPN that he thinks broadcast news commentary isn’t anti-Trump enough.
- “I think it’s fair to say that conservatives in politics and media know a little bit better what to bring to a knife fight,” he said. “Liberals — and I’m hearing it from Joe Biden — say, ‘Well, there are Republicans we can work with,’ and I’m like, ‘I can’t hear you; I’m getting the flamethrower ready.’ I’m going to bring the flamethrower.”
The first episode of Olbermann’s talk show featured him repeating a debunked claim that Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett was a member of a religious group that inspired Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel “The Handmaid’s Tale.”
Justice?: Olbermann isn’t the only prominent progressive to suggest a sweeping political inquisition if Trump loses reelection in November.
- Last week, MSNBC host Chris Hayes tweeted in response to criticism of Trump: “The most humane and reasonable way to deal with all these people, if we survive this, is some kind of truth and reconciliation commission.”
