A person looks at the fresh fish at a grocery store Monday, May 11, 2026, in Nashville, Tenn. (AP Photo/George Walker IV) There is a man parked in a car outside a grocery store doing math. Gas crossed $4.50 a gallon in May. In February, before a war no one in Congress voted for, it was under $3. He can fill the tank or fill the cart. He can’t do both.
I have been that man. Different decade, same arithmetic. I have sat in that exact lot and chosen the cart over the tank. I know the feeling in your chest when the numbers don’t work, and I know what he is not thinking about. He is not thinking about democracy
In the same month that gas hit $4.50 a gallon, the Treasury secretary stood in the White House briefing room and held up a mockup of a $250 bill with Trump’s face on it. A man who can’t lower the price of your gas wants his face on your money. That is not a king. That is a con.
Last month, Trump’s approval rating reached the floor of his presidency, and the man in the car can tell you exactly why.
In Trump’s first year, U.S. billionaires added $1.5 trillion to their collective fortunes. The four companies whose CEOs stood behind him at the inauguration took $51 billion in tax breaks and paid a federal tax rate under 5 percent. Inflation hit a three-year high this spring while Trump asked you to be patient.
Your paycheck lost the race with your grocery bill. He called your gas “peanuts.”
So, when the Trump banknote image surfaced, what did the opposition say? House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) reached for the crown, calling him a “wannabe King.”
King, not thief. Wrong charge. The man in the car has never met a king; he has met plenty of guys who took his money.
I spent 20 years as a Democratic strategist, and I can tell you why the charge is always wrong. The first rule was never “don’t sound angry.” It was “don’t name the donor.” We called it discipline. It was a nondisclosure agreement we signed with ourselves. I signed it too
Here is the campaign that finally tears up that strategy.
First, run on the robbery, not the republic. Democracy is an abstraction. The number on the pump is a fact. Nobody ever lost their home to a threat to democracy. They lost it to a payment they couldn’t make.
Say the words consultants flinch at. Robbery. Bought. Rigged. Put a number behind each one. Don’t say “our institutions are under threat.” Say “Trump raised your gas and is trying to put his face on your money.”
Next, name the donors from both parties, starting with your own. Future Forward, the Democratic party’s flagship super PAC, runs on Michael Bloomberg, the Simons hedge-fund fortune and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, who also cut a $250,000 check to a Nikki Haley super PAC. George Soros was the largest Democratic donor of the 2022 midterms.
All of it is legal. None of it is done for the man in the car. The donor class hedges. It’s their business model. The man in the car suspects this already. Confirming it is how you earn the right to be believed about everything else.
Third, win the war you’re already winning. The small dollar fight already belongs to Democrats. Last cycle, ActBlue out-raised WinRed more than 2 to 1, $3.8 billion to $1.7 billion. That is not a donor list. That is a movement built by people who, like the man in the car, will never see a dime of that tax cut.
Trump knows it. He sent the Justice Department after ActBlue and left WinRed untouched, even though WinRed draws seven times the number of fraud complaints. You don’t send prosecutors after a weakness.
Finally, make Trump defend his donors. Use one line, in front of every camera, every day, until it hardens: His donors got paid; you got the bill.
Trump will not pivot. He will brag. His ego won’t allow him to call that tax cut anything but beautiful. And every time he defends it, he is choosing the billionaires over the man in the car, in his own voice, on live television. He cannot keep both audiences. Make him pick and keep making him pick until even the people who voted for him hear the answer.
Critics will scream disarmament. It isn’t. It’s refusing the fight you can lose for the one you can’t.
Trump is not a monster. He is a salesman who sold the man in the car a tax cut for his friends and a war for his ego. Then he kept the change.
The only thing still protecting the con is the language Democrats keep choosing. The choice in 2026 was never democracy or autocracy. That framing flatters the people writing the checks and bores everyone paying the bills. The real choice is whether one party will walk up to that car window and say the rich rigged this, read the whole list, its own names included, and mean it.
He’s still sitting there. Engine off, to save the gas. He knows the truth. The only question is who says it to him first.
Michael Starr Hopkins is the author of “Burn the Playbook,” a former senior congressional aide and presidential campaign spokesman.
Add as preferred source on Google Tags $250 bill 2026 midterm elections ActBlue Billionaire Donors billionaires Democratic Party Donald Trump George Soros George Soros Hakeem Jeffries Hakeem Jeffries high gas prices House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries Michael Bloomberg Michael Bloomberg Nikki Haley Nikki Haley Reid Hoffman Reid Hoffman tech billionaires Trump administration Trump approval rating WinRedCopyright 2026 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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