Both Sane And Insane - Coming To A Better Understanding Of Trumpism So We Can Challenge It More Effectively

I am going live with Dr. Rob Shapiro at 3pm EST today - join us!

Happy Friday all. I tried to write something this morning that ended up becoming too big for me to wrestle to the ground so instead I’m sending along fragments and notes with a promise to get this thing pulled together before the Christmas holidays……

These initial notes draw heavily from yesterday’s post; my essays Surrender, Not War and When We Fight Trump We Can Win; and my conversations this year with Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Anne Applebaum, Stuart Stevens, Garrett Graff, Rep. Adam Smith, Rep. Robert Garcia, Nathan Heller and Leon Krauze.

I will be going live today at 3pm EST with Dr. Rob Shapiro at talk out one piece of this thing I’m wrestling with - Trump’s failed, tariff-driven economic strategy, something Rob wrote about in the Washington Monthly this week.

You can join our conversation by clicking here at 3pm EST.

Here we go…..

I am heartened by the progress we’ve made in weakening the regime. It should embolden us to become more ambitious, creative, and courageous in the coming months.

The video from those six national security Dems warning servicemen and women that their oath required them to ignore unlawful orders was a great example of how we must operate now. It forced the regime to “defend the indefensible” and has caused enormous fissures in his coalition. Listen to Republican Congressman Mike Turner yesterday on Morning Joe:

The success of the Democrats on the House Oversight Committee, led by Ranking Member Rep. Robert Garcia, in bringing the Epstein scandal to light and undermining their rancid cover-up of these crimes, is another great example of how we must move forward now. As was our fight over the ACA subsidy cuts and the shutdown, even though it ended prematurely. As has been our gritty fight led by the Texas Dems, JB Pritzker, Gavin Newsom and the House Dems against the illicit effort to steal Congressional seats next year. As has been the many successful legal challenges of our Dem AGs and other legal orgs that have blocked terrible policies and hamstrung the regime again and again. As has been Governor Newsom’s incredible innovation in the information domain.

These successes have come largely on terrain outside of the traditional legislative/candidate campaign battlefield that is the central responsibility of our Congressional leaders. They were an expansion of our understanding of the battlefield, unorthodox attempts to engage, challenge, and weaken the regime. Some of our wins this past November in CA, GA ME, PA also came on unorthodox elections or ballot initiatives, and certainly the Aftyn Behn race - which has shaken the Rs this week - was wildly unorthodox and unconventional.

Trump is an unorthodox and unconventional opponent. To challenge him successfully we must let go of conventional understandings and adapt to the new battlefield we find ourselves in now. It turns out that we may be further ahead in that process than we understand, but it’s critical that we keep going. I think it’s time that the leaders of our party create some kind of loose skunk works that is exploring, testing, innovating, coordinating and sharing new approaches for this new battlefield, perhaps something akin to Ukrainian innovations in drone warfare……

Next, I think we need to come to a far deeper understanding of what Trump is attempting to do to the world and to our country, and find narratives, stories, themes, words to explain what I am currently calling “Trumpism” to the American people. I don’t think our current framework of affordability and health care, or concepts like fascism, gangsterism, Project 2025, oligarchy, or authoritarianism, are sufficient. They are incomplete, early attempts to describe the malevolent intent and agenda of the regime. I’ve often used “sabotage, plunder, and betrayal” in my own writing, something that is for now far more expansive than “affordability” and “ACA subsidies.”

Over the last ten years of battling Trump the part of his agenda that always made the least sense, and was often hardest for us to gain traction on, was his illicit alliance with Putin. Here’s the very first paragraph from the 2017 Intelligence Community report on Russia’s enormous and successful campaign to elect Trump in 2016:

Russian efforts to influence the 2016 US presidential election represent the most recent expression of Moscow’s longstanding desire to undermine the US-led liberal democratic order, but these activities demonstrated a significant escalation in directness, level of activity, and scope of effort compared to previous operations.

Since coming to office this time it is as if Trump is working from a checklist provided to him by Putin to weaken America and dismantle the post WWII global system that has been the driver of our prosperity and guarantor of our security. Here’s my working version of the checklist Putin gave to Trump:

• walk away from and torch the American-led global economic system by imposing illegal and destructive tariffs on every country in the world

• ignore/undermine/weaken the foundational tenet of the post WWII American-led global order - state sovereignty

• withdraw from/weaken our global security architecture in Europe, North America, and Asia; and sell out Ukraine and Europe to Russia

• undermine our global scientific and academic leadership, the central driver of American prosperity

• withdraw from/weaken global institutions like the WHO, the G7 and G20, and the COP process

• humiliate, denigrate, and weaken America’s military

• further undermine the global rules-based order through repeated murder and war crimes on the high seas

• disable USAID, VOA, and other soft power levers around the world, and cyber, information and election security programs here at home

• desecrate the most famous global symbol of American power and democracy, the White House,

• unravel our vaccine regime here, a project long championed by Russian information operations here in the US

We must be very clear here that there is no version of Trumpism that will make America more prosperous, more secure, and more free. There is no great America following this path. It is an agenda of sabotage and surrender, the very opposite of what a traditional nationalist strongman - like Xi or Putin - would pursue. It feels far more like treason or compromise than a strategy for greatness.

An April image from The Economist

Last night the regime released an annual update of our National Security Strategy. We will have time to parse through it in the days ahead. But it is a confirmation of the incredibly dangerous place Trump is trying to take us. Here’s the first few graphs of the first NYT article on it this morning:

The Trump administration said on Friday that Europe is facing the “stark prospect of civilizational erasure” and pledged that the United States will support like-minded “patriotic” parties across the continent to prevent a future in which “certain NATO members will become majority non-European.”

The dark assessment of Europe’s future was released overnight as part of an annual update to the United States’ national security strategy around the world.

Without naming them directly, the document says the United States should support political parties in Europe that fight against migration and promote nationalism. That describes several right wing populist parties like Reform U.K. in Britain and the Alternative for Germany, known as the A.F.D., which has been classified as an extremist party by German intelligence services.

This is in essence America signaling that we are now aligned with Russia in Europe, and will work to undermine the European Union itself. Here is how one European analyst wrote about it this morning:

We are, my friends, in a very new place, a place that no living American has ever been before. The harms and dangers of Trumpism are about far more than affordability and ACA cuts. It is time our leaders recognize this, talk to the American people about this, strategize around this and commit to fight this fight in ways consistent with our heritage and what the moment requires. Understanding and defining Trumpism is a critical part of this new battlefield we are now in.

And throughout all this we must remember

we are Americans, and fighting for freedom and democracy is who we are, what we do

regardless of who may be currently occupying and dishonoring the White House.

Now, Let’s Get To Work People!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Closing 2025 Strong

• Eileen Higgins For Mayor Of Miami (Dec 9 run off) - $27,500 raised, $25,000 goal | Learn More and Volunteer | Enjoy my our conversation with Eileen Higgins (the period for donating has ended, up to the campaign and volunteers now!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

Winning The Midterms - Support Our 2026 Candidates

• Roy Cooper for NC Senate (2026) - $57k raised, $250,000 goal - Donate | Learn More | Volunteer | Enjoy my conversation with Gov. Cooper

• Jon Ossoff GA Senate (2026) - $101k raised, $250,000 goal, - Donate | Learn More | Volunteer | Enjoy my inspiring conversation with Senator Ossoff

• Hopium Winning The House Campaign (2026) - $30,000 raised, $50,000 goal - Donate to all four endorsed House challengers with one click | Learn More | Enjoy our new conversations with Christina Bohannan (IA-01), Jo Mendoza (AZ-06), and Janelle Stelson (PA-10)

• Hopium House 7 - Our Top House Incumbents Running For Re-election (2026) - $249k raised, $250,000 goal - Donate | Learn More, Volunteer | Watch My Interviews With Our Intrepid Incumbents | Keeping these newly elected Members in Congress is the first step in winning the House in 2026

Expanding The Senate and Electoral College Maps (2026-2032)

• Hopium’s Audacious Expansion Fund - $218,000 raised, $250,000 goal - Join our new campaign to expand our map by investing in the Democratic Parties of Alaska, Florida, Iowa, Maine, and Texas | Donate to all five state parties in a single contribution | Many thanks to two generous Hopium community members who have audaciously donated $10,000 to each of our five state parties!

In a new essay I talk about 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 now, be loud now, 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.

Defending America, Winning The Big Arguments With Trump, Making Hopium Stronger - We have three 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:

1. 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 current efforts to force Ukraine to surrender

2. Congress must stand forcefully for rule of law in the Caribbean - these illegal strikes must end; no war can be waged without Congressional approval; there must accountability for those who have broken the law

3. 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

4. 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 unlawful occupation of our cities; stopping the unprecedented corruption; and by forcing the Administration to finally comply with Congress, end the rancid cover up, and release all of the Epstein files

5. Fight Trump’s war on science, higher education and our public health; reverse - not delay - the cuts to the ACA and Medicaid; support and co-sponsor Rep. Haley Stevens’ effort to Impeach and remove Robert Kennedy

2 - Celebrate America, Our Constitution, Our 250th Birthday By Bringing Our Resolutions Project To Your Community - Next year, on 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.

3 - Make Hopium Stronger - There are several ways you can help make our community stronger:

• Take advantage of the 10% discount through 12/31, become a paid Hopium subscriber for the all important 2026 election year

• Invite your friends, bring in new subscribers, earn rewards

• Buy holiday gift or group subscriptions for colleagues, friends, and family

• Hit “like” on our posts and videos. This will encourage the algorithm to push our work to more people on the Substack app

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 all. I am proud, oh so proud, to be in this fight with all of you - Simon