Trump GUTS Federal Government! Is He TRYING to Destroy the Country?

Trump’s hostile takeover of America starts with slashing Medicaid, gutting the government, and handing even more power to billionaires — this is the endgame for a man intent on destroying our country. MORE FROM THOM 📃 Thom's Hartmann's 'Daily Take' Newsletter: https://HartmannReport.com 🎦 Watch a full program re-run anytime: https://www.patreon.com/thomhartmann 🎧 Audio Podcast: https://thom.tv FOLLOW THOM 📕 AMAZON: https://amzn.to/2hS4UwY 📝 DAILY TAKE: https://hartmannreport.com 👥 FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/ThomHartmannProgram/ 📸 INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/Thom_Hartmann 🎦 PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/thomhartmann 🐦 X: https://www.twitter.com/thom_hartmann Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/hartmannreport.com 🌐 WEBSITE: https://www.thomhartmann.com 📺 YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=thomhartmann 👕 Merchandise: https://teespring.com/stores/thom-hartmann-program-2 🍺 Thom Merchandise: https://teespring.com/thom-hartmann-mug?pid=522&cid=101870 ABOUT THE PROGRAM The Thom Hartmann Program is the leading progressive political talk radio show for political news and comments about Government politics, be it Liberal or Conservative, plus special guests and callers. #MoreFromThom ✔ Amazon links are affiliate links TRANSCRIPT This is, these are the first steps on the path toward dictatorship. We need to be paying careful attention to this and be freaked out by it. So why do the right-wing billionaires want to shut down the federal government? I think the answer is very simple. They don't want to pay their damn taxes. You can come up with all kinds of elaborate explanations. I mean, you know, back in 1951, Russell Kirk wrote this book, The Conservative Mind, in which he posited that, you know, if more than half of America ever reached the middle class, and back at that time it was around 45%, then, you know, women would forget their place in the home, young people would lose respect for their elders, and black people and other minorities, including gay people, would start demanding equality with white men, you know, God forbid, right? And this became basically the basis of the Reagan administration, of Reagan's attack on the middle class. You know, his efforts to take down unions, his efforts to lower taxes on billionaires and raise taxes 18 times on average working people, taxing social security, taxing tips, all these other things that Reagan did. But I don't think there's very many billionaires anymore who really think that it's dangerous to have a middle class that's more than half of America. I mean, we went from about 15% of America being in the middle class in the 1930s, early 1930s, to about 60%, a little over 60% of Americans being in the middle class in 1981, Reagan came into office. Now it's less than 50%. Some numbers suggest 45%, some 47% as the result of 40 years of Reaganomics, 44 years now of Reaganomics. But there's a, I think a much simpler explanation. Back in 1980, David Koch, the late David Koch ran for vice president on the Libertarian Party's platform. And, you know, which basically called for the repeal of all federal programs, the end of public schools, the end of Medicare, the end of social security, the end of the Environmental Protection Agency, the end of the Internal Revenue Service, the end of all taxation, including capital gains taxation, ending the Occupational Safety and Health Act, ending the FAA, ending the FDA, all of these things. In other words, gut the federal government. And they wanted to do it basically the same way that Mitt Romney's company gutted Clear Channel back when I worked there. Louise and I moved from Vermont to Oregon in what, 2004, 2005? I forget the year. It was one of those two years. Because we were on Air America, we're, you know, noon to three Eastern time. And a local station here in Portland, it's nine to noon Pacific time, a local station here in Portland, KPOJ offered me a morning show and a free studio to do my national show. And, you know, which was pretty important to us back then because there wasn't a lot of money in progressive talk radio. And so we took it. We took the gig. And so for four or five years, I did six hours of nonstop radio every, every morning. Three, you know, six to nine a.m. local show, nine a.m. to noon national show. And so I was there in a Clear Channel station when Mitt Romney took over Clear Channel, his company, Bain Capital, took over Clear Channel and just stripped the company. I mean, we had 20, 30 employees there. And by the time they were done, they were down to, you know, a half a dozen or maybe a dozen at the most. It was, they laid off everybody in the newsroom except one person. I mean, it was just, it was a bloodbath.