And Now It’s The Wall Street Journal’s Turn To Tango With Trump | Opinion

When, oh when, will Americans realize we are descending into dictatorship? President Donald Trump has already silenced ABC, CBS, and Facebook, extorting millions of dollars from them for offending him. The job was done using bogus lawsuits and the power of the presidency. And now it’s the turn of The Wall Street Journal. Trump is suing the newspaper owned by his sometime supporter Rupert Murdoch.

The Wall Street Journal had the effrontery to publish a piece painful to Trump—painful because the truth hurts. The truth works like water on a witch. People have been pouring it over Trump for years, but tragically he is still president.

This truth though may be different. It involves Jeffrey Epstein, the hyperfixation of Trump’s hardcore adherents. The Journal reported on a gutsy and grotesque birthday greeting it claims Trump sent to Epstein showing his signature on the part of a woman’s body that Trump in the past boasted he could grab any time he liked.

Trump is suing the Journal for $10 billion. He claims the card is just fake news and that the venerable conservative newspaper is a worthless rag. Will his supporters stomach this too? More important, will the Journal fall by the wayside with the rest of them and payoff Trump?

That depends. The two things are linked. So long as Trump has an army of angry supporters to unleash on the media and Congress, he has a lot of leverage. Trump can threaten members of Congress with campaigns to oust them from office. Trump can threaten the media by denying them things they need from the government. Some of them, like PBS, get money. Trump has now punished it by cutting its federal funding. Others need permission to do things. That’s how Trump got at CBS, holding FCC approval of a license transfer over its head until it coughed up $16 million. CBS even sweetened it by conveniently timing the cancellation of the most popular but unprofitable star in late night TV—Stephen Colbert.

So, what does Rupert Murdoch have that Trump could threaten? Fox News perhaps? Not so simple. Unlike ABC, CBS, NBC, and others, Fox News does not broadcast its programs over the air. It distributes its content solely over a cable network. This means it doesn’t need a license from the FCC. No leverage there.

And he can hardly tell his adherents to stop watching Fox News. It’s being absurdly slavish. While other traditional news outlets and MAGA podcasters have lashed Trump and Attorney General Pam Bondi for not releasing the Epstein files, Fox hasn’t. When it wasn’t publishing stories about savage attacks by immigrants and squirrels, Fox was announcing that Trump was ordering Bondi to seek court permission to release the “pertinent” grand jury files from the Epstein prosecution. Fox didn’t dwell on the fact that the grand jury files only reflect what the Justice Department submitted to the grand jury rather than the documents the Justice Department has in its possession. It didn’t make anything either of the slippery use of the word “pertinent.” Once again, Trump and his minions are obviously camouflaging the real files by talking solely about “incriminating” client lists and “pertinent” grand jury records. Fortunately for Trump, Fox doesn’t care.

So what else is there? Maybe those who listen slavishly to Trump and read The Wall Street Journal will stop—all 12 of them. Or maybe Trump will use or threaten to use the Justice Department to investigate Murdoch’s business dealings for potential crimes. This one’s a real possibility. As Stalin stooge Lavrentiy Beria famously said: “Show me the man, and I will show you the crime.”

Stalin, by the way was a real dictator. He could shut anybody up and wasn’t shy about it. He used the gulag or the garrote. Trump is using the government against others, and he can use it against Fox. Clearly, he hasn’t been shy about it. Consider, for instance, the Justice Department investigation of New York Attorney General Letitia James for supposedly lying on a mortgage application.

So, Murdoch will probably join the others in kowtowing to the commander-in-chief. His only hope—and ours—is that Americans will now recover their spines and demand that it stops.

Thomas G. Moukawsher is a former Connecticut complex litigation judge and a former co-chair of the American Bar Association Committee on Employee Benefits. He is the author of the book, The Common Flaw: Needless Complexity in the Courts and 50 Ways to Reduce It.

The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.