The Billionaire Coup Is Nearly Complete —
And No One Stopped It By Thom Hartmann
There is one thread that ties together Trump ’ s destruction of American government agencies , his offer to take the Gaza crisis off Israel ’ s hands and dump it on our military , and senators ’ and representatives ’ failure to challenge him : This is how kingdoms operate . Rule by decree . It proves that we ’ re asking the wrong question . Plug “ Can American democracy survive Trump ?” into a search engine and you ’ ll find thousands of websites , blogs , articles , and podcasts devoted to that one , single question .
But American democracy was kneecapped by five Republicans on the Supreme Court years ago when they ruled that money was the same thing as “ free speech ”; that corporations are “ persons ” with rights under the Bill of [ Human ] Rights ; and that political operatives can engage in virtually unlimited purges of voting rolls , accompanied by racial- and gender-targeted laws to make it harder to vote .
The correct question is : “ Can the American system — now that it ’ s become flooded with dark money and the ‘ right to vote ’ has become a mere privilege in Red states — ever again represent the interests of average citizens ? Can we ever return to democracy ?”
In an open call on X yesterday with Republican Senators Joni Ernst and Mike Lee , apartheid billionaire Elon Musk — whose father says he was chauffeured to
72 The Trial Lawyer