Thursday, October 17, 2024

If He Is Elected

 


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.

If lower courts rule his actions as criminal, the Roberts Court has already given him immunity from prosecution, so nothing short of a military coup against him or, like four years ago, the refusal of his subordinates to act, could stop him. And he’s going to make sure that doesn’t happen again.

Everything mentioned here is based on statements Trump, Vance, or people close to them have already made. And it’s important to realize that most of these things will not directly impact the lives of average working-class people so, like when these same things happened in Russia, Hungary, Turkey, etc., so the pushback will most likely not be strong or immediate.

His first step would be to gut the press, because the more widespread his actions are publicized the more they’re likely to stir up opposition. He’s already told us how he’ll do this: change the nation’s libel laws so he, his administration’s officials, and his billionaire friends can sue reporters and media outlets for “defaming” and “libeling” them with negative reporting or opinion pieces.

This is a well-trod path; both Putin and Orbán did the same. Much like the way JD Vance’s billionaire mentor went after Gawker when it outed him, the lawsuits will both put out of business the publications and bankrupt the individual reporters and writers. Just like in Russia and Hungary, once the nation’s media outlets are crippled, the billionaires close to Trump will buy them for a song and turn them all into the equivalents of Fox “News.” Now, like Putin and Orbán, he can work in darkness, or at least have friendly media “explain the necessity” of the unpopular steps he takes.

He begins by firing the entire senior staffs of the DOJ, FBI, and across all branches of the US military and the Department of Defense. They’re all replaced with Trump sycophants who will prevent junior officers or enlisted people from speaking out or taking action to preserve our democracy.

He then orders the indictment and arrest of Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Alvin Bragg, Fani Willis, Leticia James, Jack Smith, and the entire senior staffs in the various prosecutors’ offices that worked with them to “go after” him. As Trump told a TV interviewer: “Doing what they did — using the DOJ & FBI to go after their political opponent, that means that I can do it too. In other words, the Pandora’s box is open, and that means that I can do it too.”

And his plans are already well-formed. As Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW)  reported“In one post about Special Counsel Jack Smith’s investigation, he warned there will be ‘repercussions far greater than anything that Biden or his Thugs could understand’ and that if the investigations continue, it would open a ‘Pandora’s Box’ of retribution. In another post, Trump wrote that his federal indictments are ‘setting a BAD precedent for yourself, Joe. The same can happen to you.’ In July Trump reposted rally coverage quoting him that ‘Now the gloves are off.’ ‘When will Joe Biden be Indicted for his many crimes against our Nation?’”

Next, as promised, Trump invokes the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which was used during the war of 1812 and to inter American citizens of Japanese ancestry during WWII. This weekend he said he would immediately launch “Operation Aurora” to begin rounding up “illegals” and “the enemy within”: “Can you imagine? Those were the old days when they had tough politicians, have to go back that long. Think of that, 1798. Oh, it’s a powerful act. You couldn’t pass something like that today.”

Private prison contractors begin building massive concentration camps capable of holding over ten million people as Trump’s ICE officers — their ranks swelled into the hundreds of thousands — along with state and local police departments begin going house-to-house looking for people who appear Hispanic and can’t immediately produce their citizenship papers.

He’ll also go after Haitians and other legal immigrants from “shithole countries”; the only immigrants and naturalized citizens who’ll be safe will be those of European origin with white skin. Or, as Trump said“We should have more people from Norway.”

Large sections of the detention camps are reserved for “the enemy within,” including people like “Adam Schiff” and other “Marxists and communists and fascists.” As he told Fox “News”: “We have the outside enemy, and then we have the enemy from within, and the enemy from within, in my opinion, is more dangerous than China, Russia and all these countries.”

The FBI begins examining the records of social media companies, which then begin restricting posts. The feds subpoena the social media habits of “suspicious” Americans and begin making arrests of those who have spoken out against Trump; it plays out just like in Hungary and Russia where people who have posted negatively about Orbán or Putin get arrested.

The new leaders of Trump’s military order the former soldiers he considers disloyal — like General Mark Milley and former Defense Secretary Mark Esper — back to active duty so they can be court martialed. Hundreds are rounded up to “cleanse” the ranks of our current and former members of the armed forces as the firing squads Trump has said he wants back begin to operate daily.

The new, all-pro-Trump media assures us, like they do on every channel daily in Hungary and Russia, that it’s all a “difficult” and “unfortunate” but a “necessary effort” to “stabilize America” and “preserve the Constitution.” Nothing to worry about here.

In a repeat of his attack on Portland, Oregon in 2020, Trump sends tens of thousands of federal officers without any uniforms or identification in unmarked vans into “liberal” cities where they begin kidnapping and beating civilians. As he told a Fox “News” town hall, comparing American cities with large Black populations to the poorest parts of big cities in Honduras and Guatemala:

“We have cities that are worse—in some cases, far worse. Take a look at Detroit. Take a look at what’s happening in Oakland. Take a look at what’s happening in Baltimore. And everyone gets upset when I say it. They say, ‘Oh, is that a racist statement?’ It’s not. Frankly, Black people come up to me and say, ‘Thank you. Thank you, sir, for saying it.’ They want help. These cities, it’s like living in hell.”

Abortion ends: Trump’s Vice President, JD Vance, personally oversees the enforcement of the Comstock Act with the approval of six Republicans on the Supreme Court. The law is already on the books, bans all abortions (and pornography) nationwide, and Vance has already written a 2023 letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland demanding it be enforced immediately.

Physicians and companies running health apps are required to report fertile women and girls’ menstrual periods to a national database; those who resist are arrested or their companies or apps are taken over and handed to Vance allies to run.

Trump then pulls the US out of NATO and announces America is forming a strategic alliance with Russia, China, and North Korea. India, Turkey, Argentina, Saudi Arabia, and Hungary quickly join. Ukraine is overwhelmed and falls to Putin, who then invades Latvia and Lithuania to re-establish his old Baltic Soviet ports. Europe’s NATO countries, lacking the support of the US and hindered by objections from Hungary and Turkey, dither and pray he won’t take Poland, Estonia, and Finland next.

Jared Kushner begins developing beachfront properties” on the land previously known as Gaza.

All US efforts to mitigate climate change and shift away from a carbon-based economy are ended as a gift to Trump’s fossil fuel donors; high internal and foreign import tariffs are put on electric vehicles, solar panels, and wind power systems. All tax breaks for green energy are ended, while those for oil and gas are expanded.

Claiming that America’s unionized public school teachers are a threat to our country, and Randi Weingarten, the head of the American Federation of Teachers, is “the most dangerous person in the world,” the Trump administration outlaws teachers’ unions (much like Scott Walker did in Wisconsin) and puts into place a national clearinghouse for school vouchers, paving the way for virtually all elementary and secondary education to be provided by churches and for-profit operations. Trump University reboots itself in collaboration with a nationwide Christian chain.

Citing nationwide college student protests against his policies, Trump — repeating his promise that “I will not subsidize the creation of terrorist sympathizers” in our colleges — orders a one-year moratorium on university education in all institutions that he deems “still hire or employ subversive professors.” Conservative or Christian/Catholic institutions of higher education become the only option for young people who can afford them and want a degree.

Pointing to the Bill of Rights, Trump fulfills his promise to “roll back every Biden attack on the Second Amendment.” Armed militias of Trump followers sporting their trademark red hats and AR15s — led by January 6th “patriots” pardoned by Trump — begin “the great purge” of America, rousting and sometimes burning down the homes (as was done in Hungary against Roma people) of their “liberal” or “subversive” neighbors, often with the assistance of local police.

Trump decrees that American law will only recognize two genders and, with the assistance of six Republicans on the Supreme Court, reverses all legal protections for the queer community, including voiding all gay marriages and adoptions by gay parents (as Putin recently did). The question of criminalizing birth control is, per Clarence Thomas, returned to the states just like abortion was, and within two weeks several former Confederate states end access to contraception.

Criminal law and restraints on police are altered to allow “shoot to kill” orders against anybody caught committing a property crime in any American city. As Trump told a crowd in Anaheim, California recently: “Very simply: If you rob a store, you can fully expect to be shot as you are leaving that store. The word that they shoot you will get out within minutes, and our nation, in one day, will be an entirely different place. There must be retribution for theft and destruction and the ruination of our country.” 

Citing comments by John Roberts that there is no longer racism in America and Clarence Thomas’ opposition to affirmative action programs, Trump issues an executive order declaring all laws against racial and religious discrimination null and void. He reverses the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act.

Churches, stores, restaurants, and hotels begin putting back up the “Whites Only” signs they were forced to take down in the 1960s and 1970s.

Widespread arrests begin and Louise and I, along with thousands of others in politics and the media, flee the country or go into hiding.

And then things begin to get really bad.

-Thom Hartmann

 


Wednesday, October 16, 2024

Trump sidesteps question on committing to peaceful transfer of power


CHICAGO — Former president Donald Trump did not directly respond to a question about whether he would respect and encourage a peaceful transfer of power after the election, and he falsely claimed that “you had a peaceful transfer of power” in 2021 when a violent mob assaulted the U.S. Capitol.

Speaking to an audience of mostly businesspeople at the Economic Club in Chicago, Trump was interviewed by Bloomberg News editor in chief John Micklethwait about economic policies, but toward the end of the hour-long question-and-answer session, he took issue with Micklethwait’s questioning on politics and democracy.

“It was love and peace,” Trump said of the deadly Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection in which Trump supporters trying to stop the affirmation of Joe Biden’s win assaulted 140 police officers, damaged the Capitol and destroyed government property.

Trump continued to falsely assert that the 2020 election was stolen and inaccurately described the reason for his failures to prove his claims in court. “If you think an election is crooked, and I do 100 percent, if you think the day it comes when you can protest, you take a look at the Democrats, they protested 2016,” Trump said, veering off topic as he repeatedly did on questions throughout the event. “We want to have honest elections.” Democrats, led by presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, accepted the results of the 2016 election.

In his remarks, Trump pushed falsehoods about Jan. 6. He said the attack involved about 500 to 700 people; in fact, more than 1,500 people have been charged with federal crimes involving the attack, according to the Justice Department.

He said no one died from the violent riot except Trump supporter Ashli Babbitt. Babbitt was one of five people who authorities said died as a result of the siege. Trump said no one who went to the Capitol on Jan. 6 had a gun. Several people were charged with carrying guns and other weapons, such as axes, hatchets and knives.

When Micklethwait pointed out that Trump’s court cases challenging the results of the election in several key states were thrown out, Trump falsely claimed that courts rejected the cases on a technical issue of who was allowed to bring the case, also called standing.

Many 2020 election lawsuits filed by Trump and his allies were rejected on the merits by judges across the political spectrum. Trump maintained that it was a peaceful transfer of power because he left Washington on Jan. 20, breaking with precedent and skipping the inauguration of his successor. “I left the morning that I was supposed to leave. I went to Florida. And you had a very peaceful transfer,” he said.

Trump’s comments about what happened in 2021 mirror similar remarks by his running mate, Sen. JD Vance (Ohio), in Pennsylvania last weekend. Vance acknowledged that “there was a riot at the Capitol on January 6, but there was still a peaceful transfer of power in this country, and that is always going to happen.”

Micklethwait pressed Trump on whether he would “commit now to respecting and encouraging a peaceful transfer of power” if he loses in November. When Trump said the transfer of power in 2021 was peaceful, Micklethwait said it was peaceful “compared with Venezuela, but it was by far the most, the worst transfer of power for a long time,” drawing boos from some in the audience.

Trump said Micklethwait may be biased against him, saying he “has not been a big Trump fan,” and that Trump had considered whether to do the interview. Vice President Kamala Harris was also invited to be interviewed but had so far declined, Micklethwait said.

Several attendees who said they are voting for Trump said they agreed with his answer that 2021’s transfer of power was peaceful, pointing to the part of Trump’s speech on Jan. 6 on the Ellipse when he told the audience that they should “peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.”

Trump also told the crowd: “If you don’t fight like hell you’re not going to have a country anymore.” Weeks later, the U.S. House impeached Trump on a charge of “incitement of insurrection”; he was acquitted by the [corrupt Republican] Senate.

After Trump’s interview at the economic club, Robert Hershenhorn, a supporter in attendance, said the attack on the Capitol wasn’t fairly investigated by the House select committee and that Republicans have not had their voices heard on the issue. Asked by a reporter about the Republicans, including Trump’s former aides, who testified to the committee, Hershenhorn walked away.

The Rev. Corey Brooks, a Chicago pastor who gave a closing prayer at the Republican National Convention in July, said that while some people may like to hear Trump commit to a peaceful transfer of power, many of his supporters know that he would accept the results of the election without violence.

“He’s a patriot, and that’s what patriots do,” Brooks said. “So, I don’t foresee there being any problems. But as far as I’m concerned, I hope it does not even come to that. I hope the president, the former president, wins.”

-Meryl Kornfield, Washington Post


Tuesday, October 15, 2024

Failing to Halt the Destruction of the Earth's Ecosystems

 


More than 80% of countries have failed to submit plans to meet a UN agreement to halt the destruction of Earth’s ecosystems, new analysis has found.

Nearly two years ago, the world struck a once-in-a-decade deal in Montreal, Canada, that included targets to protect 30% of land and sea for nature, reform billions of dollars on environmentally harmful subsidies and slash pesticide usage. Countries committed to submit their plans for meeting the agreement before the biodiversity Cop16 in Cali, Colombia, which begins this month – but only 25 countries have done so.

The other 170 countries have failed to meet the deadline. The world has never yet met a single target set in the history of UN biodiversity agreements, and there had been a major push to make sure this decade was different.

Analysis by Carbon Brief and the Guardian shows that some of the most important ecosystems on the planet are not covered by National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans (NBSAPs).

Only five of the 17 megadiverse countries, home to about 70% of the world’s biodiversity, produced NBSAPs: Australia, China, Indonesia, Malaysia and Mexico. Suriname was the only Amazon rainforest nation to submit a plan, and no Congo basin nations had produced NBSAPs by the deadline. Canada, Italy, France and Japan were the only G7 nations to meet the deadline. The UK has submitted a technical document to the UN convention on biological diversity but is not expected to publish its plan until the beginning of 2025, citing the change of government.

Crystal Davis, global director for the Food, Land and Water Program at the World Resources Institute, said: “Nature is facing a crisis, largely driven by humanity’s use of the land and ocean … at Cop16, it’s time for all countries to step up and turn a landmark global agreement to protect and restore nature into action.”

Colombia, despite hosting the summit, also failed to meet the deadline, but said it would present its plan during the meeting. Brazil, which failed to meet the deadline, said it was formulating a plan that would last until the middle of the century and had been delayed due to the scale of what it was trying to achieve. Other countries are expected to present NBSAPs at Cop16 but it was unclear how many would be unveiled, the UN said.

“More NBSAPs would be better, that’s clear,” said UN biodiversity chief Astrid Schomaker. “We expect more to be announced at Cop16 – including some of the big ones like India, who want to have the ministerial announcement at Cop16 and give it a lot of profile.

Braulio Dias, director of biodiversity conservation at the Brazilian ministry of environment who is responsible for the NBSAP process, said he expected his country would publish a plan in early 2025.

“We are working on a new NBSAP extending till 2050. Brazil is a huge country with the largest share of biodiversity, with a large population with a complex governance,” he said.

Dr V Rajagopalan, chair of India’s working group tasked with reviewing the country’s national biodiversity plan, told Carbon Brief that the goals of the global nature deal must be adapted to local contexts.

“Our situation is different from the west: what can be done there, cannot be done here,” he said. “For example, subsidies are a challenge for us – similarly, pesticides – because of our agricultural status and food security requirements. But, still, we have kept our targets very ambitious.”

-Patrick Greenfield & Daisy Dunne, The Guardian



Monday, October 14, 2024

How Trump and the GOP Are Planning to Steal the Election

 


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.

Eight months before the 2020 election, I wrote a largely-ridiculed article for Alternet.org predicting that Trump would lose the election but would then use multiple phony slates of swing-state electors to try to get the Electoral College count thrown to the House of Representatives where, under the 12th Amendment, the Republican majority would crown him president. I noted that I’d first heard of the plan that month from a Republican insider I knew from my days living and doing my radio/TV program from Washington, DC. And, as we all now know, that’s pretty much exactly what happened.

Fortunately, Mike Pence and Nancy Pelosi stopped Trump and his merry band of corrupt lawyers and lawmakers (including Mike Johnson, who led the effort in the House) from executing the plan, but not before five civilians and three police officers lay dead because Trump incited a violent attack on the Capitol in his final, desperate attempt to pull it off.

Last Friday, my SiriusXM colleague Michelangelo Signoreli mentioned to me (on his program) that a prominent rightwing hate radio host had claimed Trump is campaigning in Blue states right now so he can help out down-ballot House members in those states. According to that host, it’s all about holding the House so when the time comes for the election to be certified Republicans will be able to deny that still-necessary certification and vote Trump in themselves.

Which is giving me a terrible sense of déjà vu. At the risk of again playing the reluctant role of Cassandra, here are some examples of how Trump and the GOP could try to steal the White House this winter, regardless of how the vote turns out. And how Republicans are today telegraphing this very outcome.

Article II (the Executive Branch), Section I, Clause 2 of the Constitution (and the 12th Amendment, which revises it) gives solely to the legislatures of the states the power to control the electors who will decide the presidential election.

It does not say — and there is no federal law that says — that the people of the states shall vote for their choice of president and then that vote shall be reflected in the states’ electoral votes. It’s entirely up to each state’s legislature (without any input from the governor).

“Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors…” is how it appears in Article II of the Constitution.

As Chief Justice Rehnquist wrote in the 2000 Bush v Gore decision when the US Supreme Court overturned the Florida Supreme Court’s order for a recount that would have given the election to Al Gore: 

“The individual citizen has no federal constitutional right to vote for electors for the President of the United States… [T]he state legislature’s power to select the manner for appointing electors is plenary; it may, if it so chooses, select the electors itself, which indeed was the manner used by state legislatures in several States for many years after the framing of our Constitution.”

Every state’s legislature generally directs all their electors to vote for the candidate who won the majority in the state (Maine and Nebraska are the exception, allowing for split decisions), a system we call “winner takes all,” but, as Rehnquist noted, a state’s legislature (its combined house or assembly and senate) can, by simple majority vote, direct its electors to vote for any candidate they want, even over the objection of their governor.

In the 2000 election, for example, when the Florida Supreme Court ordered a complete recount of the vote for president in that state, Jeb Bush and his Republicans knew that a full, statewide recount would give Al Gore the presidency. (It would have discovered the additional 45,599 votes for Al Gore that Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris arbitrarily and illegally chose not to count, as The New York Times noted a year later.)

In other words, had the U.S. Supreme Court not intervened to stop the Florida recount, the Republicans in the Florida legislature were fully prepared to hand the entire Florida electoral college vote — and, thus, the White House — to George W. Bush, even if a recount showed that Al Gore actually won the state. It was, after all, their constitutional right, as Rehnquist later noted in Bush v Gore.

As David Barstow and Somini Sengupta wrote for the New York Times on November 28, 2000, just before the Supreme Court intervened: “The president of Florida’s Senate said today that Gov. Jeb Bush had indicated his willingness to sign special legislation intended to award Florida’s 25 Electoral College votes to his brother Gov. George W. Bush of Texas even as the election results were being contested.”

“But,” some say, “Kamala Harris is the Vice President, so she won’t refuse to accept the Electoral College votes like Trump wanted Pence to do!” That’s true, but irrelevant.

While the updated Electoral Count Act explicitly redefines the Vice President’s role as purely ceremonial, it does not — and could not without a constitutional amendment —alter the power of individual Republican-controlled swing states to send Trump electors (claiming that the Harris-winning results in their states are the result of voter fraud) to DC.

Regardless of how transparently dishonest such an effort would be, its primary result would be to throw to the Supreme Court the decision over which electors to count. Multiple Court observers have noted how light the Court’s docket is this fall because, they speculate, Roberts is fully expecting to play a role in the election similar to what five Republicans on the Court did in 2000 when they stopped the Florida recount, handing the White House to George W. Bush.

The Court could then declare the election flawed because of the alleged voter fraud — Republicans across the country, as well as Trump and Vance, are already preparing the ground for this claim — and, citing the 12th Amendment, throw it to the House of Representatives. 

Under that scenario, each state’s House delegation has one single vote for president (the Senate is not involved under the 12th Amendment) and right now there are 26 states controlled by Republicans: the 26-24 vote would put Trump and Vance in the White House for the next four years. That strategy would require one or more individual states to either refuse to certify their vote, delay certifying their vote, or submit multiple slates of electors.

And we’re already hearing from both local elections officials and state legislators’ rumblings that this is exactly what they intend to do.

Another option to produce the same result would be for a majority vote in the House to refuse to certify a Harris win.

Which brings us back to Trump campaigning in Blue states. As Ed Kilgore wrote for The New Yorker“As it happens, there are ten highly competitive House races in California and New York, and a Trump appearance nearby could goose GOP turnout and promote party-organizing efforts in ways that could make a difference in those contests.” This brings us back to the scenario Michelangelo shared with me. The new, 2025-2026 House is sworn in on January 3rd, whereas the presidential vote is certified on January 6th.

If Democrats win the House in November and are sworn in on January 3rd, it’s unlikely that Speaker Hakeem Jeffries would go along with Trump’s scheme on January 6th, and Republicans wouldn’t have the necessary majority in any case.

But if Republicans can hold the House, there’s a good chance that Speaker Mike Johnson would happily hold the vote to declare Harris’ win as “fraudulent.” After all, he’s the guy who corralled fully 147 votes against certifying the 2020 election in the House; his being the ringleader of that effort is the main reason he’s the speaker right now.

There are multiple razor-tight House races in California, Colorado, and New York. Trump and his co-conspirators may well believe that his holding rallies in those states represents the best bet for helping Republicans win those races, thus ensuring Johnson is in charge of the House so they can refuse certification and throw the case to themselves via the Supreme Court.

Seizing control of the Senate would be the icing on the cake for this scheme, as it’s also sworn in on January 3rd and also votes to certify the Electoral College vote, but a deadlock is only necessary in one of the two legislative bodies, and if the 12th Amendment is invoked by six Republicans on the Supreme Court because of that deadlock only the House votes for president.

Keep in mind, JD Vance is still refusing to say that Trump lost the 2020 election, most recently stonewalling the question five times in a podcast interview with Lulu Garcia-Navarro of The New York Times last week. Donald Trump is also still asserting that he won, and is already signaling that he intends to declare victory in November regardless of the “official” outcome.

And, unlike in 2020, there are no longer Mitt Romneys, Adam Kinzingers, or Liz Cheneys in Congress who could gum up the works. The GOP is today unified in its assertion that voter fraud handed Joe Biden the 2020 presidency: this is the perfect setup for the scenarios I’m describing, and Republicans know it. They created it, in fact.

The most likely scenario, though, would involve local election officials gumming up the works by slow-walking counts, challenging counts, or outright refusing to certify counts at the state level long enough that several individual state votes can’t be certified by January 6th, very much like in the election of 1876.

That would provide an easy excuse for the six Republicans on the Supreme Court to intervene, invoke the 12th Amendment, and throwing the election to the House, guaranteeing Trump’s victory. As Jim Rutenberg and Nick Corasaniti recently wrote for The New York Times:

“The Republican Party and its conservative allies are engaged in an unprecedented legal campaign targeting the American voting system. Their wide-ranging and methodical effort is laying the groundwork to contest an election that they argue, falsely, is already being rigged against former President Donald J. Trump. …

“Even if the cases fail, Mr. Trump’s allies are building excuses to dispute the results, while trying to empower thousands of local election officials to disrupt the process. Already, election board members in several states have moved to block certification of primary election tallies, including in a major swing county in Nevada last week.”

The updated Electoral Count Act sets a hard date of December 11th for states to certify the vote but doesn’t detail any consequences or outcomes if states fail to meet that date. Thus, in the case of conflict, confusion, or multiple lawsuits the case would, again, end up before the six Republicans who control the Supreme Court.

As the Times’ Rutenberg and Corasaniti note:

“For his part, Mr. Whatley, the co-chair of the Republican National Committee, was noncommittal when reporters recently asked him if his party would seek to block certification in any states this fall.

“‘We’re not going to cross any of those bridges right now,’ he said.” Gee, ya think? They couldn’t be telegraphing their plans any more clearly if they were skywriting them.

I wrapped up my March 2020 article predicting the GOP’s upcoming fake elector strategy by imploring Democrats and the media to ring the alarm before they tried to pull it off: “Get it into the media and repeat it over and over again: The GOP plans to claim Democratic voter fraud in this election to steal the election for themselves, and they’re already getting people primed for it!

It’s worth repeating today. Pass it along.


-Thom Hartmann

The Hartmann Report is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my daily work to rescue our democratic republic, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

 


Saturday, October 12, 2024

The Huge Web of Propaganda and Mind Control

 


Thanks to Ronald Reagan and your GOP, the working class was not only robbed of their opportunities for economic advancement with 'trickledown" economics that does not trickle down, they were also robbed of the right to unbiased news coverage in 1981 deregulations that allowed the ultra-wealthy to control a lot of stations under a single entity, in 1984 when allowed cable networks to broadcast "entertaining" news that catered to the beliefs of their audiences, and in 1987 when the requirement that news be fair and balanced was dropped.

Many Americans are under-educated and unable to distinguish fact from fiction, fact from opinion. Therefore, the eighties made sure these entities could easily control the minds of the peasants. The poor half-educated and superstitious people don't have a chance to think for themselves. The wealthy have brainwashed them to believe women, liberals, gays, and immigrants are stealing their opportunities and ruining their way of life, when, in fact, the wealthy are robbing them blind. 

If you think the Taliban in Afghanistan is bad, read below. No wonder the USA (and much of the world) is in such bad shape. How can people start thinking for themselves with groups who want to wipe out the planet for profit and take us back to the Dark Ages controlling the narrative?


The Huge Web of Propaganda and Mind Control:

Media Companies

Below find a list of very destructive media companies and other organizations that purposely either cherry-pick and exaggerate news stories or outright spread disinformation about minorities, immigrants, liberal women, LGBTQ people, climate scientists and other scientists, and non-Christian religions to divide the country and fan the flames of the culture wars that they and their owners and the powerful people create.

They spread false information and even made-up graphs sparking fear that the economy is failing when the economy of the USA has recovered faster and is faring better than any country in the world, fear of rises in immigrant and black violent crime in New York and Chicago when it is, in fact, higher per capita in rural America, fear of out-of-control illegal immigration carrying on about big caravans heading that way.

When easily duped "patriots" went to the border to help out, they were surprised to find nothing. These media outlets fuel right-winged ugliness, Nationalism, fascism, uncontrolled consumption, and xenophobia throughout the world. The world would be better off if Murdoch, the Barclays, and Steve Bannon, and the people associated with them did not exist.

There is a growing interest in the USA toward cybersecurity and the use of the military to monitor and prevent harmful hacking. Everyone's worried about cyber threats, but media organizations and other entities below have hacked into people's feelings of insecurity to instill fear and intolerance for political gain and profit for decades and they continue to do so.

Their hate spreads throughout the world. If there were a hell, they would be burning there. If your hands-tied government and superheroes don't protect you, you must protect yourself. Therefore, always check their information wherever it appears using objective fact-checking sites such as PolitiFact, Snopes, and Media Bias/Fact Check.

United States:

As you can see below, huge amounts of money and effort is spent to keep people ignorant and misinformed.

1. Fox News

FoxCorporation: Rupert Murdoch, Lachlan Murdoch

2, Breitbart News

BreitbartNews Network, LLC: Larry Solov, Steve Bannon

3. Newsmax

NewsmaxMedia, Inc.: Christopher Ruddy

4. One America News Network (OANN)

HerringNetworks, Inc.: Robert Herring Sr.

5. The Daily Caller

Tucker Carlson, Neil Patel

6. The Blaze

Blaz Media: Glenn Beck, Tyler Cardon, Gaston Mooney, and CRTV

7. Infowars

Free Speech Systems: Alex Jones (sued to death)

8. Gateway Pundit

Jim Hoft

9. The Federalist

FDRLST Media, LLC: Ben Domenech, Sean Davis

10. The Epoch Times

EpochMedia Group; Falun Gong; John Tang

11. The Daily Mail

the Rothermere Family and Jonathan Harmsworth

12. The Daily Wire

Ben Shapiro and Jeremy Boreing

13.The Daily Express

These big money companies--Royal London Asset Management, Aberforth Partners LLP, BlackRock, Schroders, Artemis, and Legal & General Investment Management (LGIM)

14. Real Clear Politics

John McIntyre and Tom Bevan and Forbes

15. Washington Examiner

Philip Anschutz, Clarity Media Group including Colorado Springs Gazette

16.. The Washington Times

The Unification Church, News World Communications, The Family Federation for World Peace and Unification

17. The American Spectator

R Emmett Tyrrell Jr, Wladyslaw, Pleszczynski, American Spectator Foundation.

18. CBN

Pat Robertson, 700 Club, Also promoted by Trinity Broadcasting, Cornerstone Television, FamilyNet, LeSEA Broadcasting, TCT and even Middle East Television

19. The Independent Journal Review (especially commentary)

Alex Skatell., Camden Stuebe, and Shushanna Walshe

20. The National Review (opinion)

Rich Lowry, Ramesh Ponnuru. Disseminators of climate falsities trying to help the fossil fuel industries and promote xenophobia, including the Obama birth certificate fiasco.

21. Washington Free Beacon

Financially backed by Paul Singer, an American billionaire hedge fund manager and Republican donor.

 [...]


Thursday, October 10, 2024

"He cannot be President of the United States"

 


We learned from a forthcoming book by veteran journalist Bob Woodward that in 2020, while he was president, Trump secretly shipped Covid-19 testing equipment to Russian president Vladimir Putin for his own personal use at a time when Americans could not get it. To be clear, this equipment was not the swabs we now use at home, but appears to be what at the time was a new point-of-care machine from Abbott Laboratories that claimed to be the fastest way to test for Covid-19. 

Journalist Karly Kingsley points out that at the time, central lab testing to diagnose Covid-19 infections took a long time, causing infections to spread. Machines like Abbott’s were hard to get. Trump chose to send them to Putin—not to charge him for them, or to negotiate for the release of Paul Whelan and Trevor Reed, two Americans being held by Russia at the time and later released under the Biden administration, but to give them to him—rather than keeping them for Americans.

It’s hard to overstate just what an astonishing story this is. In 2016, Republicans stood firm against Putin and backed the arming of Ukraine to stand against Russia’s 2014 invasion of Crimea. But that summer, at Trump’s urging, the party changed its platform to weaken its support of Ukraine.

In 2020, it appears, Trump chose to give lifesaving equipment to Putin rather than use it for Americans. And in 2024, Trump’s willingness to undermine the United States to cozy up to an adversary his own party stood against less than a decade ago does not appear to be a deal breaker for Republicans.

As Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) put it: “What has this country come to if the revelation that Trump secretly sent COVID testing machines to Putin while thousands of Americans were dying, in part because of a shortage of testing machines here, doesn't disqualify him to be President?” He continued: “Donald Trump helped keep Putin alive during the pandemic and let Americans die. This revelation is damning. It's disqualifying. He cannot be President of the United States.” 

Increasingly, Trump’s behavior seems to parrot the dictators he appears to admire. 

After 60 Minutes called him out for breaking a fifty-year tradition of both candidates talking to 60 Minutes and backing out of an interview to which he had agreed, Trump today accused the producers of 60 Minutes of cutting Vice President Kamala Harris’s answers to make her look good.

He suggested that such cuts were “illegal” and possibly “a major Campaign Finance violation” that “must be investigated, starting today!” “The public is owed a MAJOR AND IMMEDIATE APOLOGY!” he wrote. Trump is trying to cover for his own failure by attacking CBS in an echo of dictators determined to control the media.

In a post on his social media site tonight, Trump appears to have declined to appear at another presidential debate with Vice President Harris. After declaring he had won the previous debate with Harris and rehashing many of his grievances, he wrote: “THERE WILL BE NO REMATCH!”

As Beth Reinhard of the Washington Post recounted yesterday, a report from Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), who sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee, revealed that the Trump White House prevented a real investigation into sexual misconduct allegations against Trump’s second Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh.

More than 4,500 calls and electronic messages about Kavanaugh sent to the FBI tip line went directly to the White House, where they were never investigated, and the FBI was told not to pursue corroborating evidence of the accusations by Christine Blasey Ford and Deborah Ramirez although lawyers for the women presented the names of dozens of people who could testify to the truth of their allegations.  

A number of senators said the lack of corroborating evidence convinced them to vote in favor of Kavanaugh’s confirmation. As Steve Benen of MSNBC recalled, Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) said at the time that it appeared to be “a very thorough investigation,” while the late Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) said that the 2018 FBI report “looks to be a product of an incomplete investigation that was limited perhaps by the White House.”

After he left office, Trump told author Michael Wolff that he had gone to bat for Kavanaugh, saying: “I…fought like hell for Kavanaugh—and I saved his life, and I saved his career.” Kavanaugh was the crucial vote for Trump’s right-wing agenda, including ending the federal recognition of abortion rights by overturning the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision.

Ken Bensinger reported in the New York Times today that Trump’s team has refused to participate in preparations for a transition to a potential Trump presidency. Normally, the nonpartisan transition process, dictated by the Presidential Transition Act, has candidates setting up teams as much as six months before the election to begin vetting and hiring political appointees and working with the administration in office to make sure the agencies continue to run smoothly. 

With the election less than a month away, Trump has neither signed the required agreements nor signed the transition’s ethics plan that would require him to disclose private donors to the transition and limit them to contributions of no more than $5,000. Without that agreement, there are no limits to the money the Trump transition can take. Trump has also refused to sign an agreement with the White House requiring that anyone receiving classified information have a security clearance. Currently, his aides cannot review federal records.

Trump ignored the traditional transition period in 2016, cutting off communications with President Barack Obama’s team. He refused to allow incoming president Joe Biden access to federal agencies in 2020, hampering Biden’s ability to get his administration in place in a timely fashion. Now it’s possible that Trump sees no need for a normal transition because Project 2025, on which he appears to be relying, has been working on one for many months. 

It calls for him to fire most federal employees, reinstating the policy he started at the end of his term. To fill their positions, the Heritage Foundation has been vetting loyalists now for months, preparing a list of job candidates to put in place a new, right-wing agenda.  

Yesterday, on California’s KFI radio station, Trump told host John Kobylt that Tom Homan of Project 2025, who as director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement oversaw the family separation policy at the southern border, will be “coming on board” a new Trump administration. 

This afternoon, Trump told an audience in Scranton, Pennsylvania, that he expects to put former rival Vivek Ramaswamy into an important position in his administration. On October 7, 2024, Ramaswamy suggested on social media that he wants to get rid of Social Security and Medicare.

He wrote: “Shut down the entitlement state & you solve most of the immigration problem right there. We need to man up & fix the root cause that draws migrants here in the first place: the welfare state. But no one seems to want to say that part out loud, because too many native-born Americans are addicted to it themselves.”

Trump has expressed frustration with the independence of the Federal Reserve, expressing a desire to make it answer to the president. In an interview with Barron’s, one of his advisors, Scott Bessent, has floated the idea of creating a shadow Fed chair until the term of the current chair, Jerome Powell, ends, thus undercutting him without facing a fight over firing the Fed chair. 

This agenda is not a popular one in the U.S., but Trump is getting a boost as Russian operatives work to swing down ballot races toward the Republicans. In a briefing on Monday, October 7, experts from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) told reporters that China and Iran are trying to influence the upcoming election and that “Moscow is leveraging a wide range of influence actors in an effort to influence congressional races, particularly to encourage the U.S. public to oppose pro-Ukraine policies and politicians.

Russian influence actors have planned, and likely created and disseminated, content, particularly over social media, intended to encourage the election of congressional candidates that Moscow assesses will oppose aid to Ukraine.”  

Russia, an ODNI spokesperson said, uses “influence-for-hire firms, or commercial firms with expertise in these type[s] of activities.” It also coopts “witting and unwitting Americans to work on Russia’s behalf,” to “launder their influence narratives through what are perceived as more authentic U.S. voices.” 

Not all of Trump’s supporters appear eager to stick around to see if Trump will win another term. Today news broke that Patrick M. Byrne, the former chief executive officer of OverStock, who became a fervent advocate of the idea that Trump was the true winner of the 2020 presidential election, has left the country, apparently permanently, to live in Dubai.

Dominion Voting Systems is suing Byrne, as is President Biden’s son Hunter. The younger Biden sued Byrne for defamation last November after Byrne claimed Hunter Biden sought a bribe from Iran. 

In September, Biden’s lawyers were trying to schedule a date for Byrne’s deposition when his lawyer abruptly “claimed for the first time that Defendant has moved his residence to Dubai and if Plaintiff wanted to take his in-person deposition counsel would have to fly to Dubai to do so, to which Plaintiff responded with various related inquiries to try to resolve this matter and defense counsel stated Defendant would not be returning to the United States for the foreseeable future.” 

Byrne claimed to have fled the U.S. because the Venezuelan government has put a bounty on him, but as Biden’s lawyers note, “the Defendant’s truthfulness is directly at issue.” 

—Heather Cox Richardson

Notes:

https://abbott.mediaroom.com/2020-03-27-Abbott-Launches-Molecular-Point-of-Care-Test-to-Detect-Novel-Coronavirus-in-as-Little-as-Five-Minutes

https://www.state.gov/briefings-foreign-press-centers/2024-elections-fpc/30-day-election-security-update-from-intelligence-community

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/09/us/politics/trump-presidential-transition.html

https://federalnewsnetwork.com/tom-temin-commentary/2024/07/project-25-and-your-federal-job-better-read-up-on-this-one/

https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-says-project-2025-author-coming-onboard-if-elected-1966334

https://www.barrons.com/articles/trump-fed-chair-powell-fire-4b79079f

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/10/08/kavanaugh-trump-white-house-fbi-report/

https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/justice-kavanaugh-becomes-latest-target-trump-s-ire-n1273851

https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/new-allegations-kavanaughs-fbi-probe-spark-awkward-questions-rcna174652

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/hunter-biden-sues-overstock-ceo-patrick-byrne-defamation-joe-biden/

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cacd.904869/gov.uscourts.cacd.904869.67.2.pdf

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/20/us/politics/republican-president-2024-heritage-foundation.html

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