Morning all. Some takeaways from my weekly talk, video above and transcript here:
In Davos Trump Was Humiliated, And Humiliated Himself. He Is A Much Weaker Global Figure Today - I cannot stress how much Trump looked like a clown, buffoon, madman, idiot, bully/coward - choose your words - to the world yesterday. His rambling, incoherent speech confirmed to many that is he addled, and not fit to lead a great nation. He also showed the world that he cannot take a punch, and is weak, cowardly, pathetic, desperate.
As we discussed with Rob Shapiro yesterday Europe has enormous leverage over the US, and can cripple our economy if they so choose. They began selling US Treasuries, the markets freaked, and Trump folded (for now). Trump learned this week that there are checks to his power other than his “own mind.”
I also think it is critical that we do not allow the narrative of what happened this week to be about Trump retreating. For what he did, as we discussed with Rob yesterday, is the greatest policy mistake by an American President in our history. He has done enormous, lasting damage to the country. We are a far weaker nation today, and calls for him to resign should grow. Not for his madness, his corruption, his rancid cover-up of the Epstein files but because is a historic, titanic fuck up who cannot be trusted to run the country any longer. He will go down in history as our worst leader who pursued an agenda of sabotage, plunder, and betrayal, and did enormous damage to the causes of freedom and democracy here and around the world.
My hope is that Trump’s wild anti-European buffoonery these past few weeks. will also weaken the far-right in Europe, and strengthen the liberal parties fighting him head on.
Trump’s early January 2026 escalation - Minnesota, Venezuela, Greenland/War with Europe - that we talked about with Glenn Kirschner earlier this week has also left him weaker here at home. In a rash of new polling we’ve received this past week Trump has clearly fallen further, as the country again rejects his new strongman plays. Look at this data - everything is coming at or below what was the 40%-56% FiftyPlusOne job approval average from a week ago:
35%-63% (-28) ARG
37%-57% (-20) Economist/YouGov
40%-59% (-19) CNN
41%-59% (-18) CBS News
39%-57% (-18) Marist
41%-58% (-17) Strength in Numbers
41%-58% (-17) Ipsos/Reuters
39%-56% (-17) Civiqs
40%-56% (-16) NYTimes
Look at this issue breakout from the new NYT poll today. It’s across the board erosion and repudiation. Like in other polls in recent days his handling of immigration has gone from strength to incredible liability:
The Viscous Cycle Of A Declining Strongman - This new data confirms a pattern we’ve seen since Trump sent troops to Los Angeles in the spring - when he goes strongman, the country recoils, his approval drops, he grows more distant to the electorate, and this failure/rejection/repudiation encourages him to further escalate, as he desperately and manically seeks to feel STRONG, POWERFUL, MIGHTY again. And yes given his humiliation yesterday, his clear failure, we should anticipate further escalation in the days to come.
Perhaps that’s why it felt like DHS/ICE escalated yesterday in Minnesota, Vance is visiting the Twin Cities today, and they’ve launched a new operation in Maine. For in their collective madness this will to power, this need to feel their boot on our neck, their seizing of Gaza and Venezuela - all of it has become the central project of the regime. It is not about what is good for the country. It is about more and more power and control. I’ve often called this dynamic the struggle between a politics of freedom and one of dominion. Trump has abandoned the politics of freedom that has been our central organizing principle in America for 250 years, and the central organizing principal of the American-led global order for 80 years, and embraced a politics of dominion. FDR’s Four Freedoms were an articulation of a very American aspiration for how the world should be organized and Trump and his allies have - incredibly, madly, vaingloriously, recklessly - rejected this inheritance, one that as I talked about last night made America the most powerful nation in history and brought about a golden age for human kind. It is the Law of Don now, law of the jungle, a return to an era of dominion - not freedom.
We must learn, however, to see these escalations, this embrace of dominion as inherently weak, pathetic, fearful, and cowardly. We have to, in our own work each day, learn how to see and communicate to others how what we are seeing with Trump is weakness, buffoonery, clownishness, desperation - the very opposite of strong. It also pushes them further and further away from the electorate - hence the vicious cycle.
Watch this video from Minnesota yesterday and feel the fear they have, the pathetic, desperate, cowardly fear:
The Europeans Showed The Pro-Democracy Movement The Way This Week - We Must “Come Together,” Grow Stronger, And Fight Not Appease - This week the Europeans came together and used the power of their collective to knock Trump off course. That is the big lesson for us in the US - we must organize ourselves into a larger collective to accrue greater power than we have when we fight him in isolation or alone; and we can never appease, only fight. As I’ve been calling for it’s time now for the Democrats to create a unified national front - Govs, Congress, Big City Mayors - to more forcefully challenge Trump’s escalating authoritarianism. We are not going to have a single leader of the opposition until the summer of 2028, so we must build something new now, something that gives us more than what we currently have. The free states and free states must band together, while we also make common cause with free nations around the world, forging a “liberal internationale” to challenge the rising illiberal one.
While we should be pleased with where we are electorally and politically we cannot, not for one moment, be pleased with our efforts to stop the damage he is doing to the country and the world. We must be more ambitious this year, and accept that we are in a “new day” that requires new thinking, new strategies, new approaches. For our goal must be, over the next ten years, to take this unsettled time and make it about a “new birth of freedom” here in America and everywhere, and not accept that the coming era will be one of authoritarian and oligarchical consolidation. As FDR did over 80 years, we must replace this politics of dominion with one of freedom. For that is our job as Americans. Our role. It’s one we’ve been doing for 250 years and we need to get on with it now.
That’s what we talked about last night. Now…..
Let’s Get To Work People!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Winning The Midterms - Support Our Candidates
Hopium’s Winning The House Campaign (2026) - $89,000 raised, $250,000 goal (new stretch goal) - Donate to all four endorsed House challengers with one click | Learn More | Enjoy our new conversations with Christina Bohannan (IA-01), Mayor Paige Cognetti (PA-08), Jo Mendoza (AZ-06), and Janelle Stelson (PA-10)
Mary Peltola For Alaska Senate - $20,700 raised, $250,000 goal - Donate | Volunteer and learn more. Amazing start everyone!
Winning Ohio - $39,900 raised, $250,000 goal - Our new campaign splits contributions evenly among Sherrod Brown, the Acton/Pepper ticket, and the Ohio Democratic Party. Donate today and help us turn this critical 2026 battleground blue! | Watch my conversation with David Pepper, who does a great overview of the opportunities we have in Ohio this year. Note a generous donor has sent $21,000 worth of Hopium-infused contributions directly to the candidates which are not included in this total.
Roy Cooper for NC Senate (2026) - $69k raised, $250,000 goal - Donate | Learn More | Volunteer | Enjoy my conversation with Gov. Cooper and a new, terrific one with NC Dem Party Chair Anderson Clayton
Jon Ossoff GA Senate (2026) - $114k raised, $250,000 goal - Donate | Learn More | Volunteer | Enjoy my inspiring conversation with Senator Ossoff
Expanding The Senate and Electoral College Maps, Winning In Red States and Red Places (2026-2032)
Hopium’s Audacious Expansion Fund - $334,000 raised, $500,000 goal (new stretch goal) - Join our new campaign to expand our map by investing in the Democratic Parties of Alaska, Florida, Iowa, Maine, and Texas. Many thanks to two generous Hopium community members who have audaciously donated $10,000 to each of our five state parties
3 Campaigns Where We’ve Hit Our Goals, But Are Still Active - We have three campaigns where we’ve hit our goals but that folks can still participate in - Ken Martin’s New DNC, Anderson Clayton and the North Carolina Democratic Party, and the Democratic Party of Minnesota (DFL).
Why We Must Invest Early, Now, And Not Wait - In three new essays (here, here, here) I discuss how one of the ways we win the 2026 midterms is by providing early support to our candidates and parties to allow them to staff up, be loud, define the terms of the debate now, before the inevitable onslaught on AI slop, Russian disinfo, and Trumpian lies funded through bribes and corruption wash across the land.
The midterms could be won or lost in these next few months - not in the fall of 2026 - and we need be fighting now with everything we got.
Winning The Big Arguments With Trump, Defend Our Democracy
We have two recommended actions today:
1 - Call Your Senators and Member Of The House And Demand They Act Upon Our Five-Part Agenda - We need to be loud people, very, very loud and make the case for our now five part agenda:
Stand with Ukraine and our European allies, and far more forcefully challenge Trump’s traitorous efforts to sell out the US and the West to Russia; demand Congress rebuke/issue a no confidence vote on his new threats to seize Greenland and his new, dangerous European tariffs;
Congress must stand forcefully for rule of law in the Caribbean and the Pacific - these illegal strikes must end; no war can be waged without Congressional approval; there must accountability for those who have broken the law, and the US must withdraw from Venezuela and cease other threats to violate the UN Charter and the sovereignty of other nations
Roll back Trump’s terrible, illegal tariffs that are re-igniting inflation, driving up prices, shifting the tax burden from the wealthy to working people, hurting small businesses and farmers, reviving tyrannical “taxation without representation,” and alienating governments and people throughout the world. To put America on a sounder fiscal course due to the enormous deficits brought by Trump’s 2025 tax cuts we should reverse the cuts to the wealthy and corporations
Defend our democracy, rule of law, and our liberties by blocking the expansion of ICE; restoring due process for immigrants across the country; vigorously defending the 1st Amendment; warring against his outrageous targeting of his domestic political opponents; ending the use of the military on our streets and the dangerous occupation of our cities; stopping the unprecedented regime corruption; and by forcing the Administration to finally comply with Congress end the rancid cover up of the Epstein crimes.
Fight Trump’s war on science, higher education and our public health; reverse - not delay - the cuts to the ACA, Medicaid and our clean energy investments; support and co-sponsor the Stand Up For Science/Rep. Haley Stevens effort to remove Robert Kennedy from HHS.
2 - Celebrate America, Our Constitution, Our 250th Birthday By Bringing Our Resolutions Project To Your Community - This July 4th America celebrates it’s 250th birthday. We need to make this holiday, a celebration of our Declaration Of Independence from a mad king, our day, and not allow it to become his.
One way we can do this is by bringing our Resolutions Project to your community or state. Imagine if by July 4th of next year a large number of towns, counties and states had passed formal resolutions, in the spirit of our Declaration of Independence, defending our Constitution and condemning the “injuries,” “abuses,” and “usurpations” of our mad king. For as our Founders wrote in the Declaration:
But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
So far Hopium members have introduced or passed resolutions in 85 communities in 23 states. In the coming days we will be convening to discuss how to bring this campaign to more places and start planning to Own The Fourth next year.
Finally, please self-report your activities to our daily paid subscriber chat. These reports help inspire all of us to do more and fight harder!
Keep working hard everyone, and I remain so incredibly proud to be in this righteous fight with all of you - Simon
