Clueless Trump Puppets Perform Cringeworthy Diplomacy for Vlad

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1:11This is the Tom Hartman program. The line with us are friend Phil Etner, the, the, the, the, the, the Coach 100 program. South African気ない, um camping działal channel. Does it get anywhere with a robotic control? I know. my Kushner and Whitcoff here in Khev. But the Russians have been giving the Capitol an absolute shellacking, and we are constantly under air raid siren. It's almost a constant, really. It takes a toll on the city. We've, you know, Touchwood had a little bit of quiet in the last, I don't know, 24 hours, but I anticipate it'll return. Yeah, yeah, this is tough stuff.

2:13I'm seeing that Ukraine is having some successes, continuing to have successes, striking at Russia's energy infrastructure. Thoughts on that? Yeah, they're hitting deep into Russia's territory, hitting electrical infrastructure, hitting the storage and refinement and distribution centers for their fossil fuel industries. But in addition to that, actually hitting some of their military targets, that are their strategic assets, in particular, they hit Ingalls Air Force Base, which is thousands of miles inside of Russia and is supposed to be one of the most secured sites in the Russian Federation, and they hit a strategic bomber that was just sitting out there on the tarmac. So the Ukrainians are finding success inside of Russia, but we're also hearing reports of, and I don't want to overstate it, some counteroffensive by the Ukrainians against Russia's summer offensive, finding some footing in a town called Leman,

3:15which is kind of at the foothills of the approaches to what are called the fortress cities. Now the Russians continue to advance on those fortress cities, and that is the bulwark against the divide between the Donbass and the rest of Ukraine, and if they can break through there, it's thought that they would have a far easier path to attack a major city like Harkiv, or even the capital. I do not suspect that will happen. There's been widespread analysis. Recently, I think it was the Finnish Defense Minister came out and openly said, there is no way Russia is going to take those fortress cities by the end of the year. It's just not at the advance, at the rate of advance that they are doing, before they've even actually gotten to these fortified positions, it's too slow in incremental advance. So there is reason for cautious optimism, but you never want to underestimate the enemy and Russia is a formidable enemy.

4:15Yeah, for sure. Did you see this clip of when Jared Krishner and Steve Whitkopf were in Moscow with Putin and Steve Whitkopf all but got down on his knees and said, please Mr. Putin. Kiss the ring. Yeah, may I shine your shoes, sir? May I pleasure you? I mean, it's... There's that moment when he said, oh, we were standing outside and we thought, oh, what great memories we'll have when we're all retired. Well, one, Putin's never going to retire. There's only two ways out for Putin and that's either toes up or somebody deposes him. You know, he either dies of natural causes or somebody gets rid of him and that will mean he gets a severe case of lead poisoning. And secondly, if you know Russian, they didn't translate it as when we're often retirement. It's when we were on our pensions is what they said, which is kind of like an insult to Whitkopf need. Of course, it went right over his head because both Whitkopf and Krishner have no idea what they're doing there.

5:16They're out of their daps. I mean, the translation was literally when we're pensioners, when we're old men. And you see the body language of Putin during this entire thing. By the way, Putin speaks plenty good enough English to have understood exactly the posterior kissing, the backside kissing that Whitkopf was going on about there. And then for him to have gone to Moscow eight times and then he comes here to kill for the first time just indicates the preferential treatment that is being given to the Kremlin by the White House and the fact that they clearly take Putin's side on things. I mean, they openly said while they were here in the Ukrainian capital, we're businessmen. We're looking at this as a business deal. While they're sitting next to a president who is a man who has watched his fellow countrymen and has been the leader of this nation, watch his citizenry be brutalized, terrorized,

6:17literally robbed rape and murdered. I'm sorry, yeah, the rape squads and the mass murders and he's sitting next to a guy who's treating this like it's a real estate deal. You can't deal with Putin like it's a real estate deal. That's not what he's after. It's not a negotiation, it's not a win-win. As Kushtar said, we're looking for a win-win. Russia and Putin don't look at it as a win-win. They're looking to conquer and that is an absolute. That's a zero sum equation for them. And these two guys are an embarrassment. They're making me so angry and frustrated that experts in the Russia desk in the first Trump term were absolutely swept out. I think Fiona Hill, I think of Alexander Vindman. I think of all these guys who could have been really helpful in this time of crisis and instead these two bumpkins, these two, I'm trying to say something. I'm trying to avoid getting you find, Tom,

7:20because I'd love to say what I think of these two men. But more importantly than anything else at the essence of it, is they are completely out of their depth. They have no idea what they're doing. Well, apparently, accortations will lead to nothing. According to the Russian media, their pitch to Putin was, let's wind this war up so that America and Russia can get back to making some good deals, like building a Trump Tower Moscow or something like that. Let's talk about some real estate deals that could be done once we end this war. That was their pitch. With all the blood on their hands, with all the blood on the Russian's hands, and they want to think about a club med Sochi. Exactly. I mean, it's disgusting. There needs to be reparations. There needs to be accountability for the crimes that they've committed here. They hunt people down with drones, Tom. FPV drones, they are targeting civilians. There are a multitude of videos that the Russians themselves release because they're proud of it. They're hitting little old ladies with FPV drones,

8:23hitting fruit sellers in the market, children. Teenagers are on their bikes in Kramatorsk, and a drone flies right down, and they just stare each other down, and then boom. It's a daily war crime, and that's not only to mention the fact of the attacks on the infrastructure that they are doing. Unless we get those interceptors here, those Patriot interceptors over here, and hopefully we're starting to get some good news on that front, not from Washington, but from the Europeans who have a deal set up so that they can buy from the United States. [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ I mean, it's disgraceful that it's going that way. We should be giving these Patriots to Ukraine. We made a promise that the Buddha has memorandum. We should be doing this directly, but instead the Europeans are acting as middlemen. And so we're hoping to get a quick infusion

9:25of Patriot missile defense systems before we go into winter, because they're going to try and take out the electricity, the heating, and the water, and they're going to do it with hypersonic ballistic missiles, and only Patriots can stop that. So the Europeans are going to do a stopgap where they give their supplies to the Ukrainians, and then they will buy from Lockheed Martin to resupply their munitions, because it's needed right now. By the time winter comes, it's going to be too late. We need those Patriots. ASAP. My recollection is that there was a proposal like that like months ago, and that Trump initially said, oh yeah, sure, no problem, and then he killed it. And that was when JD Vance said that the proudest moment of his vice presidency was when he stopped American weapon or if I'm going to Ukraine. And it was supposed to go via European countries. Am I misremembering? No, there was that period where they were trying to figure out how to do it. But there is a system in place that the Europeans can transfer

10:31from their stockpile to Ukraine. And then again, they backfill. So it's not, you know, it's a little bit more convoluted. And I'm sure there were negotiations that happened between the Europeans and the Americans about third party possession of high-tech weaponry and things like that. But we know that we have heard in recent days that the Europeans are expected to send about 1,000 Patriot missiles, which is a good thing. Which would be a good thing. And Germany is taking the lead in that, I think in no small measure, because of the Russian attack on Leipzig airport, where there were some Ukrainian trainer jets parked there. But nevertheless, you know, that's a Russian munition on a German airport that could have killed a technician or just somebody, you know, I mean, it just could have gone a misfire and you'd had a dead German.

11:32Leipzig, I think, was a really big deal. So the Germans are kind of taking the lead on immediately trying to get Patriots here to... Well, not to mention that they're freaked out about AFD, now getting this wind and Saxony and Holt and AFD wants to dump NATO and build a bridge to Putin. I mean, obviously AFD has been funded by Putin or at least, you know, propaganda. And you've got to be a musk promoting it on X. That's right. Well, I mean, is there any daylight between musk and the Kremlin? I don't know. I find his activities very suspicious. But I think you're right. I think the AFD or LePin or Farage and Brexit and even Maga, all of them have had support from the Kremlin. Just simply to so discord, just simply to divide and conquer. It's what they do and they don't care if they're supporting far-right nationalists. They always say that the Ukrainians are Nazis. Well, they don't really care about that.

12:33What they care about is defeating the West and the best way to defeat the West is if you hit us against one another. And that's what they're doing. They're trying to drive a wedge between Europe and North America and God help us if they do. Yeah, and let's not forget. Putin was an intelligence officer specialized in this sort of thing. I mean, this is barely weak. Anyhow, the great philanthropist podcast is on the edge. You can find him on YouTube as well, Philip Etner. Phil, thanks so much for dropping by. It's always good talking to you. Good talking to you. This is the very best to stay safe and firm. I'll be back with more than news of the day and your calls in just a moment. This is the Tom Hartman program. Speaking the truth, Putin and Trump would really rather you didn't know, I'll be right back with you.

13:48They were never meant to home. The old America is dying. Who will build a new one now? Will we buy before the power for? Or finally stand our ground? This country still belongs to us. If we remember what is true, when the old America is dying, we the people build a new one. We have stood here once before when fear was just a strength. When angry men blame strangers while the ribs just keep the blood, but another road is waiting when all king can own the day.

14:51Where a job can feed a family and democracy still has a say. My op-ed at harvesterport.com, the old America is dying. Who will build a new one? I've been wanting to write about this and talk about this for a long time. And it finally all came together in my head yesterday. As I sat down, well, Louisiana were brainstorming this thing. You know, how came Jeffries weaker two ago said that he was not in favor of Medicare for all. Essentially. Really what he said was we might be able to get there, but first we've got to do a few other things like let's strengthen the Affordable Care Act, which is just a neoliberal giveaway to the big insurance industry that Barack Obama put into place.

15:55And Republicans for some bizarre reason hate, which is weird because it was a heritage foundation idea to begin with. But nonetheless, when Jeffries said that, he basically revealed that he doesn't think we are in a populist moment. On the other hand, Donald Trump, Steve Bannon, the neo-fascist tech bros and the right-wing billionaires, they fully realize that we are in a populist moment. As do Bernie Sanders, AOC, Mamdani, L. Syed, and hundreds of other Democratic candidates this year. So what is a populist moment? What happens when the public loses faith in their government? It's really that simple. When people no longer have confidence that the government is working for them, they basically want a revolution, not a bloody one, but they want change, they want dramatic change.

16:58And populism is neither left-wing nor right-wing. It can be either. It's almost never centered. It's always left or right. So the last time there was a major collapse in confidence in government was in the early 1930s, where the late 1920s, in our Herbert Hoover was the Republican president. He and Coolidge before him and Harding before him had lowered the top income tax rate from 91% out to 25%. They had deregulated the securities and banking industries. And the consequence of this was the Republican Great Depression, the Stock Market crash in October of 1929. And by the time FDR came into office in March of 1933, fully a third of Americans were out of work. Now that Republican Great Depression didn't just hit the United States.

18:01It hit the rest of the world as well, particularly Germany, because Germany got the worst of it, because it had just been defeated in World War I. So what happened was in both the United States and in Germany, in both countries, about a third of the total population working population were unemployed. And in both countries, people were like, this sucks. We want something new and different. That's the definition of a populist moment. And here in the United States, we got a Bernie Sanders kind of candidate, FDR, who said we're going to tax the rich. We're going to use that money to build out the infrastructure of America. We're going to put America and working class people back to work. We're going to make sure that they get a decent damn wage, because they're going to have a union and we're going to establish a minimum wage. That was FDR slash Bernie in 1932. And 1933 became president. Similarly, in Germany, Hitler said, I'm going to put people back to work.

19:04We're going to reindustrialize Germany. We're going to do it by rebuilding the army. We're going to build the autobahn. We're going to start a car company called the People's Car Volkswagen. We're going to put this country back together, just elect me. And I alone can do it. And it's going to take strength. So that's right wing populism. So the populist moment of the 1930s brought us FDR, a Bernie-like FDR, and a Trump-like Hitler in the United States and Germany. We are again in a populist moment. In 1960, when Dwight Eisenhower was president, John Kennedy was running, 90 percent, I think the actual number was 87 percent, of Americans told Pugh, I believe it was. It might have been another, the link is in my article. Almost 90 percent of Americans said, the government always or almost always works in my interest.

20:09Nine out of ten people. Today that number is at 17 percent. We're right across both parties and independents. That is by definition a populist moment. And the Republicans figured this out. In 2016, I think we entered a populist moment in the middle of the Bush presidency. I think it was the 2006 election when Democrats won like crazy. That was the time when Americans were realizing that they had been lied into the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. That Bush was just interested in cutting taxes on billionaires. That Cheney was just interested in bailing out Haliburton, his company that he owned hundreds of thousands of shares of stock in and that the whole thing was a scam, a grift. And I think we've been there ever since. I mean, the fact that in 2008, Barack Obama won the election by saying he was going to offer us hope and change.

21:09Change is the populist word. In my opinion, it proves that. Now Obama didn't deliver. Instead of actually changing America, all he did was put into place a heritage foundation right wing plan to turn our healthcare system over to the billionaires who owned the six largest health insurance companies. And so we got the Affordable Care Act. But he was not a populist. He is not a populist to this day. He's a neoliberal, just like Bill Clinton was in 92. Biden tried to move away from that, tried to move toward a populist message and doing his student debt, for example, the Republicans took it to the Supreme Court. But it was too little too late. On the other hand, the Republicans understood this, right? They put Trump in in 2016. There are multiple polls, including a political fact that looked into this, that show that Donald Trump would have been easily beaten by Bernie Sanders in 2016, easily beaten.

22:11This horror never would have been inflicted on our country. But Hillary Clinton and Bill and his wealthy donors decided to disrupt Bernie's campaign and here we are, right? Two terms of Donald Trump. Because the only person with a populist message in the 2016 election, in the 2020 election, in the 2024 election, really the only person with a populist message was Donald Trump. I mean, I suppose you could argue that in the 2020 election, Joe Biden had a relatively populist message. I could make that case. And that's why he got elected. But like I said, it was too little too late. So here we are now in this populist moment and the Democratic Party is torn in half. You've got these corporate Democrats, the people who keep popping up on MSNBC like Paul Rykhov and whatnot going, yeah, yeah, we need to take out Iran and we need to take the lefties or too left and quite, quite, quite.

23:13You got that. The Marie Gluzincamp Perez is, you know, who vote against Democrats in Congress and John Fetterman. You got them, you know, taking money from big corporations and then you've got progressives, you know, J.B. Pritzker and AOC and, you know, there's just a whole, L.C.I. and Mamdani and a bunch of them. And the bottom line is that the Democratic Party needs to wake up some pretty damn fast and realize that we are in a populist moment and that the populist candidates are the ones who are consistently winning and will consistently win. And we need to be pushing that populism within the Democratic Party, grassroots activism, true change, not just hope, true change in America. We need a new, new deal. And we need to defeat this right-wing populism that is an echo of Adolf Hitler that we find in the Trump administration. So vote.

24:13Joe and Chicago, hey, Joe, what's on your mind today? Yes, I just wanted to take a moment to reflect on 9-11. When that happened, I was living in Chicago. I used to live in New York and was absolutely horrified. I used to spend a lot of time there mesmerized by the vast amounts of people that committed in and out of that center. The media didn't seem to understand to the end of the day that there was like 12 buildings in that complex that all were going to be destroyed when those towers came down, which happened. And that those towers, there was no way in and out of them. You had, if the elevators were working, you had to go to the 35th floor to transfer to an elevator to go higher up and different elevators went to different levels.

25:14The entrance was like 10 stories underground. There was no in and out on the ground floor or the street level entrance. They were combined in this massive tunnel system where in Jersey and New York subway chains intersected. And so you had actually underground and then go back up in them. So effectively trapping all those people in those buildings for the most part, some did get out. But the horror of that just moved me like nothing else. It was like a close encounter experience. I had to get there and see what happened. And within two weeks I was there, got into a building next door to this site. I found my way up to the very top, looked down, got a couple rolls of photographs showing the destruction of the fortatory building that was part of that complex. It just horrified me when they built the memorial. It was incredibly, it's an incredible moving site of the base of those towers, a void that goes down with this waterfall.

26:15It is very moving. But over the years and going back and looking at the memorials, the feelings have changed to horror to just shame and despising what we've done as a result of that. The way we react to this. You know, Timothy Snyder, the fascism expert, his sub-stack newsletter this morning was about how on 9-11 he immediately published a piece saying, don't over-react. Now is the time. Use this, since this came out of Saudi Arabia, use this as an excuse to get off oil. Don't start a friggin' war. And of course George Bush had to start a war because his popularity was in the country. It was worse than that. When we started torturing people, we created the Civil War. I won't describe what you've read about what people did to each other because it's just unforgettable. Oh yeah, I would have happened it. I would have been great what happened down in turning people into vegetables. That one guy with his panic name, I'm forgetting his name now, he literally lost his ability to speak.

27:21He was tortured so severely by us. And he had nothing to do with anything. He was just picked up. He was using power. Jose, something to do, I think. People like people. But the thing with the Democrats should have really demanded that Bush and Trini resign. They shouldn't even have been told the resign they should have done so. Well, and especially when it came out that on August 6th of 2001, George W. Bush had been warned explicitly that this was coming and refused to do anything about it. In fact, he refused to go back to Washington DC until after 9-11 because he knew it was coming. And he didn't want to be in the White House when the White House got hit because he knew that DC was going to be a target. Joe, I got to move along, but thanks for sharing your observations with us. And thank you. Lawrence and St. Paul Minnesota, hey, Lawrence, thanks for listening to KTNF. What's on your mind today? Yeah, living in St. Paul right now, I'm in Las Vegas, but I'm all over the country. Okay. And I do realize, I do realize the thing I want to make two points here. Since I'm traveling to country, here's the problem. The problem is not with Donald Trump. He's a genius.

28:23I mean, four or 10 year old and a 10 year old is mine. He's a genius. Of course, he's going to give you a give everybody $5,000. But the problem is not with Donald Trump. It's with the Democratic Party and the Democratic Party. There's still being said by MSNBC and they don't know that they're being duked by that news channel. And here's the thing. The Democratic Party, they're still trying to appease to a voter block that will never vote for them. And that is the initial problem with the Democrats is being fostered through MSNBC. Well, not all of MSNBC, but I get it. When I see, you know, I guess like Paul Reikoff on all the time, it's like, oh, really? Yeah. And I'm not saying, oh, yeah, everything has its limits. But now that you can tell the switch. No, Ali Velt, she's doing a good job there. Rachel Maddo is doing a good job there. There's some, you know, Chris Hayes, pretty much a pretty good job.

29:24But yeah, I get it. Particularly their daytime lineup. Right. And that's the thing. So that purge test is not going to get him better until we try to reach out to other people instead of just trying to appease their voter block there with no vote for them. Thanks for coming back here. Lawrence, I got to run. I'm sorry, I'm out of time. But thanks for the call. Well said. And thank you for being with us today. We'll be back same time, same place. The meantime, don't forget democracy is not a spectator sport. It requires all of us. And that includes you. So get out there, get active, taggy. You're in. There's so much to do right now. From the writing postcards, calling people, letting people know, sending around articles that you've read. I mean, activism has never been more important. This is the most critical election of my lifetime. I guess it is, I'm guessing it is a wish to you. So tag your it. Have a great afternoon. I'll catch up with you at Stacey. You've been listening to Tom Hartman. For audio and video archives, visit Tom Hartman.com.

30:34You