Has the Media Normalized the GOP’s Voter Suppression?

0:00I have several cherished sweaters in my closet from Quince that I wear on repeat. You know, I run cold sweaters for sweaters often and that's one of the things that Quince does best. Quince also makes premium pants, fitted tees and polos and breathable active wear. Quality basics designed to work across your wardrobe and hold up to everyday wear. Everything at Quince is priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands. They work directly with ethical factories and therefore they cut out the middlemen to your pain for high quality and not brand markup. And as such as clothing, Quince brings that same approach to everything they make from hotel quality bedding and bath and kitchen essentials and thoughtfully designed furniture. They make well-designed pieces for everyday living. Find your next fall favorites at Quince. Download the Quince app for app exclusive offers or go to quince.com slash Tom THOM. If free shipping on your order in 365 day returns now available on Canada and the UK too. That's q-u-i-n-c-e.com slash Tom. Quince.com slash Tom. This is the Tom Harbin Program.

1:15Hey, welcome to the car program. On the line with us are Buddy Craig Enger, the journalist author, most recently of Den of Spies, Reagan Carter in the secret history of the trees in the stole the White House. He also has a great substag newsletter. Craig Enger, well just go over to substag and plug in Craig Enger. It'll pop right up. I don't have the URL here, sorry. Craig, what is the URL for your substag Gs. You know, I don't have the URL type of mine but the title I use for it is the same as one of my books, American Compromise. Uh-huh, thank you very much, American Compromise. And Craig, your most recent article here, the Bogoton Brothers and the Long Shadow of the Brainy Don. This is fascinating. And hearkens back to some of your earliest reporting on Donald Trump's connections to the Russian Mafia. Tell us about it. Well, absolutely. It goes back to when I first started out roughly ten years ago and I tried to get it the origin of Russia's ties to Donald Trump.

2:18What I went back to 1984 and that's when a man named David Bogoton, who is brother of the guy I'm talking about today, Jacob Bogoton, went into Trump Tower. He put down six million dollars in cash and bought five condos. And this, according to the New York State Attorney General, was laundering money through Trump real estate. And it was the beginning of a whole bunch of money laundering that eventually totaled more than a billion dollars. And so flash forward from 1984 to now, what is that 42 years? And the brother, Jacob, who never really went to jail, but he was indicted over some of this stuff with the Russian Mafia. There was a pump at Dubb's Thox scandal that he was part of.

3:18And he allegedly burned down his own house in Virginia for the insurance and the fire killed one of his neighbors. So there's an arson murder charge against him that just came out now. That's amazing. In other words, Donald Trump would not be as rich as he is. In fact, he'd be dead broke. If he hadn't been running a, can you call it a criminal money laundering operation? Or is this legal in the United States? Well, it is sort of legal if you can't prove Donald Trump's state of mind. I mean, to prosecute him, you would have to say that prove that he knew he was getting money from sex trafficking or whatever it is the Mafia was doing. That got him that money. And I mean, I think whatever you think of Donald Trump, he's smart enough to turn a blind eye to such things and not ask the questions that'll get him into trouble.

4:24But it really is what's extraordinary to me is there. If you look at the whole world of money laundering, of offshore wealth, it's a universe with as much as $60 trillion in it all over the world. And that's twice the economy of the United States of America. And two of the key people in it are Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump. And a third one, Lesser was Jeffrey Epstein. So this is a very important world. And I think it gives inside into exactly who Trump is and how he got it a lot of his money. Yeah, it's a remarkable, remarkable story. You have kind of become an expert on all things Trump. I'm curious your take on this. I don't know if you saw Trump's little talk this morning at the ellipse where he was, you know, they wouldn't let him speak at ground zero in New York. So he held a little presser in DC. Did you catch his statement about being carried out of the wreckage of 9-11?

5:30I know I'm afraid I missed that. I will, I will, I will read you the quote. I was building a big building in New York and I took the whole crew down there right after this happened. Wasn't too much we could do. We had other buildings in the United States. Steel building was creaking. I'll never forget two firemen. We thought it was coming down on top of us and two firemen, big, strong guys. I'm not the smallest guy in the world. They grabbed me under my arms. They had to get me out of there. They literally lifted me up. Not an easy thing to do. I'm big. They lifted me up and they started running with me. I said, Fellas, I can run myself. Wow. Yeah. I mean, you can see, in his daily posting, you can see him decompensating in real time. One of my memories of what he was doing around 9-11 when it was 25 years ago was he went on the air and he said, well, now I've got the tallest building in Lower Manhattan. That's right, which wasn't true, by the way. There was another building that was what, 15 feet taller than Trump Tower. Unbelievable. Yeah.

6:30So do you think that he's, I mean, the Washington Post and his first term documented what, 30,000 lies that he told in office? Is it your sense that he, I think the thing that characterizes a pathological liar, a psychiatricly pathological liar from somebody who just lies for advantage is that the pathological liar actually comes to believe his own lies. He's constantly inventing his own reality. Is that what's going on here? Well, I'm not a shrinker of any type, but to me, a lot of it stems from Roy Cohn who taught him way back. Roy Cohn, of course, was the dark, satanic prince of the American legal world and he was Trump's lawyer back in the 70s. And he taught Trump, deny, deny, deny, never admit anything. And I think that's one of the things you see in Trump. And certainly when he talks about the 2020 presidential election and of late, I mean, he's

7:31just been nuts. If you look at the various things he's posting on true social. The stuff, him and Natalie apparently staying up late in the White House bedroom just cranking this stuff out. It's totally weird. I wanted to get to your book, Dennis Spies, Reagan Carter in the Secret History, the treason that stole the White House. It's a public knowledge. I mean, Ben Barnes, the former Lieutenant Governor of Texas, did kind of a deathbed confession for the New York Times about a decade ago saying that he was on that trip to Europe where they cut the deal with the Iatola to hold onto the hostages to screw Jimmy Carter. We have the tape recordings from 1968 of Lyndon Johnson talking to Edward Durksen discussing the fact that Richard Nixon had just blown up the successful peace deal that Humphrey and Johnson had negotiated with South Vietnam just to get himself elected. So here we have two Republican presidents who basically on the historical record committed

8:36treason to become presidents. And yet the Democratic Party, I never hear any Democrats ever talk about this. You have to know that if the tables were turned, if any Democrat had ever committed that kind of a crime to become president. Republicans would never let you forget about it. It would be every other word. Do you think that there's any possibility that this, and then there's, you know, in 2000 where Jab Bush had his Catherine Harris purge 100,000 roughly black people, black and Hispanic people from the voting roles in Florida so that his brother could win by 537 votes? I mean, these are all crimes in my mind. Do you think there will ever come a day when Democrats start talking about this stuff? You know, it's enormously frustrating. What you're talking about is my life's work. I've done six books on this showing how Republicans have been battling democracy and you're right. It does go back to 1968. And that's, I mean, that's a wonderful moment in a way because it was after the Civil

9:40Rights Act that Lyndon Johnson had had signed. And after that, you start seeing, if you look at the electoral maps of every presidential election since then, the red states look with only a few anomalies look an awful light like the Confederate, Confederate states of America. And I think it's reawaken that. And I think there are a handful of Democrats who are aware of this kind of thing. I'm thinking of people like Jamie Raskin, but they've never had enough control of both houses to really do anything. I mean, to keep impeaching Trump when they don't have the votes in the Senate to convict is enormously frustrating. And again, I think there are a handful of people who recognize this as for what it really is. And the real echoes of the Confederacy of the Civil War.

10:41And I think like Sheldon White House, the Senate recognizes it and a few other people do as well. Yeah. And I think, you know, I wrote a book about this. They hid in history of American oligarchy. I don't think most people even know. Most of our history doesn't teach that the Confederacy ceased to be a democracy in the mid-1840s early 1850s and became a complete authoritarian state. If you spoke out against them, if you didn't vote with them, newspaper publishers were hanged, people drove out of the state. It was just a violent, fascist state by the by 1860, 1861 when they declared the war on arrest of us. So it's just a remarkable thing. Right. We have a much darker history than we like to admit, you know. Absolutely. Great chronicles of it. The great Craig Unger is his work. You can find him over on Substack.com. Just plug in Craig Unger. It'll pop up. Or what did you say the name of it was again?

11:43American Compromot. American Compromot. That's right. Craig, you are doing such great work. Thank you so much for coming here and ensuring it with us. Thank you Tom. I appreciate it. Yeah. Great talking. What do you think? This is the Tom Hartman program. We'll be right back with more of the news of the day and your calls and just a moment. Ozzy and Los Angeles. Hey, Ozzy, what's up? Hello, Tom. It's the first time I talked to you. I'm a 38 years friend of KPFK in Los Angeles. Oh, thank you. You know, rodeo Hollywood and those times. Oh, yeah. I got my knowledge, mostly from KPFK. And I just want to give my idea of how to improve our radio regardless of where you are Los Angeles or North Coast.

12:45Is the audience should contact other stations, try to get in like I just got in. I weighed one hour on the line. So I'm just intelligently say something that makes sense. Let's say I heard this on KPFK or it sounds like truth. Anyway, I do 46 years of radio talk shows. I just call president and time can or complain mostly complain. There's no time. And this is Jackson. He thanked me 12 years ago in his radio Sunday morning. My mom is the last one of the princes of Iran, where the oil was, princes were state. And if you want to remember the last prime minister of Iran, Dr. Bachelior is my family. Even his father got killed by a shot father because three brothers, one of his mind and the sister, Maryam, we conquered the capital city Iran 100 years ago, and three Iran, but he

13:46didn't take the kingdom. They asked us why don't you take a whole country as a king general Assad said I came to give freedom to my people and not take the kingdom. Those family are. So I do myself 46 years because I live alone. If you have a perjury, you can do that. And each in the hands of your cousin is more short, more bald, but makes more money, go make money. Okay, I got it. Thank you very much. Vince and Wellsville, Kansas, say Vince, what's on your mind today? Good day. A couple of things. One, many, many years ago, I read a book called Learned Optimism. Yeah, by Martin Sallickman. Yes. And the first chapter was about learned helplessness. They had a good book by the way. Which was his prior book, by the way. And they were doing everything they could to keep them from achieving whatever it is that dog wanted to do. And eventually with the barriers and the changing of schedules and priorities for feeding

14:52and all these other things, the dogs got where they couldn't do anything but lay around and wonder why they weren't doing anything else. Yeah, I think that with all the things that are going on in our culture right now, the assaults on voting, prudent security, housing insecurity, wars we don't want or need, the all of the assaults on the opportunities to vote, all of these things. And I wonder, are they not trying to make us feel helpless in doing anything about what they're absolutely there. Absolutely. Absolutely. This is what Fashia states always do. Well, the cabinet, you know, they're all blooded followers, you know, they're not going to do anything. Yeah. And what does that leave for us? You know, are we learning to be helpless? I think that that's the goal of the Republican Party and Donald Trump. And it's what every Fashish government has always done is try to induce a sense of helplessness on the part of its people. And I have a feeling in that sense of helplessness is fading quickly as we head toward the election.

15:56Thanks for the call. That was brilliant observation. Thank you. Has the media normalized the Republican's voter suppression right before our very eyes? This is a, this is a major story that is not a story in the media. And that's, that's what's so wild about this. For 40 years now, I have been seeing every election year, every two years, you see these reports on television where there's some reporter standing out in front of a polling place where the line is stretching down the block and around the corner going, look at how enthusiastic these people are. And what you're actually looking at, yes, of course you're looking at enthusiastic voters, but what you're really looking at is Republican voter suppression. It is always, always. You never see these lines in white upscale neighborhoods, which is pretty much the kind

17:00of neighborhoods I've lived in most of my life. I've never had to wait more than 15 minutes to vote ever. But if you live in a black neighborhood, if you live in a Hispanic neighborhood, if you live in a neighborhood, in a, in a college town, if you live in any kind of a community where there are a lot of Democrats and your state is controlled by Republicans, there are going to be long lines. I mean, this, we saw it literally in black neighborhoods in, in Georgia lines ran 10 hours in blue parts of Republican run Florida, four hours. Same thing in Virginia back in the, you know, back in the day. And it just, the Washington Post reporting in 2012, at 8 a.m. in Arlington, 644 people lined up outside a department polling station, almost all of the late for work. And then they talk about people are just so enthusiastic. These have been doing this since the 60s, where when they control the ability to determine

18:04how many polling places there are in a precinct, in a district, and how many machines are in each polling place, they know well in advance how many people to expect. And this is what Terrent County, Texas did just last week is, in fact, I believe it was last Wednesday or Thursday. And you know, they, they said, okay, let's get rid of about a third of our voting of, of our polling places. Why? Because Terrent County is rapidly turning blue. And so if they cut down the number of polling places, you increase the length of the lines, and most of your blue collar workers are paid by the hour and they don't want to stand in line for seven hours to vote. This is just pure and simple voter suppression. And every year it happens, and every election year it happens, and every election year, the media is out there going, gee, look at the enthusiasm of these voters. My question is, when is the media going to start saying, gee, look at how successful

19:07this Republican effort to suppress the vote is in this generally democratic district. I'm standing here in a largely black area, and the lines are six hours long. I'm standing here in a college town where there's a lot of Democrats voting, and the lines are five hours long. I mean, when are they going to start talking like this? It just blows my mind. That I mean, literally for 40 years, Republicans have been doing this or longer. Really since the 60s, what is that? The 60 years. It's a long, long time to be doing successful voter suppression. I mean, Greg Palis did the math on the 2024 election. If it wasn't for Republican voter suppression, Kamala Harris would be president right now. And they're doubling down on it for this election. And Trump's whole thing with the mail-in votes. I mean, that's just the latest version of Republican voter suppression because they know that Americans don't want more tax cuts for billionaires, more deregulation producing more sickness

20:11in our food supply, less support for poor people and working class people. They know that Americans do not support their Republican agenda. And that's why Republicans either throw out fear. Oh my God, the black people look out, the queer people look out, look out, look out, or they just, they just make it hard to vote. It's nuts. When's our media going to wake up? The workers watching daylight die. They call it courage. Call it pride. But never asked who made the line.

21:11Our bio. Year by year. The same old picture. Reveals. They praise the ones who stay behind. But never asked who made the line. Either you never asked who made the line. A big story broke in the progressive newspaper in Israel, Haadats. And the story is, and there have been earlier reports of this as well, by the way, this is not entirely brand new. But the story is that the president of the UAE, Muhammad bin Zayed al-Nahayan, had a 45 minute conversation with Netanyahu 10 days before the October 7th attack when, you know, Hamas came across the, you know, out of Gaza and killed like 1200 people and raped a

22:17bunch of women and, you know, just horrible or the horrific crime that then provoked Netanyahu to slaughter over 70,000 Palestinians and just lay waste to all of Gaza or most of Gaza. Well, it turns out that he gave Netanyahu 10 days advance notice and Netanyahu didn't even bother to tell his security service. This reminds me of August 6th, 2001, when the CIA, when George W. Bush took the longest vacation presidential history, nobody could figure out why he was unwilling to come back to Washington, D.C. Until we later learned that on August 6th, a CIA officer flew down a Crawford, Texas and told Bush that bin Laden was the title of the CIA report, bin Laden determined to strike inside the U.S. and that he was targeting the bin Laden was targeting New York and D.C. And George Bush didn't do anything about it either. And for Netanyahu, that strike by Hamas was the biggest gift he ever had.

23:17It allowed him to engage in the mass slaughter that he's always wanted to do, the racist genocide. And for George W. Bush, whose popularity was completely in the crapper, he was viewed as an unelected or illegitimate president. He lost the election by half a million votes in 2000. And he only won the electoral college because of Florida, and he only won Florida because his brother had knocked 100,000 black people off the voting rolls, and that story was starting to come out. And so when 9-11 happened, suddenly George W. Bush was the most popular president ever, or right up there. It saved him, just like October 7th, saved Netanyahu. Not to turn this into a wild conspiracy theory, but hey, those are the facts.

24:23Kathy and Green Bay Wisconsin, hey Kathy, what's on your mind today? Hey Tom, I know this isn't the most important thing in the world, but the city of Green Bay does not own the Green Bay Packers. I didn't think so. Well, you were right. I wasn't certain, so I didn't want to challenge the guy when he said that. Yeah, well, I mean, it's a nice story, but it just isn't true. Green Bay Packers is a publicly held nonprofit corporation. It sells shares of stock, but the shares don't pay any dividends. They don't appreciate and value, and they don't give the owners any equity. You used to get free tickets if you were stockholder, but that's about it. They don't even do that anymore. Apparently, do you get some sort of voting rights, and I don't remember what that is, and I get an invitation to the annual meeting every July, which is kind of a big deal. We do, however, own Lambo Field, together with the stadium district, and we lease that

25:28back to the Packers. So the city owns that? The city of Green Bay owns that, yeah. Well thanks for setting the record straight, Kathy. I appreciate that. It's fun to have a share. I'm sure I don't own any shares of the Packers, but people all over the world do own that. It's not even just the city of Green Bay. Yeah, I get it. I get it. Yeah, and we started by the Meet Packers Union back in the day, right? It was. That's the Packers. Yeah, there you go. Yeah, exactly. I mean, we never had a problem with the name. We were never the brave or the Indian, they're always the Packers. Yeah, there you go. Yeah, not racist, just workers. I love it. I think it's kind of a nice thing. I agree. I agree. I agree. I think it's great. Kathy, thank you. Thank you for setting the record straight. I appreciate the call. Michael and Brock Stewart. Hey, Michael, what's on your mind today? Yeah, it's kind of good, buddy. I'm noticing a backache paint by my face.

26:31Oh, it's been there, done that. It's right. It's changed the weather, too. That's my main problem. Before I get into the issues with Trump, you were talking about the 2000 election. And about the 537 vote count that got George W. Bush the victory. Yes, there was the purging of voters, a black voters from Jeb Bush the brother. But that 537 count that you mentioned was a result of Catherine Harris stopping the vote count. They were counting first the votes that were heavily Republican districts. And then they start going into counting the Democratic districts on the mixed districts before getting to the Democratic districts. George Bush's leave was shrinking drastically. And then because that Catherine Harris thought and saw that George Bush was likely to lose

27:35the election because they still have to count the Democratic districts that were voted overwhelmingly for people for out. That's why she stopped the count. And there's some question about Felicia County, which is a very Democratic County. I don't recall the details of that, Michael. I don't report the details. The only thing I know is that she stopped the count of the Democratic areas. And then, well, this is, I mean, there was all kinds of hanky-panky. That's why the State Supreme Court ordered a recount. And then the federal Supreme Court ruled the State Supreme Court, which is a complete violation of the 10th Amendment of states' rights. And... You're listening to Tom Hartman. Visit tomheartman.com for audio and video archives. It's the place where smart people get their news. We'll be right back.

28:41So what's on your mind, Rob and Apple Valley, California? Hey, Rob, what's up? Yeah. I would like to address Trump's little delusional fantasy, territorial fantasies about like taking over everything, right? You know, I find it obscene and kind of disturbing, right? So I'm looking out of map, you know, from like the rise and fall of the third rock. I got a third edition from 1960 or so. And it's like, you look at Europe. And it's just like obscene. How much land this guy had. And it's like Trump is, he's doing this like, imaginary, right? You know, just believing he could do this. And this is real if you look at this, you know? And it's like, how do you recommend this book? It's really disturbing. Oh, it is. Yeah, well, I'm sure the rise and fall of the third rock, it's the classic text on Hitler. And you read in now, and it's like you're reading from the newspaper. I mean, from today's newspaper. Oh, yeah. Yeah, when Trump first got elected, you know, the Latin first time, I was telling my friends, it's like, hey, now it's time to read this book.

29:42You got to check it out because this is what's happening. You know, people may or may not believe it because it hasn't happened here in the United States. You know what I mean? But anyway, I'll real, William Shire has another good book. I don't have the second edition, but I have the Berlin diaries. And that's a good one too. I haven't read them for a while. Yeah, he was a war correspondent who was based over there after the war. Yeah, and he got, I think he got killed on an island, right? Yeah. I don't recall how he ended up, but I know he was a war correspondent. Yeah, yeah, he was, I think it was one of the Japanese islands in the Pacific. But I'm not quite certain I'd have to look that up just to be clear. I don't want to. To be precise, I don't want to be a war correspondent. The rise and fall of the third rock and the rise and fall of Donald Trump are startled in a way similar. Thank you for the call. You've been listening to Tom Hartman for audio and video archives. Visit Tom Hartman.com.