Ex-MSNBC host Keith Olbermann unloads on Bill Maher over visit with Trump
Former MSNBC host Keith Olbermann unloaded on Bill Maher on Saturday after the "Real Time" host revealed some details from his meeting with President Donald Trump.
"BTW don't overanalyze Maher prostituting himself to Trump, Maher works for the same fascists at Warner who took over and corrupted CNN," Olbermann wrote on X Saturday.
Maher said that the president was "gracious and measured" during his visit with him, and added, "everything I've ever not liked about him was, I swear to God, absent at least on this night with this guy."
Olbermann savaged him as a "shameless opportunist."
"I've known Bill since 1978. He was a shameless opportunist with no real principles then and he remains so. This is so he can keep his HBO show," the former MSNBC host continued.
Olbermann Leads Left-wing Meltdown Against Cnn, Calling To 'Burn It Down' After Biden's Performance
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Olbermann previously called Maher a "selfish and unfunny scumbag" in 2023 after Maher announced he would resume producing and airing episodes of his show despite the writers' strike at the time.
"Without writers, the new weekly SCAB edition of 'Real Time With @billmaher' will be 83 seconds long," Olbermann commented.
He added, "As somebody who's known you since 1978: F--- you, Bill, you selfish and unfunny scumbag."
Fox News Digital reached out to Maher's "Real Time" representative for a comment.
During Maher's "Real Time" segment, he called out liberals and other critics who took issue with him meeting with Trump at all.
"And I know as I say that, millions of liberal sphincters just tightened. 'Oh, my God, Bill, you gonna say something nice about him?' What I'm going to do is report exactly what happened," Maher said, adding he "didn't go MAGA. And to the president's credit, there was no pressure to."
Washington Post Columnist Clashes With Bill Maher On 'Falling Into The Trap' Of Talking To Trump
He went on to share that his favorite moment was when they both said they heard from a lot of people who liked how they were having dinner together, and how they agreed they didn't like those who didn't want them to meet.
"Don't talk, as opposed to what? Writing the same editorial for the millionth time and making 25-hour speeches into the wind. Really, that's what liberals have?" Maher said.Original article source: Ex-MSNBC host Keith Olbermann unloads on Bill Maher over visit with Trump
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Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
The Trump administration revives an old intimidation tactic: the polygraph machine
A version of this story appeared in CNN's What Matters newsletter. To get it in your inbox, sign up for free here. When President Ronald Reagan's White House threatened thousands of government officials with polygraph exams, supposedly to protect classified data (but probably also to control press leaks), his Secretary of State George Shultz threatened to resign. Reagan's White House backed down and agreed to impose the tests only for those suspected of espionage, according to a 1985 New York Times report. In terms of catching spies, polygraph tests failed spectacularly in key moments. More on that in a moment. First, consider the second Trump administration, which is leaning in on polygraphs, presumably to ferret out leakers, but also as an apparent method of intimidation. 'The polygraph has been weaponized and is being used against individuals who have never had a polygraph requirement, whether pre-employment or security, in their entire federal careers,' said Mark Zaid, an attorney who specializes in representing people who work in national security, after a slew of published reports about polygraph threats throughout the Trump administration. The tests are frequently being used to identify not leaks of classified information but rather 'unclassified conversations regarding policy or embarrassing decisions that have made their way through the rumor mill or directly to the media,' said Zaid, who has previously testified before Congress about the use of polygraphs and sued federal agencies for their practices. ► At the FBI, the New York Times reports, an increased use of polygraphs has 'intensified a culture of intimidation' for agents. ► At the Pentagon, officials publicly threatened to conduct polygraph tests as part of an effort to figure out how the press learned that Elon Musk was scheduled to get a classified briefing about China, which a billionaire with business interests in China probably should not get. It's not clear if polygraph tests were ultimately administered as part of the probe, according to CNN's report. ► At the Department of Homeland Security, according to CNN, polygraph tests have been used on FEMA and FAA officials in addition to those in more traditional national security roles. Administration officials have defended the practice as a way to protect government information. DHS Secretary Kristi Noem defended the use of polygraph tests during an interview on CBS in March. 'The authorities that I have under the Department of Homeland Security are broad and extensive,' she said. Previously, per Zaid, polygraphs have been used as a sort of 'weeding device,' not unlike a physical fitness test for large pools of applicants to national security and law enforcement roles. After that, some employees — particularly in the intelligence community — may be given exams every five or 10 years, sort of like a random drug test. What's happening now is something different. Polygraph tests are 'being used against individuals who have never had a polygraph requirement, whether for pre-employment or security, in their entire federal careers,' Zaid said. Most Americans have never been subjected to a polygraph, and that's in large part because Congress acted to largely outlaw them from use in the public sector in 1988, a time when millions of Americans were being polygraphed each year and companies were using them to bar people from jobs and conduct coercive internal investigations. For an example of why polygraphs were problematic, look back at an old '60 Minutes' segment in which Diane Sawyer submits to an exam and hidden cameras are used to show how the bias of the examiner affects results. 'If you're trying to find one leaker in an organization of 100 people, you could end up falsely accusing dozens of people,' according to Amit Katwala, author of the polygraph history Tremors in the Blood: Murder, Obsession and the Birth of the Lie Detector. 'And you might not even catch the culprit — there's no evidence to suggest that an actual lie detector is even scientifically possible,' he told me in an email. The Employee Polygraph Protection Act was signed into law in 1988 by Reagan, years after his showdown with Shultz. But the law kept polygraphs for the public sector, particularly for national security and law enforcement. In the national security world, the principle of protecting the innocent is 'flipped on its head,' according to Zaid. 'We would rather ruin 99 innocent people's careers than let the one new Ed Snowden, Aldrich Ames or Robert Hanssen get through,' he said. If polygraphs have a spotty record in detecting lies, they have a horrible record in detecting spies. A Senate Intelligence Committee report from 1994 explores how the CIA officer Aldrich Ames, who spied for the KGB, evaded detection for years in part because he passed multiple polygraph exams. At the same time, the same report describes how another CIA employee who aided the KGB, Edward Lee Howard, did so in part because he felt jilted by the CIA after he was fired for failing a polygraph exam. Then there was the shocking trial of FBI official and Russian spy Robert Hanssen, who had never been given a polygraph in his career, there was an uptick in their use at some agencies, including the FBI and the Department of Energy. At the turn of the 21st century, the US government commissioned a large-scale report on the efficacy of the polygraph undertaken by a special committee at the National Research Council. They found the scientific evidence on polygraphs to be more than lacking. 'As a nation, we should not allow ourselves to continue to be blinded by the aura of the polygraph,' Stephen Feinberg, the Carnegie Mellon professor who led the study, testified before Congress. Ames offered his assessment of the polygraph machine in a letter from prison published in 2000, calling the polygraph 'junk science that just won't die' and saying it is most useful as an instrument of coercion. 'It depends upon the overall coerciveness of the setting — you'll be fired, you won't get the job, you'll be prosecuted, you'll go to prison — and the credulous fear the device inspires,' he wrote. Polygraphs are frequently used in criminal investigations, but rarely used in court. The idea behind the polygraph, which was first developed in the '20s, is that lying causes stress. The examiner hooks a person up to monitors that gauge things like blood pressure and fingertip sweat. A pre-interview helps formulate common questions that create a baseline and reactions to more probing questions are compared to that baseline. But it's not a scientific process, and it can be beaten, or misled, since at its core the machine is simply measuring physiological responses. Frequently, incriminating information is offered by nervous exam-takers who don't understand exactly how the process works. Pop culture often suggests that when a person is hooked up to a polygraph machine, their lies will be detected. But that is not exactly true. 'The polygraph works because we think it works. It's a tool of psychological coercion in an already intimidating environment—particularly when it has the weight of the federal government behind it,' Katwala told me. But the intimidation is probably the point. 'Using the polygraph may not help you catch the leakers, but the idea of it could well scare any potential future leakers into keeping their mouths shut,' Katwala said. The man credited with fully developing the polygraph, a Berkeley police officer named John Larson, who also had a PhD in psychology, would later turn on his invention as unreliable, according to Katwala. Larson was inspired by the truth-telling machine of William Marston, himself a psychologist, but one with an active imagination and a flair for the theatrical. Zaid described him as the PT Barnum of polygraphy. Here's a video of Marston using a polygraph-like machine and claiming to identify the varying emotions of blonde, brunette and redheaded women. His conclusion was that redheads like to gamble, brunettes are looking for love and blondes are easiest to scare. Okay. Marston also invented the comic book hero Wonder Woman, with her Lasso of Truth. Katwala warns that there are new technologies being developed with the help of AI or revolving around brain waves, but he argues they should be viewed just with the same skepticism as the polygraph machine. 'None of them get past the Pinocchio's nose problem — everyone's different, and something that works for one person might not work for everyone,' he said. But they could all be used in the same coercive way as the polygraph machine.
Hamilton Spectator
an hour ago
- Hamilton Spectator
David Jolly, a Trump critic and former GOP congressman, to run for Florida governor as a Democrat
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San Francisco Chronicle
2 hours ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
David Jolly, a Trump critic and former GOP congressman, to run for Florida governor as a Democrat
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — A former Republican congressman and vocal critic of Donald Trump says he wants to become governor in the president's adopted home state of Florida, and that he's running as a Democrat. David Jolly formally announced his bid Thursday, becoming the latest party convert hoping to wrest back control of what had been the country's premier swing state that in recent years has made a hard shift to the right. Under state law, term-limited Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis can't run for reelection in 2026. Even as Florida serves as a place for the Trump administration to poach staff and test policies, Jolly says he's confident that issues such as affordability, funding public schools, and strengthening campaign finance and ethics laws will resonate with all voters in 2026. He predicts elections next year will herald nationwide change. 'I actually think Republicans in Tallahassee have gone too far in dividing us. I think we should get politicians out of the classrooms, out of the doctor's offices,' Jolly said. 'I think enough people in Florida, even some Republicans, now understand that. That the culture wars have gone too far,' he said. Jolly was first elected to his Tampa Bay-area congressional seat during a 2014 special election, and was reelected for one full term. The attorney and former lobbyist underwent a political evolution that spurred him to leave the Republican Party in 2018 to become an independent and then a registered Democrat. And he has built a national profile for himself as an anti-Trump political commentator on MSNBC. Jolly said he has considered himself 'part of the Democratic coalition' for five or so years, and believes in what he sees as the party's 'fundamental values' — that government can help people, that the economy should be 'fair' to all, and that immigrants should be celebrated. 'I struggled to exercise those values in the Republican Party,' Jolly said, continuing: 'The actual registration as a Democrat wasn't a pivot. It was a kind of a formality.' Jolly has broken from his old party on immigration, as Florida lawmakers race to help Trump fulfill his promise of mass deportations. Jolly skewered Republicans who he said have 'conflated immigration and crime,' which he described as wrong and immoral. 'If you were born here or if you immigrated here, or if you're a Tallahassee politician who steals Medicaid money, we're going to be tough on crime,' Jolly added, referring to a probe into the use of Medicaid settlement funds by a charity associated with first lady Casey DeSantis. Jolly's gubernatorial run as a Democrat draws comparisons to the failed bid of former Republican congressman-turned-independent-turned-Democrat Charlie Crist, who lost to DeSantis in 2022 by 19 points. It was Crist, running as a Democrat, who ousted Jolly from his congressional seat in 2016. Jolly joined the Florida Democratic Party at what is arguably one of its most vulnerable points in years. Florida currently has no Democrats elected to statewide office, and there are now 1.2 million more registered Republicans than Democrats, according to the state's active voter rolls. The GOP has made significant inroads in formerly Democratic strongholds in the state, such as Miami-Dade County. The day that Jolly announced his new affiliation, the-then top Democrat in the Florida Senate, Jason Pizzo, revealed he was leaving the party, declaring that 'the Democratic Party in Florida is dead.' Pizzo, a former prosecutor, has said he'll launch his own run for governor as a candidate with no party affiliation. On the Republican side, Jolly will face Trump-backed Rep. Byron Donalds, who is also a frequent presence on cable news as a surrogate for the president. Among the other names floated as potential GOP candidates are former Rep. Matt Gaetz and Casey DeSantis.
