I confess that President Trump makes me laugh.
It’s not the laughter of someone having a good time. It’s the shake-your-head, I-can’t-believe-it kind of laughter — kind of an involuntary grunt at the brazenness of the president’s lying and the sheer audacity of his gaslighting.
The latest example was Trump’s social media rant accusing Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) of “political extortion” for negotiating to unfreeze congressionally approved funding for the National Institutes of Health in return for moving confirmation of some Trump nominees.
Trump complaining about political extortion? How can you not laugh at the absurdity of it?
Trump’s second term has basically been defined by the magnitude of extortion that can be brought to bear by a president who has no qualms about abusing his power.
Extortion is such a defining Trump trait that it was the centerpiece of a recent instantly legendary South Park episode. In the show, the president threatens the small town with a massive lawsuit, forcing its leaders into a multi-million-dollar settlement. The profane and hilarious episode reminded me that ridicule can be a powerful weapon against dictatorial leaders.
It’s urgently needed right now. The architects of Trump’s Project 2025 presidency are following the anti-freedom playbook that Hungary’s authoritarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has used to impose his will on universities, media, the legal system.
Let’s start with the universities.
A few years ago, JD Vance said at a National Conservatism conference that the movement needed to “aggressively attack the universities in this country.” That attack is ongoing.
Trump and his team have engaged in bare-knuckled extortion against some of the nation’s top universities, threatening billions of dollars in cancer research and other publicly beneficial projects in order to force schools into alignment with MAGA ideology.
The price of the blackmail has varied from school to school, but it has included hundreds of millions of dollars in what amounts to ransom payments, and the abandonment of any kind of commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion.
Freedom of the press, essential to a democratic society, is also a target of Trump’s extortion.
Trump has a long record of hostility toward outlets that are not sufficiently adoring of his greatness. He has used social media to attack media outlets and individual reporters and riles up angry crowds who jeer at journalists covering his rallies.
That’s all bad enough. But things have gotten far worse during his second term, which is guided by a right-wing theory of presidential power as virtually unlimited and unaccountable.
Trump is using the previously independent Federal Communications Commission to threaten media outlets whose coverage is critical of the president.
Sadly, some business titans have given up the fight. Owners of CBS, desperate to win FCC approval for an intensely desired corporate merger, chose to give into Trump’s extortion rather than mount a legal defense to what was virtually universally recognized as an absurd and meritless lawsuit.
Perhaps even worse than what Stephen Colbert called the “big, fat bribe,” CBS owners agreed to saddle the network with an official ideological overseer, leading FCC Commissioner Anna M. Gomez to sound the alarm about the FCC “imposing never-before-seen controls over newsroom decisions and editorial judgment, in direct violation of the First Amendment and the law.”
On top of all that, Trump has crowed that “we also anticipate receiving $20 Million Dollars more from the new Owners, in Advertising, PSAs [public service announcements], or similar Programming, for a total of over $36 Million Dollars.”
As Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) noted in response, “This reeks of corruption.”
Trump has also waged an outrageous and unconstitutional campaign directed at lawyers and law firms that displease him. He’s issued a string of executive orders to punish individual lawyers and threaten firms’ ability to do business.
According to a recent ProPublica report, nine big firms caved to Trump’s extortion, reaching deals that require them to provide nearly $1 billion in pro bono work for Trump-approved causes.
ProPublica also reports that some of the country’s biggest firms are backing off pro bono legal work that might in any way anger the Trump administration, harming advocates for the environment, LGBTQ equality, police accountability and more.
In short, nobody knows extortion like President Trump. Maybe that’s why he reached for the term when he was rage-posting about Schumer. Frankly, the negotiations that Trump “nuked,” in the words of Fox News, seemed like basic dealmaking back-and-forth that is supposed to be Trump’s genius.
I think Trump has gotten too used to people caving into his demands. That’s dangerous.
It’s good news that Senate Democrats are refusing to simply go along while Republicans rubber stamp one horrible Trump nominee after another. It’s good that Texas Democrats refused to just go along with a corrupt redistricting scheme Trump demanded.
Leaders everywhere, take note. Our country needs persistent resistance to the extortionist-in-chief.
Svante Myrick is president of People for the American Way.
