A guy who’s spent a lifetime in the public eye should know by now how hard it is to hide anything for long.
But Keith Olbermann, one of the most callously cruel leftists raging on social media these days, apparently thought that deleting a couple of apparently threatening posts on the platform X would be enough to make those messages go away.
And now, CNN’s conservative commentator Scott Jennings has forwarded them to the FBI.
As the New York Post reported, Olbermann was in a raging dispute with Jennings over the fate of late-night “comedian” Jimmy Kimmel, whose job is clearly hanging by a thread after his flagrantly false comments last week about the assassination of conservative organizer Charlie Kirk.
“You’re next, motherf***er,” Olbermann wrote to Jennings. “But keep mugging to the camera.”
Olbermann deleted the posts, but not before they were captured by Dustin Grage, a columnist for the conservative website Townhall.
Jennings tagged FBI Director Kash Patel on the contents:
WARNING: The following post contains vulgar language that may offend some readers — Olbermann did NOT use asterisks.
Cc: @FBIDirectorKash https://t.co/4bEXaWfAHv
— Scott Jennings (@ScottJenningsKY) September 22, 2025
To be fair, as some social media users noted, it’s possible Olbermann was not referring to Jennings’ being killed but instead to being taken off the air, as Kimmel was by ABC (though that didn’t last).
Maybe.
But in the American political atmosphere after the Kirk assassination, it’s easy to see how Olbermann’s words come off like a death threat.
The Sept. 10 shooting at Utah Valley University has made the country achingly aware of how easily a bullet can upend a political order — and reminded us all of how hair-trigger deranged the American left has become.
And let’s face it, “You’re next, motherf***er,” generally isn’t terminology that describes the addressee’s future employment status.
There were plenty, plenty of social media users who took Olbermann’s words as the threat they appeared to be:
The one person on cable news that appears to be the voice of reason is just too much for them to abide. They go from cancellation, to lawfare and if those doesn’t silence people, then they move to the unthinkable. Heaven help us. This country is in a bad place.
— Skylark (@skylark1984) September 22, 2025
What is it about their cloistered, groupthink surroundings that makes them tone-deaf to their own rhetoric? Please ensure cameras are rolling when Keith is tazed and cuffed.
— Stanley Ridgley (@StanleyRidgley) September 23, 2025
That’s reads like a call to action.
I’m no lawyer, but that sounds like a situation where @CNN may be need to hold @KeithOlbermann liable for the additional security costs to necessitate this increased risk.
— Jimmy McCambridge (@JimmyMack0320) September 23, 2025
If there were an innocent explanation — if Olbermann really had been referring to Jennings losing his gig as the only sane voice at CNN — the right move would have been for Olbermann to clarify himself.
Instead, he chose to delete the posts, like a child hiding a broken toy, hoping that would make it all go away.
It didn’t, though.
Maybe he can do a better job clearing things up with the FBI.
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