It Begins with a Whisper
How the Trump administration is forcing America and the world to accept American authoritarianism.
We saw it before the election even took place. Major companies led by the nation’s billionaires like Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and others started falling in line behind the expected lawlessness of a future Trump administration. The scene at the inauguration was one Americans had never before witnessed. A group of men surrounded the man who promised to care for working Americans with a combined wealth larger than 90 percent of the world’s economies. Trump was surrounded by his base — on bent knee.
To the historically aware observer, that was a frightening scene. It foretold what America and the world should expect from the next four years. One after another, leading companies and their founders make compromises to Trump’s chaos. They weigh what it will cost them to protect America’s democracy and then calculate that their single protest won’t be enough to stop the inevitable, so they cave to the pressure and make deals.
Paul Weiss, a prominent law firm that has often represented Democratic clients and causes, is facing widespread criticism online from the legal community after agreeing to provide $40 million in pro bono legal services to the Trump administration to avoid a retaliatory executive order targeting its lawyers and clients.
Earlier this month, President Donald Trump issued an executive action that would have stripped the firm — whose full name is Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP — of its security clearances, limited access of its lawyers to government buildings and rescinded some government contracts with its clients. He asserted that the firm had engaged in “harmful activity” and “blatant discrimination and other activities inconsistent with the interests of the United States.” Trump specifically cited the work of former Paul Weiss partner Mark Pomerantz, who helped lead the Manhattan criminal investigation into hush money payments by Trump (Paul Weiss Agrees to Deal with Trump).
Brad Carp, chairman of the law firm, caved to the inevitable. He, like many others, regards the inevitable as the full weaponization of the federal government to destroy anyone who ever tried to hold Donald Trump accountable for the multitude of crimes he committed in his life. Trump is not trying to make America great. He is making America his bitch, and forcing the country to its knees to make America worship him the way he has always dreamed. Countless times, he commented about how impressed he was by how North Korean and Chinese citizens lept to their feet and cheered when in the presence of their respective leaders.
“That’s what I want Americans to do when I enter a room.”
Trump was never loved by his daddy, and most likely, his love for his father was a mix of fear and hatred. Having been humiliated countless times by Americans not in awe of him, not stupid enough to join his cult, Trump, thanks to the SCOTUS decision last year that granted him complete immunity from any crimes he commits in office, is now determined to break the back of all resistance.
First, he will weaponize the government to go after his so-called enemies, and then, with the precedent in place, use this newly zeroed weapon to go after the rest of us. He will go after independent media. He is already threatening to use the death penalty on people who protest against Tesla. Foreign tourists are being detained and denied entry simply because they expressed anti-Trump views on their social media accounts — phones and computers are being checked at points of entry like in Russia! This is not fearmongering — this is happening!
When will Americans wearing the resistance t-shirts I sell on Etsy (so far 6!) be detained for expressing resistance to this coup? It’s coming, folks. I used to try to shine some positive light on my anti-Trump articles, but it’s getting more and more challenging.
Kathleen Clark, a government ethics expert and law professor at Washington University, described Trump’s initial orders as “an attack on the legal profession and on the independence of lawyers and law firms.”
“There’s every reason to think that the Trump administration will respond to Paul Weiss’s apparent capitulation by, you know, seeing who’s next in line, which law firm is next in line to target, picking them off one by one,” she said. “I would predict that President Trump will feel emboldened by Paul Weiss’s response in a way that he did not feel emboldened by, I would argue, Perkins Coie’s response (Paul Weiss Agrees to Deal with Trump).”
Donald Trump mocked Americans on Friday when he said that nothing he did should be regarded as coercion. Trump, knowing that he will likely be sued many times before he ends Americans’ rights to do so, will now get $40 million of free law consulting. By the time he gets his payback, Trump will have his legal fees covered for generations.
“The law firms all want to make deals,” Trump said from the Oval Office.
The president claimed without evidence that the firms “violently” pursued him for years. “The law firms you’re talking about, they’re not babies,” Trump said. “They’re very sophisticated people (Paul Weiss Agrees to Deal with Trump).”
Trump is coming for us, and soon there will be nothing we can do but compromise or go to jail — just like in Russia!
This is real, folks.
We are going from one horror to another. Thank you for the article.