Hartmann Report

If a Ukraine proposal was shaped to benefit a foreign power tied to Kushner’s money, that’s not diplomacy: it’s corruption… I don’t know why this wasn’t above-the-fold news all across the country over the past few days as the details of the “peace plan” Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff took to Putin this week came out. Kushner, it appears, had added in a provision that would have forced both Ukraine and Russia to take actions that would specifically benefit Saudi Arabia, a country that is paying the presidential son-in-law at least $25 million a year.

A government that celebrates cruelty, weaponizes culture, and mocks due process is telling you exactly what it plans to become... The Trump White House just showed us something every American should find chilling, no matter what music they listen to or what party they vote for. They took a video of aggressive ICE arrests, slapped Sabrina Carpenter's song on top of it, and posted it like it was a victory lap. Then, when Carpenter objected and said the video was "evil and disgusting" and told them not to use her music to benefit an "inhumane agenda," the White House hit back with a statement that sounded like it came from a playground bully, not the seat of American government. They didn't debate her point. They didn't defend policy with facts. They went straight to dehumanization and insult, calling people "illegal murderers, rapists, and pedophiles," and saying anyone who defends them must be "stupid" or "slow." That's not just ugly: it's a warning. Because the biggest story here is not a celebrity clapback; it's that the White House is using the power of the state to turn human beings into a violence-normalizing punchline, and using America's culture as a weapon to spread it. This is what rising authoritarianism looks like in the age of social media.

Why every era ruled by the morbidly rich ends the same way: corruption, collapse, and ordinary people paying the bill.... One of the greatest gifts Donald Trump and the thirteen billionaires he pulled into his administration have given America is the reminder, finally and once and for all, that just because somebody is rich doesn't mean they're smart. Particularly if they inherited their starting capital from daddy, like Trump and Musk both did. Wealth in this country has become so intertwined with our mythologies of genius, destiny, and merit that we've ended up elevating into near-sainthood (and electing to high office) some of the least thoughtful, least competent, and least self-aware people ever to walk a boardroom floor. It's a dangerous confusion, and one with deep roots.

What elite isolation reveals about the fragility of modern democracy and the cost of unchecked billionaire power… In a recent Wall Street Journal report, "The Ultrarich Are Spending a Fortune to Live in Extreme Privacy," reporter Arian Campo-Flores pulls back the curtain on a disturbing new reality: our country's wealthiest citizens now inhabit a parallel America of private jets, members-only restaurants, "sky-garage" condos, and luxury wellness centers they can rent out entirely for themselves. These aren't just perks; they're a full-blown escape from public life. The ultrawealthy no longer wait in lines, navigate public institutions, or share community space with ordinary Americans. And that's the real danger: once the richest begin living outside the civic sphere, they stop caring whether the rest of society works at all. A nation where the wealthy secede into a private realm is a nation confronting oligarchy.

The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerated the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than the democratic state itself. That in its essence is fascism: ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or any controlling private power. —Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1938 message to Congress As Louise and I watched Trump descend that golden escalator in 2015, we felt what millions of Americans did: disbelief, followed by dismissal. Surely this reality TV showman, this serial bankrupt, this carnival barker would quickly fade. Yet as the years passed and my radio listeners increasingly reflected his worldview back to me, I confronted a haunting truth: Donald Trump didn’t happen by accident. He wasn’t, as so many have suggested (particularly Democrats) just some political anomaly or a weird, media-driven glitch in American democracy. He was, instead, the inevitable product of political structures meticulously constructed by morbidly rich ideologues and the fossil fuel industry over decades; all systems designed to concentrate power in the executive branch, weaponize the historic grievances that have haunted American politics for three centuries, and systematically dismantle the democratic guardrails that, up until now, have kept us a free nation.

The Best of the Rest of the News. — Trump in mental decline or has he always behaved like an ass? — Big Brother tries to get bigger. — Judges are getting seriously pissed at Trump's illegal orders flooding their courts. — Trump is now literally hiding the economic scoreboard because the numbers are a disaster. — Is a cornered party as dangerous as a cornered rat? — What's happening in Tennessee — the state that brought us the Scopes Monkey Trial — is not careful "parental oversight," it's raw censorship. — Two new developments expose a country sliding into fear-driven reaction and abrupt scapegoating. — The Republican war on education, culture, and the American Way.

And if Donald Trump approved or encouraged these actions, then impeachment and criminal referral are not optional: they're required to defend the rule of law... Shocking as this moment is, none of us should pretend we weren't warned. When Donald Trump installed Pete Hegseth — a television provocateur whose public record is soaked in belligerence, booze, and culture-war performance — as America's Defense Secretary, the world could see exactly where it was headed. Still, nothing prepared us for today's Washington Post's revelation that Hegseth personally ordered U.S. forces to "kill everybody" on a small wooden boat off the coast of Trinidad on September 2.

From Jefferson’s era to today, history proves democracy’s defenders can still win… Yesterday was probably, politically and spiritually, the darkest Thanksgiving for our nation in our lifetimes. So how about a quick story out of America’s earliest history that eerily echoes this moment and may give us some hope? Donald Trump has told us he’s going to use the 1807 Insurrection Act to declare a state of emergency, which will allow him to round up not only undocumented immigrants but also his political opponents, who he refers to as “the enemy within.” He came to power using Willie Horton-style ads trashing trans people and is happy to demonize anybody else who stands up to his hunger for absolute power. In an age-old technique usually employed during wartime, Trump regularly uses the rhetoric America has employed against foreign enemies to characterize Americans who disagree with him and his policies. Remember the “raghead” slurs against Arabs from the Afghan and Iraqi wars? Or politicians referring to Vietnamese in the 1970s as “slants” and “gooks”?

Science proves that daily appreciation can dismantle stress, amplify joy, and create lasting mental wealth... Practicing daily gratitude is a habit I picked up from my spiritual mentor, Gottfried Müller; when Louise and I took a long hike through the trails of Forest Park here in Portland yesterday, for example, we stopped a few times to look around at the forest and just notice what an amazing world we live in and then to say "thank you" to all the life around us. Every day, when we take our daily walk, we do this. Sometimes it's our amazement at the clouds or the geese or the river or just the fact that we're alive. I think of what my parents or my deceased brother would give for just a few minutes of what I'm experiencing and it fills me with awe and appreciation. And I'm so grateful to you for reading and sharing my writings. You've helped built a real and meaningful community both here on Substack and on the radio/TV. Thank you! I always suspected that this daily practice of gratitude helped keep me sane in these insane times, but now I've discovered there's actual science behind the mental health impacts of it.

When this bubble bursts, the collapse won't hit Google's coders — it'll hit the electricians, nurses, teachers, retirees, renters, and low-income families who never got a penny from the boom… The number one most-read story in the Financial Times yesterday was headlined, "Nvidia shares fall on signs Google gaining upper hand in AI." It turns out that Google's AI software/product is doing about as well as its competitors but isn't using Nvidia's "must have" AI super-chips, shocking the market. But even with that, we ain't seen nothing yet: get ready for the Moores' Law shock and a few others that seem increasingly inevitable.