Hartmann Report

The Republican Party has gone from being a threat to the lives, health and wealth of working people to being a full-on threat to democracy and our republic itself. Jamie Dimon is whining about Biden's upcoming tax increases on rich people like himself: screw him. But more about that in a minute. Ever since the late 1970s and early 1980s, both the Republican and Democratic parties have been operating, in part, on delusion and fantasy.

The roots and brutality of the hard-right grew in the soil of libertarianism and Ayn Rand’s writings. Many Americans are baffled by the Republican Party’s embrace of billionaire sociopath Trump and elected Republicans’ willingness to overlook the death of seven Americans, including three police officers, in an attempted coup. (Particularly after they spent over 2 years and tens of millions of dollars obsessing on 4 dead Americans in Benghazi.) They’re also wondering why Kevin McCarthy would reject Liz Cheney to embrace someone like Elise Stefanik, an apologist for the January 6 treason attempt, or go along with Mitch McConnell’s attempts to sabotage the American Rescue Plan, the American Jobs Plan, and the American Family Plan. After all, people are hurting.

It appears Garland has unleashed the FBI and other investigators in ways that must be sending shockwaves through Mar-a-Lago and the ranks of former Trump officials. One can only hope… George HW Bush and Ronald Reagan were facing the possibility of treason charges. Who did they call? Bill Barr. That was in the '80s and early '90s, but now we discover the Bill Barr really, truly, definitely also lied to America about presidential treason this decade. Shocking.

America has a serious fascism problem, but it goes way beyond the kinds of authoritarianism displayed by people like Donald Trump. It goes deep, now, into the very structure of corporate America. There's been a lot of talk lately about fascism, generally in the context of Republicans denying people their right to vote or Donald Trump sending an armed mob to murder five people at the US Capitol to try to install him as America's first strongman dictator.

Nobody is asking the bigger question: "Why would a professional, lifelong politician and master tactician like Mitch McConnell make such a huge mistake?" Nobody's asking, "Why?" Just like he did with the Covid rescue bill a few months ago, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell just said that there will not be one single Republican vote in support of President Joe Biden's infrastructure plan.

Forty years of Reaganism and trickle-down economics have left America pockmarked with refugee camps and people hanging onto life by their fingernails. The award-winning movie Nomadland is every bit as brilliant as the reviews, but it's also, for this era, a hell of a wake-up call.

Right-wing "Redcoat/Redhat" terrorists have openly proclaimed their goal of Americans fighting Americans in an ideological and racist war against democracy itself. Former Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney being booed in his own home state raises an urgent question: Are the Redcoats back?

Factions have been America's biggest battle for 240 years, and if we don't fight hard now, we could lose the whole thing. This week, President Joe Biden proposed plans to put America back to work, get Americans back to health, and rebuild our nation in a way befitting the greatness of our ideals. He's also officially announced his support for voting rights and DC statehood. The right-wingers and two Democrats who oppose him claim that he's not representing the best interests of America, but instead is working for "Special Interests," something the Founders of this country referred to as "factions."

You'd have to be abnormal not to have Trump Derangement Syndrome right now Rudy Giuliani and his lawyers are suggesting that the reason a search warrant was issued for his premises and computers is "Trump Derangement Syndrome." Yeah. A lot of us are suffering from that. It's normal and predictable. Arguably, it's a sign of good mental health. It means your psychological alert and defense systems are actually working.

We can't solve our very real & serious issues if we don't confront them, and it's tragic that the GOP would use this national platform to once again deny America's most tragic reality. President Joe Biden, last night, gave one of the best presidential speeches and policy proposals of my lifetime. It rivals Jack Kennedy in 1961, and, if passed, will undo much of the damage of the Reagan Revolution of the past 40 years. In the Republican Party's rebuttal, without seriously addressing even one single specific proposal of President Biden, Senator Tim Scott, the sole Black Republican in that body, instead went out of his way to promote the GOP idea that, in his words, "America is not a racist nation."