Coming To Terms With Trump's Malevolence, And Madness

Trump is a clear and present danger to our Constitutional order, and our leaders need to start acting like they understand the urgency of the moment

Afternoon/Morning all. There are days where I struggle to take all that is swirling around in my head and bring it to you, here, simply. Today is one of those days. So let me offer some notes on where we are now, rather than a more organized essay….

Trump’s Economic Wrecking Ball Keeps Wrecking Things For The Whole World - A Paris-based organization, the OECD, just released their revised global economic forecasts. Due to Trump’s reckless economic policies, global and US growth will be slower, and inflation here in the US higher. Here is what Washington Post/MSNBC commentator Catherine Rampell posted this morning:

Here is how the report is playing across the world. As a Trump driven global slowdown:

And this just came in as I was about to hit send:

Our First True Mad American King Has Arrived - Everything our Founding Fathers worked to prevent, and successfully prevented for 250 years, a Mad American King, has come to pass. Trump is operating outside of our Constitutional order, outside of international law and treaties, outside of the understandings of modern economics, outside the understandings of modern medicine, outside generally accepted rules of political physics and perhaps most importantly outside the understanding of what makes mankind civilized and not barbarous. There is a manic, fascistic madness to his actions now, a delight in destruction, a comfort in the humiliation, degradation and even intentional killing of other human beings that is simply not being adequately captured in our daily discourse. He is just torching things now - world-leading academic institutions, our global reputation, the future of our kids, our alliances - for fun, Trumpian shits and giggles, like golfing. Just things he does on a Saturday.

Nero watching Rome burn

It is understandable, perhaps, given how ugly and terrible it all is that people would look away, normalize, console themselves that things weren’t as bad as they seemed. But they are as bad as it seems. Trump, in his madness, is attacking the engines of our prosperity; illegally, unconstitutionally, inhumanely dismantling the federal government with escalating intensity despite repeated court rulings against them even in the Supreme Court; peddling Cod Liver Oil as a cure for measles; tearing down the global security architecture that has keep America safe and free for generations; literally just walking away from our Ukrainian and European allies on the battlefield in the most serious military conflict on European soil in 80 years; disappearing legal residents of the United States; attempting to provide legitimacy to a weakened and disgraced Putin, a genocidal war criminal, just weeks after his disastrous loss of Syria and ongoing struggles in Ukraine…..

The Big Lie in all this, the core of the madness, is that Trump is doing all this to make America stronger. This conceit is driving all of his actions, and the narrative parroted by his quislings daily in the media. But it is the Big Lie. Trump is making America weaker. Our economy will never be as strong again. We are more vulnerable to a devastating attack today than we’ve even in over 200 years. Our technological, medical and scientific edge over the rest of the world is now gone. With the vaporizing of USAID and the trashing of all our alliances America is now a global pariah, and it is impossible to imagine us recovering the reputation we had in many lifetimes, if ever. Trump is manically making America weaker, poorer, more isolated, less healthy, less safe, less free and less in control of our own destiny.

There is a deep madness underneath it all as this is being to us, on purpose, by design, while we were being told that yes in fact it is all good for us. A transition. Things will be great on the other side. Just you wait, my fellow American suckers. Don’t worry. Let’s head to the Colosseum and watch my people shave the heads of the conquered slaves. Parade them through out streets. Ritually tar and feather them. As Trump once said in his infamous Access Hollywood interview:

“I’m automatically attracted to beautiful — I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait,” Trump said. “When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything.”

You can do anything, Trump said.

Here at Hopium we are not going to let him do anything, are we? We are going to fight. For we are proud American patriots, and we are not going to sit back while our great country burns. Fighting for freedom and democracy is who we are, what we do. At the core of my recommendation for what we do now and how we fight is that we must open up a sustained and determined Second Front against Trump, one that puts this madness and malevolence squarely in front of voters, something that up until this point has been difficult for our leaders to do. On Friday I wrote a detailed and comprehensive post laying out my two big recommendations for what we must do now:

• Open up that Second Front, putting Trump’s attack on our government, our Constitutional order, and his global alignment with Putin in front of voters

• Overhaul our comms and political operations to make us louder and more effective in challenging Trump

Politico has a story this morning about the emerging debate among Democrats in the Senate about the path forward after what went down last week. It is worth your time. As I wrote on Friday what should unite all of us is a clear understanding that what we are doing to counter Trump is inadequate and that we must do far more, together. However Leader Schumer and Leader Jeffries got unaligned, they need to get aligned, and the Senate must start matching the House in raising their game, doing more. To be clear - the Senate is a laggard right now. Senator Schumer’s Senate is not acting with the level of urgency required. He must stop acting like he is just the leader of the minority in a single legislative chamber and also become a leader of a more comprehensive and ferocious opposition movement. It is not clear to me that Leader Schumer really understands the nature of the conflict we are now in, and must show all of us in the coming days that he is aware that he has to raise his game and has a plan to do so. Our American Nero is lighting the our great Republic on fire, and either we let it burn or fight it with everything we got. Here at Hopium we are going to continue to fight it with everything we got. Our leaders must make it clear in the coming days they intend to join us.

For as a CNN poll told us a few days ago Democrats are looking for their leaders to fight now:

Canceling his book tour is a sign that Senator Schumer is waking up to what is required of him now in a time of unprecedented challenge to our Constitutional order and America itself. It is a welcome development. Let us hope that he uses the free time he now has this week to develop a far more aggressive battle plan to prevent Mad Donald from becoming a true American Mad King.

Now, let’s get to work.

Things We Can Do This Week - While we have made many recommendations to Democrats in recent months for how to raise our game and fight harder and smarter, let’s focus on our current four recommended sets of actions for how we can best channel our love of country and our frustrations into concrete action today:

1 - Fight The Trump-Musk Attack On Our Government, Our Privacy And Our Constitutional Order - Encourage your Senators and Representatives to let Facts be be submitted to a candid world in a joint Senate-House Letter to America; to hold their own hearings; to file criminal referrals for Musk and his malicious posse to DOJ/FBI and amicus briefs in the court cases regarding the usurpation of their Constitutional authorities or file suits of their own (House Dems began doing this two weeks ago). Encourage them to hold a daily morning press conference to more aggressively challenge Musk’s ransacking of the USG that is making America less prosperous, less healthy, less safe and far less respected in the world.

2 - Loudly Protest Trump’s Embrace of Russia and Abandonment of NATO and Europe - Let your electeds know you are outraged by traitorous Trump’s selling out of Zelenskyy, abandonment of Europe and embrace of Putin; and that we cannot accept this level of appeasement of someone who is a clear enemy of America and the West, and certainly not an ally. Demand that Trump not let his Saudi meeting w/Putin become our Munich; demand that he not become our Neville Chamberlain; demand that we rejoin our European and NATO allies in support of Zelenskyy and democracy here and everywhere. The country is not with Trump’s embrace of Putin and we must be very loud, very, very loud now. See my new essay on the need to support our allies and not surrender to Putin, and my new interview with Rep. Adam Smith, the Ranking Member of the House Armed Services Committee, one of the most important foreign policy voices in our party.

3 - Organize Against The 17 Most Vulnerable Republican House Members - For those of you who live in AZ, CA, CO, IA, MI, NE, NJ, NY, PA, VA, WI please start talking to your local orgs - state and local Democratic parties, grassroots groups, traditional Dem allies - about mounting a campaign targeting the most vulnerable 17 Republican House Members to urge them to vote against whatever joint House-Senate reconciliation bill emerges in the coming weeks. We launched this new effort a few weeks ago and while we should be urging all our Senators and Reps to vote against these emerging plans, those of you can work these 17 House Rs have a special role to play in this next phase of the battle over the budget. As we’ve discussed there is a lot of concern in the Republican House about the size of the Medicaid cuts required in the House outline passed last month and we need to keep working it people! (will be updating this in coming days now that the DNC, the House Dems and the state parties have become active in all these districts - as we hoped!!!!! Sign up to attend a new “People’s Town Hall” today)

4 - Keep Calling Attorneys General In The States - Ask them to protect you and your data, tax returns and privacy, and to keep federally mandated monies flowing to your states and communities. For those in the 19 states that brought the successful Treasury suit thank them and encourage them to keep going. I still believe these 19 states should make criminal referrals of Musk/his posse to DOJ/FBI and raise the stakes.

Paid subscribers should self-report their actions today in our daily chat. So inspired by how hard so many of you are working. I want to make a special plea to all Hopium readers in states with Republican Senators - please make your calls, every day. Even 50 to 100 people calling every day in every red state can make a difference. We have hundreds of Hopium subscribers in every state in the country and it’s critical that we all do our part now.

Next, for those wanting to do more traditional political/campaign work we have four Hopium-backed efforts we're rallying behind in addition to our new House Hopium 7:

Help Susan Crawford and Ben Wikler in Wisconsin - As a way of honoring our good friend Ben Wikler and supporting this critical April Supreme Court race in Wisconsin, I’m asking our community to donate to the Wisconsin Democratic Party today. The money raised here will make sure Ben has the resources he needs to keep his team in place so they can support this critical statewide race. I know many of you are already deeply involved here - thank you all.

Watch our new discussion with Susan and Ben. Thanks to a huge surge of support in recent days we have already raised $154,000 from almost 2,000 of you, blowing past our original $50,000 goal and now our stretch goals of $100,000, $125,000 and $150,000. We are now upping this to a new superduper-stretch goal of $175,000 by March 31st. Amazing work everyone!

Support The Hopium House 7 - We’ve begun our work to help flip the House next year by supporting and shoring up the 7 newly-elected battleground House Dems we helped elect last year. You can give to all 7 through a single donation to our new ActBlue page and learn more about this important effort here. We’ve already raised almost $13,000 towards our $50,000 March 31st goal - thank you all!

Help Get Ken Martin Off To A Strong Start - In this time of extraordinary challenge we need a strong DNC. Two weeks ago we set a goal of raising $100,000 by March 31st for our new Chair. Incredibly, over 1,000 of you have donated over $100,000 so far. Watch my interview with Ken about what he wants to do with the DNC, and chip in whatever you can to help Ken and the new exciting team at the DNC get off to a strong start!

Help Abigail Spanberger Win Virginia - Virginia will be one of the big battlegrounds of the November, 2025 elections and we have a great candidate for Governor, Abigail Spanberger. Watch my interview with Abigail, donate, volunteer, and learn more here. Given how many federal employees live in Virginia, this race is also now on the front lines of the Trump/Musk assault on the federal government. We’ve raised more than $64,000 so far towards our March 31st goal of $100,000 - thank you all. Let’s keep working it for Abigail!

Get Anderson Clayton And The NC Dems Fight The GOP’s Attempt To Steal A Supreme Court Seat - Last week we began a campaign to raise $50,000 for Anderson Clayton and the NC Dems. These funds will help the NC Dems get off to a great start in 2025 and help cover the costs of their fight to prevent the Republicans from stealing a Supreme Court seat we won together in 2024. Watch my new interview with Chair Clayton from last week to get an update on the fight over the Supreme Court seat and her plans to win elections and counter Trump this year. We’ve raised $23,000 so far - thank you all!

Help Hopium Celebrate Our 2nd Anniversary - In a post from last weekend I reflected back on our work together over these past two years, and made two asks:

1) Commit to bring in one new Hopium subscriber at the your current subscriber level this month. Help us grow this community, and bring our plucky, upbeat, hardworking spirit to more people across the US.

2) Upgrade your subscription to paid or paid to Founding (10% off annual paid subscriptions through March). The resources you provide allows me to work full time at Hopium and keeps our community vibrant, growing and making all sorts of good trouble every day. Gift and group subscriptions are also a great way to grow our community!

Keep working hard all. Our work is making a difference, and we need to keep fighting for our freedoms, our families and our future - Simon