BULLETIN: DEMOCRACY ENDS. FBI APPLICANTS MUST LIE ABOUT JANUARY 6TH - 2.9.25

This is if you do not know. In the Washington Posts brief damning almost despite everything unbelievable nightmarish report posted Saturday night, the Post is quoting applicants for the FBI and other top national security positions, and they hit some of these people who were in these organizations were dismissed and were being the opportunity to return to work, quoting

them as saying they had been asked these questions. At least two FBI applicants were asked at least two questions out of George Orwell or the Soviet Union or Nazi jermy one you heard it, who is your real boss? If you need more, don't worry, there is more. The other question, who were the real patriots? On January sixth? You have to answer these questions correctly. From the Trump point of view, to get a job at the FBI.

We know through the post supporting of at least two other questions asked of those being interviewed for some kind of leadership positions within other aspects of the Trump national security apparatus in Washington. They are told to answer yes or no to each question. One was January sixth, an inside job. Question two was the twenty twenty presidential election. Presumably with two l's. At least these two applicants cited in the post story told their interviewers no, and neither

was hired. The asking of these questions, just the asking, let alone the answers, let alone the implications that it is anything but political science fiction. To conclude that some people have already answered yes and are now moving into roles at the FBI and other law enforcement at other national security organizations. Just asking those questions signals the end

of democracy. Because if today you can ask candidates for federal law enforcement positions to swear personal loyalty to their real boss, and if today you can ask candidates for these same positions to insist that lies about January sixth, then the twenty twenty election are the truth, and that the truths are lies, then tomorrow you can make it illegal to answer that the twenty twenty election wasn't stolen, And then next week you can make it illegal to

publish or broadcast that the twenty twenty election wasn't stolen, and then the week after that you can put anybody who does so in prison. The slow, incremental submersion into this quicksand is asking the would be leaders of the FBI to swear to lies and fiction and fantasy and perversion of reality, punishing people for refusing to do any of that. That is only the quick, terrible final step some of us have been warning we would get here.

We have been warning that the creature at the head of this movement is not just unstable, quirky, populist, selfish, self indulgent, not just insane, but criminally insane and homicidally insane and ultimately conceivably genocidally insane. Some of us have been warning about this for a decade. We have been shunned, mocked, and marginalized. We have been told Trump is not a subhuman psychotic, not a terrorist, not a mass murderer. He's

just popular. We were right, and if there was any remaining doubt, it ended last night, and those who doubted and those who told us otherwise were and are wrong, and it will cost all of us our form of government. Some of those who told us we were wrong have even come to understand this since just January twentieth. Some of them have just come to understand this since reading the Post article last night. Some of them will not understand any of it until they are being led away

in handcuffs or worse. And so I would like to mention here while it is still legal, to mention here, that we are here now on the precipice as it crumbles beneath us, in large measure, probably in the decisive final measure, because of the people who both sides us and what abouted us? Who both sides and what abouted

this country figuratively and probably literally to death? Attorney General Merrick Garland and former President Joe Biden, who refused to recognize that the danger was not in breaking the ritualistic imbecilities of Department of Justice norms. We're not getting back

to normality as soon as possible. The danger was in not vigorously and immediately prosecuting Trump and taking any measures available to imprison him for the rest of his life and imprison these creatures, who now ask the successors to Garland's own employees, who's your real boss? Garland and Biden helped kill our country. David Zaslav, head of Warner Brothers Discovery, and his minion Chris Licht, who neutered CNN to make money. Not decisive by any stretch of the imagination, but neutering

CNN accelerated the both sides this landslide. David Zaslab and Chris Licht helped kill our country. Jake Tapper and Dana Bash of CNN, who refused to demand the right to fact check Trump in the debate last summer as he lied literally without interruption for ninety minutes. Tapper and Bash who helped kill our country. Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzhinsky, who two weeks after the election went to Florida to prostrate and prostitute themselves in front of Trump. Scarborough and

Brzhinsky helped kill our country. Mark Zuckerberg, the spineless head of Facebook and a series of failed related websites, who, with terror written across his face, has guaranteed Trump that he and his liars could lie all they wanted to

on all of his platforms. Mark Zuckerberg, who helped kill our country, Joe Kahn, executive editor and A g Selzberger, publisher of the New York Times, who made sure every cowardly, non committal headline slapped above the work of their writers, the courageous work and the cringing work alike would never convey malice, who would never specified danger, which would never warn readers headlines. And two men Kahn and Sealzburger, who

helped kill our country. Mitt Romney, former US Senator and governor, who nine years ago attacked Trump, then appeased him in hopes of becoming Secretary of State, who five years ago attacked me in print because I called Trump a terrorist in the months before the twenty twenty election, who four months after he called me a terrorist, found himself pinned inside the Capitol by Trump's terrorists, and who still would never call Trump what he is, Mitt Romney, who helped

kill our country. Countless nominal Democrats who since the election, or since the inauguration or both, have sought to find compromise or move towards bipartisanship with Trump and an evil machine that wants you to say only one thing, not bipartisan, this compromise that they want just one thing from you. You are my real boss. Chuck Schumer, who used the phrase stop the steal last week. I guess he thought

it was funny. John Fetterman, Eric Adams, Mark Kelly Akeem, Jeffries, Chris Coons, nearly all of them in that party to some degree great or small, briefly or still in progress, someone looking to get to a yes on Tulsi Gabbard or Cash Patel, all of them who helped kill our country.

And dozens upon dozens of commentators and reporters and newscasters and columnists who I'm sure all wanted to say more, but they had mortgages to pay and careers to consider in a shrinking medium, and guest bookings they could not jeopardize.

Bob Iger, Van Jones, Andrew Mitchell, Katie Turr, the other executives of ABC News, the executives of sixty Minutes, the new head of MSNBC's parent, Mark Lazarus, looking to make MSNBC more excessible to Republicans, everybody virtually at Politico, Chris Solissa, Chuck Todd, Kristen Welker, and we can pick Kristin Welker almost at random to represent the media for when last April a video appeared of a Trump pickup truck with flags flapping in the highway wind and an illustration a

sticker or decal on its bumper showing then President Biden bound and gagged full size, as if he had been kidnapped and beaten or murdered and thrown into that Trump truck. Because that, at heart, is what Trump's friends wanted to do and wanted you to know they intended to do. When that image. We don't like the president, we'll just kidnap him. We don't like the election outcome, We'll just

kidnap the winner. We don't like your answer about who really want or who's the boss, We'll just kidnap you.

When that image appeared in public and it was shared by people who were proud of it, Kristin Welker spoke for a generation of journalists when she said, it is yet another reminder that we are covering this election against the backdrop of a deeply divided nation, instead of saying the truth, which is that it was yet another reminder that we were conducting this election against the backdrop of an incredibly dangerous percentage of this nation being willing to

kill a president to get their way, and an equally incredibly dangerous percentage of this nation being gutless people like Kristin Welker and Joe Scarborough and Joe Kahn and all the rest being unwilling to say what was true, being unwilling to say what was happening, being unwilling to warn those who doubted that it was coming, but it was coming, and now it is here. Who is your real boss?

Day twenty oh and two more final Championship names on this list Jeff Bezos and Will Lewis of The Washington Post, whose reporters took this final fatal straw, who published the reality that would be FBI officials are being asked as a condition of employment, Who's your real boss? Who printed this figurative crack of doom for American democracy and representative government and freedom of speech? And when they did put it out, even in the Washington Post, they placed it

as scrolling down from the top of their homepage. They placed it as their thirty third story from the top, thirty third, immediately following three stories about player trades in the National Basketball Association democracy dies not in darkness, but in lies of commission and lies of omission. And you, mister Bezos, and you, mister Lewis, and all the rest of you have committed both kinds. And soon it will be illegal not to lie. If you're applying for the

FBI job. We are already here. It is, in essence illegal not to lie about the twenty twenty election. It is illegal not to lie about where your loyalty lies, the Constitution, the law, or this pile of human feces. Soon it will be illegal for everybody not to lie. And that perhaps will be about the time, mister Bezos and your friend, my former colleague, Miss Sanchez, when you suddenly realize that your own lies to yourselves will have

to end. That you do not in fact live in some other America, walled off from the nightmare that Trump, now with Musk, now with a pliant military, now with a pre screened FBI, now with law enforcement, not just encouraged to lie, but required to you, Jeff and Lauren, you do not in fact live walled off from this living nightmare. You, sir and madam, are here with the rest of us, the damned, and you are just as screwed,

as if you had actually stood for something. And I hope to God you make me eat my own words, because I hope to God that you really do stand for something, and that you have an idea that you have been keeping secret from us. Because as if somehow this were not bad enough, if these questions were not being asked as a litmus test, will you lie for Trump? Will you kill for Trump? Will you be the FBI for Trump? Will you make up evidence for Trump? Who's

your real boss? If this were not bad enough, Trump has already gotten around to firing the head of the National Archives because the National Archives only asked him to give back all the stuff he stole for a year. And what that means, Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez and all the rest of you, what that means is if you and I aren't next soon, I don't know how long we have. It is why I did not wait till the usual Monday countdown podcast publication hour and put

this out when I did on Sunday morning. I don't know how long we have after this. This to me is the first genuine surprise I have had out of Trump and his terrorist gang in at least five years. If they are already asking would be FBI agents, who's your real boss? We may only have wee and yet implausibly in those weeks there are more immediate problems still. Now we get to find out if Trump and his

Afrikaner president Musque will obey the courts. Musk yesterday was already signaling he might not, insisting the judge is corrupt stochastic terrorism at its finest. Trump is already reposting Roger Stone's latest slanders against one of the attorneys general who sued if Trump and must continue on this path, we're going to have to find other ways to make them

obey the courts. If they do obey with an eye towards simply freezing their privatizing of government until they can get their theocratic Supreme Court to overrule any lower court decisions and you know the constitution, they do it that way, then we're going to have to find other ways to change governments. As you are aware, Overnight Friday Saturday, a federal judge ordered Musk and his teenage mutant Ninja Turtles out of the Treasury computer system until at least this Friday.

Earlier that same day, a different federal judge blocked any further destruction of the us AID agency by mister Rubio, Secretary of Comovers. Twenty two hundred more employees at USAID were to go on leave that was stopped, and five hundred were reinstated again. This administration dictatorship is three weeks old Monday, and we are already at that Nixonian moment when we wait to see if the President and Trump for that matter, refuse to comply with the courts. It

is a very real possibility. The best case scenario is that they do and use it to further fuel the Trump umbridge at everything and everyone, and just building up a further explosion of rage against government, which will itself inevitably come into conflicts with the other building explosion of rage for government. There is the very slim possibility, of course, that somebody Trump hired is not a religious nut too stupid to see that the courts, or fate or the

law actually did them a huge favor. On the us AID story, killing off USAID may be hugely popular with MAGA and other morons like Ram Emmanuel and David Axelrod, but nobody seemed to notice until this was in full swing. That USAID didn't just hand money out to them foreign dudes. Forty one percent of the food USAID bought for international assistance was bought from US farmers two billion, one hundred million dollars worth, and that market has suddenly been ripped

out from under American farms, American farmers, the Americans. Trump vowed to protect the ones who voted for him, the ones whose tons of wheat are now rotting in Houston, of all places, because that's where it was to be shipped out of The likely irrevocable waste figure is already at three hundred and forty million dollars no matter what happens next, And that's just reality. Musk and Trump or Tusk and Mump cramped all over the economic vibes too.

Economists expected consumer sentiment to soar under Musk, because, after all, nothing says profits like people who will happily destroy the planet and kill suffering millions worldwide to raise the price of stock shares by forty nine cents each, But instead, er the Wall Street Journal consumer sentiment dropped in January, and it has dropped again this month. Bottom line, Ah,

what a shock. Businessmen don't have the slightest idea what they're effing doing, especially the ones whose primary business turns out to be trying to convince you that they are successful, you know, like Musk and Trump, who, by the way, are also embracing immigrants while insisting on removing immigrants and reaching out to poor persecuted South African immigrants, like Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and doctor Patrick Soon Shong or as we might better call him, as he drives the La Times

into the ground, doctor Patrick Soon bankrupt one last time before I break on one familiar quote, not who's your real boss? This is the quote from the Yale historian Tim Snyder. The New York Times got him to phrase it. Trump is in the classic dictatorial position. He needs to die in bed holding all executive power to stay out of prison. This means that he will do whatever he can to gain power, and once in power, will do all that he can to never let it go. This

is a basic incentive structure which underlies everything else. It is entirely inconsistent with democracy. Who's your boss? Next steps? There are things democrats can still do before it becomes illegal to be a democrat, and everybody has to swear everybody has to swear under oath not just loyalty to Trump, but they have to swear under oath that Trump had the election stolen from him. There are steps things Democrats can still do, Americans can still do. Those who need

to atone right now can still do. That's next. This is an emergency edition of Countdown, continuing the emergency edition of Countdown for February ninth, twenty twenty five. I hope that of the thousand times I have said this, now I will prove to have never proved more accurate when I say it this time. That the preservation of democracy is owed less to our efforts to preserve it than it has the stupidity of those trying to destroy it

is hinted at before the break. These guys literally cannot figure out whether they hate immigrants or love immigrants, and which ones are the good ones. While we are still reviewing the hating of this group today but defending the same group tomorrow, how about good old JV. Musk goes outside all the laws and all the rules and installs a twenty five year old anti Indian racist with what

amounts to veto power over government spending. And the guy turns out to have gotten caught having written I was racist before it was cool and quote normalize Indian hate and calling for eugenics. And then he resigns because he is somehow too sleazy for Elon Musk, and then Vice President Vance JV. The VP demands that this pro eugenics

Musk slave be rehired. Here's my view, genius rights. I obviously disagree with some of Ellas's posts, but I don't think stupid social media activity should ruin a kid's life. We shouldn't reward journalists who try to destroy people ever, so I say bring him back. If he's a bad dude or a terrible member of the team, fire him for that. We shouldn't reward journalists who try to destroy people, ever, says a spokesmodel for the website that pushes libs of

TikTok and other online fascists. And remember Musk claims X and all of them they are journalism now they are the media. But we should never reward journalists who try to destroy people, ever, especially the ones who try to destroy seven or eight hundred of them a day. I don't think stupid social media activities should ruin a kid's life.

The kid in question is twenty five years old. When Maxwell Frost was elected to Congress at twenty five, he was only the thirty first senative sworn into our house at that age or younger. William Pitt, the British leader who wanted to let the American colonies go rather than force us into the revolutionary war that nearly destroyed Great Britain, became Prime Minister of that country at twenty four. Napoleon

was the leading French general at twenty four. This idiot, Marco ELS's stupid social media activity as a kid was last summer when, depending on when his birthday fell, he was twenty four or already twenty five. Of course he was a kid. He was several months younger than he is now. To air is human, to forgive Divine, wrote Musk between doses and rehired him as if Musk has ever shown any signs of knowing anything about being human

And another thing normalize Indian hate. JD. Vance's wife, the now second Lady of the United States, Missus Vance, missus Usha Balachilikourie Vance first generation American born of Indian immigrants, and he sticks up for the Inceell who attacked her and her parents and everybody in their native country and everybody in their diaspora, and Jdvance doesn't even get angry

in his wife's defense. Of course I disagree with it, but sure, slander my wife, slander my in laws, slander everybody in their country, slander them all, doesn't even get angry. I'm just gonna say this. It goes back to my point about how we must rely on the stupidity of those trying to destroy this country. I'm just gonna say this. If I had to guess, I would guess that the hair that he grew to cover his pudgy, bulging face is not JD Vance's only beard. The other cave in

that I should mention on who's your boss? Your real boss day is that co Presidents Mump and Tusk have set themselves up for the dawning realization by the magas that the two trillion dollars that they say they are going to cut may not go to the swamp, and it may not go to those stupid starving people in wherever Land. But guess what, it also is not going to go back to American taxpayers or even Trump sloths. This entire government efficiency. Thing has been a scam from

the beginning. Musk is so transparent and hated that it is finally getting through to the morons who supported him that it has been a scam from the beginning. The money not spent is going to Musk and other billionaires in the form of tax breaks, and maybe in other forms too, other billionaires, and maybe if they are nice to him, like news media executives could be nice to them, it might go also to just some plaint old millionaires.

This was Congressman Mike Flood of Nebraska to Bloomberg News about stage two of DOGE simple just run the mill comment about how it's going to inflict pain on the people who voted for it. Quote, it will be littered with a collection of ideas, some of which Americans are going to really not before. But hey, if we don't sacrifice, if we don't understand that this is going to be

a painful process, nothing's going to change. My message to the American people is we as a nation, as Americans, have to recognize that this is such a big problem our debt that we're going to have to say no to some programs that we like, but we simply can't afford you know, programs like Medicaid, food stamps, childcare tax breaks,

by taking educational scholarships and taxing them. Because there's nothing Republicans like better than confusing their idiot base by deliberately conflating governmental debt, American savings bonds, and of course the multimillion dollar bank equivalents of savings bonds, government programs that pay Americans money that they need to, you know, not starve,

kind of stuff that actually truly fuels the economy. The Republicans like conflating that with things like your credit card debt and your bankruptcy and the money you spent on Oxyconton has suggested earlier, by that consumer confidence note, it looks like even the magas are figuring this out. The Nebraska congressman who wants you to know this is only going to hurt a lot for a long time, and we're all going to be in this together, and he doesn't really care because he's not going to be as

together in it as you are. Mike owns fifteen radio stations and seven TV stations, and he owns News Channel Nebraska.

But he's just like you and me, only has enough money to never notice any of this, which swings us back to money and mump and tusk and the big thing that the clapping monkeys enjoyed last week when Time magazine put President Musk on the cover and Trump got off a brilliant singer that he just thought up and nobody has ever used before, ever, in the history of the whole world, other than you know, the ten or twelve million people who've said this exact same thing before,

and in the time magazine was still in business. Very witty, not just the bond mo but truly the most just as usual from our greatest president, not counting the other forty four and some of the fictional ones more on absolute freaking moron. But you do have to give him some credit for this, the fact that he was not shot by somebody else's husband in nineteen seventy seven, or he hasn't been in jail since nineteen eighty five, or something he did in business, or he didn't flee the

country after one of his bankruptcies. This owes largely to this amazing ability. He has to flood the nation or his part of the nation with so much bullshit all at once that nobody, nobody, would everything to come back to him after he said I didn't know Time magazine was still in business, and say, wait, sir, two months ago, Time Magazine gave you that Person of the Year award and said it was a great honor. I may be mistaken on this, mister president El presidente, my real boss Trump.

I thought, I thought you remembered Time Magazine was still in business. Then maybe so, as I asked before the break, next steps, same as last week. Senate holds on everything. Trump wants a Senate hold on everything. Republicans need support on. Do a Tubberville, whatever it is, hold it. If nothing else, you piss Trump off, You inflict pain. You reminded me he is not invincible. I mean Musk. That also applies to Trump. And in the House, the overnight symbolic filibusters

against russ vote. They were great, limited impact, pretty good visibility at minimum, showing some Democrats are not in a coma. Of course, let's flush this idea like the third it is about by partisanship, nothing, not one Democratic vote for anything. Republican support have to crash the system. There are no other options. Mike Johnson needs votes for the dead ceiling. F him. Call Elon Musk, you need some money, You do that, Mike, call Elon, he has your money over there.

You need the votes on anything else, Mike f you call Trump. Mike, you broke it. You bought it. Happily. Minority Leader A. Keem Jeffries gets this right right right now. There he was again Friday, refusing to pull the emergency cord and deny all Democratic support for anything by partisan this. He said, consensus that he said, not committing to this. He said, there is a possibility all that was a feint on his part to not give away his strategy, But I'm doubting it. Set it before, say it again.

No signs yet. Akeem Jeffries is a wartime consulieri. There are enough bureaucratic trip wires still in place to make the Trump coup reducts at least grind to a halt for a while and make the Republicans take all the public blame for what happens. You just have to have the courage to recognize the stakes and tighten up those trip wires so everybody trips on them. Maybe you should

listen to us. We told you we would eventually get to this point where all the police and all the FBI and all the prosecutors will literally agree with Jump that up is down and down is up. You must fight back. But this would require Jeffries to either come to Jesus and fast, or it's going to require the wartime consolieri that I keep referring to, or if you want to update the cultural reference a little bit, and never mind the consuliary, we'll call it. We need the

war doctor. I still think it's aoc to borrow a phrase that is in the news just now, Representative Jeffries, who's your real boss? I don't know when the next edition of Countdown is going to be, As you know, the schedule now is Mondays and Thursdays. And this is not Monday North Thursday. It's Sunday. As I said earlier, I just didn't think this could wait. We are now to loyalty tests. Will you lie for Trump? Will you swear to lie for Trump? Will you insist on reality?

Is reality? All of the cliches that we have ever been accused of using turned out not to be cliches, but in fact Trump using Hitler's favorite speeches, and perhaps nineteen eighty four as a kind of guide book. I don't want to say I told you so. I know you told them so too. So I do not think there will be a new edition tomorrow. But hell, I didn't think there was going to be a new edition today either. And then as I was writing this up, I thought, this can't wait. This needs to be said

right now. So have a nice Sunday if you still can. I think there's a football game or something later. I won't be watching it. Certainly there will be a new edition later in the week. It is probably going to be Thursday, but who in the hell knows. I'm not going to do any of the cutesy how many days left. I'm not going to say thank you for your time this time till next time. I'm not going to do

any of it. I'm just going to simply close by saying I'll be back if they let me whenever I am back, and until then, good night and good luck. Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of Iehea Heart Radio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.