Hartmann Report

The world has often seen great wars ignited not by inevitability, but by weakness, hesitation, and betrayal. Cowards playing with matches. History shows that one of the biggest risk factors for war is an autocratic leader who fears for his own future. Which is why the kind of pathetic incoherence we saw at the United Nations this week should concern us all. This week’s news brings some alarming data points.

Dark money, foreign payoffs, and dangerous lies are pushing what's left of our government to the edge… If his lips move, he's lying. Or trying to solicit a bribe. Or slandering Democrats. Or, today, taking hostages. Most recently, he's started lying about what congressional Democrats are demanding in exchange for giving the GOP the votes they need in the Senate to keep the government open past October 1. And now, just this morning, they've announced that they're taking hostages. Federal employees will be fired, rather than temporarily furloughed, if there is a government shutdown. But I'll get to that in a moment; it isn't where he started lying, bribe-getting, and slandering Democrats this week.

This is not law and order: it's monarchy enforced by fear and lawsuits… FCC Chairman Carr, wearing a gold pin of Donald Trump's head that eerily resembles an old Mao pin I bought in Beijing in 1988, went after Jimmy Kimmel again just hours before he was back on the air last night. He also mentioned station licenses again, in what seems like a thinly-veiled threat, when he tweeted: "Democrats just keep digging themselves a deeper & deeper hole on Kimmel. They simply can't stand that local TV stations—for the first time in years—stood up to a national programmer & chose to exercise their lawful right to preempt programming. We need to keep empowering local TV stations to serve their communities of license." Meanwhile, Trump's revenge prosecutor is reportedly demanding information on the FBI agent who was first to see the Sandy Hook carnage and testified against Alex Jones. As I lay out in my new book, The Last American President, this is how terror and intimidation work. This is how free speech and the rule of law die. It's how kings rule, not elected presidents of democratic republics. And this is how power enforces obedience: by making an example out of person after person, news outlet after news outlet, comedian after comedian, until the rest of us are too afraid to speak.

Whether bought, brainwashed, or bullied, the six conservative justices have abandoned their oath, and the consequences are tearing our republic apart… Are they afraid Trump will get them killed? Ninety years ago, President Franklin D. Roosevelt fired William E. Humphrey from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). Humphrey sued to the Supreme Court, which ruled that the Constitution had never given "illimitable power of removal" to the president and that he couldn't fire Humphrey. The case is called Humphrey's Executor v US, and Humphrey got his job back. The unanimous decision of the Court was clear and explicit.

The past teaches us one truth: when laughter dies, liberty soon follows... We've seen this movie before. Or at least our grandparents did. Dictators can't take a joke. On February 4, 1939 — seven months before their invasion of Poland kicked off World War II — the man with oversight responsibility for German media officially forbade five comedians from ever again performing in public. As the headline in The New York Times explained: "Goebbels Ends Careers of Five 'Aryan' Actors Who Made Witticisms About the Nazi Regime" Their crime, according to Goebbels, was publicly telling "brazen, impertinent, arrogant and tactless" jokes about the Führer.

“A field of battle covered with dead bodies putrefying in the open air is an awful and distressing spectacle, but a nation debased by the love of money and exhibiting all the vices and crimes usually connected with that passion, is a spectacle far more awful, distressing and offensive.” - Letter from Dr. Benjamin Rush to Thomas Jefferson, 1813. The past 3000 years have seen the emergence of several great forces that have shaped the modern world: the nation-state, feudalism, capitalism, democracy, and, most recently, communism and neoliberalism.

The Best of the Rest of the News. — 1,800 Men Went Into Alligator Auschwitz, but when ICE started to shut down the facility, only 600 Came Out. — Did the FCC Chairman break federal law with his “authoritarian” move against ABC? — The Nazis famously required German states to give them the names of Jews; Trump’s FBI appears to be on the verge of compiling a list of Trans people. — Joe McCarthy was a piker — Love Charlie Kirk? Join the Army! — Trump is violating his own executive order. — Cities are pushing back against ICE; here’s what’s happening in Portland. — Geeky Science! Do fatty foods scramble your mind? — Hunter in a Farmer’s World: The Unbearable Weight of Boredom in ADHD — Wisdom School: The Blood Moon’s Invitation

The reason we're at a pivotal moment in America is because most people don't know how to answer this question: "How do you know when you're really no longer living in a democracy?" This is a threshold moment, this stifling of Jimmy Kimmel. It's the last laugh before the silence. The attack on him is something everyone can understand.

When reporters become prey, the public becomes the battlefield. We've crossed into the second tier… The FCC chairman just threatened to pull ABC's license because of a comment Jimmy Kimmel made about Charlie Kirk, and ABC just indefinitely took him off the air. This is the sort of thing you'd expect in Russia, not America. But let's back up a minute. First, those who use violence come for the politicians. Then they come after the pundits and reporters. And finally they encourage average people to turn their guns on each other.

The rightwing machine wants you scared of progress, but I'm here to speak their worst nightmare out loud… If you're even remotely associated with the Democratic Party, whether running for office, helping out, or just breathing while Democratic, the GOP and their rightwing media attack dogs will label you a "far left radical." So, in the interest of clarity, let me make it official: I'm a far left radical. Here's why.