On Trump's Escalating Madness, Epstein, Compromise And The Unsustainable Path He Has ChosenHopium Paid Subscribers Gather Tonight At 7pm ET
Morning all. Today’s post is a more of a collection of notes rather than a coherent essay as we all try to asses where we are now after Trump’s terrible August of spiraling madness and physical decline. So here we go….. I think Trump’s disappearance last week was a significant event, and suggests that he is having significant physical and/or cognitive challenges. As we’ve discussed Trump had not taken a vacation all summer - an odd thing for such an old man in such a demanding job - which I’ve felt was a sign of disquiet and worry in his mind, a desperate need to reverse his declining poll numbers and growing sense that his government is failing, to somehow make Epstein and his horrible past disappear, of the shock of two buddies, Elon and Putin, turning on him. Rather than being a slow month to rest and reset ( as JD Vance viewed it), Trump manically attacked August - the wild, impulsive and destructive tariffs; the red carpet for Putin; the occupation of DC; the firing of the heads of the BLS and DIA and a Fed governor; Kennedy’s medieval assault on our public health; the escalating campaign to steal Congressional seats and make our elections bend the knee to him; the venal harassment of Kilmar Abrego Garcia; a new effort to illegally and unconstitutionally wrest control of federal spending away from Congress; the dark middle of the night loading of young children to traffic them to Guatemala, Uganda or god knows where else…..
Then he just disappeared without any explanation of where he had gone. No “vacation” - which would have been deserved and welcome - no a few days golfing. Just gone. Off camera for a week. After his manic and reckless August it was a bit of a shocker, and does suggest that his health problems - evident to the eye, unable to be AI-ed away - are far more serious than they admit. Then there was this bit of palace infrequent - Vance saying he was fired up and ready to go if anything happened to Trump….
Yesterday Trump showed up for the cameras again and it was ugly. His remarks were wild and deeply unhinged - mad even. Here’s NBC News reporting, straight up, on why Trump said he moved Space Command from Colorado:
I’m sorry but that is fucking insane. 25th Amendment territory. Then Trump released a video of the US military vaporizing a boat of 11 “narcoterrorists” near Venezuela. Are we really at war with Venezuela now? The President is posting videos of us killing a bunch of people at sea? What in the world is going on? Then we have the incredible spectacle of the governor of Illinois having to basically prepare his citizens of a Federal invasion of Chicago using National Guard troops from Texas. Ummmmmm, whaaaaaattttt?
But as Trump descends deeper into his make believe world, into his authoritarian madness, the real world is still out there, not bending the knee.
In recent days his tariffs were declared illegal (again), a judge declared the LA troop deployment illegal and a violation of the Posse Commitatus act, and another judge ruled that his use of the Alien Enemies Act to deport residents here without due process was also illegal. Together, these rulings tell a story of a remarkable, historic, deeply deranged and clearly impeachable abuse of power by Trump over these past few months. As we return of course chaos reins inside Trump’s party as a government shutdown looms. Here’s Punchbowl News this am, GOP heading into different directions as funding fight begins:
And then our deranged, idiot-in-chief apparently woke up to how he has been played, terribly, foolishly, by Putin, Xi and Kim (and perhaps he will now understand - or perhaps we need to make him understand - how his tariffs have made us far weaker today and our adversaries far stronger):
As I wrote to you yesterday I think we need to aim to make the story of the fall one of his retreat and struggle, and our movement asserting ourselves, winning elections and turning the tide. As he stumbles, and his failures and decline become more manifest, we must be courageous, bold, ambitious for more than anything else Trump takes a perception of weakness as a permission to escalate. As a movement we must be in his face every day on every possible issue, contest every space, force them to confront both the madness and extremism driving their regime and their ongoing failure to make things better for American and its people. What I see now is not a strong man but a weak one; not a success but a failure; not a popular leader but a deeply unpopular one who has lost the consent of the governed and the legitimacy he so desperately seeks. And then later today comes the Epstein survivors, voices crying out from his dark and terrible past, and a party that seems deeply weary of the clumsy and insulting coverup.
On this Epstein affair Trump is clearly guilty of something terrible. He and Epstein were best friends for years. 1,000 FBI agents assigned to scrub the files and even that wasn’t good enough. So we get an unbelievable coverup, clumsy, illegal, deeply corrupt. Then the House Rs rebel in late summer, and vote to subpoena the files. And DOJ has failed to comply. It’s extraordinary that Trump has put his government in a place where it is now openly defending sex traffickers and pedophiles and refusing to prosecute the crimes these records point to. Here’s the Washington Post this morning about the pressure Senator Ron Wyden is bringing to bear on Treasury for covering up sex crimes:
Wherever this extraordinary scandal goes there is one aspect of it that has not gotten enough attention - The President of the United States is clearly compromised. People, foreign governments, Ghislaine Maxwell, perhaps Elon Musk have leverage over Trump. Does this explain why he has been so fanatical about pursuing policies that are doing clear harm to our national interest - the tariffs; the severing of our historic alliances; the dismantling of our global democracy and soft power tools; the use of foreign gulags; the assault on science, higher ed and public health; the stepping back from our global leadership of clean energy tech; the turning of our military’s focus on China and Russia to pursuing Trump’s domestic ambitions? Some days the easiest explanation for what Trump is doing to the country is that Putin and Xi have him by the balls and are squeezing with everything they got; and the re-emergence of the Epstein nightmare is part of a broad pressure campaign to keep him executing on the checklist they have given him. For I will say it again - the last three manic, no-vacation months of escalation that we’ve seen from Trump began with Elon’s three day assault on him in early June that centered on the Epstein files tweet above that lead to another - now deleted - of Musk endorsing the idea of Vance replacing Trump. For while Trump ferociously worked through the summer, JD Vance took numerous lengthy vacations even at moments that Trump was declaring national emergencies that were apparently not emergency enough for Vance to return to…… OK, Simon. Where are we? I am not sure, but what I feel in my bones is that Trump is now on an unsustainable path. Too much isn’t working. He has brought too much material harm to the country and the American people. He is too unpopular, and he has lost his powers of persuasion, despite their enormous information superiority. His assault on our public health is insane, dangerous, medieval and completely indefensible. He is old, addled, and in declining health. He is illegally and brazenly monetizing the Presidency in a way that suggests he won’t be around much longer. He is a convicted felon who continues to break every kind of law imaginable on a daily basis. These images the last few days from Beijing even make it look Trump is in the process of losing the Cold War to Russia and China a half century later, in what will become known, without question, as the greatest series of national security and foreign policy mistakes in all of our history. That he and his regime are failing, extreme, dangerous, doing clear material harm to our people and interests, and also let us just say it - traitorous and betraying the country - is becoming harder to whitewash or ignore It’s just there for all to see. If one is willing to look. I don’t know where we go if this path is unsustainable, but it is why we need to keep working with everything we got to force a course correction; to win these fall elections; to find a better path for our great country. If things are going to change we need to commit to try to make them better and do everything we can to prevent them from getting worse. I believe this is a moment of opportunity for us, and we need to seize it. Let us work now to win the fall, together. Ways You Can Make A Difference This WeekPaid subscribers gather tonight at 7pm ET to talk all this out. Register here. Our “Must Win/Everyone In” Races
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Our updated fundraising goals are now for the end of the year, December 31st, except for the 2025 races, which are now for Election Day, 2025. Our Recommended Actions - We are prioritizing two actions today. You can get our full list of recommended actions here. Let’s get to it: 1 - Call Your Senators and Member Of The House And Demand They Act Upon Our Four-Part Agenda - We need to be loud people, very, very loud and make the case for our our emerging four part agenda. Demand that your reps work to
2 - Bring “Resolutions Of Condemnation” To Your Community - Inspired by the tactics of our Founders learn about how Hopium members are advancing “Resolutions of Condemnation” in their communities across the country and consider bringing this initiative to your state, country or city/town. Be sure to check out our new discussion with Deborah Potter and Rachel Poliner who have passed resolutions in New Mexico and Boston, and offer advice on how to get a resolution passed in your own community. Remarkably, members of this community are now advancing 75 (!!!!) resolutions projects in 23 states +DC. Can we get to all 50 states by the fall election? 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! Been impressive to see how many of you remain involved in local, in person protests of all kinds in your communities. Keep it up!!! As we get ready for what is going to be a very intense fall of politics let’s take inspiration from those famous words from Robert Frost that “the best way out is always through” - Simon You're currently a free subscriber to Hopium Chronicles By Simon Rosenberg. For the full experience, upgrade your subscription.
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Wednesday, September 3, 2025
On Trump's Escalating Madness, Epstein, Compromise And The Unsustainable Path He Has Chosen
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