With the news that Meta is paying Donald Trump millions to settle a spurious lawsuit, followed by the news that Paramount is planning to do the same, it’s time to acknowledge that Trump’s litigation strategy is a great success.

Not only is Trump strong-arming media companies into cowed deference, afraid to cross him — he’s also lining his pockets.

It seems almost quaint to focus on this while Trump’s pet billionaire, Elon Musk, runs around ripping the wires out of the United States government and tearing things down to the studs. Even in the face of that existential danger, however, this new frontier of litigation-as-bribery-scheme, run by the most powerful man in the world, is alarming.

Recall that ABC News didn’t even wait until Trump took office to bend the knee. Last December, they settled Trump’s absurd defamation lawsuit against the network by giving him $15 million toward his as-yet-nonexistent presidential library. Trump alleged that George Stephanopoulos defamed him by saying he was found liable for raping E. Jean Carroll because he was technically found liable only for forced digital penetration. However, Stephanopoulos’s comments aligned with how the judge in the Carroll case described what occurred.

The lawsuit against Meta arguably had even less merit than the one against ABC News. Trump sued the platform in 2021 after his Facebook account was suspended following the January 6 coup attempt. Of course, Meta is a private company and is not obliged to keep anyone, even Donald Trump, on Facebook if he violated their terms of service by spreading lies about the 2020 election. Also, of course, Trump’s Facebook account was fully reinstated by Meta back in January 2023, making any continued litigation unnecessary if the real goal was simply to get back on the platform. Additionally, a federal judge had already thrown out a similar Trump lawsuit against Twitter over being thrown off that platform for the same reason after J6.

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Despite all these factors weighing heavily in Meta’s favor, Trump’s team continued to pursue the case. In November 2023, his attorneys argued that even though he had been allowed back on the platform, he might feel scared to post now. No, really. Here’s Trump attorney John Q. Kelly: “Once you’re censored, you’re censored, and that’s it. But when you’re restored, you have to watch your step. You’re sort of whistling in the dark every time you use Facebook and even approach matters that Facebook is not endeared to, such as our ex-president.”

Even the judge on the case said this argument didn’t sound terribly plausible. But Trump had other pressure points. He threatened to jail Meta head Mark Zuckerberg during the 2024 election, saying that “if he does anything illegal this time he will spend the rest of his life in prison.”

So Meta came to the table after the election, where Zuckerberg was told that the lawsuit had to be settled before he would be “brought into the tent.” Meanwhile, Zuck donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration and sat in Oligarch’s Row for the festivities. He also ended third-party fact-checking on Facebook and killed Meta’s DEI programs.

Apparently, none of these shows of fealty were enough. What Trump wants, besides compliance in advance, is cash. So Meta followed ABC’s lead and gave Trump $22 million for the erstwhile presidential library and $3 million to fees and other plaintiffs.

It’s tempting to call this a bribe disguised as a lawsuit settlement, but it’s more as if Trump has demanded protection money. Pay him, and you won’t be subject to the president using the weight of the federal government to wreck your company. Pay him, and you won’t be subject to ceaseless frivolous litigation filed in Trump-friendly courts.

Which brings us to Paramount, parent company of CBS, which is currently flirting with entering into the same type of mob boss arrangement. This is in no small part because it needs government approval for a major merger with Skydance Media.

Trump sued Paramount for a staggering $10 billion shortly before Election Day 2024, saying that CBS had deceptively edited a 60 Minutes interview to make Kamala Harris look better. It’s a reed-thin lawsuit, one made more absurd because Trump was the candidate who benefited from persistent sanewashing during the 2024 election, with the mainstream media laundering his rambling, racist remarks into reasonable-sounding policy pronouncements.

As with both the ABC and Meta lawsuits, it doesn’t really matter whether these claims were legally viable or supported by any facts. This time around, Trump substantially upped his chances of success by filing in the Amarillo Division of the Northern District of Texas, where his own hard-right pick, Matthew Kacxmaryk, is the only judge.

After winning the election, Trump elevated Brendan Carr to the head of the Federal Communications Commission. This move might seem unrelated to the lawsuit until you remember Carr spent campaign season attacking CBS and demanding they release the unedited transcript of the Harris interview, an odd look for a sitting FCC commissioner.

With his ascension to the top of the FCC, Carr now controls the fate of the Paramount-Skydance merger. He already publicly threatened to nix it over Trump’s complaint about the Harris interview. And in case Paramount and other media companies didn’t get the hint, Carr also reinstated election coverage complaints against ABC, CBS, and NBC that the FCC had previously dismissed as attempts to weaponize the FCC complaint process.

Now, Paramount has agreed to give the full, unedited transcript of the 60 Minutes Harris interview to the FCC as part of its investigation into Trump’s complaint that the editing of the interview constituted “election interference.” But if the ABC and Meta settlements are any indicator, all of this knuckling under won’t be enough, and Paramount will end up giving Trump millions.

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This isn’t normal

It’s a category error to try to assess the merits of Trump’s allegations as one would any other lawsuit. The point isn’t whether he could prevail in court. These lawsuits are tools for dominance and profit. They’re threats designed to exact compliance and money.

It’s wild to live in a world where the sitting president has both the time and the legal ability to pursue ruinous civil cases against media companies he doesn’t like. He still has an active lawsuit against Iowa pollster Ann Selzer, the Des Moines Register, and Gannett, the Register’s parent company, over Selzer’s blown call on Iowa in the 2024 election — because now apparently poll misses are election interference too.

Trump also has litigation against Simon & Schuster over a Bob Woodward book and against CNN for defamation. He gets to pursue these cases as a private litigant while weaponizing the whole of the government against the media whenever he wants. But as wild as that feels, what’s wilder still is Trump’s new argument that he is immune from civil litigation filed in any state court while he is president.

Trump is in the middle of a multi-billion dollar slap fight between the founders of Truth Social, his vanity project social network. Two of the founders sued Trump and other executives over what happened when the company went public, with the plaintiffs saying they were cut out of their full stake. Trump told the Delaware state court that he is facing an “unprecedented” number of lawsuits and to defend himself would distract from his presidential duties and interfere with the executive branch.

So, Trump has infinite time and energy to be the plaintiff in civil lawsuits, going after companies who displease him, but it will compromise the presidency if he is the defendant. Got it.

Demanding immunity in state courts only is a neat little sleight of hand, as the Paramount case is in federal court, as are the Simon & Schuster and CNN cases. The Iowa poll case is also there now, but that wasn’t initially the case. Trump filed in state court in Iowa but is now in federal court after being removed there by the Des Moines Register. So, Trump’s stance in the Truth Social case would still allow him to maintain all his own cases while shutting down any litigation in state courts. Litigants would then be forced to sue in federal court, where they will always face a court system stuffed with Trump appointees.

What all of this adds up to is a bone-deep corruption of the American enterprise. It’s presidency for profit, presidency as weapon. A decade ago, it would have been inconceivable to think of major media companies lining up to give a sitting president millions of dollars, even in the guise of the sums being for a presidential library. Now, we’re on the verge of a third company doing so in as many months. That presidential library is going to be awfully flush with cash if this keeps up.

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