Hartmann Report

How far can a political party take trolling as its main way of motivating voters before it turns into something like the fascist parties of Europe in the 1930s or modern-day Russia and Hungary? So, Donald Trump says that if Judge Tanya Chutkan orders him not to reveal details of the prosecution’s case before they can be presented to a jury, including the names, addresses, and testimony of witnesses against him, he’s going to do it anyway and challenge the court. And there’s little reason to believe he won’t do it: he’ll take what he’s asserting as his First Amendment right to troll and threaten witnesses against him all the way to the Supreme Court he packed with three rightwing crackpots. If nothing else, it may buy him enough time to get elected president and pardon himself before he’s convicted. In this, Trump has raised vicious social media trolling into a form of electoral performance art. He’s become our troll-in-chief.

Trump cultists are already calling for death to people who oppose his efforts to capture the White House in 2024: It’s time for the 14th Amendment... Donald Trump conceived and led an insurrection against the United States and must be banned from public office, per the 14th Amendment. The campaign to keep him off the ballot should start at the state level, and in some ways already has. Georgia citizens tried to prevent Marjorie Taylor Greene from running for re-election and lost for lack of clear and convincing evidence, according to the Georgia judge, that she gave “aid and comfort” to the January 6th insurrection. (Greene testified over 80 times during the proceeding that she “could not remember” details of her role in promoting the insurrection.) But New Mexico citizens succeeded in removing Couy Griffin, founder of Cowboys for Trump, from his office as county commissioner after he was arrested at the Capitol in the midst of his attempt to overthrow our government. Now it’s time to do the same with Trump, and to do it in as many states as possible.

The simple reality, dear Trump-lover, is that you’ve been suckered and now might be a good time to change the channel… Dear Trump-loving Friend, Donald Trump and the fascist-supporting, billionaire-funded rightwing have been lying to you about these indictments, particularly the federal one that charges Trump with trying to overturn the 2020 election in defiance of the Constitution and federal law. His lawyer has been all over TV telling anybody who will listen that Joe Biden ordered this prosecution and that it’s all about “denying Trump’s free speech right to question an election.” Both are lies, being spun to try to justify a criminal conspiracy of shocking proportions that nearly ended the American Experiment after 247 years. First off, Joe Biden has had nothing to do with this: if he had, there would have been shocked news about it out of the DOJ like there was when Trump ordered them to investigate and try to prosecute Hillary Clinton and Hunter Biden.

"Yes, people pull the trigger—but guns are the instrument of death. Gun control is necessary, and delay means more death and horror." —Former New York governor Eliot Spitzer

The Best of the Rest of the News. — The Don is desperate. — How to talk back to Fox cultists who say Trump was indicted on Free Speech. — Dark and twisted rhetoric swamping right-wing media about the Trump indictments doesn’t bode well for the future of American democracy. — DeSantis Alert! Florida has become “The Leper State,” both politically and literally. — In Ohio, politicians are trying to convince the people to give their own power away so that the politicians themselves face even less accountability: Say what?!? — Why is Florida banning advanced placement psychology? — Will the GOP take seriously a new poll showing 82% of voters not only oppose cuts to Social Security but want taxes raised to protect it? — FATCAT Alert! The morbidly rich pay less tax on jet fuel than you and me when we fly: why is that???

Very simply, a corporation is organized money and the only way to balance that power is through organized labor… CNBC’s Jim Cramer is upset. Very upset. United Auto Workers’ President Shawn Fain laid out the demands they’re putting forward as the UAW negotiates new contracts with Ford, GM, and Chrysler to replace those expiring on September 14th. The UAW is asking the automakers to stop using “temporary” workers to replace union members, to increase paid time off, for an end to the two-tier wage structure, to restore health benefits, for annual cost-of-living adjustments, and a small increase in pension benefits both for current and future retirees.

The bottom line here is that Trump and his co-conspirators were not only willing but planning to recreate Reagan’s and Nixon’s Kent State slaughter on a nationwide basis... Although it’s generally only mentioned in passing in the mainstream media, there are two particularly chilling passages in Jack Smith’s indictment of Trump. Both, to my mind, invoke Kent State, but on a much larger scale.

So, yeah, let’s take seriously the existential threat a GOP president represents to our nation, the nations of the world, and all life on Earth. The stakes have literally never been higher... Every day that goes by, even with yesterday’s newest indictment, looks more and more like Donald Trump will be the GOP’s standard bearer in 2024. After all, his popularity stood at 44 percent when NY DA Alvin Bragg indicted him; it then rose to 49 percent when he was indicted in the documents crime; following his conviction for raping E. Jean Caroll it rose to 54 percent among Republicans. But even if he’s not the candidate, Republican primary voters will demand a candidate with the same affection for Putin and other dictators; the same disdain for racial, religious, and gender minorities; the same abusive attitude toward women and girls; the same faux embrace of Confederate and hillbilly values and hatred of city-dwellers and college graduates; the same cavalier attitude toward guns and fossil fuels. There’s also the growing possibility that Trump or another MAGA Republican could win the White House. Yesterday, both the New York Times and CNN reported on polls showing that Trump and Biden are right now at a dead heat.

Is it to distract us from the actual Republican agenda, which bears a much closer resemblance to fascist states like Russia and Hungary than communism in Cuba? In June of 1954, Robert Oppenheimer lost his security clearance because his ex-wife had been a member of the Communist Party and he had described himself as a “New Deal Democrat,” which, to his inquisitors, meant “communist.” The Soviet Union had brought down the iron curtain on their people, after all, and millions of Russians lived behind it. The USSR also had the world’s second-largest stockpile of nuclear weapons, and Americans lived in fear of nuclear war: I still remember the “duck and cover” drills from elementary school in the 1950s. Now the GOP is reprising their infamous McCarthyite “Red Scare” tactics, with more on the horizon. They’re doing it to distract us from the actual Republican agenda, which bears a much closer resemblance to fascist states like Russia and Hungary than communism in Cuba.

When Barbie has more integrity than six Republican members of the US Supreme Court, you know American democracy is in a crisis… Sam Alito wrote in The Wall Street Journal last week that: “No provision in the Constitution gives them [Congress] the authority to regulate the Supreme Court — period.” He’s deeply, profoundly, and constitutionally wrong: in fact, the constitution requires Congress to regulate the Supreme Court. I’ll get to that in a second, but first the important stuff: Barbie! Louise and I went to see the new Barbie movie Friday afternoon. Sitting in the theater, we both nearly choked on our popcorn when, in the first few minutes of the movie, one of the Barbies said: “In Barbieland, corporations are not people, and money is not considered protected free speech!” Wow! I suppose it shouldn’t surprise me that Barbie has more common sense than Sam Alito, but there it is.