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Trump Is A Loser, A Failure, A Coward And An Appeaser. America Is Not Winning Under Trump

Hopium Paid Subscribers Gather Tomorrow Night at 7pm ET

Simon Rosenberg

Mar 18

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Morning all. News accounts suggest that in the coming days our treacherous leader is going to declare Crimea part of Russia, not Ukraine, formally putting the US on the side of Russia - not Europe, not Ukraine - in Putin’s genocidal attempt to conquer Ukraine. It will signal among many other things a functional end to NATO and the Western alliance that has kept the US safe, free and prosperous for generations. Putin successfully engineered the UK’s departure from Europe. And now it appears he is getting America to abandon it too.

As I wrote to you yesterday Trump is leading America to a place that guarantees that we will be poorer, less healthy, less safe and less free; that making us a diminished nation, a global pariah, and poorer is Trump’s actual strategy here despite whatever “great again” narrative he spews; and that our leaders must begin a serious and sustained conversation with all of us about the gravity of what is happening here. For Trump and Musk are breaking things today that will be very hard, if not possible, to repair.

One of the things Trump and Musk appear to be breaking in their manic assault on the US may be Trump’s single most important brand attribute - that with Trump you get success, winning, a better life, more money, more opportunity, more prosperity, “greatness.” I think this aspect of Trump’s brand has been his primary bridge to his non-MAGA supporters. Even in his 2020 loss the exit polls showed Trump with huge advantages over Biden on the economy. We’ve been told that the nostalgia for the pre-COVID economy under Trump was central to his victory in 2024, and we know this aura of success has been reinforced by the very public support Musk and other Silicon Valley leaders have provided him (and why they were so prominently featured at his Inaugural). We see Trump as a monster. Many see him as a successful businessman who can make their lives better. A winner.

There is a growing body of data that suggests that this part of Trump’s brand, perhaps the only attractive part, is slipping away from him. First, let’s look at today’s newly revised Atlanta Fed GDPNow forecast. In this highly influential forecast GDP growth this quarter has declined 6 points - 6 points - due to Trump’s reckless economic policies. In my more than 30 years looking at economic and public data this may be the single most astonishing thing I have ever seen. It certainly suggests that we should see Trump as far more a historic fuck-up than a proven winner.

Let’s now look at the influential University of Michigan Consumer Confidence data over time. This graph comes our friend Stephen Clermont at Change Research. In the new data released on Friday American Consumer Confidence was lower than it has been at any time in the last 45 years, and plummeting. Note that for most of Trump’s first term, the one voters looked back on so fondly, this survey came in in the mid 90s to low 100s. Today it is 58. The county is losing faith in him.

I shared a lot of polling with you last week (here, here, here). It all showed Trump losing altitude. Yesterday’s Morning Consult tracker had Trump’s job approval 10 points lower than Inauguration Day, similar to what we are seeing now in other polls. Now I want to return to three polls I wrote about last week. Let’s start with the CNN poll that showed Trump incredibly under water on the economy, health care and tariffs. As several polls have noted Trump was never this far underwater on the economy during his first term, and note this data tracks with the collapse in consumer confidence University of Michigan has found.

Next, is a comprehensive Reuters poll that we reviewed on Friday. It is my belief that what has become baked into voter’s minds right now, already, is that

Trump = tariffs = higher prices = greater struggle for their families

and again, that these price increases are something Trump is doing on purpose.

Note that in this polling 20-25% of Republicans disagree with Trump’s main arguments. These are those “bridge” voters, weak Trump supporters, who connected to him as the “opportunity” candidate.

Perhaps the most interesting of all the polling data we got last week came from the sturdy Economist/YouGov weekly tracker. Below find some of the changes since Trump took office. Hispanics and young people were the late breaking voters for Trump that helped put him over the top, and part of those “bridge” voters. What we see here is a total collapse of Trump’s approval on his economic stewardship, "the winner” part of his brand:

Trump Job Approval

Overall - 49%-43% to 47%-47% (6 pt swing against Trump)

Hispanics - 42%-47% to 34%-56% (17 pt swing against Trump)

18-29 year olds - 48%-43% to 43%-45% (7 pt swing against Trump)

Independents - 41%-45% to 41%-46% (1 pt swing againt Trump)

Trump Job Approval For Jobs and The Economy

Overall - 49%-37% to 43%-47% (16 pt swing against Trump)

Hispanics - 41%-36% to 32%-58% (31 pt swing against Trump)

18-29 year olds - 51%-33% to 40%-45% - (23 pt swing against Trump)

Independents - 43%-35% to 38%-49% - (17 pt swing against Trump)

Americans increasingly believe that we are not winning under Trump. And they, of course, are right:

Another critical part of Trump not winning is what is happening to Musk. He is incredibly unpopular in all these polls, as is his assault on the US government. And everyday we keep seeing the collapse in his stock price. Yesterday Tesla dropped 5% even after Trump’s desperate attempt to prop it up. Today it is down 7% and it is now down more than 54% since mid-December. We see the protests and Musk is increasingly talking about becoming a hated man. Musk’s rockets keep exploding. Twitter just went off line last week. His global brand is collapsing along with his stock price.

And Trump and Musk are not winning every day in court, even in the Supreme Court. Today they are experiencing what is arguably their greatest loss - reinstating 24,000 workers illegally fired!

As I often say to that we need to understand how much Trump sees the world through winning/losing, strong/weak. It is why it is essential that we work to establish that he is both weak and a loser; not strong and a winner. And let us be very very clear now that America is not winning under Trump. We are losing badly. We are weaker, poorer, less healthy and far, far less safe. As we saw in this data today those Americans available to us - the non-MAGAs - are increasingly waking up to the not winning, and Trump’s brand - which is essentially all he has - is eroding, badly, rapidly. It is why we need to keep working hard. Keep arguing that we are not winning, and keep doing everything we can to stop the extraordinary damage Trump is doing to this once great country.

So, now, let’s get to work everyone……

Things We Can Do This Week - While we have made many recommendations to Democrats in recent months for how to raise our game and fight harder and smarter, let’s focus on our current four recommended sets of actions for how we can best channel our love of country and our frustrations into concrete action today:

1 - Fight The Trump-Musk Attack On Our Government, Our Privacy And Our Constitutional Order - Encourage your Senators and Representatives to let Facts be be submitted to a candid world in a joint Senate-House Letter to America; to hold their own hearings; to 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 two weeks ago). 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 - Loudly Protest Trump’s Embrace of Russia and Abandonment of NATO and 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 and NATO 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 and not surrender to Putin, and my new interview with Rep. Adam Smith, the Ranking Member of the House Armed Services Committee, one of the most important foreign policy voices in our party.

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 a few 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 month and we need to keep working it people! (will be updating this in coming days now that the DNC, the House Dems and the state parties have become active in all these districts - as we hoped!!!!! Sign up to attend a new “People’s Town Hall” today)

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 in addition to our new House Hopium 7:

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 $159,000 from almost 2,000 of you, blowing past our original $50,000 goal and now our stretch goals of $100,000, $125,000 and $150,000. We are now upping this to a new superduper-stretch goal of $175,000 by March 31st. Amazing work everyone!

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. You can give to all 7 through a single donation to our new ActBlue page and learn more about this important effort here. We’ve already raised almost $18,000 towards our $50,000 March 31st goal - thank you all!

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 $64,000 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 $24,000 so far - thank you all!

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 $100,000 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!

Help Hopium Celebrate Our 2nd Anniversary - In a post from last weekend 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. Gift and group subscriptions are also a great way to grow our community!

Keep working hard all. Our work is making a difference, and we need to keep fighting for our freedoms, our families and our future - Simon

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Tuesday, March 18, 2025