Weakness Is a Provocation
ABC News, billionaires, media orgs, and CEOs are surrendering to Trump because they think he’s a lame duck. They’re making a terrible mistake.
Usually this newsletter is locked for Bulwark+ members but today we’re making it free for everyone. This stuff is as serious as a heart attack and most people aren’t prepared for what’s coming.
Because this isn’t about ABC News. It’s about power, weakness, and Trump 2028.
Buckle up. —JVL
1. Earthquake
Nobody cares about media stories but the announcement over the weekend that ABC News decided to settle Donald Trump’s weak defamation suit for $15 million is a big forking deal.
(1) ABC News didn’t settle. Disney did.
I do not have inside information but a decision this consequential was almost certainly not made by Almin Karamehmedovic, the president of ABC News. It probably wasn’t made by his boss, Debra OConnell, who runs the news group for Disney Entertainment Networks.
I’d bet the milk money that Bob Iger—the CEO of Disney and one of the most important corporate executives in America—made the final call on settling with Trump. Because this is a decision that affects the entire corporation’s relationship to the federal government.
And while it might be against the interest of ABC News to sell out its journalists, it’s very much in the interest of the Walt Disney Company to be on good terms with a president who is open about punishing his enemies and rewarding his friends.
(2) All of corporate America is making the peace.
We talked about Trump’s tribute/protection racket last week and how Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg have gotten right with Big Orange. Add Disney to the list. This is an important development because Bezos and Zuckerberg are founder/owners. They have gigantic personal stakes in their companies and thus a great deal to lose.
But Iger is just a normal CEO. Which is to say: He’s a hired hand. For sure, Bob Iger is well compensated for his work, but he doesn’t “own” Disney. And if even workaday CEOs like Iger—who have much less to lose than founders—are going to accommodate themselves to Trump, then everyone is going to fall in line.
(3) The media has already capitulated.
Over at the Los Angeles Times the billionaire owner is openly putting his thumb on the scale to make the paper more hospitable to Trump. Writers and editors at the Washington Post are running for the exits as Bezos’s new Trump-friendly publisher mucks about. Time magazine named Trump “Man of the Year” and the magazine’s owner said that Trump’s election “marks a time of great promise” for America and that “we look forward to working together.”1
Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski presented themselves at Trump’s court to reset their relationship and then discovered a delicate sensibility concerning on-air criticism of Trump cabinet nominees.
And now Disney has cut off ABC News at the knees and put everyone in its news division on notice that they will not be supported by corporate if they make enemies with Trump world.
What is capitulation going to look like going forward? Mainstream news outlets aren’t going to start fluffing Trump. The capitulation will look more like this:
(1) They’ll try to buy protection by employing Trump favorites. That’s what the LA Times did by bringing in Scott Jennings. Media companies will hope that by paying people who have access to Trump they can persuade Trump to leave them alone.
(2) They’ll cut down on platforming Trump critics who are in DGAF mode. Instead, they’ll favor tame critics who stay in the realm of normal kabuki theater.
(3) They’ll start leaving things unsaid.
Let me explain how media orgs are thinking.
They know that lawsuits are coming. There are two ways to defend against lawfare. (1) Stay under the radar so that the litigation hits someone else. (2) Reduce the size of your target.
The second option is something you do by being exceptionally careful about what you say. You cannot stop a bad actor from filing a frivolous libel or defamation claim. But you can make the claim harder to prosecute.
For instance: I can write that Public Figure X is an asshole, or say that he’s a Nazi. Those are insults that will be covered by the First Amendment.
It gets trickier if I say that Public Figure X is an alcoholic or a rapist. Because now we’re talking about descriptions that map to specific, legally defined behaviors.
In theory, Public Figure X could argue that:
My description is not true.
I knew the description wasn’t true and made it anyway out of malicious intent. And most importantly,
Having this description made in public resulted in material harm to Public Figure X.
In newsrooms all over America today, journalists are talking to lawyers and coming up with lists of words and phrases that are potentially more actionable than others and making those words and phrases verboten.2
Undergirding all of this maneuvering by billionaires and CEOs and institutions is the belief that Donald Trump will go away soon. He’s a lame duck, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg and Bob Iger are telling themselves. We just have to keep our heads down for four years and then this will all be over.
And maybe that’s true. It’s probably true.
But it’s not certainly true.
2. 2028
Here is a game I would like Democratic senators to play once confirmation hearings start.
A Democratic senator should ask every single Trump appointee, “Could Donald Trump run for president or vice president in 2028? Just a simple yes or no answer, please. Is it possible?”
What percentage of prospective Trump employees do you think would be willing to say—on the record, in black and white—that Trump absolutely cannot, under any circumstances, run in 2028?
I think the answer is somewhere in the range of 0.00 percent.
This is not normal. In 2005 or 2013, if any Bush or Obama appointee had been asked that question they would have laughed, shaken their heads, and said, “Of course not.” And neither Bush nor Obama would have cared that they had said it.
That such a response would be unthinkable for a Trump appointee in 2025 underscores how far down this road we already are.
We have seen this dynamic over and over and over.
Trump suggests something outrageous. Republicans at first play coy. Then they say it probably won’t happen. Then they say we have to let “the process” play out. And eventually Republicans arrive at the point where they insist that this once-outrageous thing that they didn’t even want to comment on obviously must happen.
And here is where we get to the big takeaway:
The people surrendering preemptively think that they can safely do so because Trump will go away of his own volition. What they don’t understand is that their surrender makes it more likely that he’ll try to stay on indefinitely.
Why?
Because weakness is a provocation.
Gentle men like Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg and Bob Iger don’t understand that.
A man like Donald Trump does.
I often think that The Bulwark’s big comparative advantage is that we’ve always known what kind of man Donald Trump is. Because of this, over the years some people have called us alarmist. I think we’ve turned out to be clear-eyed and hard-headed.
Over the next four years the cause of liberalism is going to rely a lot more on small media organizations like The Bulwark, because corporate-owned media will not have the freedom to cover Trump’s authoritarian attempt the way they want to.
We’re ramping up for this work and we’re only able to do that because we’re directly supported by our readers.
If you have the ability to support us, we’re going to need it. This is the fight of our lives.
3. Lawfare
One more thing about the asymmetry of Trump’s defamation claim against ABC News.
Fox News broadcasts regularly refer to the “Biden crime family.” A guest on Newsmax called President Joe Biden—who has never been convicted of any crimes—the “head of the Biden crime family.”
In May 2020 Donald Trump Jr. authored an Instagram post with a picture of Biden saying: “See you later, alligator” alongside an image of an alligator saying: “In a while, pedophile.”
On September 15, 2020 Donald Trump himself insinuated that Joe Biden was a pedophile, retweeting a post with the hashtag “#PedoBiden.”
Joe Biden didn’t file defamation suits against the Trumps père et fils.
We have established a playing field in which the forces of MAGA can slander, libel, and defame with near impunity—what is QAnon if not an elaborate defamation case?—while simultaneously using libel law to attack legitimate critics in an attempt to chill everyone else’s speech.
The sooner we recognize this asymmetry and start taking it seriously, the sooner we can start doing something about it.
In what sense can the owner of a journalism business “work with” the president of the United States?
Not in any sense that we would traditionally define as “journalism.”
Another thing they’re doing is moving comms into encrypted channels that are not breachable in the course of a legal discovery process.
Journalists in America are about to start acting like journalists in Russia. Moscow Rules are now in effect for the media.
Every single thing out of JVLs brain since the election has been 100%. And he’s the only one saying it. One of the few people who really gets what is happening. Thanks for doing what you do - I’m an Area leader for the Dems in PA. I’m listening and will be building my strategy on your analysis.
Lately I’ve finally understood what MAGA people always meant when they said “Biden is weak”. It wasn’t some measure of his political effectiveness. It was only because he didn’t punch back against their needling of him, like a kid who doesn’t fight back against a bully.
Small media can do great things. The MAGA tumor has grown entirely through small media. Big media was never going to stop anything, it lacks the innovation needed to fight a force that figured out how to hack it long ago.