Trump Is Weaker Today, The Economy Is Slowing, And We Need To Keep Fighting MAGA's Ruinous Economic Agenda

Joe Garcia Joins Us Live From Miami Today At 12:15pm

Morning all. I don’t know what is going to happen with the feud in the coming days but there is little doubt that it is bad news for Trump, the GOP and their terrible reconciliation bill. Here is how Politico is covering it in their lead story this morning:

“Trump has 3.5 years left as President, but I will be around for 40+ years,” Musk said on X.

The post was an unambiguous warning from the world’s richest man, who has the power to single-handedly reshape elections with his wealth. It was not long ago that Republicans hoped Musk could pour cash into their efforts to help maintain control of Washington. Instead, he’s becoming their public adversary.

Musk spent Thursday online attacking President Donald Trump over Republicans’ massive tax-and-spending bill, which Musk says does not cut enough government spending.

He’d already threatened to challenge Republicans who support the megabill; on Thursday, he blasted House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune, took credit for Republicans winning trifecta control in November, and floated the idea of launching a third party.

“This is a massive crack in the MAGA coalition,” said Matthew Bartlett, a Republican strategist and a former Trump administration appointee. “This town is historically built on Republican versus Democrat, and this seems to be crazy versus crazy. It is asymmetric and it seems, for the first time, President Trump seems to be out-crazied.”

Here’s how the NYT is playing it, leading with the ugly, ugly Tweets:

As I wrote to you last night I have three initial takeaways on the feud:

• Musk is doing a lot of damage to Trump at a time when he was already weakened and struggling. All of this makes Trump less “strong” and his regime even more of a farce and clown show.

• We should welcome Musk’s help in killing/undermining Trump’s terrible budget bill. It is a bad bill, and it will be good for the country if it fails.

• Musk is an historically dangerous oligarch, a serial criminal, and he and his entire DOGE crew should be prosecuted for their illegal and destructive dismantling of the US government and theft of our private data. His vaporizing of USAID will lead to the death of millions of the poorest people on Earth, and there are can be no redemption for Musk for any of this, ever. His unprecedented undermining of American hard and soft power - and now a sitting American President - cannot be flushed down the memory hole no matter how many flacks he hires and politicians he buys.

Prior to all this Trump was already in a weakened position. His economic strategy is failing - prices are rising, the economy is slowing, the markets are jittery, our credit has been downgraded, no one is cutting “deals” with him and the American people are unhappy. His big ugly bill is a fiscal, economic and political disaster, something Senate Republicans seem to be figuring out. He keeps losing in court, badly, daily. His fanatical immigration raids are way over the line, and are drawing increasing public opposition. Ukraine’s recent successes are an enormous, global embarrassment for our Russia-allied leader, and it appears that Congress is about to throw a very harsh Russian sanctions bill at him that he has no interest in signing:

While Ukraine just pulled off an audacious and effective attack on Russia’s bomber fleet, Vladimir Putin is slow-walking Donald Trump’s effort to nudge the warring countries toward peace talks and continuing to kill Ukrainian civilians, irritating the American president.

Soon, Trump could have on his desk a sanctions bill that would do grave damage to Russia’s capacity to fund the war by targeting the countries still buying Moscow’s oil and gas, the lifeline of their economy. The measure, co-sponsored by Senators Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), has amassed a remarkable 82 sponsors and both Senate Majority Leader John Thune and Speaker Mike Johnson this week vocalized their support for confronting Russia.

There may not be again such an opportune moment to squeeze Putin and finally force him to the negotiating table.

There’s only one hold-up: Trump doesn’t seem to want to.

The new May jobs report out this morning showed further weakening of the US economy:

This week Musk has done many things but perhaps the most important thing he has done has been to show clear and aggressive defiance of the mad wanna be king. The circle of defiance we talk about here grew much, much larger in recent days. Trump was mocked, humiliated, attacked, challenged, defied in a way that all of MAGA could see, by one of Trump’s most important allies. If part of what takes an authoritarian down is the loss of their “strength” this week Trump has looked weak, very, very weak. I mean look at this wimpy, flaccid show of support from the Vice President:

For more on why we must do everything we can to challenge Trump’s ruinous economic agenda - including killing the rancid reconciliation bill - be sure to check out yesterday’s post and video and my informative new discussion with health care expert Charles Gaba.

We should also note that yes, Senate Republicans are now openly talking about adding cuts to MEDICARE to the already significant cuts to the ACA and Medicaid. From The Hill this morning:

The latest headache for Thune and other Senate negotiators is a proposal being pushed by fiscal conservatives to root out more than $200 billion in what they’re calling waste, fraud and abuse in Medicare — a controversial prospect, given the program’s popularity.

I think passing this terrible bill got a lot harder this week and we need to keep the pressure on everyone! Loud and proud, loud and proud!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Joe Garcia Joins Us Today At 1215pm ET - Going to have a bit of a Florida focus these next few days as I head down to Jupiter, Florida on Monday for an event with David Jolly, our newly announced candidate for Governor. Get more info on to attend the event here if you make it to Jupiter.

Today, my good friend and former South Florida Congressman Joe Garcia joins us Live from Miami at 1215pm ET. I’ve asked Joe to update us on how South Florida is reacting to 1) Trump’s efforts to deport almost a million of legal Venezuelans, Cubans, Haitians and Nicaraguans, many of whom live in South Florida, from the country 2) the throwing of legally present Venezuelans into the Salvadoran gulag 3) the newly announced travel ban that includes restrictions on Cuba, Haiti and Venezuela. You can join our livestreamed discussion by clicking here at 1215pm. Join us - going to be a good one!

Now, Let’s Get To Work - In last Saturday’s post I offered up some initial ideas of what our summer was going to look like. Please check it out if you haven’t gotten to it yet.

Job 1 for us this summer is fighting Trump’s ruinous economic agenda. We need to keep calling every day and demand our leaders vote down the reconciliation bill and roll back Trump’s terrible tariffs. This is the big, definitional battle of the summer and we need keep working it every day. Those of you in states with Republican Senators have a particularly important role to play.

Here’s a possible script for contacting your offices. Use whatever works for you:

I am calling to urge you to vote against the reconciliation bill and to roll back Trump’s terrible and illegal tariffs. Together these actions have raised taxes on all of us and will explode the deficit - things Republicans have always told us they did not believe in.

But your agenda is also causing all of us to “pay more and get less” for every day things including our health care; people to loses their jobs; and the economy to slow - all so you can give your rich donors a huge tax break. Your plans will weaken this great country and are an extraordinary betrayal of everything you promised during the campaign - which was to help people like me, not Elon Musk, get ahead.

Your plans are ones of sabotage, surrender and betrayal and I urge you to abandon them and to work with Democrats to find a better way.

I know many of you are involved in the June 14th No Kings events, town halls, Telsa take downs and all the other in person activities that have taken off of late. Thank you, and do keep working it everyone. I am still encouraging our community to explore ideas for how we can Own The Fourth and make our Independence Day an ugly day for our mad wannabe king. Hopium Merch is coming soon, and be sure to check our robust Events schedule as new events are being added daily.

Please self-report your activities to our daily paid subscriber chat. These reports help inspire me and I am sure others to do more, fight harder.

There are three additional efforts we’re working on now:

1 - Help Abigail Spanberger Win Virginia - Simply, the Virginia elections are the most important elections we have this year, and we must win them. We have narrow majorities in both legislative chambers and while our candidate Abigail Spanberger has a modest lead in current polling, this is going to be a close election where our money and volunteer time can make a real difference. If you are to give to only one candidate or election this year it should be this one. Here’s a link to do so today……

To learn more about Abigail check out my new discussion with her, watch her new TV ad, or head over to her campaign website We have now raised over $121,000 towards our June 30th goal of $200,000 - thank you all! We need to keep working it everyone!

2 - 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. Catch our interviews with Reps Derek Tran, Janelle Bynum, Tom Suozzi and Laura Gillen and give to all 7 through a single donation on our ActBlue page. Learn more about this important effort here.

We’ve already raised over $121,000 towards our $200,000 June 30th goal - great work everyone!

We also have ongoing campaigns to raise money for the new DNC, support the North Carolina Democratic Party and to thank Senator Cory Booker for his spirited leadership in a time of enormous challenge.

3 - Growing Hopium - We’ve set a goal of trying to grow the Hopium community from the 151,000 we are now to 175,000 by Labor Day. Do what you can to encourage your friends, family and colleagues to become a summer subscriber to Hopium, free or paid. To encourage the growth of our community annual paid subscriptions are 10% off through Labor Day too!

Keep working hard all. Proud to be in this fight with all of you - Simon