This is the Tom Hartman program.

Daily take over at Hartman Report.com is the assault on democracy stronger than we think

and nearing permanent control. My point is that Trump and the billionaires, the fascist,

the neo-fascist, billionaires, and the foreign fascists, that he's aligned himself and,

and as a result the United States, or at least part of the United States with, are in some

ways stronger than I think most Americans realize,

and in some ways weaker than some of us who are in despair realized.

Stephen Levitsky, the co-author of How Democracies Die, says that there's like this spectrum.

You know, on the far, on one far side of the line is, you know, democracy, functioning democracy.

And the other far end of the line is oligarchy, autocracy, tyranny, despotism, dictatorship.

And in between is this thing that he calls competitive authoritarianism.

In other words, you have an authoritarian government.

It rules by fear,

and it exploits the rule of law to go after people that it doesn't like. You know, the way

Trump is going after James Comey right now, for example, or ICE is going after protesters.

And yet, you still have elections. It's still, quote, competitive. Not really, but sort of.

And that's the world that, according to Stephen Levinsky, we are now fully in. I think it's a

reasonable description. They're using the nation's systems to skew the rules to restrict opposition,

to weaponize institutions, to vandalize the truth, to destroy and ignore

democratic norms. I mean, we're about halfway down that road in just a short 10 months.

And the template for this, of course, is Project 2025, which Victor Orban and his buddies

gave to the Heritage Foundation, spoke with the people from the Heritage

...