The Appeasers

Mar-a-Lago, where integrity goes to die

It took a while, but in the run up to the 2024 election, many in the corporate media started to tell the truth about the threat Donald Trump poses to the future of American democracy. Many of them accurately called him a fascist. Of course, they also spent a lot of time normalizing him, so it shouldn’t surprise us that those same people are falling over themselves to get back in my uncle Donald’s good graces.

In the weeks since the election, we’ve begun to see just how far the corporate-owned media will go to appease the man who, on an almost daily basis for nine years, has maligned the profession of journalism and put individual journalists in danger.

Of course, the appeasement, or as scholars of authoritarianism call it, anticipatory obedience, by certain outlets began well in advance of the election. Jeff Bezos and Patrick Soon-Shiong, owners of The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times’ respectively, refused to allow the papers’ editorial boards to endorse Kamala Harris.

The most embarrassing current example of this appeasement was the spectacle of Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinksi of MSNBC’s Morning Joe announcing on live television that they had visited Donald at Mar-a-Lago. Brzezinksi said the following:

For those asking why we would speak to the president-elect during such fraught times, I would ask back: Why wouldn’t we? It’s time to do something different, and that starts with not only talking about Donald Trump, but talking with him.

Why wouldn’t you? Because, if you have integrity, if you believe your own warnings, you do not ever make common cause with fascists. That’s why.

But these are hacks who were once close enough with Donald that he offered, over lunch at Mar-a-Lago, to preside over their wedding. There’s no reasons to put stock in anything they say or do.

Things turned bitter after Donald became displeased with Morning Joe’s coverage of his administration. Presumably in retaliation,Donald posted the following in the spring of 2020, on Twitter:

When will they open a Cold Case on the Psycho Joe Scarborough matter in Florida. Did he get away with murder? Some people think so. Why did he leave Congress so quietly and quickly? Isn’t it obvious? What’s happening now? A total nut job!

This was in reference to a vicious conspiracy theory that Scarborough murdered one of his congressional staffers. But, apparently, that, along with Donald’s fascism, is all just water under the bridge for Scarborough and Brzezinksi.

They and people like them have clearly made the decision that anticipatory obedience will spare them from Donald’s wrath. Undoubtedly, they’ve also made the calculation that abdication will also be more lucrative for them.

We know that’s the call Jeff Bezos made when he broke with the paper’s 36-year tradition of endorsing a candidate for the presidency. Protecting his multi-billion dollar government contracts is more important to him than protecting democracy. Bezos’ grotesque tweet in the wake of the election results was just a more overt bending of the knee:

Big congratulations to our 45th and now 47th President on an extraordinary political comeback and decisive victory. No nation has bigger opportunities. Wishing @realDonaldTrump all success in leading and uniting the America we all love.

Bezos hasn’t stopped there. The Post just announced that its annual Global Women’s Summit will feature Kellyanne Conway and Lara Trump. (But Meghan McCain is also a featured speaker, so who knows?)

Doubling down on his own  refusal to allow The L.A. Times to endorse Harris, Soon-Shiong went on Fox News to make it clear he wants his newspaper to have more right-wing contributors. He even name-checked CNN professional liar and gaslighter Scott Jennings as his ideal employee. 

The preemptive rolling over of much of the corporate media comes at the worst possible time. Donald’s transition, marked by disastrous cabinet picks and ethics breaches, show us that a second Trump administration is preparing for a full-on assault on our American institutions.

The Supreme Court and judges like Aileen Cannon have almost completely removed the guardrails of justice. The request of New York District Attorney Alvin Bragg to postpone indefinitely Donald’s sentencing on the 34 felony counts of which he was convicted by a jury of his peers in May of this year was yet another blow.

That essentially leaves us. So, we must not cede any ground. A considerable percentage of legacy media has become too corrupt or too indifferent to hold the line, therefore, the line is ours to hold.

Whether it’s Substack or YouTube channels, we must support independent media that pledges to speak truth to power and call for accountability at every turn—wherever we find it.

Here’s the link to Mary Trump Media’s YouTube channel—it is free to subscribe but your subscription is vitally important to our ability to grow.