Trump Has Stumbled, Badly, And We Need To Get Much More Aggressive In Challenging Him Now

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Morning all. Let’s start this morning with the GDPNow forecast from the Atlanta Fed. In just a few weeks Trump turned the strongest economy in the developed world into shit. On purpose. By design. He chose this.

Every American is getting hurt by Trump’s reckless economic agenda. Our country is far weaker. Poorer. How can any American every trust him to do anything ever again? For what Trump is doing to our economy right now is without question the greatest fuckup by an American leader in our history. He is now, today, without question the greatest fuckup and worst leader this country has ever known.

Here is the image The Economist used last week, before the big drop in our stock markets. Trump lighting American prosperity and himself on fire. On purpose.

Today the markets started off in positive territory. Then Trump announced new tariffs and they went negative again. As if he wanted to drive them down, and hurt America, again, on purpose. Here’s CNBC:

The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell Tuesday after President Donald Trump placed additional tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum coming into the U.S.

The 30-stock average lost 455 points, or 1.1%, while the S&P 500 dropped 1.1%. The Nasdaq Composite slipped 0.6%.

In a Truth Social post, Trump said steel and aluminum duties would go up by an additional 25%, bringing them to 50%. He added that the levies would take effect Wednesday.

This is the latest in a series of escalating trade policy moves that have stoked fears of a U.S. economic recession. The White House has place tariffs on Canadian, Mexican and Chinese imports, leading to steep losses in equities.

But this is not all Trump has done in his early days. He has also abandoned Ukraine and Europe, torching America’s most important alliances, and allied America with a genocidal maniac bringing a world war to Europe. He has threatened to seize Canada and Greenland, violating international law with those threats, pushing America towards conflict with both Europe and NATO allies. He has vaporized USAID, torching America’s reputation in the 100 countries that it serves. He has backed a budget outline that would literally take from the poor and the middle class and give to the rich while also leaving America with enormous new deficits. He has launched an unprecedented attack on our Constitutional order, claiming powers no leader could ever have in a democracy, and using it to dismember the United States government itself. He and Musk have been on an historic crime spree these last few weeks, together breaking more laws than any Americans have in all our history.

There can be little doubt now that Donald Trump is the worst and most destructive American there has ever been. He is now a world-famous villain. He is destroying our democracy, our reputation, our economy and our future. His betrayal of the great American project and the American people is historic. He is irredeemable. And as we’ve been saying here over the last few weeks, we simply must fight his reign of terror with everything we got. There is a great urgency to our work for Trump and his rancid partner Musk are breaking things that are going to be very hard if not impossible to repair. Look at headlines this morning. It’s madness, and it is long past time for us to make sure this Trumpian fever breaks:

Musk Says Entitlements ‘Big One’ to Cut in Trump’s DOGE Push

Suspension of USAID funding likely violated Constitution, judge says

Kennedy Links Measles Outbreak to Poor Diet and Health, Citing Fringe Theories - In a recent interview, the health secretary also suggested that the measles vaccine had harmed children in West Texas, center of an outbreak

USDA cancels $1B in local food purchasing for schools, food banks

U.S. cancels aid supporting political prisoners, activists in Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela

JD Vance Attacked by His Own Cousin Who Fought in Ukraine

Trump Warns Arrest of Student “First Of Many”

Funding freeze leaves Fulbright and study-abroad students stranded

or this Twitter exchange where Musk calls Senator Mark Kelly a decorated veteran, a traitor for visiting and advocating for Ukraine:

Critically, Trump is weaker now. He has retreated, begun to desperately change course. Inside the White House and Republican circles in DC they know this thing isn’t working. It has become far harder for his enablers to pretend he is anything other than an idiot, a disaster. Wall Street has lost confidence in him. The American people are turning on him. Protests are growing in frequency and size and it is freaking Trump out (crowd size is a thing with him!). The free world has turned on him, and it is not clear he will even be able to visit any traditional American ally in the coming years. The curtain has begun to be pulled back from the Wizard. Trump the strong and mighty is becoming Trump the idiot, the weak, the fuckup, the betrayer.

Which is why Democrats must wake now from these hazy early days and prosecute our case with the American people far more aggressively. Yes, we should hammer Trump on his failed and reckless economic agenda. But we must now open up that Second Front we’ve been discussing, one that creates a clear understanding in the public’s mind of both his selling out of America to Putin and his attack on our government and Constitutional order here at home.

As I shared with you last night one of the leading advocates of opening up this Second Front is Rep. Adam Smith. In our new discussion he describes a new and encouraging project - the coming together of the national security ranking Dems in the House and Senate into a more organized force, an early form of what could be called a Shadow National Security Cabinet. As I detailed yesterday House Dems are clearly raising their game, adding new muscle and capacity to their challenge to Trump.

While we are stronger now, we all know what we are doing, together, still isn’t enough. The effective and ferocious opposition we all want to emerge is still in its early days, still walking not yet running. Which is why we here at Hopium need to get loud today and every day this week. Now that Trump has clearly stumbled, badly, we must demand that our leaders become even more aggressive in their opposition to him. The wheels have started coming off the Trump-Musk bus from hell, and we need to keep the pressure on.

No one knows what is going to happen with the CR this week. On Saturday Speaker Johnson ended weeks of bi-partisan negotiation and decided to go with a partisan myway or the highway bill today. Let’s see if it can pass. As of this morning he still did not have the votes, and Democrats are lined up against it. Republicans made a choice with this bill to, despite the current economic turmoil, to shut the government down. Trump fought to shut the government down in December, and he did shut it down while he was President for more than a month. They are the party of government shut downs going back to Gingrich in the mid 1990s, and have once against chosen to burn it all down rather than work together with Democrats on behalf of the American people.

How should Senate Dems proceed if the partisan House bills passes? Let’s see if Rs can pass the House bill first. More on that tomorrow. Whatever happens his week presents us with an opportunity to explain to the American people how Trump and Musk are illegally and unconstitutional usurping Congress’s authorities, and that it needs to end - something we’ve been calling for for many weeks now……

Now, let’s get to work for our work is making a difference and we need to keep fighting Let’s start with our current four recommended sets of actions:

1 - Fight The Trump/Musk Attack On Our Government And Our Privacy, End This Historic Crime Spree - Encourage your Senators and Representatives to let Facts be be submitted to a candid world in what I’m calling a joint Senate/House “Letter to America;” hold their own hearings; 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 last Friday). 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 - Protest, Loudly, Trump’s Embrace of Russia and Abandonment of 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 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.

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 two 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 Tuesday and we need to keep working it people!

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 right now:

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 $129,533, blowing past our original $50,000 goal and now our stretch goals of $100,000 and $125,000. We are now upping this to a new super-stretch goal of $150,000 by March 31st. Amazing work everyone!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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 $98,000 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 our very strong start for this effort (note that we did have some money clawed back due to an error in the amount someone gave!)

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 $61,000 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 $21,000 so far - thank you all!

Help Hopium Celebrate Our 2nd Anniversary - In yesterday’s post 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.

Paid subscribers should sign up for our Wednesday night get together here.

Keep working hard all. Our work is making a difference, and I am incredibly proud to be in this fight with all of you - Simon