If legislators, for instance, don’t cut back on climate-related spending, he has threatened to initiate a constitutional showdown by rescinding the money. His running mate, JD Vance, once suggested that if courts overrule such actions, they may be ignored altogether. “The chief justice has made his ruling,” Mr. Vance said in 2021, imagining a confrontation with the Supreme Court and quoting a line that Andrew Jackson might or might not have said. “Now let him enforce it.”
Corporate giants with media divisions, such as those controlled by Disney, Comcast and Jeff Bezos, have been distancing themselves from their media assets rather than making a case for traditional accountability journalism that could invite Trumpian retaliation against their broader financial interests. For smaller, less financially secure news organizations, the expense of defending themselves in lawsuits from Mr. Trump and his allies may be enough to encourage self-censorship.
He has picked Pam Bondi to be attorney general and Mr. Patel to lead the F.B.I. and other candidates for positions that are critical to the rule of law — yet who have spoken to varying degrees about prosecuting people who cross Mr. Trump. “The Department of Justice, the prosecutors will be prosecuted, the bad ones,” Ms. Bondi said on Fox News in 2023. (In her confirmation hearing this week, Ms. Bondi insisted that “politics will not play a part” in prosecutorial decisions.) Mr. Patel has an enemies list of the so-called deep state and has vowed to “come after” members of the news media “who lied about American citizens.”
Business will face pressure, too. As president, Mr. Trump will once again wield enormous influence over regulation, mergers, industrial policy, licensing, tax enforcement and a host of business waivers and outcomes. Chief executives will be under pressure to get with the program on tariff, tax and spending policies rather than speak truth to power about potentially damaging short- or long-term fiscal decisions. Business leaders, economists and academics who were once counted on for expertise and warnings to Congress and in the news media about deficits, trade wars, sanctions and the broad exercise of government power on the economy will be expected to sing from the Trump hymnal.
Mr. Trump has also used this approach in his engagement with the rest of the world, going beyond his previous declarations that he would no longer fulfill various treaties and international commitments, including those plainly in the American interest, if he doesn’t win concessions. He is acting like a bully rather than a constructive leader, threatening allies like Canada and Mexico with heavy tariffs if they don’t stop the flow of drugs and migrants and warning developing nations they would be shut out of the U.S. market if they create a currency to threaten the dollar. He has demanded that Denmark and Panama allow Greenland and the Panama Canal to become American property.
