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Trump On President's Day - Rot, Failure, And Decline

The tide is turning against the most un-American leader America has ever had

Simon Rosenberg

Feb 16

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Morning all. I was going to write something a bit more breezy today, and let Saturday’s post full of videos and links be the bulk of the content, but I was struck today by the tone of the coverage I encountered this morning, and how much of it had a “Trump is batshit crazy and failing”/Emperor has no clothes vibe.

This vibe matters for next week is the State of the Union, and we will be spending the next few weeks assessing the health of the nation and Trump’s second term. Based on my read of the news vibe right now Trump is entering this consequential period in a bad place.

For the truth is Trump’s first year has been a disaster for him politically and electorally, and for the nation more broadly. He has very, very little that the can sell the to public next week that they will want to buy.

Let’s review - the economy has slowed. Inflation has remained too high. The Fed stopped cutting interest rates. For the first time in history we no longer have the highest credit rating in any of the top three credit rating agencies. Consumer confidence has been the lowest in sixty years. Crypto is crashing. Our health care system has been badly damaged. We are losing manufacturing jobs. Our world leading research ecosystem has been under a sustained assault. Trump is the most corrupt politician in our history. He is a 34 times felon, and his time in office has resembled a crime spree far more than an America Presidency. The Epstein coverup is staggering in its immorality and lawlessness, and he has now also clearly failed to contain the extraordinary scandal. The country has rejected mass deportation and his brutal assault on communities across the country. We keep winning and overperforming in elections of all kinds across the country, and are also now likely to win the redistricting war he recklessly, impulsively, initiated. He has alienated our allies, sided with Putin, and is leaving us alone, isolated, and far less safe. He is regularly murdering people on the high seas, and his vaporization of USAID will end up killing tens of millions of the poorest people on Earth, including millions of children. It would be accurate to call him a mass murderer.

The list goes on and on……

Let’s get to his coverage I mentioned. On Friday Axios ran a big story, written by its two founders, about Trump’s weakening hold on Washington with this dramatic image:

Photo illustration of a small President Trump looking up at a giant man in a suit with arms crossed

Today, another well read insider DC publication, Politico, has a similar story that leads with this image:

The article is essentially a long list of his failures, retreats, fuck ups, and batshit craziness. Let’s dive in:

President Donald Trump’s first year back in office was defined by sweeping upheaval that was largely plotted out during his four-year Florida exile. But the president has somehow intensified the volatility in year two with a succession of whiplash-inducing policy swings, several of which have almost immediately withered in the face of Republican opposition and public outcry.
The administration this week finally withdrew the thousands of federal law enforcement officers from Minneapolis, after violent and at times deadly clashes with protesters turned the tide of public opinion against the president’s immigration crackdown.
It came after Trump threatened to decertify Canadian aircraft, a move deemed “unjustified and dangerous” by a Washington-based aerospace trade union that the president soon dropped. Trump said in early January that he’d cap credit card rates at 10 percent, a move that would have upended the banking industry, only to change his mind and ask Congress for legislation.
Also last month, Trump’s administration paused millions in Centers for Disease Control and Prevention funding for state public health infrastructure — only to reverse course roughly 24 hours later…..
……The president has made numerous pronouncements with emphatic declarations on social media, sometimes even suggesting he is governing by fiat in cases where legislation is required. But he has quickly moved on from many of them: a cap on credit card interest rates, 50-year mortgages and, according to a new Financial Times report, possibly even the sweeping tariffs on aluminum and steel that have led to higher costs.
While some have come to expect out-of-the-box ideas posted at all hours and others even see a certain gutsiness in Trump’s move-fast-and-break-things approach, the effects can be real and devastating for those caught in the crosshairs of an untested idea……
……the reversals have a way of capturing bigger headlines.
At the start of last week, Trump threatened to halt the opening of a new bridge between Detroit and Windsor, Ontario, in a further move against Canada — only to seemingly drop it.
It came after Trump backed off one of his biggest foreign policy moves of the year: his gambit to seize Greenland from NATO ally Denmark, which prompted strong European resistance.
Last April on what he called “Liberation Day,” Trump imposed higher tariffs on nearly every country despite warnings from Wall Street. But he quickly backtracked, lowering them within days following tremors in global bond markets.

Stories like these, written in these skeptical “holy shit the guy is a fuck up” tone would have been unimaginable in DC six months ago. But here we are. A week before the State of the Union. Ugly stuff for our very ugly leader and his rancid regime.

Look at this other story from Politico today:

Here is how the story begins:

Home builders are warning President Donald Trump that his aggressive immigration enforcement efforts are hurting their industry. They’re cautioning that Republican candidates could soon be hurt, too.
Construction executives have held multiple meetings over the last month with the White House and Congress to discuss how immigration busts on job sites and in communities are scaring away employees, making it more expensive to build homes in a market desperate for new supply. Beyond the affordability issue, the executives made an electability argument, raising concerns to GOP leaders that support among Hispanic voters is eroding, particularly in regions that swung to Trump in 2024.
Hill Republicans have held separate meetings with White House officials to share their own electoral concerns.
This story is based on eight interviews with home builders, lawmakers and others familiar with the meetings.
“I told [lawmakers] straight up: South Texas will never be red again,” said Mario Guerrero, the CEO of the South Texas Builders Association, a Trump voter who traveled to Washington last week.
He urged the administration and lawmakers to ease up on enforcement at construction sites, warning that employees are afraid to go to work.
The construction industry is one of the latest and clearest examples of how the president’s mass deportation agenda continues to clash with his economic goals of bringing down prices and political aims of keeping control of Congress. Even the president’s allies fear disruptions to labor-heavy industries will undermine the gains with Latino voters Republicans have made in recent years, in large part because of Trump’s economic agenda.
These concerns were the central focus of a White House meeting this week between chief of staff Susie Wiles, Speaker Mike Johnson, and a group of Republican lawmakers, according to three people with knowledge of the meeting, granted anonymity to discuss it. The group talked about growing concerns that Hispanic voters are abandoning the Republican Party in droves, as well as the policies driving these losses — immigration and affordability concerns.

The growing Republican freakout over the economic and political consequences of Trump’s mass deportation polices became so great this week that Mike Johnson, the Cowardly Speaker, had to bring a delegation of Members to the White House!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

In my weekly talk this week, Trump Is Weaker, And Our Movement Is Stronger, I reviewed what a bad week Trump was having in Washington. He signaled retreat in Minnesota. He lost two hugely important tariff votes in the House, getting rebuked, loudly, publicly, on his most important economic policy. Democrats refused to bend the knee on DHS funding and the Department shut down. Zelenskyy is just not yielding to Trump’s unrelenting pro-Russian blackmail, and Rubio is looking small and pathetic this week in Europe:

And then there’s the polling……FiftyPlusOne has Trump at his lowest level of his second term now, -19, a staggering 31 point net drop (crash?) in just 13 months:

That’s what we are seeing. Part of the reason I think Republicans in Congress have been a bit slow to challenge Trump is that the polls they see are much better for Trump than what we see. But even in that world Trump’s rot and decay has become impossible to ignore. Here is a chart Claude AI and I put together this morning of the one of the most pro-Trump pollsters out there, Quantus Insights. They just released a 43-56 (-13) poll for Trump. The trend is brutal for him, even among his most favorable of the red wave pollsters:

As we hoped last summer the tide has turned against Trump. He has gone too far. Is too much of a fuck up. Things are not better in America. He done lasting harm to all of us. And it has become impossible to pretend otherwise, even among the supine Republicans in DC. His grip on the city is weakening, and even the insidery DC press has begun to turn against him for the state of the union is shitty, my friends, as shitty as its ever been.

Let us summon the courage of Washington and Lincoln, and the people of Minnesota, and now…….

Let’s Get To Work People!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Keep contacting your Senators and House Member and demand they rein in ICE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! We are in the fight about ICE we all wanted to have and now we need to go win it!

Winning The Midterms, Competing In Red States and Red Places, Expanding The Map

Hopium’s Winning The House Campaign (2026) - $164,000 raised, $250,000 goal (new stretch goal) - Donate to all four endorsed House challengers with one click | Learn More | Enjoy our new conversations with Christina Bohannan (IA-01), Mayor Paige Cognetti (PA-08), Jo Mendoza (AZ-06), and Janelle Stelson (PA-10). Now including funds already raised with our friends at FridayAction for a joint event we are doing in late March.

Hopium’s Audacious Expansion Fund - $369,300 raised, $500,000 goal (new stretch goal) - Join our new campaign to expand our map by investing in the Democratic Parties of Alaska, Florida, Iowa, Maine, and Texas. Many thanks to two generous Hopium community members who have audaciously donated $10,000 to each of our five state parties.

Mary Peltola For Alaska Senate - $33,700 raised, $250,000 goal - Donate | Volunteer and learn more. Amazing start everyone!

Winning Ohio - $58,900 raised, $250,000 goal - Our new campaign splits contributions evenly among Sherrod Brown, the Acton/Pepper ticket, and the Ohio Democratic Party. Donate today and help us turn this critical 2026 battleground blue! | Watch my conversation with David Pepper, who does a great overview of the opportunities we have in Ohio this year. Note a generous donor has sent $21,000 worth of Hopium-infused contributions directly to the candidates which are not included in our on-line goal tracker.

Roy Cooper for NC Senate (2026) - $76,900 raised, $250,000 goal - Donate | Learn More | Volunteer | Enjoy my conversation with Gov. Cooper and a new, terrific one with NC Dem Party Chair Anderson Clayton

Jon Ossoff GA Senate (2026) - $127,400 raised, $250,000 goal - Donate | Learn More | Volunteer | Enjoy my inspiring conversation with Senator Ossoff

Winning The Big Arguments With Trump, Defend Our Democracy

1 - Call Your Senators and Member Of The House And Demand They Act Upon Our Five-Part Agenda - We need to be loud people, very, very loud and make the case for our now five part agenda:

Stand with Ukraine and our European allies, and far more forcefully challenge Trump’s traitorous efforts to sell out the US and the West to Russia; demand Congress rebuke/issue a no confidence vote on his new threats to seize Greenland and his new, dangerous European tariffs;
Congress must stand forcefully for rule of law in the Caribbean and the Pacific - these illegal strikes must end; no war can be waged without Congressional approval; there must accountability for those who have broken the law, and the US must withdraw from Venezuela and cease other threats to violate the UN Charter and the sovereignty of other nations
Roll back Trump’s terrible, illegal tariffs that are re-igniting inflation, driving up prices, shifting the tax burden from the wealthy to working people, hurting small businesses and farmers, reviving tyrannical “taxation without representation,” and alienating governments and people throughout the world. To put America on a sounder fiscal course due to the enormous deficits brought by Trump’s 2025 tax cuts we should reverse the cuts to the wealthy and corporations
Defend our democracy, rule of law, and our liberties adopting the Dem leadership’s ten point plan to rein in ICE; ending mass deportation and the expansion of the detention camps; warring against his outrageous targeting of his domestic political opponents and vigorously defending the 1st Amendment; ending the use of the military on our streets and the dangerous occupation of our cities; stopping the unprecedented regime corruption; forcing the Administration to finally comply with Congress and end the rancid cover up of the Epstein crimes; and ensure we have free and fair elections this November.
Fight Trump’s war on science, higher education and our public health; reverse the cuts to the ACA, Medicaid and our clean energy investments; take part in Stand Up For Science’s National Day Of Action on March 7th.

Keep working hard everyone. The momentum is with us, and we need to keep fighting as hard as we can - Simon

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