A procession of the richest and most elite institutions in American society since last November has found itself one after another facing unmatched demands from President Donald Trump and his band of retribution-seekers.
One after another, these institutional pillars have responded to these demands with the same: submission and obedience.
Though the specifics differ, two motifs remain constant. The first is a considerably more coordinated and focused attempt than any precedent from Trump’s first term to bring institutions that have earned the president’s ire to heel. The second topic is even more unexpected: The speed with which presumably powerful and apparently autonomous institutions have reacted—with something resembling the quivering assent of a youngster giving up his lunch money to a big kid on the morning walk to school.
Cumulatively, the instances reflect an incredible new chapter in the history of the American establishment: The Great Grovel.
ABC News, one of the most famous news networks in the nation, resolved a defamation case with Trump for $15 million that would be sent to his next presidential library; CBS News seems ready to pay for millions more. Both heritage newspapers owned by Trump-friendly billionaires, the Washington Post and the LA Times, have changed the material of their editorial pages to satisfy the White House. Columbia University, Alexander Hamilton’s alma institution, also consented to nine policy modifications in order to unfreeze $400 million in federal money. Other colleges used Republican lobbyists to be on the president’s favorable side.
In recent days, a group of HEADLINESFOREVER writers sought to highlight the shared themes throughout these many events. They spoke with individuals in and around Trump’s entourage as well as important officials at institutions under attack. These four findings are:
A time of transactions
Leaders of the organizations that have followed Trump’s requests reject the White House’s notion that the fundamental assumptions of American government have shifted and a New Normal has come. On the contrary, what people are longing for is a return to the Old Normal, when old income streams and profit margins remain unchanged.
When Brad Karp, chair of Paul, Weiss sent a firm-wide letter on March 23 justifying his decision to make a deal with Trump, he emphasized “the need to ensure, above all, that our firm would survive.”
Executive partner Jeremy London of Skadden, on the other hand, provided HEADLINESFOREVER with a firm-wide email issued Friday detailing his bargaining. He had discovered the Trump administration planned an executive order targeting the company. He stated, “We decided to work proactively and constructively with the Administration to agree on a fruitful way forward avoiding the issuance of an executive order.” “We signed the deal the President revealed today since, when confronted with other options, it became obvious that it was the greatest way to safeguard our Firm, our personnel, and our clients.
The companies appear to have made a deliberate choice that, like some kind of rubber-gloved treatment at the doctor’s office, going along with Trump’s requests would be uncomfortable for a moment but would quickly return to business as normal.
There have been exceptions: Perkins Coie, Jenner & Block and WilmerHale, Big Law firms targeted by Trump with similar punishment, have opted to fight him in court.
Trump, though, seems taken aback by the magnitude of the surrender. “They’re all bending and saying, ‘Sir, thank you very much,’ Trump remarked at a White House ceremony for Women’s History Month Wednesday. “Including law firms that have been quite terrible, no one can believe it…” and they’re simply asking, where do I sign?
Pressure areas
Though far from a new issue, Trump’s behavior has made more clear than ever how many rich private colleges have their policies and finances intertwined with the federal government. What is remarkable is the readiness of Trump and his lieutenants to utilize this influence so brazenly. Along the way, he has shown the institutions to be more susceptible to intimidation than their leaders themselves could have acknowledged.
Many reporters at ABC News found the choice to resolve the libel lawsuit rather controversial as they believed an independent news organization had to fight hard to defend itself. ABC, however, is just a tiny portion of the Walt Disney Corp., whose management reportedly felt that the legal discovery process and any damage to the bigger company would make fighting the lawsuit embarrassing. “It sent a chilling message to the newsroom that they could be sold out by the higher ups and by the corporate division” at Disney, said a source who works with Disney allowed anonymity to talk frankly. A Disney representative refused to speak.
Similarly, one finds it difficult to picture a previous generation of Washington Post proprietors giving a president’s inauguration fund $1 million. Post owner Jeff Bezos, however, did that for Trump. And Amazon, the company he founded and where he remains a key shareholder, reportedly signed a $40 million deal with Melania Trump to distribute a documentary about her, along with other content projects.
The power disparity
Much of the credit for Trump’s new sense of ideological purpose in the second term has focused on top advisors like Stephen Miller or budget director Russ Vought. Both have contributed to the administration’s attempt to apply executive branch power to entities outside the government. But the retribution campaign is much more of a team effort, involving Trump allies across agencies and even outside advisors.
“Retribution is an important component of justice,” said Mike Davis, a Trump ally who runs an outside judicial advocacy group. It restores the victims and acts as a strong deterrence.
“If law firms and businesses and others within the private sector choose not to stand up and front a resistance to this power that [Trump] is claiming, but which the Constitution does not give him, then he will have that power,” said Mary Spooner, who worked at Paul, Weiss for more than a decade. “But it becomes much, much harder to resist when individual organizations and institutions and corporations are forced to resist alone.”
The goal is humiliation.
Trump’s campaign against institutions has some ideological origins—grounded in antipathy to what critics see as illegitimate government subsidies or the alleged “wokeness” of their internal practices on such matters as diversity, equity and inclusion.
On equal footing with these motivations, however, is a psychological dimension.
In the eyes of critics, Trump has for a lifetime caressed his grievances as if he were supervillain Ernst Stavro Blofeld stroking his cat. “What you see here is a group of people who think they missed an opportunity the first time around — that they didn’t fully realize what they now believe to be the powers of the presidency and they didn’t maximize Trump’s indiscriminate, narcissistic, vengeful nature,” said Ty Cobb, a former White House lawyer during the first Trump administration. “They’re playing to Trump’s strengths, which is as a mob boss.”
It is far from clear from the reporting, however, that Trump’s team would regard this as an insult. To the contrary, people in his orbit are pleased that the whole world can now see what they already knew: In Trump’s four years out of power, he and his allies were thinking hard about what they would use their power for if they got it back.