Keith Olbermann has one word he uses to define the Republican Party: “stupid.” The political commentator has deep feelings for the state of the GOP and their reaction to the rescue of WNBA star Brittney Griner — and he doesn’t hold back in sharing it on his “Countdown With Keith Olbermann” podcast Saturday.
“Unpatriotic, simple-minded, the real-world-is-just-a-fantasy-basketball-draft face-plant about the return of Britney Griner yesterday has not only reaffirmed that Republicans are stupid, but it is also underscored that on the rare occasion when a glimmer of smart might somehow sneak through, Republicans will deliberately pretend to be even more stupid than they are in order to appeal to their stupid base full of stupid people,” Olbermann said in one breath.
You can listen to the “Countdown With Keith Olbermann” podcast in its entirety here.
While Olbermann said that “some are born stupid” and others “achieve stupidity,” and some “have stupidity thrust upon them like you know, Peter Doocy,” whom Olbermann calls “the legacy hire that Fox News inexplicably sends to the White House every day to get humiliated by press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre.”
The most recent trip to the briefing room had Doocy grilling Jean-Pierre about why President Biden rescued Griner and not U.S. Marine veteran Paul Whelan, to which Jean-Pierre responded, “The professional athlete is also an American citizen, so let’s not forget that.”
“The president of the United States — any president of the United States — and his diplomats managed to extract an American hostage from Russia during what is a proxy world war against Russia, and this bonehead son of a bonehead says it was a bad deal because he personally has determined it’s a bad deal. Thus the only possibility is that it is a bad deal,” Olbermann said. “Weaponized Republican stupidity.”
According to Donald Trump, Whelan would have been let out for the asking, dodging the fact that Whelan was seized by the Russians on Dec. 28, 2018, which would have given Trump two years and 22 days as president to get Whalen back. Olbermann concluded if that were true, either Trump didn’t ask or his attempt failed. “Either case makes Trump look stupid and Trump bringing his failure up and reminding everybody about it is stupid. Why? Why is that the first knee-jerk move, to invoke your own stupidity?” Olbermann wondered.
And then there are “the supider people,” as Olbermann calls them. Among those, there’s Marjorie “Trailer Park” Greene, who he says could be tapped “on the knee with a reflex hammer and her stupid bone would vibrate… Half of [her] tweets contain a hilarious mistake which befits somebody whose head looks like a carved Halloween pumpkin come to life.”
But, Olbermann adds, she’s not alone. “Of course, there are the true lunatics. You saw the woman who insisted that there is no President Biden, that he is being portrayed by Jim Carey and James Woods wearing masks. How stupid is that? As if you couldn’t cast somebody better than James Woods.”
That underscores an obsession the farthest of the far right has with reappearances and reincarnations of liberals John F. Kennedy senior and/or junior. (“It varies from week to week and nut job to nut job.”)
“Sadly, the jokes and the sheer inhumanity that inspire them obscure an awful reality,” Olbermann said. “Whatever stupidity Republicans don’t achieve naturally, they supplement. They are at abyss levels of stupidity in this country. And I truly believe this is a choice. Their stupidity is a language all its own. A reverse superiority, an indecipherable code impervious to logic or intelligence.”
Olbermann points out that Lutheran Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer — who wrote inside a German prison camp and was part of the group that tried to assassinate Hitler on July 20, 1944 — wrote that “the stupid person in contrast to the malicious one is utterly self-satisfied and being easily irritated, becomes dangerous by going on the attack. For that reason, greater caution is called for than when a malicious one, never again will we try to persuade the stupid person with reasons for it is senseless and dangerous.”
He went on: “As always, the weapons we have, the only weapons we have are to be found in truth and the willingness to use the words we have been given these people, Republicans, fascists, they are stupid. The last time their stupidity was overlooked, ignored, apologized for they coughed up Hitler. The last time they were allowed to run one of the most powerful nations in the world, they nearly destroyed the world.”
“At some point in this country, we stopped shaming stupidity. We stopped looking at the Peter Doocys and the Marjorie ‘Trailer Park’ Greenes and the Elon Musks and saying, no matter what their power or influence or success, we must call them what they are.
“They are still stupid and in their brainless response to something as straightforward and positive as the rescue of Britney Griner, they are stupid,” Olbermann concluded. “Let us never flag in our exertions or our willingness to call them that.”
