The Blinding Greed, Arrogance, And Incompetence Of Their Vile 1,000 Year Reich

I go live with Mike Nellis today at 5pm EST - join us if you can.....

Happy Monday all. I rise this morning a bit overwhelmed by the blinding greed, arrogance and self-certainty of the new Reich, while also buoyed/terrified by their remarkable idiocy and incompetence.

I will be talking to strategist Mike Nellis about all this today live at 5pm EST. Head to the Hopium site a few minutes before and you can watch it there……

Consider…….

They’ve decided to just blow off the newly passed Epstein law. Blow it off, as if it were a suggestion, not binding law. Three days past the legal deadline 99% of what the government has in its possession has not been released; what has been released has been comically over-redacted; and yes in their manic attempt to provide cover for Trump and his allies the Trumpistas have continually left the actual victim’s names unredacted……

A high priestess of the new Reich, Bari Weiss, newly installed “Editor-in-Chief” of CBS News, did a last minute spike of a widely promoted 60 Minutes story about their Salvadoran gulag (WaPo story, gift link). This Trump pleasing move came just as her techbro overlords - the new Reich allied Oracle/Paramount/TikTok - made a renewed effort to wrest control of Warner Brothers and CNN from Netflix, something Trump may be able to engineer, as he did their acquisition of TikTok last week.

Here is what Sharyn Alfonsi, the CBS correspondent of the now memory holed segment wrote to her colleagues last night. It’s incredibly damning, and powerful:

News Team,

Thank you for the notes and texts. I apologize for not reaching out earlier.

I learned on Saturday that Bari Weiss spiked our story, INSIDE CECOT, which was supposed to air tonight. We (Ori and I) asked for a call to discuss her decision. She did not afford us that courtesy/opportunity.

Our story was screened five times and cleared by both CBS attorneys and Standards and Practices. It is factually correct. In my view, pulling it now—after every rigorous internal check has been met is not an editorial decision, it is a political one.

We requested responses to questions and/or interviews with DHS, the White House, and the State Department. Government silence is a statement, not a VETO. Their refusal to be interviewed is a tactical maneuver designed to kill the story.

If the administration’s refusal to participate becomes a valid reason to spike a story, we have effectively handed them a “kill switch” for any reporting they find inconvenient.

If the standard for airing a story becomes “the government must agree to be interviewed,” then the government effectively gains control over the 60 Minutes broadcast. We go from an investigative powerhouse to a stenographer for the state.

These men risked their lives to speak with us. We have a moral and professional obligation to the sources who entrusted us with their stories. Abandoning them now is a betrayal of the most basic tenet of journalism: giving voice to the voiceless.

CBS spiked the Jeffrey Wigand interview due to legal concerns, nearly destroying the credibility of this broadcast. It took years to recover from that “low point.” By pulling this story to shield an administration, we are repeating that history, but for political optics rather than legal ones.

We have been promoting this story on social media for days. Our viewers are expecting it. When it fails to air without a credible explanation, the public will correctly identify this as corporate censorship. We are trading 50 years of “Gold Standard” reputation for a single week of political quiet.

I care too much about this broadcast to watch it be dismantled without a fight.

Sharyn

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Sharyn Alfonsi

The ongoing desecration of the Capital is becoming further institutionalized:

This morning the Reich, in another corrupt appeasement of its global petro partners, cancelled 5 off shore wind farms:

Senate Republicans just launched a new ad in Maine with completely AI generated images of Janet Mills (AI slop is the name for this stuff). Watch this report from Maine to see what is coming next year:

Last night, at 11pm, just days before Christmas, Trump announced the appointment of Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry to be his “Special Envoy to Greenland.” Greenland, of course, is part of Denmark and Denmark is part of both the EU and NATO. There can be no official envoy there - only to Denmark. Here is what our Very Special Envoy then posted, a remark that goes against every possible understanding of international law, the UN and NATO Charters. This whole thing is just so jawdroppingly idiotic and dangerous.

It appears this provocative announcement, one that further pushes the US away from Europe and NATO (aiding Russia of course), came out of the current vile Witkoff-Kushner-Dmitriev talks in Miami:

OK, I may be a little grumpy today. I will admit it. For today, for whatever reason, the insanity of all this, the depravity, clear madness, the “sabotage, plunder, betrayal” - all of it - just got to me. They just keep grinding away; keep executing their vile plans; keep ignoring the law and weakening the democratic project here and abroad; keep undermining the global security architecture that has keep safe and free for generations; keep bolstering a world historic villain and mass murderer, Putin; keep lining their pockets and stripping this great country for parts; keep telling the Congress and the American people to fuck off as they head to their golf courses and warm weather mansions. And I am pissed, angry, that all this cannot even take a break for the Holidays. To give us some respite from the ugliness of it all. Their lust from power cannot be satiated. Their arrogance leads them to believe accountability will never come. And they just keep grinding on - arrogantly, manically, comically, dangerously, traitorously……

I used the term “Reich” today for I think they have Imperial ambitions, and imagine themselves to be the vanguard of a oligarch-led post-democratic America. It is more a dynamic “Reich” than a rigid “regime,” and I going to keep playing around with the term. Here is how the Google defines “Reich” -

Reich - (German for “realm,” “empire,” or “kingdom”) refers to historical German states, most famously the “Third Reich” (Nazi Germany, 1933-1945) but also the German Empire (Second Reich, 1871-1918) and the Holy Roman Empire (First Reich). In English, the term often carries strong connotations of totalitarianism, especially linked to Hitler’s Nazi regime, but fundamentally it just means “empire” or “realm” in German.

A reminder that Hitler’s new Reich lasted only 12 years, not 1,000. Accountability did come, and the Reich did fall.

So heads down all, and now…….

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

Note we are very close to hitting our year end goals for our new intrepid House candidates and our Audacious Expansion Fund - chip in to either before the end of the year if you can. Thank you everyone!!!!!

Winning The Midterms - Support Our 2026 Candidates

• Roy Cooper for NC Senate (2026) - $59k raised, $250,000 goal - Donate | Learn More | Volunteer | Enjoy my conversation with Gov. Cooper

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Expanding The Senate and Electoral College Maps, Winning In Red States and Red Places (2026-2032)

• Hopium’s Audacious Expansion Fund - $248,000 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 three new essays (here, here, here) 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, 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:

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 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

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.

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!

Happy Holidays all and may we spend as little time thinking about him as possible in these coming weeks.

For the opposite of love isn’t hate. It’s indifference - Simon