Afternoon all. We had a great gathering of our paid subscribers last night. I kicked it off with 25 minutes of opening remarks, and then opened it for discussion for another 35. A recording of our event is above. Enjoy and share with others you think might be interested. For those who would rather read than watch a transcript is available by clicking through to the site itself.
A few thoughts about the issues we discussed last night…..
Democrats needs to do a better job at understanding the psychology of Trump and how much he sees the world through winning and losing, strength and weakness. We need to win more, be strong, and make him lose more, be weak. As I said in my opening remarks, we need to be a little more like the 2019 World Champion Nationals and work to go 1 and 0 today, win the day, and take and celebrate the wins when they come. Winning matters now, as does not losing. We have to pick our battles carefully, now, and win them.
As I’ve been writing over the past few days I believe Trump is much weaker than he appears right now. Inflation is rising. The economy is slowing. Due to the rightful expectation that his policies will bring higher inflation consumer confidence is falling. He keeps losing in court, badly. His reckless levying of tariffs this week will further fuel inflation and slow the economy. Independent polling also shows a clear and dramatic decline for Trump. In just three weeks he’s lost 7 points in job approval in Morning Consult, 6 in Economist/YouGov and 5 in the right-wing poll heavy 538 averages. Trump now has the highest disapproval rating every recorded in the first month of an American Presidency since polling was introduced in the 1950s, and is now regularly showing up underwater in major, credible polls:
Economist/YouGov 47%-49% - Trump has lost 6 pts here in 3 weeks
Civiqs 45%-50% - 4 pt decline for Trump in last week
Marquette University 48%-52%
Pew 47%-51%
In the Economist/YouGov poll this week Trump is 10 points underwater with independents, 39%-49%.
While the Trump/Musk show goes on everyday, the shock and awe of it all, underneath it all his standing with the American people is eroding, significantly, rapidly, and it is a big problem for him and the entire Republican Party. For they have no plan to get prices and inflation down. Their plan actually raises prices, which is why prices and inflation are going up.
My friends, this is what not winning looks like.
That we did not mount a major campaign to disqualify Trump’s Unacceptable 4 - Hegseth, Gabbard, Kennedy, Patel (and Vought) - and defeat them was a major mistake that we must learn from. It’s clear that our elected leaders must far more rapidly now come to understand their new role not just as legislators and executives but as communicators, influencers, info warriors and leaders of a new, ferocious 24/7/365 Opposition Party and defenders of our Constitutional order.
As a reminder here is the oath our Congressional leaders took:
I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.
I am incredibly proud of the role our community is playing in helping our electeds come to understand what is expected of them now; to help give them ideas on how to become the leaders we need them to be now. Here at Hopium we are not whining, we are working. In a time of enormous challenge many of you are channeling your love of country into concrete, constructive actions every day. It is inspiring to see.
Here’s what Tim from Minnesota shared in our daily chat yesterday:
I have been calling my senators local offices for the last couple of weeks on a daily basis. I have been getting a live person almost every time. Today, both offices of my senators rang and went to voicemail because they were taking other calls. Sen. Smith's office told me yesterday they are getting a lot of calls and I assume that it hasn't changed.
As for my rep, I called and talked to a live person and asked that the House D's do not vote for anything on the budget/government funding until the criming stops. I also expressed my disappointment that there was an Axios article where House Democrats are mad at all the phone calls they are getting. https://www.axios.com/2025/02/12/democrats-jeffries-move-on-indivisible-trump . I asked my rep to not be mad, but instead be thankful that her constituents are giving a clear message on what they want done. I know that anger is the first stage of grief and acceptance is the last stage, so it's good to see that we are helping our reps work through this process.
We are in the frustrating interlude right now, where there is not a lot of action. But, in the coming weeks, with the government funding running out in mid-March and the attempt to push through $4 trillion in tax cuts, there will be a lot of action and elected Democrats will have a lot to do. We need to keep making clear what it is that we want them to do.
We have to keep working hard all. One day at a time. Let’s go 1 and 0 today.
We also talked last night about how nothing Musk is doing is legal or Constitutional, how it is an extraordinary assault on our democracy. Paul Krugman writes this morning about what an absolute fraud Musk is, having not yet shown any real examples of “waste, fraud and abuse” despite being at it for months. We, the American people, however, did find some significant waste, fraud and abuse last night, abuse of the Muskian variety. Apparently he is forcing the State Department to buy $400m of armored Tesla cybertrucks, thousands and thousands of them. As I wrote on Bluesky this morning, we have to imagine that the goal here is to place one of these ridiculous beasts in front of every American Embassy as a marketing and sales ploy help bail out his struggling car company that is the major source of his wealth and power.
So while Musk is literally killing the poorest people of the world thru the vaporization of USAID he is lining his own pockets with our money.
Here’s the opening graphs of that story:
Bitcoin, emissions credits and promises about artificial intelligence can only do so much. Like it or not, Tesla is still a car company. And Tesla's sales are not off to a great start in 2025.
In recent days, full-year and January sales results from various markets around the world indicate a bleak picture for the Elon Musk-led electric vehicle company. Even as it added the Cybertruck to its lineup in large volumes last year—which should have unlocked more buyers in America's expansive pickup truck field—Tesla is seeing serious declines in places where it once had a near-lock on electric sales. Let's take a look at some of the areas taking the hardest hits.
Musk is also very vulnerable to being targeted in the coming round of reciprocal tariffs from Canada, Mexico and Europe for Trump’s new tariffs on steel and aluminum this week. Punishing Musk has become a major topic in the upcoming Canadian election…..
We also talked about Trump’s extraordinary betrayal of Ukraine this week. Our President has apparently decided to “negotiate the end of the war” with the genocidal maniac who started it, Putin, leaving out our European partners and Ukraine itself. It is one of the darkest moments in American history, perhaps the darkest. Here’s how the NYT covered it today in a story, Putin Scores Big Victory, And Not On The Battlefield:
For President Vladimir V. Putin, one phone call marked a turning point as great as any battle in his three-year war.
In a lengthy call on Wednesday, President Trump delivered a message to Mr. Putin that encapsulated much of how the Russian leader sees today’s world: that Russia and the United States are two great nations that should negotiate Ukraine’s fate directly and move on to addressing even weightier global affairs.
It was the clearest sign yet that Mr. Putin, despite Russia’s disastrous failures at the outset of his Ukraine invasion in early 2022, could still emerge from the war with a redrawn map of Europe and an expansion of Russia’s influence in it.
The call came on the same day that Mr. Trump’s defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, declared that the United States would not support Ukraine’s desire for NATO membership. It also came as the Senate confirmed Tulsi Gabbard, widely seen as sympathetic to Mr. Putin, as the next director of national intelligence.
Taken together, the developments marked a payoff for Mr. Putin’s monthslong campaign of lavishing praise on Mr. Trump — apparently in the belief that the American president has the power to deliver a Russian victory in Ukraine.
“Putin is playing a very clever game,” Tatiana Stanovaya, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center in Berlin, said. “He’s investing 100 percent into the effort to seduce Trump.”
In Moscow, news of the long-awaited call ushered in a wave of barely contained glee. Commentators claimed that the American-led three-year effort to isolate Russia had emphatically ended. They celebrated Mr. Trump’s glowing social media post after the call about “the Great History of Our Nations” and noted that the American president had spoken to Mr. Putin before he had called President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine.
One Russian lawmaker said that Mr. Putin’s call with Mr. Trump “broke the West’s blockade.” Another said that Europeans were surely reading Mr. Trump’s post about it “with horror and cannot believe their eyes.” A third said it was a “day of good news.”
Letting Putin win is another way Trump - and America - are not winning today.
Let’s Get To Work - Here are my current working recommendations for calls/contacts this week. Four today, and thanks to all of you who are busting your ass right now:
Keep calling to stop Musk’s crime spree and assault on the US government. Encourage your Senators and Reps to file a criminal referral for him and his malicious posse to DOJ/FBI. Feel free to add that you would like funding for USAID restored so our government does not kill millions and millions of people this year in our name.
Keep calling Attorneys General in the states. Ask them to protect you and your data/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 this weekend 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 this week, and raise the stakes.
Insist they fight to challenge and rollback Trump’s tariffs which will raise prices here, strain our alliances, undermine the rules-based global order and make us a rogue, pariah nation. This is all particularly true as new data tells us the American economy is slowing, inflation is rising and consumer sentiment is dropping. There is perhaps no greater Trumpian betrayal of America than these tariffs. For more background, see this post which includes my recent interview with leading economist Dr. Rob Shapiro.
Lets 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, not an ally. Demand that Trump not let his Saudi meeting w/Putin become our Munich; demand that he not become our Neville Chamberlain.
We have dropped the calls for NIH funding for it appears that after pressure and successful court challenges grants are flowing again. Great work everyone!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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.
A note - while physical protests and rallies are a vital part of how we build our new opposition movement, make sure you only attend or promote events by organizations you know and trust. This is really important.
For those wanting to do more traditional political/campaign work, we have three Hopium-backed efforts we're rallying behind right now:
Help Get Ken Martin Off To A Strong Start - In this time of extraordinary challenge we need a strong DNC. A week ago Saturday we set a goal of raising $100,000 by March 31st for our new Chair. Incredibly, over 1,000 of you have donated over $105,000 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. We now have a new stretch goal of $150,000 by March 31st after hitting our initial goal of $100,000 in just seven days!
Note that two other good friends of Hopium - David Hogg and Jane Kleeb - were elected Vice Chairs of the DNC this weekend (Jane was elected head of the ASDC which also makes her a DNC Vice Chair). You can watch my inspiring interviews with David here, and with Jane here and learn more about where they want to take the party in the days ahead.
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 $33,000 so far towards our March 31st goal of $100,000 - thank you all. Let’s keep working it for Abigail!
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. More on this critical election in the coming days. Our goal is to raise $50,000 by April 1st. We’ve raised $25,000 so far - thank you all!
More Things To Do - Dive into my recent interviews with folks who are making a difference. Check out our upcoming events. Come see me in Bethesda, Maryland next Tuesday. Review my 7 Initial Takeaways From The 2024 Elections.
Let’s go 1 and 0 today all. Proud to be in this fight with all of you - Simon
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