2025 Archives

Posted at Hartmann Report on Mar. 14, 2025

Trump’s Imperial Fantasy: He Wants to Be Polk, McKinley, and Putin—All at Once

Donald Trump has never been known for originality, but his latest act is his most dangerous yet — a desperate imitation of history’s most aggressive land-grabbers and strongmen. From James Polk’s expansionist conquest to William McKinley’s imperialist scheming to Vladimir Putin’s authoritarian crackdowns, Trump isn’t just following in their footsteps — he’s trying to outdo them all. Nobody has, to the best of my knowledge, ever argued that Trump is a particularly creative individual or an out-of-the-box thinker. He’s spent much of his life trying to imitate his late father’s real estate success, his former attorney Roy Cohn’s toughness (see the movie The Apprentice), and his personal life role model Jeffrey Epstein.

Posted at Hartmann Report on Mar. 13, 2025

The Five-Year Cover-Up: How Trump’s Racist Covid Strategy Got Buried

Their diabolical and racist plan, for purely political purposes, to intentionally allow a half-million Americans to die has been largely ignored by the American mainstream media… Today, March 13th, through April 7th next month, commemorate the anniversary of what could only be called the start of an intentional, racially-based plan for the mass death of American citizens, put together by Donald Trump and Jared Kushner for purely political purposes, and virtually ignored by the American mainstream media. If that sounds extreme, read on: all details are hotlinked to credible, mainstream sources. And, as these anniversaries over the next 3 weeks are noted in the press, hopefully some in the media will report on this now-well-documented history.

Posted at Hartmann Report on Mar. 12, 2025

Stock Market Meltdown? The Morbidly Rich Call It "Happy Hour"!

While working families struggle, Trump and his billionaire cronies are cashing in big time… When the stock market crashes and working families lose everything, the morbidly rich don’t panic — they pour a drink. For them, a financial meltdown isn’t a crisis, it’s Happy Hour; a golden opportunity to buy up the world at fire-sale prices while the rest of us struggle to survive. Recessions are also great opportunities for neoNazi recruiters, Russian social media trolls, and people who want to destroy our country. Billionaire lovers of neofascist strongman government are licking their lips and rubbing their hands in Bond-villain glee. For them, it’s a great time to be alive. Here’s why.

Posted at Hartmann Report on Mar. 11, 2025

Vanishing Protesters: How Trump’s ICE Is Silencing the Next Generation

Who’s next? Trump’s ICE is snatching student protesters off the streets! Trump and his police-state goons are trying to frighten people who dare even come close to people protesting his or Benjamin Netanyahu’s policies. This is how dictators intimidate citizens, how freedom dies, and is a clear violation of our Constitution. And, in all probability, this is just the beginning of what historians will someday define as a very ugly episode in American history.

Posted at Hartmann Report on Mar. 10, 2025

Trump Can’t Hide the Real Killers of the American Dream—Or the Homeless People Left Behind

Wall Street landlords, foreign buyers, and the GOP’s war on affordable housing... Trump ordered Washington DC mayor Muriel Bowser to evict homeless people from various parts of Washington DC. He then cut millions of dollars in federal support to house poor people. He didn’t make any suggestions about solving homelessness, mind you; he simply wants the problem moved out of sight. It’s a classic Republican strategy, and will work about as well as putting a Band-Aid over cancer. It wasn’t always this way in America.

Posted at Hartmann Report on Mar. 9, 2025

America’s Sickest Reality Show: Crowdfunding Cancer Care While Billionaires Hoard Billions

WTF, America?! The country where kids with birth defects must beg for help… Welcome to America’s sickest reality show — where families turn to crowdfunding for cancer treatments while billionaires hoard obscene wealth. In no other developed nation do sick children depend on charity to survive, but here, it’s just another episode of our rigged system. Regular readers might have noticed that our monthly Zoom meeting has been moved back to March 15; it’s because Louise and I were with our family from Michigan on a cruise ship in the Caribbean. Yesterday afternoon (our last day), the ship was running a program where they were selling T-shirts to benefit St. Jude’s Hospital, a fine charity that’s doing great work. Weirdly, though, America is the only country in the world where children with cancer have to depend on the charity of others for research and treatment. Somehow, this doesn’t seem abnormal to Americans. In fact, we are marinated in constant reminders — that we ignore because they have just come to see normal — of how unique America is in this regard. Consider the ubiquitous ad for the company that buys life insurance policies. The senior citizen in the ad says something to the effect of, “We learned that we could sell our policy when a friend did so to pay their medical bills.”

Posted at Hartmann Report on Mar. 8, 2025

Saturday Report 3/8/25 - Musk sure knows how to manipulate Trump to roll over like a dog wanting his tummy scratched...

The Best of the Rest of the News. — Donald Trump continues to ignore and violate multiple court orders regarding the funding of various congressionally mandated programs, while Elon Musk‘s DOGE teenagers continue to invade federal agencies, sometimes with armed muscle who appear to be pretending to be federal marshals. — Is Trump seriously trying to seize Canada as our 51st state? — Trump is seriously trying to screw Ukraine on behalf of Putin, and ‘Liddle Marco and the terrified Republicans in Congress are being forced to go along with it. — Want to send a few bucks to Texas Congressman Al Green by way of supporting his defiance of Trump‘s lies at the State of the Union? — Supreme Court Associate Justice Sam Alito is at it again, lying in a dissenting opinion while laying out a road map for Donald Trump to violate our Constitution. — Elon Musk sure does know how to manipulate Donald Trump: just spend a million bucks on TV advertisements flattering him and he’ll roll over like a dog wanting his tummy scratched. — Crazy Alert! Is the Pentagon really going to decide that they can’t mention the name of the Air Force plane that dropped the bomb on Hiroshima? — Wisdom School: The Pervasive Universal Consciousness Model: A New Frontier in Understanding Reality — Hunter in a Farmer’s World: ADHD: Learn to Postpone Gratification

Posted at Hartmann Report on Mar. 7, 2025

The Bootlicker Brigade for the Morbidly Rich & Their Never-Ending War on Democracy

How fake patriots are betraying their own country... Former Democratic Senator Joe Manchin accused Congressman Al Green and other Democrats of “disrespect” and — absurdly— “inhumanity” for standing up and pointing out Donald Trump’s over-100 lies in his State of the Union address. This is the same on-the-take Senator Joe Manchin who refused to break a filibuster and thus blocked legislation that would have reversed Citizens United and established an absolute right to vote in America. The same sellout-coal-baron Senator Joe Manchin who opened the door for Elon Musk to buy the election for Donald Trump and Republicans to throw around 4 million mostly-Democratic voters off voting rolls or refuse to count their votes.

Posted at Hartmann Report on Mar. 6, 2025

Social Security’s Death Warrant Was Just Signed — Are You Ready?

America’s safety net is their next profit scheme — and you’re the target… Tuesday night, Donald Trump stood before the nation and, with the full backing of billionaires like Elon Musk, laid the groundwork for the biggest heist in American history — the rapid, systematic destruction of Social Security, disguised as “reform.” We saw the formal announcement of it during Trump’s State of the Union address, and the DOGE announcement earlier in the week that 7,000 employees at Social Security are to be immediately laid off — with as many as half of all Social Security employees (an additional 30,000 people) — soon to be on the chopping block. Republicans and their morbidly rich donors have hated Social Security ever since it was first created in 1935. They’ve called it everything from communism to socialism to a Ponzi scheme.

Posted at Hartmann Report on Mar. 5, 2025

We Crushed Fascists Before — It’s Time to Do It Again

The last time American fascists tried this, FDR and Wallace took them down. Will we? Last night, we were treated to a litany of grievance, political bullshit, and lies. Of particular note was Trump’s declaration of war against the government of the United States, particularly Social Security, which I’ll discuss at more length tomorrow. But the larger issue, given the GOP’s adoption of neofascism, is how far Trump and his Republican enablers have dragged America from the form of government on which America was founded.