Hartmann Report

Eleanor Roosevelt famously said, "With freedom comes responsibility." That includes the responsibility of media outlets that use the word "news" to present factual information… We all saw it on Wednesday night. Bret Baier, the multimillionaire supposed "real news" guy at Fox, angrily and rudely lied to the face of the Vice President of the United States and his millions of viewers, presenting an edited version of Trump's most fascistic remarks that turned truth on its head. This is just the most recent example of the deadly toxants Fox "News" has been spreading across the American media and political landscape for decades. The soil in which a democracy grows and flourishes is truthful information held as common knowledge by the majority of the population. Lies, when presented as news or as truth-based information, become a poison that severely injures and can even kill a democracy. Particularly when those lies are packaged and sold just to make a buck. Or, in the case of the Murdoch empire, billions of bucks.

From internment camps to abolishing free press—how Trump could make his worst threats real… Given that we're in the midst of a vote that will determine the fate and future of democracy in America, let's review what Donald Trump has already said he will do if he gets back into the White House. In theory many of these things would also require a compliant House and Senate, but with the recent Supreme Court rulings about presidential power he may be able to do many or even most of them by executive order or simply by fiat.

When language becomes a political weapon, democracy becomes the victim… Have you noticed how elected Republicans and hate-radio and -TV hosts are so committed to mispronouncing Vice President Kamala Harris' name? Or how incapable they are of saying "Democratic Party"? These are symptoms of a political party that's devolved into a pathetic (but deadly) mobocracy, lacking any moral or policy core, devoted instead to pursuing the singular goal of obtaining, holding, and wielding great wealth and ultimate, unchecked power. Way back in the spring of 1956, then-President Dwight D. Eisenhower spoke to a group of Republican women about the need for the GOP to remain "soundly based" in "moral" values.

To the extent that our Constitution is still intact, the choice for our democracy to rise or fall is in our hands... The Office of Strategic Services (OSS) was the American predecessor to the CIA and was formed during World War II. They hired a psychoanalyst, Dr. Walter C. Langer, to undertake an exhaustive, nearly-year-long analysis of the personality of Adolf Hitler, from his earliest influences through his later years as then-Führer and mass murderer. Langer's profile of Hitler wasn't declassified until 1972, when much of it was published in a book titled The Mind of Adolf Hitler. As The New York Times explained that year: "[Langer] saw Hitler as a weakling who masqueraded as a bully, Hitler the failure casting himself in the role, unconsciously for reasons of mental self-preservation, as Hitler the Fuehrer the superman.

Will Trump manipulate the Constitution and the courts to take the presidency without winning the vote? Sometimes I hate being right. Donald Trump is campaigning in Blue states right now, including California, Colorado, and New York. It has pundits scratching their heads: is it just all about his ego? Is he crazy? Or crazy like a fox? I'd argue the latter: that this is part of a strategy to legally seize the White House after he's lost both the popular vote and the Electoral College vote, much like Republican Rutherford B. Hayes did in the election of 1876.

For years it worked like a charm, at least from the 1980s until around 2016. Even when Democrats did win elections, they had to eschew labels like “liberal” and take positions like Bill Clinton’s infamous “the era of big government is over,” as was “welfare as we know it.” President Barack Obama’s signature piece of legislation, the Affordable Care Act, added billions to the coffers of big insurance and drug companies and continued to legally prevent Americans who were under 65 (and not disabled) from accessing Medicare. And then, in 2015, a real estate mogul and reality TV star burst onto the scene, blowing up the carefully crafted Potemkin village that his fellow billionaires had built over two generations.

— Head’s up: I’ll be a guest on Ali Velshi’s brilliant show this Sunday morning — Chief Justice John Roberts is shocked, shocked, I tell you! that the public is horrified that he wrote a decision saying that Trump, if he returns to the White House, can commit all the crimes he wants with impunity. — The GOP’s evil purge strategy to win in 2024. — The GOP’s main messaging strategy is to tell lies — the more outrageous the better, per Hitler’s “Big Lie” technique — and it’s working. — Vice President Kamala Harris made a major proposal this week that the media has almost entirely ignored. — Is Putin Running Out of Cemeteries? — Musk’s new robot confesses ‘human’ desires. — Wisdom School: how do societies evolve? — ADHD Hunter in a Farmer’s World: Distraction by design.

An article I published 8 months before the 2020 election predicting what Trump actually did try to do... (First published on March 13, 2020 at Alternet.org) The Constitution provides a couple of mechanisms for Trump to lose the 2020 election—both the popular vote and the Electoral College—and still hold the office of president for a second term. It's keeping historians and constitutional scholars up at night and, based on offline conversations I've had with D.C. conservatives I know, is something the GOP and partisans within the Trump administration are already discussing.

Will service workers benefit, or will hedge funds and big banks reclassify bonuses or bribes as tips? Back in 1982, Republicans and the Reagan administration determined that they needed to raise taxes on average working people to pay for part of the massive tax break they were giving billionaires (they dropped the top income tax bracket from 74% to 28%). Reagan imposed income taxes on elderly people on their Social Security income, ended the tax deductibility of interest on car loans and credit cards, and ended the tax deduction on two-income households. But one of the most truculent ways Reagan went after average working people to fund his tax cuts for billionaires was to sign legislation and issue new rules requiring the IRS to more aggressively require employers to track and report tips earned by their employees, and tightening penalties on tipped workers who’d failed to report their tip income. Speaking last month in Nevada — the state with the highest percentage of tipped workers in the nation — Donald Trump proposed eliminating taxes on tips altogether. Not to be outdone, Kamala Harris has also endorsed the idea. But there are big differences between the two.

How one woman’s ego Is endangering Democracy and destroying the Green Party... Jill Stein doesn’t give, as the old saying goes, a flying f*ck about democracy. Instead, she’s all about how famous she can become and how much money she can grift off her repeated presidential campaigns. It’s a damn dangerous game. Fresh off her 2016 political quacksalvery, in which she handed that year’s election to Donald Trump, this professional grifter — who’s been doing real damage to the Green Party for over a decade — is trying to get Trump back into the White House. As her Wisconsin campaign manager, Pete Karas, told Politico: “We need to teach Democrats a lesson.” Arguably, Democrats have already learned that lesson.