On July 24, 2025, Keith Olbermann demanded on his podcast, Countdown, that Barack Obama deliver a national address. He then proceeded to read this speech which he had written as Obama, which called for a government coup and that a $500 billion lawsuit be brought against President Trump. All while literally pretending to be Obama and voicing these lines as if he were the former President.
Olbermann’s bizarre attempt at Obama-roleplay was laced with frantic rhetoric, from calling Trump “a madman … steadily disassembling American democracy,” likening him to “a Temu Hitler,” insisting he was a “criminal who must stay in office at any cost,” and claiming “hundreds and thousands of crimes.”
He imagined Obama's complaints of Trump’s accusations, saying “if a random madman … had accused me of treason … I would never blink,” but when Trump did it, it’s suddenly “sacrilege.”
Labeling Trump’s language “sacrilege” elevates Obama into a quasi‑divine status, and criticism of him becomes blasphemy. That rhetorical elevation was grotesque and mirrored the very cult worship that Democrats routinely accuse conservatives of.
Then, while still in character, Olbermann proposes a new form of government to replace Trump until the 2028 presidential election.
The described plot, working to oust a president, creating a weird caretaker “pseudo government,” organizing tax boycotts and nationwide strike, echoes the very same fascist authoritarianism liberals claim to be fighting against:
America will not last long as a dictatorship run by a minority of unproductive racists, if the fair-minded people of the nation, who oppose such a dictatorship, decide to stop paying for it. Our conference will propose legal peaceful means to remove Donald John Trump from office immediately along with many of his most fervent and least mentally-well acolytes and enforcers, and to replace his administration with a bipartisan, multi-party one, that can serve to undo the damage he has already inflicted on us as a form of caretaker government until the midterm elections of 2026, and the presidential election of 2028.
Olbermann, still playing make-believe as Obama, called on Democrats, Clinton and Obama SCOTUS appointees, and Democrat governors to hold a conference to plan this government overthrow.
Aside from the fact that this was the exact opposite of democracy, the entire scheme was politically backward. For one, there weren’t any current serving Clinton appointees on the Supreme Court. He only appointed two, one of which has since passed away. Additionally, justices were forbidden to act on party loyalty. The entire idea of partisan Supreme Court Justices was antithetical to the idea of the Supreme Court.
Olbermann insisted on bringing up (all while still speaking as if he were Obama) the idea that Trump made sure that no president can ever be convicted of a crime by implementing presidential blanket immunity. So, according to Olbermann, the idea that Obama could even be charged with treason was absurd. But, at the same time, also formally announced that he (as Obama) was filing a civil suit against the sitting president.
If anything, it just underscored that Olbermann had minimal knowledge of what the concept of presidential immunity was. Simply put, presidential immunity ensured that a president could not be charged with a crime based on official acts that were taken within the constitutional powers of the presidency.
The irony was that, while Olbermann’s point was that Obama could not be tried for treason because of “presidential immunity," Obama absolutely could be if it is found that he committed a crime outside of official presidential duties. It became even more ironic when the very thing Olbermann claimed Obama should do (sue Trump for slander and defamation), actually fell under protected official actions of a President.
Trump simply communicated what the director of National Intelligence had claimed to have found. Trump relaying that information was not slander or defamation. That was clearly laid out in Nixon v. Fitzgerald, a Supreme Court case which essentially made it impossible for a president to ever be civilly sued for slander.
The “plan” described in the podcast: ousting a democratically elected president, installing a caretaker government made up of democratic-loyalists, orchestrating tax boycotts and nationwide strikes, was far more fascist than what the left has accused Trump of. Imagining a conference with business leaders, governors, and courts to override elections is totalitarian overreach.
Pretending to channel Obama in order to justify this fantasy is pure delusion. The elevation of Obama into a Messiah-like figure, the perception of endless criminality by Trump, the misreading of who sits on the Supreme Court, and the distortion of Trump v. United States are all aberrations masquerading as moral clarity.
It has proven that leftists do not want change, or democracy, or freedom. They want control, even if that means stripping power away from the people and dismantling the Republic in the process.
The entire transcript is below. Click expand to read.
Countdown with Keith Olbermann
July 24. 2025
TIMESTAMP 0:00:18
KEITH OLBERMAN: What follows is the speech Barack Obama should now give to the nation.This is the address Barack Obama should now give, rather than another one about how everybody else needs to do more and say more and stand for more in this time of crisis. This is the speech Barack Obama should give now, because he has been unexpectedly afforded the opportunity to perhaps actually start something that could end this nightmare of a madman steadily disassembling American democracy, a Temu Hitler gradually turning harassment of minorities into persecution and ethnic cleansing, a criminal who must stay in office at any cost or face the reality of dying in prison for one of his hundreds and thousands of crimes. This is the speech Barack Obama should now give at this moment in the hopes that he can inspire America as he did in 2008, only this time, not merely inspire it, but save it.
My fellow Americans, if a random madman on the street or online had accused me of treason, I would probably never hear him say it. It has happened since I left the presidency. It happened during my presidency, it happened before my presidency, I would not blink. It is part of the job. If an active American politician made such an accusation against me, I would never respond. Republican and conservative politics have long since fallen into the gutter through the stone beneath the gutter through the basement.
But when the current president of the United States accuses me, or any other former American president, of treason and more disturbingly still claims to have incontrovertible proof of my guilt and instead presents only some laughably cherry-picked documents that point only to his own guilt, and his own collusion with Russia, and his own insanity, as Mr. Trump did the day before yesterday in the Oval Office.
When this kind of sacrilege occurs, I, as an American citizen, am left no other choice but to respond. I must respond not for myself but for my country, for our country, for our future. Donald Trump can no longer remain President of the United States. Whatever there is in the so-called Epstein Files that incriminates him in whatever crime or bestiality or abuse, it has severed the already flimsy tether between himself and reality. And a president, the most powerful man in the world who is severed from reality, yet retains the all too real powers of the office, is a danger to the life of every person in this country and every person on this planet. Nothing in my conduct has ever approached the words Mr. Trump has used to describe me.
His animus towards me is decades old. It has been analyzed by many smarter people than I. It is clear that it contains elements of racism and of envy and of lust for power and most importantly, and most perilously, of sheer madness.
As someone who loves my country above all else, as someone who has devoted my life to serving my country, his words are slanderous in the highest degree possible using human language. There is no worse accusation he can make and no more amplifying platform he could have made it from.
In addition, I must note that the members of the Supreme Court, Mr. Trump himself appointed, including one who he was able to appoint only because of a manipulative and unethical political trick enacted by his party, while he was running for president, have created virtual blanket immunity for presidents for acts committed while in office. Therefore, it is not possible for any president to be guilty of any of the crimes Mr. Trump has alleged about me. Even if they were remotely true in the slightest possible degree because Mr. Trump has made sure that there are no crimes, any president can be guilty of.
Therefore, Mr. Trump has exceeded all boundaries of acceptable comment or political criticism or legally defendable speech, even within the mentally warped world he inhabits and therefore it is necessary that I act on two fronts.
In the lesser of these, I have today had my attorneys file a slander and defamation suit against Donald John Trump. As an individual in this suit, I seek damages of $500 billion from him personally. I have filed an additional slander and defamation suit against the government of the United States of America for permitting him to use it as a staging ground for his slanders, smears, and more importantly, for giving him a place from which to try to usher in a form of America in which a madman's vague effort to save himself from prison by fabricating an imaginary plot against this country is acceptable. I will state now that any money I receive after I prevail in these two lawsuits. Any part of the $1 trillion in damages I am seeking will be distributed to citizens, immigrants, and defendants who, like me, have been slandered and abused and whose life has been imperiled by this creature Trump.
But more importantly than these defamation suits. I am calling for the leaders of the Democratic Party to meet with me. And with the governors of the key Democratic-led states and with former President Clinton and with the members of the Supreme Court that President Clinton and I appointed, and with the key business leaders of this country at a conference to attempt to fend off the coming disaster Donald Trump seeks to inflict on this nation and this world. To stop it with actions that would shame a Soviet leader or a medieval king.
We who believe in democracy. We who believe in an America safe for us to disagree with one another, without having someone in power who can respond by jailing us or threatening us with phony charges and a politically corrupted judiciary, we who believe in America, must gather our forces now to fend off disaster later.
To begin, we will be filling out the idea voiced by Governor Newsom of California that his state should no longer pay the expenses of the so-called red states, whose economies are such that they cannot provide services for their own people without being underwritten by the so-called blue states. Governor Newsom has suggested, in effect, a federal tax boycott and at our conference, those of us who want to save America, will propose an organized and safe process. For all the states to participate in this tax boycott and assume all the risks so that you as a citizen will bear no risk.
We will additionally analyze, organize, and propose a national strike to hasten the realization by the members of this president's cabinet, and party, and his congressional leaders, and his Supreme Court that they must join our movement, or they must assume responsibility for the financial chaos that will ensue in the red states and the areas which they purport to represent.
America will not last long as a dictatorship run by a minority of unproductive racists, if the fair-minded people of the nation, who oppose such a dictatorship, decide to stop paying for it. Our conference will propose legal, peaceful means to remove Donald John Trump from office immediately along with many of his most fervent and least mentally-well acolytes and enforcers, and to replace his administration with a bipartisan, multi-party one, that can serve to undo the damage he has already inflicted on us as a form of caretaker government until the midterm elections of 2026, and the presidential election of 2028, hopefully put us on the path to the tolerant, diverse, multi-party nation in which we all grew up and in which you and I and our parents and our ancestors have thrived since 1776.
Our conference will seek to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence July 4th of next year, the 250th anniversary of our nation by ensuring that on that anniversary, our nation will still be here. I invite all responsible Republican leaders to join us.
To, as President Lincoln said, disenthrall yourselves, disenthrall yourselves because you already know without me telling you. That the next person Mr. Trump will accuse of treason
