Hartmann Report

America must have a conversation on the history, purpose and practice of policing. There's much celebration in America that a murderous, psychopathic cop will spend the rest of his life in jail for killing George Floyd. While this moment – this rare moment where a white cop who kills an unarmed Black man actually is held to account — does appropriately get nationwide recognition, it also should provoke nationwide introspection.

America can't let them get away with it. The 21st-century version of the Confederacy is fixing to repeat the Big Lie strategy of its 19th century forebearers. And this one goes beyond the Big Lie that Donald Trump won the 2020 election. Now they're trying to sanitize treason as well. George Orwell famously pointed out that, "Those who control the past control the future," and the GOP is furiously trying to rewrite the history of January 6th to hide their participation in a heinous crime and promote their authoritarian agenda for the future.

If America is to again be a "shining city on the hill" we must end our gun violence epidemic. America, John F Kennedy said, was like John Winthrop's idealistic "city on a hill." Ronald Reagan added the word "shining" to that description when he plagiarized Kennedy. And now Republicans across the country want to change the word "city" to "armed encampment."

The America First movement rises again & it doesn't take a dog to figure out what that whistle means Well, now they're just coming right out and saying it. Several Southern Republican members of the House of Representatives have proposed a Ku Klux Kaucus that will adhere to "Anglo-Saxon" values and vigorously resist allowing any more people of color into America under any circumstances. They're officially calling it the "America First Caucus."

Accountability for criminal Republican presidents can't happen soon enough. The Biden administration yesterday laid it right out in the open. When Trump 2016 campaign Chairman Paul Manafort was passing secret polling information about swing states like Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania to Konstantin Kilimnik, as is laid out in the Mueller Report, it was part of a very specific and successful effort on the part of Russian Intelligence to help put Trump in office.

Crimes, from treason to murder, were committed that day, and crime-fighters need to locate and prosecute the traitorous, treasonous criminals America needs and deserves to find out what happened on and in the time leading up to the January 6th attempt to overthrow our country.

This bizarre conspiracy theory now threatens democracy itself - can it be stopped? News that the Johnson & Jackson vaccine can cause blood clots in about one in 1 million women under 50 has exploded across the social media world. Republicans, along with countries that hate America, are smiling. A fellow who runs a couple of communities on a popular social media site called into my program yesterday saying that the vaccine news had caused an "absolute explosion" of vaccine denialism. People who'd been on the fence are now outright opposed to getting the jab. And Trump and the GOP are making hay with the announcement.

It must not be allowed, like the Confederacy was, to live on with its own "lost cause" BS mythology President Joe Biden has largely given up on trying to negotiate anything with Republicans. There's a good reason for this: the GOP is no longer a legitimate political party.

Republicans and "white nationalists" are playing with fire in their efforts to end democracy. It’s no coincidence that Trump supporters, including those who attacked our republic on January 6 at the US capital, love to wave and display the Confederate flag. Somehow, they think, their whiteness will protect them from the consequences of ending democracy in America. They’re wrong.

The GOP and Trumpsters are willing to sicken more Americans to regain political power. Well, it’s all out in the open now. Donald Trump and his homicidal cronies actively worked to damage America’s public health infrastructure, so 500,000 Americans ended up dying unnecessarily. All to push America deeper into authoritarianism.