Trump Is Moving Fast And Breaking Things, And We Need To Move Much Faster Now, Get Much Louder
Live Event Today at 2pm ET - Dr. Rob Shapiro On Tariffs, Inflation and Trump
Morning all. We are a week in and it’s clear now that Trump 2.0 is a wild, reckless, impulsive mess. Just like him. Eliminate FEMA! Start trade wars with close allies! Tariff everyone! Blow up the 80 year old global trade system! Fire everybody! Round ‘em all up! Let ‘em all go! Seize land from sovereign nations! Clean out Gaza! Buy my memecoin, my bibles, my sneakers! Shut down all foreign aid (even to Ukraine)! Turn off funding to life saving medical trials and hospitals! Stop infrastructure projects already under construction across the US! Nazi salutes! Yeah baby!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
It’s ridiculous. Yes some of all this is strategic but a great deal of it is idiotic. Trump and his team are reckless, fanatical, dangerous fools. They are in Silicon Valley speak manically “moving fast and breaking things” but the things they are breaking are not theirs. They are ours - our nation’s honor, our government, our laws, our prosperity, our health, our democracy, our safety, our warming planet…..
From The Washington Post:
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials have been directed by Trump officials to aggressively ramp up the number of people they arrest, from a few hundred per day to at least 1,200 to 1,500, because the president has been disappointed with the results of his mass deportation campaign so far, according to four people with knowledge of the briefings.
The quotas were outlined Saturday in a call with senior ICE officials, who were told that each of the agency’s field offices should make 75 arrests per day and managers would be held accountable for missing those targets. The four people spoke on the condition of anonymity to disclose internal briefings.
The orders significantly increase the chance that officers will engage in more indiscriminate enforcement tactics or face accusations of civil rights violations as they strain to meet quotas, according to current and former ICE officials.
We cannot for one moment let this stuff become the new normal, or as I’ve been saying we cannot let Trump’s madness become our own. But our elected leaders in Washington and across the country need to start moving as fast as Trump and his team to minimize the damage being done and to start talking to the American people about what is happening. We are in the fight now, 24/7/365. It is here now and we need to dramatically, immediately raise our game.
I’ve also come to realize that I need to be doing that more of that here every day too. We have to examine, learn, understand in order to become the effective and ferocious opposition, and we will will have to move quicker too. In the past few days we’ve had a great conversation about Trump’s immigration strategy with David Leopold; another with Rep. Eric Swalwell about the role of Congress in fighting and winning the info wars; another with David Hogg about raising our game and winning back young voters. At 2pm ET today I will go live with our good friend, Dr. Rob Shapiro, to talk about tariffs, the global economic system and inflation. You can register for our event here and it will be shared here on the site for those of you who cannot make it live.
Trump has promised extraordinary new tariffs on Mexico, Canada and China this weekend. Will he blink as he did with Colombia last night? Will the cost of everything for everybody rise next week? Do they care?
Come discuss it all at 2pm ET today. Here’s Rob’s most recent essay in the Washington Monthly, Trump’s Campaign Promises Are On A Collision Course With Reality. It’s well worth a read.
Betrayal. Idiocy. Recklessness. Secession. Fanaticism. These are the words I keep coming back to as I think about these early days of Trump. I don’t think the American people signed up for any of this, or the attack on our democracy or the global order that Trump’s team seems intent on waging. And that is where I will end this morning. While we should all be worried about what Trump is breaking now my greatest worry is that he really does seem intent on breaking and undermining the American-led global system built after the catastrophe of the 1930s and 1940s. Unilateral, whimsical tariffs and territorial aggression violate are an abandonment of that system, an American secession from the rules based order of the past 80 years. Destroying that American-led system is the top foreign policy goal of Russia, China and our adversaries everywhere. What remains so stunning after this first week is that it appears to be our top foreign policy goal now too.
Why we need to keep fighting all.
A few more things:
Kennedy and Gabbard have their nomination hearings this week. Keep making your calls everyone.
We’ve endorsed Abigail Spanberger for Governor of Virginia. Watch my recent interview with her, learn more, volunteer and consider donating to her campaign. Our goal is to raise $100,000 for her by March 31st. We’ve already raised $17,000 - thank you all.
Be sure to watch my new video presentation (and companion essay) on the early days of Trump 2.0 and the need for us to keep fighting; review my current working 7 takeways and recommendations about the path forward (video and post), and my new essay on how "betrayal” is the word that I think best captures the new Trump era.
On Saturday the DNC will vote for a new Chair and new leaders. You can catch my interviews with leading Chair candidates Ken Martin, Martin O’Malley and Ben Wikler here. We are in the home stretch!
I’m speaking to a major political gathering in person at the University of Southern California this Thursday, January 30th. My panel starts at 215pm PT. Hope to be able to see some members of the Hopium community there!
For those coming up for renewal for your paid Hopium subscription please make sure your payment info is current. Paid subscribers keep this place going and the Hopium flowing!
Keep working hard all. Proud to be in this fight with all of you - Simon
There's supposed to be an opposition called the Democratic Party but the leadership is a joke. They are more worried about offending their deep pocket donors than they are about confronting the administration. Our leadership is beyond words. The only time I hear from them is when they want money. Has anyone ever laid out how the billion we gave them last year was spent?
Why aren’t congressional dem’s louder & bolder? Agree with the earlier commentator that the Dems are afraid of offending the corporate backers. That is in the past. Get louder and bolder! file lawsuits everywhere! Be on YouTube & lots of social media! What the heck are the congressional Democrats doing?