OLIGARCHS v. DEMOCRACY
The Hartmann Report
Thom Hartmann
4.5 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 8 October 2019
⏱️ 62 minutes
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Summary
How did it happen that right-wing autocrats have taken over and putting back the progress of American democracy made since the New Deal? The level of corruption in this administration is stunning, as nearly half of surveyed Americans think it might be better to have essentially a king. ~ Are the principles of democracy this country was founded on being eroded right before our eyes? The director of the CIA has described Trump's administration as equivalent to a banana republic. Did Trump fire our ambassador to Ukraine as a part of a scam to get an American oligarch on the board of an oil and gas company there? ~ Are conservatives deliberately radicalizing our police forces to become the right wing's Gestapo? ~ Plus Thom reads from 'The Cult of Trump' by Steven Hassan.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is the Tom Hartman program. |
| 0:15.0 | Welcome back, Tom Hartman here with you. |
| 0:17.0 | And tip of the hat and many thanks to all the folks, a couple hundred folks who showed up for my book signing |
| 0:22.0 | in our labor panel and what not in Chicago and |
| 0:24.2 | thanks to WCPT and to the unions who helped put that together. |
| 0:28.0 | Tip of the hat to y'all. |
| 0:30.3 | How does it happen that America gets taken over by right-wing autocrats and we see basically |
| 0:35.9 | American democracy being turned back? |
| 0:39.7 | And in fact, let me just go back a week ago, week and a half ago, on Faree Zakaria's show, |
| 0:45.0 | and I talked about this a little bit last week, but I was, you know, as I was talking about it, I was kind of organizing in my head this op-ed that I published last week. |
| 0:52.0 | The one I have printed out in front of me |
| 0:54.0 | was published on the LA Progressive and the headline is we have to undo the attack on the |
| 0:58.0 | middle class. It started with Reagan if we want our democracy back. In a couple years ago, two researchers Foa and Monk, |
| 1:05.4 | FOA and MOU and K, Roberto Stephan Foa and Yasha Monk, |
| 1:10.3 | published this paper in the Journal of Democracy and what they found |
| 1:14.0 | and just listen to this and think of Trump as you're listening to this this is |
| 1:18.4 | mind-boggling in the United States write, among all age cohorts, the sheriff citizens who believe it would be better to have a, quote, strong leader, who does not have to, quote, bother with parliament and elections has risen over time. In 1995, 24% of a respondents |
| 1:37.2 | held this view. By 2011, that figure had increased to 32%. By the time the paper came out in 2016, fully 49% of Americans thought |
| 1:48.5 | elites should be making decisions rather than quote government. |
| 1:55.2 | Almost half of Americans. |
| 1:57.6 | Where does this come from? |
| 1:59.0 | Well, Foa and Monkwright, in the past three decades the share of U.S. citizens |
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