Hartmann Report

Trump has attacked the American Way and Congress MUST proceed with investigations and impeachment; rightwingers on SCOTUS notwithstanding, no one is above the law in a functioning democracy... I’ve been feeling something unusual these past few weeks: optimism. Not naïve optimism or the kind that ignores danger, but the real kind that arrives when you see people waking up, standing up, and refusing to bow before a lawless president who believes rules are for suckers and the Constitution is a mere suggestion rather than the foundation of our republic. We’re now governed by a man who treats legal limits as personal insults. Donald Trump doesn’t just violate our nation’s norms and laws: like every wannabe third-world tinpot dictator before him, he despises the idea that any law can constrain him at all. Trump and the spineless sycophants in his administration have rejected the entire idea of a rules-based society. He and his lickspittles are turning the presidency into a throne, trying to transform you and me into its subjects, and painting as enemies anyone who insists soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen (and others in government) should follow the law.

We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be. — Kurt Vonnegut, Mother Night What if the most powerful man in the world built his empire not on success, but on pretending he had it? I remember September 11, 2023. It wasn’t just the anniversary of 9/11; there was also a grim (but, frankly, satisfying) show going on in Manhattan that had the nation (and Louise, me, and the listeners to my radio program) glued to their TV screens. In a crowded federal courthouse in New York City, former president Donald Trump sat stone-faced as his former accountant testified under oath about the Trump Organization’s financial statements. For decades, Allen Weisselberg explained, the company routinely inflated Trump’s assets—sometimes by billions of dollars—to secure loans, insurance, and business opportunities. Properties were suddenly worth double on paper. Apartment buildings grew fictional floors. Golf courses sprouted imaginary mansions ready for sale.

The Best of the Rest of the News. — Marjorie Taylor Greene, after being attacked by the man-child in the White House, pulls the plug on her congressional career saying she refuses to be a "battered wife." — After Trump called for the death of military and CIA veterans now serving in Congress who defended the Constitution in a video, they're predictably getting death threats. — Shocking Gallup Poll: 80% of Americans want what Democrats are working for. — A rightwing billionaire reportedly considering buying CNN was reportedly in discussions with Trump's people about firing Erin Burnett and Brianna Keilar. — Hegseth hearts the swastika? — Another Texas woman has died because of that state's abortion ban; this is becoming shockingly routine in Republican-controlled formerly Confederate Red States. — Trump is preparing to give Putin everything he wants in Ukraine; is it because Putin has the Epstein files, as we learned from the recent email release? Or just because he hates democracy? Or is he still hoping for a billion-dollar Trump hotel in Moscow? — Crazy Alert! Who's "Piggy?"

If Trump wants veterans in Congress killed for affirming U.S. law, doesn't that make him the very danger the Founders warned would destroy the republic, the kind impeachment was designed for? Trump just called for the execution of American veterans — all of them also elected members of Congress — because they reminded our active duty soldiers that it's a violation of both American and international law to commit war crimes. If that's not impeachable, what is?

But the roar was never for her, it was for Trump.. And when he turned it against her, she learned the eternal rule: demagogue's followers don't choose enemies, their leader does... Marjorie Taylor Greene has been dissed and ridiculed by the Left for years. Progressives mocked her lies, shredded her conspiracies, exposed her QAnon nonsense, and denounced her cruelty. And through it all she never once feared for her life. She fundraised. She smirked. She gave speeches, traveled the country, and strutted through Congress like she owned the place. But the second she angered the Republican base, barely forty-eight hours after she resisted Donald Trump's demands and broke from the MAGA line, she suddenly feared for her life and needed private security.

Neuroscience gives us one more warning. Losing power can feel like withdrawal. We're seeing this now as Donald Trump thrashes about, losing his grip on his party and his followers... In a comment to my recent article here about how much Trump-like corruption the American people will tolerate, Sabrina Haake (who writes the "Haake Take") wrote: "I really want to see a deep dive on how power affects the brain. A strong addiction, as you say. but it deserves a special study in the age of Trump, given its complete takeover…" It's a great question, and the revelations of the Epstein connection to Trump and numerous — perhaps hundreds — of rich and powerful men and their abuse of powerless children again highlights how this addiction warps behavior, destroys lives, and kneecaps democracies.

How a single predator exposed a centuries-old system built to shield wealthy white men from accountability and forced the country to confront a truth its institutions have long concealed... The Jeffrey Epstein scandal stripped away the polite fiction that wealthy white men in America are held to the same standards as everyone else. Epstein wasn't an exception. He was the rule, laid bare.

He's tested every limit of decency and democracy, and every time he does the GOP bends a little lower. At this point, the question isn't just about Trump's crimes; it's about their complicity… Is Marjorie Taylor Greene leading the way, or the exception that proves the rule? By the shocking light of today's glaring headlines, it's time to ask a larger question that no one in the media appears to be willing to say out loud: at what point does the accumulation of misconduct by Donald J. Trump become so brazen, so corrosive, so frankly immoral and even criminal, that Republican elected officials and voters finally say, "Enough is enough?

I was twenty-two in 1973 and had just started an herbal tea company when I became entranced by the business self-help movement. Louise and I listened to Earl Nightingale tapes in the car when we’d take weekend two-hour drives up to my grandparents’ house in Newaygo, Michigan. I read books by Napoleon Hill (Think and Grow Rich) and Claude Bristol (The Magic of Believing) so many times I had entire sections memorized. I got a “pillow speaker” so I could go to sleep at night listening to their tapes. W. Clement Stone, the insurance multimillionaire, had created a foundation that distributed posters and stickers with his slogans—“Do It Now!” and “Thinking will not overcome fear but action will!”—on them, and they decorated our apartment. I took the Dale Carnegie Course on public speaking, probably the best decision (outside of marrying Louise) of my life; it was transformational. That was an era when many young people in business were looking for role models and mentors.

The Best of the Rest of the News. — "Good for me, but not for thee." — Trump's new big lie: "There is no affordability" problem. — Against the orders of a federal judge, Trump/Bondi/Noem/Homan sent hundreds of immigrants to a hellhole torture center in El Salvador. — So much for equal justice under law, the slogan carved over the entrance to the Supreme Court. — Throwing almost 200,000 families out of their homes? Just another day in Trump's America. — Tax breaks for billionaires are more important to Republicans than tsunami warnings for the little people. — The spike in bowel cancer diagnoses among younger people, particularly women, appears to be linked to eating ultra-processed foods (UPFs). — Crazy Alert! Trump having sex with "Bubba"?!?