What did Donald Trump do today?

He took his latest bribe from companies that want to be "in the tent."

A notable feature of Trump's second term has been the prominent and sudden support of billionaire CEOs from the tech industry. Some, like Trump's biggest 2024 campaign patron Elon Musk, are clearly pulling strings in the administration and exercising the powers of the presidency without any of the legal responsibilities that a real government official would have. 

But others, like Facebook/Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Amazon CEO/Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos, seem content to make sure they are on Trump's good side so that he doesn't use the power of the presidency against them.

Trump sued Zuckerberg's company Meta in 2021 for suspending his accounts on Facebook and Instagram after the January 6 coup attempt. The theory, which legal experts have called absurd, was that Facebook violated Trump's first amendment rights because it was acting in a government role when it suspended Trump—who was the actual President of the United States at the time—from its private network. The First Amendment protects against government censorship, but it does not require private companies to give everyone a platform. Trump had already lost an identical case against Twitter (prior to its purchase by Musk).

Today, Meta announced it was settling the suit for $25 million.

According to reporting from the Wall Street Journal, in a post-election dinner with Zuckerberg at Mar-a-Lago, Trump explicitly demanded that the suit be settled before Zuckerberg could be "brought into the tent" of his second administration. Trump had also threatened to have Zuckerberg imprisoned for unspecified crimes.

This is becoming a pattern with Trump. ABC News recently settled a similarly dubious suit with Trump, who had sued for defamation after George Stephanopoulos used the word "rape" to describe what a jury had found Trump civilly liable for in the E. Jean Carroll case. The judge in Carroll's defamation case had already noted in his ruling that what Trump had been found to have done fit the definition of the word "rape" as commonly used (distinct from its technical legal meaning in New York state law).

Also, just before the election, the parent company of CBS was debating whether to settle its suit with Trump, in this case over his claim that it was somehow unfair to edit pre-taped interviews for broadcast. In that case, it was Brendan Carr, Trump's pick for head of the FCC who warned Paramount Global executives that Trump would get in the way of a planned merger if they didn't settle.

Why does this matter?

• Having to pay bribes the leader to avoid being targeted by the government is what happens in tinpot dictatorships.