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 Hartmann Report-  Let’s not forget:

— When Trump refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power in 2020, the political class gasped. Now it’s barely discussed.

— When he orchestrated an attempted coup on January 6th, 2021, it was the top story in the world. Today, most Republicans call it “a protest” or a “tour.”

— Had any previous president invited an immigrant billionaire who promotes fascist memes to rip the guts out of the Social Security Administration and shut down USAID (handing our soft power to the Russians and Chinese) there would have been hell to pay. Now Musk’s extraordinary damage to our government is barely discussed.

— When Trump began calling undocumented immigrants “animals” and labeling judges and prosecutors as “scum,” it horrified the media. Now it’s part of the daily churn.

— When a federal judge’s son was murdered by a Trump campaign volunteer it shocked America; now judges are routinely threatened and Republicans won’t even give the judiciary control over the US Marshall’s Service to protect them.

— When Trump praised Putin and Viktor Orbán and suggested suspending the Constitution, the headlines flared, but then faded fast.

— When he arrested a Tufts University student for having written an op-ed in the student paper critical of Netanyahu and threw her into prison for months, the country was appalled. Now he’s rolling out loyalty tests for civil servants and investigating the social media posts of American citizens returning to the country and nobody’s even discussing it any more.

— When ICE agents showed up in Portland in 2020 in unmarked vans without uniforms and their ID missing, kidnapping people off the streets without warrants, Americans and the media were shocked. Now seeing jackbooted thugs with masks covering their faces and refusing to identify themselves has become “normal.”

This is the playbook. Fascism doesn’t arrive with jackboots; it arrives with media and voter fatigue. As the political theorist Hannah Arendt warned, the very banality and ordinariness of evil is its greatest weapon.