With ABC's capitulation, Trump shows how fascism takes hold

The fact that corporate media are owned by larger companies with other interests makes it easy for an authoritarian who stacked his Cabinet with billionaires.

Donald Trump sent a clear message by announcing his picks for the Cabinet and stacking it with billionaires and multi-millionaires: If you want to make more billions, play ball with the administration in every way possible.

Altogether, the Trump Cabinet picks are worth $450 billion. Tech executive Frank Bisnano, who will lead the Social Security Administration—tasked with making sure Americans, upon retirement, get the money they contributed during their entire working lives—is worth $650 million. Real estate magnate Steve Witkoff, named as Trump's Middle East envoy, is worth $1 billion. Trump’s choice to lead NASA, Jared Isaacman, who is CEO of a payments processing company, comes in at $1.7 billion.

Those are the lesser-known names. There are quite a few more. And there’s of course Elon Musk—a man who takes government subsidies for his many companies, which are supposed to be regulated by the government as well—who will pretty much be a co-president, constantly advising Trump and leading a new government agency, the Department of Government Efficiency. He poured $277 million into Trump’s campaign, and, just since the election, he has made $200 billion and will soon be listed as a trillionaire.

It’s in this context that ABC News settled a frivolous lawsuit with Trump and handed him $15 million to go to his “presidential library and museum,” in addition to $1 million in legal fees as part of the settlement. All of this over comments by George Stephanopoulos that were completely defensible in court, a “low, low point of ABC News,” as media critic Erik Wemple put in at the Washington Post.

Think about that. ABC, a supposedly impartial news network, will now finance a massive vehicle to enshrine a propagandized version of Trump’s place in history in the United States.

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On a case that was an easy win—using the word “rape” over sexual abuse in describing the E. Jean Carroll case civil court verdict when the judge in the case himself said the two are, for all practical purposes—if not technically in New York law—interchangeable, ABC capitulated.

There’s been a lot written about how ABC was fearful of losing access to the White House—not being able to compete with other networks—and wanting to just get past this and not be a media organization in litigation with an incoming president.

But this doesn’t quite gel as the major reason. The constantly litigious Trump has sued numerous news organizations—and is currently suing more—including the New York Times, which fought the case until it was dismissed in 2023. The Times didn’t lose access to Trump’s campaign during that time. And, even those of us who are rightly critical of The New York Times’ political coverage agree that the Times also did hard-hitting investigative reporting of Trump during that time when the lawsuit was in play.

So the argument that ABC would be out in the cold if it fought the lawsuit doesn’t quite hold. ABC, unlike the Times, however, is owned by a larger multinational corporation, Disney, a company that has much business in Washington and, like other global companies, is positioned to make billions with an administration pushing deregulation and led by billionaires who understand those companies’ priorities.

But to be in on making those billions, you have to be on the team. That was why Amazon owner Jeff Bezos, who owns The Washington Post, spiked the Kamala Harris endorsement and gave a million dollars to Trump’s inaugural fund. Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg met with Trump and also gave him a million bucks for the inauguration, as did Apple’s Tim Cook.

A week before the announcement of the ABC settlement, Debra O’Connell, the Disney executive who oversees ABC News, had dinner with Trump’s incoming chief of staff, Susie Wiles, in Palm Beach, as several ABC News executives visited Mar-a-Lago to meet with Trump’s transition team.

That seems to say it all in terms of what happened here.

There’s no question that ABC’s actions throw a blanket of censorship and propaganda over the entire media. Who needs Trump actually trying to weaken the First Amendment via court action or passing laws when news outlets will rein themselves in? The Times reports there are several other lawsuits against media in the works from Trump and those in his orbit, and Trump confirmed in a press conference yesterday that he plans to pursue more suits:

Even before the settlement was reached, Elizabeth McNamara, a prominent media lawyer, said she expected that the trend “is only going to increase,” given the political environment.

“There’s been a pattern and practice for the past couple of years of using defamation litigation as a tactic to harass or test the boundary of case law,” said Ms. McNamara, who represented ABC News and Mr. Stephanopoulos but was speaking in general. (Her law firm, Davis Wright Tremaine, has also represented The New York Times.)

Over the past several weeks, lawyers for Mr. Trump and two of his most high-profile nominees—Pete Hegseth, the potential defense secretary, and Kash Patel, whom Mr. Trump has picked to run the F.B.I.—warned journalists and others of defamation lawsuits for what they had said or written.

Much of this is out of the playbook of authoritarian Victor Orban of Hungary, who’s intimidated the media via lawsuits and then passed laws to more firmly control the media.

But the larger scheme of rewarding billionaires and corporations—like Disney—who do the authoritarian’s bidding while punishing those who don’t is out of the playbook of every dictator past and present. It’s what Vladimir Putin has done in Russia, banishing and even imprisoning oligarchs who defy him while making sure those who protect him make more money. And it’s well-known how industrialists and corporations worked with Adolf Hitler in order to both save themselves and enrich themselves.

So the story of ABC is also about the global companies that own much of corporate media protecting their interests and seeking to capitalize in a big way on Trump’s fascistic impulses.

What we all can do is already happening, and needs to ramp up in an even bigger way: support independent media. As the corporate media becomes more derelict, people are turning to dozens of other sources, as we see network news and cable ratings—other than Fox—plummeting.

There are many excellent journalism non-profits, like ProPublica, and many other independent outlets, from Mother Jones and The Nation to The New Republic and Salon, plus the many newsletters—including those like Popular Information, that have become independent news organizations unto themselves—and podcasts that are proliferating by the dozens and with very large, growing audiences.

Many of these outlets can be found on Oliver Willis’ Breakingnewsusa.org. It’s not just about reporting—which is foundational and important—but also about analysis and commentary. We need loud voices lifted up.

It doesn’t mean Trump can’t try to censor those as well, but it will take a while, since he’s focused on the big corporate outfits right now. We not only have to support these independent publications and commentators, but also think about legal defense funds as well.

We’ve been here before in in U.S. history—many times in fact—when major publishers became so big and so compromised they created an environment for new start-ups. So while this is a dangerous time, let’s put our energy toward the opportunities ahead, and help new media to flourish.