How Right-Wing Billionaires Are Robbing America Blind

Hinzugefügt: 2026-05-09

[00:00:00]But my op-ed today, my my daily take at hartmannreport.com uh which you can get in your in inbox in your email inbox every day for free.

[00:00:10]Uh hartmannreport.com, how right-wing billionaires created a faux movement, phony movement, fake movement, and used it to rob America blind. You know, >> [clears throat and cough] >> for decades many of us, uh Democrats, people on the left, whatever, suspected what's now being confirmed uh in plain English by a Trump insider.

[00:00:31]Ashley St. Clair, she's 27 years old, she's the mother of one of uh Elon Musk's children.

[00:00:38]And as such, she became a social media star, over a million followers on X.

[00:00:43]Um a huge platform.

[00:00:46]Uh became one She was the uh Turning Point USA brand ambassador. She became one of MAGA's most visible young women.

[00:00:54]And uh she's decided uh you know, for whatever reason, I mean, there's there's speculation and you know, Elon not treating her right or something. Who knows?

[00:01:05]But she's decided to blow the lid off this whole thing. In a series of uh TikTok monologues in a recent feature in the Washington Post, she described in detail how the Republicans right-wing influencer economy actually works.

[00:01:21]Uh and the bottom line, she says, roughly 99% of the right-wing influencers out there are being subsidized, are being paid.

[00:01:31]Um she says some Republican consulting firms run platforms where wealthy donors and Republican political operatives can list influence campaigns, and independent influencers can basically bid on them, say, "Oh, yeah, I'll I'll I'll pitch that in my podcast if you give me $5,000."

[00:01:50]And there's no disclosure on any of this because the content is, quote, political. And the Supreme Court keeps saying "Political speech has protections that commercial speech doesn't." In commercial speech, for example, you know, if I was to to try to sell you a widget, uh hey, I've got a new widget here.

[00:02:08]Uh if you if you use this widget, you'll never get cancer, right? That's a lie.

[00:02:12]And so, if I was to do that, you know, I could get fined. I could even go to jail.

[00:02:18]Um but if I said, "Hey, you know, Donald Trump has a brand new program that's going to make sure that you don't get cancer."

[00:02:25]Uh even if it was a lie, there's nothing that can be done cuz that's quote political speech, according to the Supreme Court.

[00:02:31]But the problem is that these people are actually being paid to say these things.

[00:02:36]So, this isn't just political speech.

[00:02:38]This is an economic deal.

[00:02:41]And as such, it can be regulated.

[00:02:44]Um it it it This is a real problem because, you know, you you get a couple of dozen major influencers, you know, the the the big talk shows, the big podcasts, uh out there saying something, and they're all saying it. And then all the thousands of smaller influencers, the ones across social media, the the the local talk radio hosts on the 1,500 right-wing radio stations all across America. There's hundreds of them. I I go to the convention, the the talkers convention in New York about every other year.

[00:03:15]Usually end up debating them on a stage.

[00:03:18]Excuse me, you can find all that living over on YouTube.

[00:03:23]Pardon me.

[00:03:24]Uh bit of a cold here today.

[00:03:27]But anyhow, um the the the small-time guys see the big-time guys all focusing on one particular message each day or or, you know, at the most three. And they think that this is an organic process, and they jump on the bandwagon. And this And then what happens is the mainstream media picks it up, and pretty soon you got, you know, a full-blown, quote, movement.

[00:03:50]And uh you know, I mean, you know, if this sounds familiar, we saw this in 2024 when the Biden Justice Department indicted Tenet Media for funneling $10 million from Putin to right-wing influencers, including Tim Pool, Benny Johnson, and Dave Rubin, who are still, you know, major platform right-wing influencers.

[00:04:15]Um, one right-wing influencer was paid report- reportedly paid 400,000 a month plus $100,000 signing bonus.

[00:04:23]Again, money coming from the Kremlin.

[00:04:26]The breaking point the bro- excuse me, the broader point still stands. The entire this entire system is saturated with covert money. I told the story on the air yesterday, I'll repeat it. Um, I back in the early 2000s, I had a a friend who was a right-winger or an acquaintance who was a right-wing talk show host. And he was a reasonable guy.

[00:04:44]He just, you know, he was well paid for what he did. He'd be the first to tell you.

[00:04:49]And he told me how he he would organize a dozen or so speeches to local high schools, uh, you know, around his state, and every time he did one, he'd get a $20,000 check from one of these right-wing foundations as a speaking fee. And it was really just their way of subsidizing him. And according to Ashley St. Claire, you know, Musk's baby mama, 99% of the right-wing influencers out there are getting this kind of spiffing.

[00:05:15]We know that, you know, Heritage gave a million dollars to Rush Limbaugh, gave a million dollars to Sean Hannity. I mean, you know, this stuff is fairly well documented.

[00:05:24]So, uh, and it was it was characterized as advertising, right?

[00:05:30]So, none of this came out of nowhere, right?

[00:05:34]This all started with the Powell memo back in 1971, and then Nixon put Powell on the Supreme Court, and promptly the Supreme Court ruled that it's okay to bribe politicians. I mean, there was the Buckley and Bellotti decisions, and the corporations could do it too. Joseph Coors took took that to heart and seeded the Heritage Foundation, Richard Mellon Scaife, Bradley, Koch, Uihlein, the Sackler families, all you know, they're just pouring money into these things.

[00:06:00]And that same network is pour is continues to pour money into this right-wing machine. And then of course you got Rupert Murdoch, and then you got Elon Musk with with Twitter.

[00:06:09]And um you know, when you look back and you know, what is it that they're pitching?

[00:06:16]I I find this particularly fascinating.

[00:06:18]Here are their pitches. Number one, working-class white people should be afraid of their black and Hispanic neighbors.

[00:06:24]Number two, women in the workplace are stealing jobs from white men.

[00:06:28]Number three, grant gay and trans people are coming for your kids.

[00:06:31]Number four, low or no taxes on billionaires will trickle down to average working people.

[00:06:38]Uh number five, deregulation will lower prices instead of raising them. Uh six, fossil fuels are essential and climate science is a hoax. And finally, Russia and Israel are our friends while Canada, Germany, and France are our enemies.

[00:06:51]I mean, this is a dis- deliberately constructed fog fog of lies and grievances, and it has just one purpose.

[00:06:59]To keep us at each other's throats so they can continue to rob us blind without our noticing.

[00:07:08]I mean, the the RAND Corporation, I've often cited this this figure from about a decade ago where the RAND Corporation found that from the Reagan the beginning of the Reagan presidency up until about a decade ago, 50 roughly 50 trillion dollars had been transferred from the uh pockets, homes, paychecks, pensions, what you know, everything else of average [snorts] working people into the money bins of the the of the morbidly rich.

[00:07:37]Well, they updated that last year.

[00:07:40]Uh by a guy named Carter Price uh working for RAND. They updated it. Now it's $79 trillion. If I said billion, I meant trillion. $79 trillion that the morbidly rich have taken from you and me, from average working people, and moved into their money bins.

[00:07:58]In 2023 alone, the last year we have numbers for, it was $3.9 trillion that the morbidly rich got from you and me in this transfer of wealth.

[00:08:10]That's enough to give every every working person in America a $32,000 a year raise.

[00:08:16]And meanwhile, as we're handing all this money to the Elon Musks and Mark Zuckerbergs of the world and Jeff Bezos's of the world, while we're doing that, we're the only developed country in the world without a national health care system. We're the only developed country in the world where you go broke going to college.

[00:08:33]We're the only uh developed country in the world who's, you know, under assault, whose health care system is under assault.

[00:08:40]Uh whose infrastructure is crumbling. Uh we're fall falling behind Europe and China in a clean energy transition that's going to be necessary not only to have independence from oil, but also to stop fossil fuel.

[00:08:52]So, these guys, they manufacture rage so that the billionaires can keep robbing us.

[00:08:57]So, >> [clears throat] >> you know, Ashley Sinclair has done us a great [music] favor. She's laid out exactly how it works. Not like it was a surprise or a shock or even a big [music] secret, but at least it's now public.

[00:09:09]So, the next time somebody in your life, you know, puts forward some viral piece [music] of right-wing propaganda, just ask them, "You know, do you know who's paying for that?"

[00:09:18]Odds are it's a [music] billionaire or a big corporation.