This is how democracy dies

The latest casualty of Trump’s efforts to silence media criticism is Eduardo Porter, one of the most thoughtful and intelligent critics of this heinous regime.

On Tuesday, Porter wrote his last column for The Washington Post. In it, he criticized Trump’s attempt to dismantle the global trading system.

Porter didn’t stop there. He also explained why he was leaving the Post:

“Jeff Bezos and his new head of Opinion are taking the paper down a path I cannot follow, directed toward the relentless promotion of free markets and personal liberties … I have no idea to what extent this is driven by Mr. Bezos’ fear of what Donald Trump could do to his various business interests, most of which are more valuable to him than The Post.”

Well, I do have an idea. Bezos stopped the Post from endorsing Kamala Harris. He made a huge contribution to Trump’s inauguration. And he stood directly in front of Trump at Trump’s swearing in.

Why? Because Bezos owns a bunch of mega-corporations, including Amazon, that depend on Trump’s goodwill and could be in deep trouble if Trump decided to retaliate against Bezos.

It’s much the same story with Stephen Colbert, longtime host of CBS’s The Late Show and the top-rated late-night talk show host in the United States.

On July 14, Colbert openly criticized CBS’s parent company, Paramount, for its $16 million settlement with Trump of his frivolous lawsuit over the routine editing of a 60 Minutes interview with Harris that Trump claimed gave her an unfair advantage in the 2024 election.

Said Colbert in his opening monologue:

“As someone who has always been a proud employee of this network, I am offended. And I don’t know if anything will ever repair my trust in this company … I believe this kind of complicated financial settlement with a sitting government official has a technical name in legal circles. It’s big fat bribe. Because this all comes as Paramount's owners are trying to get the Trump administration to approve the sale of our network to a new owner, Skydance.”

Three days later, on July 17, Paramount pulled the plug on Colbert’s show, eliciting from Trump a celebratory, “I absolutely love that Colbert was fired.”

(A few days later, Colbert came out swinging, telling Trump to “go f––– yourself,” and joking that it had always been his dream to have a sitting president celebrate the end of his career.)

On Thursday, one week after Colbert’s show was cancelled, Trump’s Federal Communications Commission approved Paramount’s sale to Skydance.

To cinch the deal, Skydance CEO David Ellison promised that he’d eliminate all U.S.-based DEI programs at Paramount and CBS and create a new ombudsman to field complaints of ideological bias in news coverage.

Trump says CBS also agreed to run $20 million worth of public service announcements consistent with his ideological beliefs.

Let’s be clear. Bezos has silenced any criticism of Trump on the editorial pages of The Washington Post because Bezos fears Trump’s wrath.

CBS and its parent corporation, Paramount, has silenced criticism of Trump on Colbert’s hugely popular Late Show because its top corporate brass fears Trump’s wrath.

The new owner of CBS has agreed to some federal interference in the content of what it produces because he fears Trump’s wrath.

The silencing is happening across American media because Trump cannot stand criticism, because he’s vindictive as hell, and because he’s willing and able to use every department and agency of the federal government to punish any media corporations that allow its writers or hosts to criticize him.

It’s the same with American universities, whose professors have often criticized Trump’s illegal and unconstitutional actions and whose research has often yielded conclusions that contradict Trump’s lies (such as that climate change is a “hoax”).

Columbia University, Dartmouth College, and a handful of others have gone out of their way to “cooperate” with the Trump regime in order to avoid Trump’s wrath.

What does “cooperation” entail? Silencing Trump’s potential critics.

Columbia has just agreed to allow the regime to review its admissions and hiring practices in order to receive the federal research grants that the regime had held back.

Friends, this is how democracy dies.

Shame on any media outlet or university that allows Trump to silence it.

Trump is a dangerous despot. America needs its Eduardo Porters, Stephen Colberts, and all others in the media and in academia who have helped the nation understand just how truly dangerous Trump is.

• Robert Reich is a professor emeritus of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com