Hartmann Report

We can’t afford any more George W. Bush’s or Donald Trump’s, who were both brought to us by Democratic-leaning voters thinking they were doing the right thing by voting for third party candidates... One of the most fashionable statements these days among progressive-leaning voters who pretend to great political insight is: “I want to vote for the person I like the most, not some party or candidate that I only half-agree with.” Its corollary is: “You’re just trying to get me to vote Democratic because you support that party’s corruption. I won’t be intimidated: I’m going to vote for the best person to run the country!”

What if Hunter’s laptop and Jared’s billions are all part of the same story of a handful of petro states trying to end American democracy? So, Hunter Biden gets a special prosecutor and Jared Kushner gets three billion dollars from hostile foreign governments. What’s wrong with this picture?

A lot of the people who keep a gun at home for safety are the same ones who refuse to wear a seat belt. —George Carlin

The Best of the Rest of the News. — The co-founder of the Federalist Society and two other Federalist members agree that Trump is already disqualified from running for or holding public office. — Ex-Trumpster horrified by plot to have the military turn their guns on Americans. — Does America need a Psychological Defense Agency? — As I pointed out on the air two weeks ago, the Hunter Biden thing is a Russian disinformation operation. — Are “Christians” trying to remove Jesus because he was too liberal? — And speaking of religion — is the GOP really invoking the Bible to defend Abbott's “barbaric” razor wire & circular saw buoys? — Clarence Thomas took 38 vacations — or should we call them bribes — from his and Ginni’s billionaire sugar daddies. — White locals won't let a Black mayor be mayor after he was elected. — Geeky Science! Wow: the world’s largest study on walking shows that the more you walk, the longer you live. — Crazy Alert! Will AI replacing psychics and tarot readers?

An increasingly desperate GOP is doing this because they know their policies are unpopular: racism, pollution, privatizing Medicare, ending Social Security, criminalizing abortion, etc. If you live in the Blue part of a Red state, Republicans don’t want you to vote. And their latest strategy is their most brute-force method: simply remove you from the voting rolls. A shocking new study from Demos lays out the dimensions of this voter purge crisis of democracy brought to us by an increasingly desperate GOP.

No former president in American history has encouraged such violence or tried to inspire stochastic terrorism. Outside of the Confederacy, no politician has worked so hard to tear America apart... Yesterday morning at 6:15 am Provo time, Craig Robertson was shot and killed by the FBI after posting to Facebook that he was going to assassinate President Biden during his trip this week to Utah. Had the FBI not stopped him, he may well have pulled it off: he had a high-tech sniper rifle and apparently knew how to use it. The shoot-out he started with FBI agents trying to arrest him, if nothing else, was a tell. This, I believe, is exactly what Donald Trump wants.

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