Opinion: Trump takes care of some selfish top priorities
Since Nov. 5, Trump has done something no president-elect has ever done. He’s checked off the top three to-dos on his postelection agenda before even taking the oath of office.
No question that staying out of jail was Trump’s No. 1 priority.
Last May, a New York state jury found Trump guilty on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records as part of a scheme to unlawfully influence the 2016 presidential election. In 2018, Trump’s lawyer Michael Cohen was sentenced to three years in prison for more or less the same activities undertaken at Trump’s direction. This month, the trial judge acknowledged “the seriousness” of Trump’s crimes but said imprisonment would interfere with Trump’s duties as president and let him off with no prison time.
In 2023, Trump was indicted in two federal cases, one for stealing classified documents and the other for conspiring to overturn the 2020 presidential election results. Both cases were dismissed after this past November’s election because Justice Department policy bans the prosecution of a sitting president. Trump crowed, “The voters have spoken.” Yes, Trump is moving into the White House, not the Big House, this year.
Trump’s next goal was to have former political opponents acknowledge his primacy and seek his favor.
Trump and his allies have long seen Big Tech as a part of the “deep state” that fought an underground war against his policies. Trump was kicked off Facebook, Meta’s social networking app, after the 2021 insurrection. He was only allowed back on in 2023 but with “new guardrails to deter repeat offenses” in postings. Just after this past November’s election, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg traveled to Mar-a-Lago for dinner with Trump. This month, Meta announced that it would no longer review Facebook posts for content and that it was replacing Nick Clegg, the former head of the UK’s Liberal Democrat party, as president of global affairs with Joel Kaplan, a former Republican White House staffer.
Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, bought The Washington Post in 2013. Four years later, The Post won a Pulitzer Prize for exposing Trump’s untruths regarding his charitable giving. In 2018, the paper won for its investigation of the connections between the 2016 Trump presidential campaign and Russia, and it won in 2022 for its coverage of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. None of these stories was close to favorable to Trump.
Amazon, the primary source of Bezos’ fortune, does billions in business with the federal government and, of course, would like to do more. It also runs a streaming service which this month struck a deal to run a documentary about Melania Trump that she herself is executive producing. In addition, Blue Origin, another Bezos company, holds a $3.4 billion contract with NASA to build a lunar lander and is competing for a $5.6 billion contract to provide space launches for the Pentagon. On the same day executives of Blue Origin met with Trump, Bezos quashed a Post editorial endorsing Trump’s opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris.
In the past month, prominent Post staffers including the Pulitzer-winning Ashley Parker, political cartoonist Ann Telnaes and popular columnist Jennifer Rubin have resigned from the paper. The motto of the new platform Rubin founded is a none-too-subtle “Not owned by anybody.” The Post’s masthead still includes the slogan “democracy dies in darkness,” but it sure looks as though the paper’s lights are dimming.
Last month, the Walt Disney Company agreed to pay $15 million to settle a defamation case brought by Trump for a statement made on its ABC Network even though Disney would probably have prevailed on the merits. Democratic attorney Marc Elias commented: “Ring kissed. Another legacy news outlet chooses obedience.”
Mission accomplished here, too. Tech billionaires and media magnates are approaching Trump on bended knee. Last month, he boasted: “In the first term, everyone was fighting me. In this term, everybody wants to be my friend.” Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg will be seated on the dais at Trump’s inauguration along with Elon Musk, tech’s wealthiest man.
What’s third on Trump’s Top 3 list? To show that being a sexual predator is no big deal, that everyone does it. Over two dozen women have accused Trump of sexual misconduct. In the infamous Access Hollywood tape, he was recorded as saying: “And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab ’em by the (private parts).” A New York state judge found that according to the common understanding of the word, Trump raped author E. Jean Carroll.
Trump seems to regard accusations of sexual misconduct as a plus on a potential cabinet member’s resume. In December, he nominated Matt Gaetz as attorney general despite credible evidence that Gaetz had committed statutory rape. Even after Gaetz withdrew his nomination, Trump’s choice for the CFO of Florida, Joe Gruters, said, “Matt Gaetz continues to have a bright future in elected office.” Trump’s nominee for secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, paid a woman to drop charges of sexual assault in return for her silence. Trump’s nominee for secretary of health and human services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., texted an apology to a former babysitter who accused him of sexual assault.
Hegseth’s confirmation hearings appear to confirm that for Republicans, sexual misconduct is not a disqualification from high office. Trump can put a checkmark by his goal to normalize harassing and assaulting women.
Between his election victory and moving into the White House, Trump has already gotten what he wanted most. And the American people are about to get the felonious, predatory, bullying, shameless president they elected.
— Keith Raffel is a syndicated columnist with Creators.