The scary surrender to Trump’s attacks on free speech

Everyone needs to act more normal

Americans are fortunate to live in a country with a strong tradition of the rule of law.

Back in 2016, AT&T decided to buy Time Warner. Most people felt anti trust regulators would easily approve the deal, because it was basically the same as Comcast’s acquisition of NBC Universal some years earlier. Others felt that approving the Comcast deal was a mistake, and that the government should challenge the merger and try to establish a different standard for this kind of vertical deal between companies that occupy different layers of the content stack. My take at the time was that this was probably simply AT&T executives following in the long tradition of people at boring companies overpaying to buy movie studios because they think it would be fun to hang out with movie stars.

The deal was announced in the waning days of Barack Obama’s presidency, and soon enough, Donald Trump was president. You wouldn’t normally expect a Republican to endorse a new, more aggressive legal theory of anti-trust enforcement. But Trump did, because he wanted to punish Time Warner for CNN’s journalism.

But again, Americans live under the rule of law.

Trump being mad at CNN’s journalism is not a valid basis for blocking a merger. The theory that the whole legal standard for this type of vertical deal should be different is interesting, but courts normally follow precedent, and there has been no huge revolution in the composition of the American judiciary since the Comcast deal. So when Trump sued to block the merger, he lost in court. AT&T bought Time Warner and (per my prediction) the acquisition turned out to be a business disaster, and AT&T was soon divesting itself of these media properties.

I thought Trump’s inclination to abuse the power of the federal government in this way was a disturbing indicator of his fundamental lack of respect for freedom of speech and the Constitution. But the system — which has never hinged on the idea that every single person in the executive branch will always operate with integrity — did work.

And one of the most disturbing things about Trump’s second term is the extent to which business leaders, politicians, and even, occasionally, journalists are acting like that’s not what happened and that Trump is a dictator now.