This Video Is Not For The Faint of Heart (Thom Hartmann)

[00:00:00]Tom Hartman and it is so great to have you in, sir. How you been?

[00:00:05]>> I'm fine, Mark. It's great to see you again. Thank you for inviting me.

[00:00:08]>> I um I want to ask you about something that you've written uh about recently and then we'll get into some of the other stuff that's happening because it's been a fairly busy week, >> but um you write um in the Hartman report about the fact that the state can take on any number of people legally. uh big fish, small fish, independent journalists, big organizations, and just in taking them on, just in having a Justice Department investigation, just in having the indictment, the process itself can be ruinous. And it more than whether or not they prevail in a court case, it can send a message, and that's part of the game.

[00:00:55]>> Yeah. And oddly this has been an argument of and a freakout by the right historically. I mean, you know, remember when when they were talking about uh opening up some of the FEMA camps for climate refugees and suddenly you had Fox News, Wall-to-Wall, you know, Glenn Beck, all these guys going, he's building camps to put us in them, you know, and which is the extreme end pro of that process. But you're starting really at the beginning of the process, which is, you know, Stalin's chief security officer, I forget his exact title, but I think he was head of security, uh, you know, famously said, "Show me the man and I'll I'll find you the crime or words to that effect." And that's what is going on right now. And and this article that I wrote points out that Trump doesn't care if James Comey goes to jail. I mean, it would be icing on the cake, but that's not the goal here. the goal is to wipe out his retirement savings, you know, to to for a serious criminal federal prosecution.

[00:01:59]You're looking at a $100,000 law bill to start. And you know, it could run into it could run to a million dollars if it lasted a couple of years. And you know, these lawyers are I mean, they literally charge $3,000 an hour for lawyers that can litigate at that level. And uh >> by the way, the thing that's ironic, Tom, not to interrupt, but to interrupt, is that in my view, Comey helped Trump win an election.

[00:02:24]>> Oh, yeah. Handed it to him. Yes. By by going after Hillary or by, you know, reopening that investigation in 2016.

[00:02:30]You're absolutely right. Uh, you know, the ironies are just so thick here. And and like I said, this, you know, traditionally, I mean, my dad was a, you know, a Republican. He was he as an Eisenhower Republican. He kind of went through his Goldwater Republican phase when I was a kid. In fact, I went door to door with him for Barry Goldwater in ' 64. I was 13. Uh, and then he kind of came back around to being a a kind of George Bush Eisenhower Republican in his last days. And I, you know, he and his friends were all freaked out about government overreach. You know, I mean, I remember like being 10 years old and having my dad say the government has the power to confine you and even to kill you. And that's an awesome power. And you want to make sure that the people who are running the government are people that you can trust, who take that power seriously, who who wield it responsibly because it is the ultimate power. We hand that power to to our government officials when we elect them, when we put them into office, and we trust them not to abuse it against us.

[00:03:41]And that's exactly what's going on. I mean, we've got this long list, so long you can hardly remember all the names now of the people that Donald Trump has gone after to get revenge. And he and now you've got Todd Blanch out there auditioning for the full-time job of uh, you know, AG and uh, you know, now going after Gavin Newsome. I mean, you know, apparently.

[00:04:03]>> Yeah. Yeah. New N Newsome's saying just that. He's saying that my my wife, my family, and I were being investigated.

[00:04:09]>> Yeah. And and they're going through She's got a little nonprofit, and she's got a little film company that actually showed a film at the Tribeca Film Festival a couple months ago. I mean, she's she's no slouch, right? She's doing good stuff, but she's not these people are not billionaires. They're not even probably, you know, multi multi multi-millionaires the way you'd think, you know, hundred millionaires. um you know and uh I guarantee you that right now they're paying CPAs and lawyers to go through all their their own stuff you know and this in my mind this is an abuse of the grand jury process. The Department of Justice has this division called the public integrity unit. And any prosecution by any federal officials anywhere in the country that involves an elected official on the premise that the people put that person in office and therefore it's a much higher bar to go after that person than just your random possible criminal off the street. any investigation into any elected official all the way down to dog catcher if it's a federal election in the United States has to go through the public integrity unit first to make sure it's not political. Well, Trump has gutted the public integrity unit. They just don't they for all practical purposes they no longer exist. And so what we're seeing right now is is Stalinist techniques. I mean it's just it's mindboggling. You've written so much about um Stalinist techniques and um the creep of fascism in this administration. Um we've talked before about in many ways you can see the Justice Department completely in the uh capture of Trump. I mean it's they've gotten rid of and they continue to get rid of in other institutions of American government anyone who pushes back at all or there even question marks over them. You got people like Laura Loomer weighing in on, you know, someone's uh ex post or Twitter post from years ago. It It's kind of crazy. And yet you also write about the fact that there are certain aspects of what Trump is doing again unconstrained that uh really show the absurdity or the um ineffectiveness of a lot of the policies that have long been talked about by the right. Yeah. Um, yeah. And and I, you know, I think broadly speaking, this this kind of falls into that category, if I'm correctly understanding your your assertion or your question. Um, that it has historically been the right that is skeptical of government power. And since the New Deal era anyway, it's historically been the left that's been a big advocate for government power. um the the power to regulate industry, for example, which Republicans push back on.

[00:06:53]Um you know, the power to uh to control our money supply, uh you know, which Republicans freak out about.

[00:07:01]And and but but we're we're so far beyond left or right, Mark. I mean, you know, we are now in in full-blown oligarchy certainly. I mean, you know, an oligarchy is where a government is run of, by and for the benefit of the very very rich. She had Mark Zuckerberg sitting next to Donald Trump and at the cage fight uh you know on the the south law of the White House. And the problem with oligarchy is, and this is where I'm going with this, the problem, and I I wrote a whole book about this, the hidden history of American oligarchy.

[00:07:32]The problem with oligarchy is that it is always a transitional form of government. It's never stable. And the reason why is because when it becomes obvious that it's an oligarchy, the people rebel. They they rise up and they say enough of this stuff. And at that point, the oligarchy, the oligarchs by and large themselves, uh face a choice.

[00:07:54]They can either do what the oligarchs in the United States did in the 1890s and in the 1930s, which is say, "Okay, we give. We're going to back away. We're going to let you have a union. We're going to let you have your minimum wage and your social security and under your child labor laws and and and your 91% in top income tax bracket. We will go along with that. Just don't don't destroy us, which is what FDR was threatening to do and Teddy Roosevelt before him. Either they back away like that or they do what Vladimir Putin did in 2002 2003 when you know Russia became an oligarchy around 9798 when Yelson basically turned most of the most of the big government operations over to a handful of of oligarchs and Putin inherited that and and just said okay we're going to crush this resistance with a with an iron fist and you know Alexi Nalli was one of the pro most prominent people he was running this nonprofit called the Anti-Corruption Institute and was documenting not not just the corruption of Putin, he was documenting the corruption of a whole range of oligarchs associated with Putin uh long before Putin came along. And so he became the guy that they went after and uh you know and they crushed him. They killed him and they and they and you know they're and they're imprisoning anybody else who who dares to do what he's doing. So that's the choice that the Mark Zuckerbergs and the and the Elon Musks and the David Ellison's have to be deciding right now. Um, you know, yes, it's ultimately Trump who who quote makes those decisions, but I think you and I both know he, you know, Trump is a billionaire. He's got 13 billionaires in his cabinet. It's an oligarchic administration, but his first loyalty is to his class. And if the oligarchs all got together and Sam Alman and all these other guys and came to the White House and said, "You got to stop this. It's hurting us." He'd probably stop it. Um, you know, the but I don't think that's going to happen. I think that that they are riding this gravy train as and they're going to ride it as far as they can and they're just going to let Trump do his worst and Trump is taking guidance from his uh every two week phone calls with Vladimir Putin.

[00:10:09]>> I mean, he's supercharged by the surge in AI. He's supercharged by, you know, a market buoyed by AI. He's supercharged by the supercharged Elon Musk who created a completely fictitious valuation to SpaceX. It's utterly underpinned by nothing based on everything I've read. It it is a narative >> Tesla, by the way, and continues to be >> mind. I mean, the only thing that makes money for for him is Starlink and and so you you know, that's a legit company, but that also gives him immense power, right, Tommy? He you know, he's controlling theaters of war through Starlink.

[00:10:48]>> That's right. Yeah, he cut off he cut off the Ukrainians when they wanted to attack Russian ships. Um he has cut off Russians. So, yeah, he he gets to play kingmaker. And Starlink, of course, is heavily subsidized by the US government.

[00:11:01]U you know, you can't launch rockets into outer space without the government going along with you. Uh, not to mention government loans and government grants and government contracts. Um, and I think it's important to remember too that Elon Musk would be broke right now if if uh Barack Obama hadn't bailed out Tesla back in the day.

[00:11:18]>> Oh.

[00:11:18]>> Which which really pissed off Republicans by the way. Remember them screaming about that? Obama giving hundreds of millions of dollars to to Elon Musk because they all thought he was a lefty because he had a >> right. He was electric cars. Exactly.

[00:11:28]Yeah.

[00:11:29]>> Yeah.

[00:11:31]It's a it's a wild uh twist because now really he is he's wagging the dog and uh I I just think that when I look at Musk's um stories like you know going to Mars completely ridiculous um uh even even lunar u some kind of lunar populating the moon and terraforming even a portion of it. I mean, these are good data centers in space. Perhaps the most intriguing thing because it would at least get it off of the US soil or off of Earth. It is it's fraught with issues. So I I don't know Tom in in all the ways bless you in all the ways that I've seen Musk describe uh those things that are showing up in the prospectus for SpaceX uh there's just utter absurdity after utter absurdity and and he it's paid off for investors not so much the New York Times laid it bare so I don't mean to obsess about this but I think that the the link between Trump and Elon is strong and and and between Elon and the Trump family and that's why I think it's worth the beat.

[00:12:38]>> Well, I don't think Trump would be president right now if it wasn't for Elon Musk. He's the largest single donor to the Republican party in the last cycle. So, yeah.

[00:12:46]>> Yeah. So, there you go. Uh tell me about how you think this game's out because I've read some stuff from you that, you know, once in a while I'm encouraged by some of the things you write and then once then I find myself downcast after reading something. Um, you uh you wrote this, what desperate regimes do before they fall. History leaves behind a pattern. You wrote, "Attack the courts, discredit elections, in intimidate opponents, rewrite the rules, and cling to power at any cost. The question is whether America recognizes it in time."

[00:13:19]You write, "Donald Trump is already telling us he's going to try to steal the 2026 election, and the fact that he's saying it now months in advance is the whole tell." Give me a moment on that, please.

[00:13:32]Well, yeah. I mean, he tried this in 20, you know, when he lost the 2020 election and it culminated in January 6th. Um, you know, a genuine attempt to murder a vice president and a speaker of the house that killed four police officers and and an attempt to overturn an election. You can't you can't say that there's anything that is too far, you know, a bridge too far for Donald Trump.

[00:13:54]He's already passed that bridge. He's already done it. and and uh so you know small stuff like you know hey let's just prevent black people from voting you know let's let's prevent voter registration drives in Ohio by you know bringing the FBI in which they did last Thursday um you know this is this you know this is how they roll this they they the Republicans have figured out or the oligarchs let's say that who own the Republican party and and and to tell the truth own a fair goodsized chunk of the Democratic The oligarchs have decided that hanging on to power, hanging on to their tax breaks, hanging on to their deregulation, particularly the fossil fuel oligarchs have decided that, you know, dictatorship is okay. It's worth it. Uh when I was a kid, I don't know if I've got it handy. Um my dad when I was I think I think it was my 25th birthday, my father was a book collector. This is why I have all these books. I This is every book I've read in the last 50 years. And >> Oh, that's cool. And my dad had 20,000 books in his basement, which is where I carved out a bedroom when I was a little kid. And uh so anyhow, he gave me a copy of Fritz Tyson's book, which was published in 47, I think, called I Paid Hitler. Fritz Tyson was the richest man in Germany. Uh he he owned the Tyson Steel Works, which he had inherited from his father. He was a Nepo baby, and he's the guy who raised the three million Reichkes marks uh to sponsor Hitler in the 1933 election. and and really funded his rise from 29 through 34. And by 37, Tyson had to flee the country because Hitler had turned against him because he was saying, "Wait a minute, you're going too far. You know, this this is" and and Hitler would not tolerate that. And so he wrote this book that was kind of an apologia. But, you know, eventually the the dictator will turn on you. I mean, you know, just ask James Comey or, you know, Brennan or I mean, you know, any any of these people. Ask Mike Pence for God's sake. he tried to kill him, you know, or his his his goons did. And uh so so I you know, back to my point earlier that oligarchy is a transitional form of government. We are now in full-blown oligarchy. The last election um 200 billionaire families put in almost half of all the money that was spent. And in this election, it'll probably be more than half. And you know, billionaires are buying politicians and judges legally and have been now since 2010 with this highly corrupt Citizens United decision where the deciding vote was Clarence Thomas, a man who himself had taken millions of dollars in what I think you could argue are bribes, you know, from a from a right-wing Nazi memorabilia collecting uh billionaire who's got two uh paintings done by Adolf Hitler and a signed copy of mine comp. I mean, these are not normal people.

[00:16:45]and they're not fans of normal democracy.

[00:16:48]>> So, you know, we're going to have to make a choice, we being the American people >> or that choice is going to be taken away from us. And uh you know, if if they succeed in rigging and stealing the election this fall, and they are clearly doing absolutely everything that they can, both above the ground, you know, the stuff that's visible, and below the ground, the stuff that we're just hearing the rumblings about. Um, if they pull that off, it's game over for this country.

[00:17:15]>> Sure.

[00:17:15]>> And if they don't pull that game off, it's still going to be a hell of a climb out of this hole that these that these uh neofascists have put us into.

[00:17:24]>> When you talk about the stuff that we don't hear a lot about that is is being worked on. You talk about manipulation of data, election data. You talk about election officials. Is that what you you those who are charged with the the responsibility of making sure the legitimate legitimacy of the election is held up? You're talking about that, right?

[00:17:43]>> By and large. I mean, you've got a number of key positions in swing states and in important states um where the where senior election officials or decision-making election officials have been replaced by Trump loyalists uh who identify themselves as election deniers, you know, 2020 election deniers. And um there's also there's been talk out loud by Republicans, although I think it's diminishing now about refusing to seat Democrats after the 2020 20, you know, after this 2024 election or the 2026 election, excuse me. Um refusing to seat them next January. Um I I frankly doubt that'll happen, but that was actually a hot topic in Republican circles maybe six months ago.

[00:18:30]>> That was always what I felt would happen. But you don't think it will happen?

[00:18:33]>> I, you know, I think that what's happened is that um because Trump went after John Cornin and uh you know, Tom Tillis has bailed out and and uh Bill Cassidy down in Louisiana. I mean, you know, Trump has basically been stabbing in the back people who I think a lot of members of the House and Senate can identify with. You know, look, yeah, I'm a conservative. Yeah, I'm proun. Yeah, I hate queer people and black people. I'm all there, but I don't agree with Trump on absolutely everything, and I'm just not gonna bow down and kiss his ass.

[00:19:08]Those people, which are probably a small majority of the Republicans, elected Republicans, are starting to get very nervous. And uh so I I suspect that, you know, it's not going to it's not going to be the Democrats who are going to restrain Trump. It certainly wasn't in his first term. And so far, I haven't seen where they've had a lot of success outside of the court system. I I think it's going to have to be some Republicans along with Democrats. And that's what we saw, you know, with the Epstein File Transparency Act where Thomas Massie and and you know, a handful of other people uh Marjorie Taylor Green and whatnot, you know, said, "Okay, we'll join the Democrats and you know, that's what we saw with this anti-war resolution that happened two weeks ago or last week."

[00:19:52]So, >> so your point is that those to whom you've referred will be uh loathed to not seat legitimately elected officials.

[00:20:02]>> That's my guess right now, but I you know I I would never bet actual money on integrity in the GOP.

[00:20:11]>> Yeah. Yeah. I I just I just thought it seemed to me like the go-to. I was saying this months ago, but but yeah, it could go either way. Um I just in our in our final minutes I just want to ask you about the Iran deal which I put in air quotes because it's sort of filled with uh you know the vagaries of any deal but this particularly is filled with the uh big announcement and flourish that you know Trump wanted on his birthday but it seems as though there are no more than vague promises. There are not a lot of specifics. There's a tremendous amount of money being released back to Iran.

[00:20:46]This is from a guy who was incredibly critical of Barack Obama releasing 1.7 billion or whatever it was in frozen assets back to the Iranians. That's a rounding error compared to the crap that they're going to be a tremendous amount of money. This is 20 I think it's 24 billion before they even get to any kind of specific on the negotiation around nuclear stuff. Uh speak to all all of this that's happening in the announcement.

[00:21:13]>> Trump for 40 years. Well, I don't know if it's 40 years, but for years and years and years, Benjamin Netanyahu has been trying to find an American president stupid enough to go along with him in going after Iran and finally found one.

[00:21:28]Uh, you know, Netanyahu convinced Trump to do this. I'm sure that Trump ran it by Putin who said, "Hey, that's a great idea." Because Putin was, you know, dying financially. You know, the price he needed the price of oil to go up and he knew that a war with Iran would drive up the price of oil. So, I'm guessing that both Netanyahu and Putin told him to do it, you know, and probably Hexath because Hexath just loves people dying, you know, blood, blood. I want more blood. Um, my understanding is General Dan Kaine said that's crazy. They'll close the straight of Hormuz. But, you know, who's paying attention to him?

[00:21:59]He's just a military guy. So, >> and apparently Vance said it as well, right? I mean, in that at least that New York Times reporting had Vance.

[00:22:06]>> Yeah. Or Vance wants us to think he did.

[00:22:08]>> I see. Okay.

[00:22:09]>> We don't know yet, right?

[00:22:11]>> Okay. Good. Yeah. Go ahead. uh because you know Vance is looking at 2028 real seriously >> and with considerable trepidation and nervousness right now and uh competition with Marco Rubio among others. So anyhow, Trump Trump makes this giant mess and his really his only solution right now is to declare victory and come home and basically do whatever it takes to declare victory. And in that case, it looks like it's going to be this 20 some odd billion upfront, a $300 billion payment down the road. Um, he's going to try to extract that money from the Saudis, the Emiratis, the Qataris, you know, from from the other Middle Eastern countries. So, you know, he can claim we didn't have to pay that. And, you know, to put Iran back together and undo that damage. the pro the big problem that he's going to have is that Netanyahu can blow this thing up in an instant and uh is increasingly pissed off at Trump because Netanyahu is looking to go into prison and this war was his ticket to get out of prison and his base wants him to wants him to do to Iran what he did to Gaza, you know, just reduce it to rubble or at least Tyrron, at least capital city and and uh so I would not want to be where Trump is right now. I can tell you, but it's he put himself there. And you know, sadly, there's enough of a right-wing bubble. I was on C-SPAN on Sunday morning. You know, they've got a Republican call-in line, and these Republicans were all calling in. I was on for a little short of an hour, and Republicans are calling in going, "Well, Trump's finally doing what no American president had the courage to do with Iran before, you know, and I'm like, oh my god, you just, you know, you listen to Fox News all day long, you're just getting all your news from these Australian billionaires who who don't give a damn about you. They want your money, you know, and and it's it's it's it's funny, it's sad, it's tragic. Um, but I that's my prediction of, you know, I I think a month from now, I think it's going to take a few weeks actually, you know, to work through all the details.

[00:24:08]But I think a month from now, um, you know, Trump will get criticized for it from left and from right and Republicans will be all bent out of shape and then and then it'll blow over and we'll be off to some new scandal that Trump will create to particularly if the Epstein files come back with the vengeance. You know, I think that there's a good argument to be made that the the the thing that Netanyahu used to convince Trump that now would be a good time to attack Iran is that it will, you know, the Epstein investigations are getting really serious now. and this will blow it right off the front page, which it did. So, you know, I I I think long before the November election will have gone on to new outrages and Iran will be a distant memory. It's my guess slash >> Yeah, I think you're right to point to the kind of propaganda machine that will help paper over it, you know. So, that I think a lot of the payoffs, for example, to Iran, uh those tens of billions of dollars, in in fact, even hundreds of billions will be some of that will be subrosa. think this administration does a lot of stuff that way. Just, you know, in a backroom deal and uh crypto deal, who knows what. So, I I I think you're right. All right. Very last question.

[00:25:16]Cuba, is that the next distraction from Epstein?

[00:25:20]>> Well, he's he got his fingers burned, you know, touching the hot stove of Iran and uh which he thought was going to be Venezuela 2.0.

[00:25:29]And so now he's got to be looking at Cuba thinking, "Okay, maybe this isn't going to work out quite as well as I thought." Um, you've got Marco Rubio who sees taking Cuba as part of the key to his presidential candidacy, but he's got two and a half years to get there. And in fact, it might even work out better for Marco if it's a year from now.

[00:25:48]Meanwhile, you've got the Cuban people literally starving. And you know, tens of thousands of people in Cuban hospitals who are unable to get basic medication, cancer patients being taken off their chemo, surgeries being postponed, people are dying right now as a result of this embargo, which is a war crime by any international standard. It is illegal. And >> it also makes no sense to me, Tom.

[00:26:13]>> How so?

[00:26:14]>> It makes no sense that you're trying to uh impose this embargo on Cuba. I don't get I don't I don't get what you get from that. I mean, you're getting you're gonna get them to cry uncle. They're already close to crying uncle already.

[00:26:25]And it's it's a destitute culture, this society.

[00:26:28]>> The theory that that Marco Rubio has advanced is that at at some point it'll get painful enough that the people will rise up against their the administration and then they will invite us in there.

[00:26:38]there will be the Cuban version of the 1959 Cuban revolution or the, you know, 1970 or 1979 Iranian revolution where the people rise up and take over. The danger with that is that you don't know who the hell is going to be leading the people, you know, is it going to be Fidel Castro? Is it going to be another Ayatollah? Is it going to be I mean, obviously it would be a Catholic version, but um you know, who's it going to be? I mean, and and how are they going to govern? And you know the advantage he has in in Venezuela is that Deli Rodriguez, the vice president of the country, was just as corrupt as Maduro was. But you know, they took out Maduro. They took him and his wife out.

[00:27:20]They killed 80 of the people surrounding him and then basically said to her, "We can do the same thing to you. You can be sitting in an American prison right now or you can dance to our tune and give us all your oil." And so, you know, tankers full of oil have been sold on the market in Venezuelan oil and the money appears to be in an account with Donald Trump's name on it in Bahrain or someplace in the Middle East. You know, at least I've seen news reports that effect. I don't know if they're true. Um, no, I'm not sure anybody knows where the money is.

[00:27:48]And uh, but I don't think Cuba is going to be that easy. I don't think it's going to be anywhere near that easy. And I think he's figuring that out. And and like I said, Marco is the driving force behind this. and he really doesn't need this to happen for another year or two.

[00:28:01]>> I'm going to link to the magic of Tom Hartman under this video. And I say it, it's not it's I I think you cannot read enough Tom Hartman, everyone. So, hartmanreport.org and Hartman, of course, is spelled with two N's. And uh I'll also link to your books, The Hidden History series. They're everywhere in my house. I I love your stuff. You can't believe how prolific you are. Yeah, this is your new one. I pre-ordered it. When does it come? It uh ships on July 7th and it's a murder mystery basically about the 1886 Supreme Court case that set up Citizens United. Without this case, Citizens United could not have happened. And it was a crime. It was a crime.

[00:28:37]>> Who killed the American dream? For those just listening and not seeing it, Thomas is holding up the uh the book.

[00:28:42]>> Crime committed by a corrupt Supreme Court justice, Steven J. field of California and a corrupt clerk of the court, one of the richest men in the country, John Chandler Bro Davis, whose father was then the governor of Massachusetts. And >> thank God there are no more corrupt Supreme Court justices, you know.

[00:28:58]>> There you go, >> Tom. Uh thank you, my friend. You're just generous with your time. You know, you're you're so prolific and I I just uh I drink it in my my friend. We'll see you soon.

[00:29:09]>> Hi, it's Mark and I thought that was great. Hit the notification bell. You'll know whenever there's a new video being dropped. And please subscribe to our channel to help us save the universe.