It’s Happening Here

By bowing to Trump, the media is betraying our country’s ideals and hastening the arrival of authoritarian America.

Last Monday morning, I endured the spectacle of MSNBC hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski defending their post-election pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago, marking their first meeting with Donald Trump in seven years. As they sat there reading from a prepared script, blissfully arrogant and hypocritical, a now-familiar nausea washed over me. It began in late October, when Jeff Bezos — with billions of dollars of business before the federal government — instructed the Washington Post’s publisher to break 36 years of precedent and make no endorsement in the most consequential election of our lives. I felt it again last week when CNN’s Dana Bash bizarrely both-sidesed the somehow unknowable politics of neo-Nazis on the march in Columbus. It was clear to me, as I’m sure it was to you, that Joe and Mika were afraid of what Trump 2.0 would do to them, which Brian Stelter’s CNN later confirmed. (See my YouTube video for my initial reaction).

These events signaled to me what Timothy Snyder in On Tyranny calls “obeying in advance”: 

“Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a more oppressive government will want, and then offer themselves without being asked. A citizen who adapts in this way is teaching power what it can do.”

Powerful media figures' craven capitulation to government power — before that power is even inaugurated — surely smacks of the preemptive compliance Snyder describes. Since we as Americans have no experience of authoritarian rule, speculating about what comes next is a challenge. To imagine what a returned Trump might do once in power, consider Russia’s experience during Vladimir Putin’s rise: 

Four days after Putin’s inauguration as Russia’s president in May 2000, Russian federal tax agents raided the offices of NTV, one of the country’s few independent media outlets. NTV had pitilessly mocked the notoriously thin-skinned Putin; once he got to power, he wasted no time deploying the full force of the Russian federal government against it. Under the guise of financial crimes, NTV’s owner was swiftly arrested, imprisoned, and coerced into selling NTV to a pro-government conglomerate who would replace NTV’s journalists and make it a Kremlin mouthpiece. The following month, Putin summoned Russia’s most powerful business figures to the Kremlin where he made clear their new reality: Stay out of politics, and you all can keep your businesses, your wealth, and your freedom. In one fell swoop, the Russian state had cowed its media elites.

If you’re saying, “Well, that’s Russia and this is the United States,” compare the parallels between our country today and the Russia of 2000. Trump of course is pathetically sensitive to media criticism, and he has repeatedly made plain his intention to continue his weaponization of the federal government against his perceived enemies. Senate Republicans are eager to grant him his loyalist hacks as law enforcement officials (so long as they aren't generationally loathsome accused sexual predators!) who will unleash prosecutions against his enemies. As recently as today, Elon Musk — whose willingness to light money on fire extends from Twitter to Trump-Vance 2024  — has menaced MSNBC with a pro-Trump takeover. Meanwhile, social media and tech moguls fell over themselves to ingratiate themselves with Trump after his victory, having essentially shadowbanned political content prior to it.

Trump moreover enters office with advantages Putin did not. He will be the first U.S. president with a media company of his own, which before Trump took a sledgehammer to our norms would have been unthinkable (though it worked out in Italy!). He enjoys the unlimited support of Elon Musk and his wholly owned and radicalized X, as well as of an emerging army of Gen Z podcast bros. Lastly, a rightwing legacy media propaganda machine consisting of Fox News, Newsmax, and OAN stands at the ready. A cinematic universe of Made-in-America state-run media served from your TV to your browser to your phone.

For anyone struggling to envision authoritarianism in America, I have terrible news: It looks exactly like this. 

It’s foolish to assume history will repeat here exactly as it has elsewhere. Yet as Russia’s experience demonstrates, autocracy begins with the state’s subjugation of a free and independent media. The preemptive compliance we’re seeing is the beginning of the beginning. These seemingly small accommodations are actually the signs of a system under immense strain, and as they accumulate they accelerate. For every major media outlet’s shameful public accommodation of Trump’s eggshell psyche, how many other pained conversations are occurring in private in newsrooms around the country? How many local news affiliates are weighing Trump’s repeated threats to weaponize the FCC’s licensing power? How many struggling regional newspapers are pivoting away from political coverage for fear of legal action from a Trumped up Department of Justice?

Fortunately, our country was founded on the idea of “Fuck You.” We have always taught power what it cannot do; defiance is in our DNA. During Trump’s final act, we will need to remember this ancient refusal to obey. 

Unfortunately, now as then, this will require personal sacrifices not only from journalists, reporters, and editors around the country, but from ordinary Americans raising their voices and refusing to comply. I am lucky in that I am not notable enough to be the target of persecution, but strangely I almost hope to be, because it will mean I’m on the right side of history. 

Mika, Joe, and anyone else bending the knee before Trump is even sworn into office defile the American tradition of defiance and are inviting the tyrants in.

I will not comply. Not now. Not ever. Neither should you. 

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