Trump operates on two simple rules:
- For me to win, someone else has to lose; and,
- If someone capitulates to my demands, I can still get more.
If you give in to Trump, he will be back. The latest “victim” is Colombia University. They’ve given in to Trump (and Biden) repeatedly, crushing anti-Palestinian protestors, adopting an extreme definition of anti-semitism, kicking multiple students out, executed a partial ban on wearing masks, and are to have security with arrest rights so they can crack down further on students who protest genocide.
The Trump administration is considering placing Columbia University under a consent decree, according to a report by the Wall Street Journal, a dramatic escalation in the federal government’s crackdown on the Ivy League institution…
…The university has already accepted a series of changes demanded by the administration as a precondition for restoring $400m in federal grants and contracts the government suspended last month over allegations that the school failed to protect students from antisemitism on campus.
Needless to say, Trump hasn’t restored that 400 million.
If you give in to Trump without fighting, he assumes that there’s more left on the table. And since you’ve proven you won’t fight, he expects you won’t fight next time. He’ll keep doing this until you do fight, because that tells him how much you really have to give.
Trump’s been going after both Big Law and the Ivies, and so far most, though not all, have given in. Four major “white shoe” law firms have offered 340 million in pro bono work for Trump’s causes and promised not to oppose him.
All of them are idiots. Trump is a bully and a blackmailer. You can never “pay off” a blackmailer. They will always come back to the well for more.
You have only two choices if Trump comes after you:
- If Domestic, fight.
- If foreign, and he’s only threatening, tell him to pound sand and ignore him. If he does something, retaliate.
Trump’s not all powerful. The Supreme Court just ruled 9-0 that he has to return someone they sent to prison in El-Salvador. He’s reaching as far as he can to see how much he can get, that’s all. If you give in, “how much Trump can get” will be as much as he can take. If you fight, he’ll often just go find someone easier to take on and if he does choose to throw down, you stand a good chance of winning because he’s a bully, and at heart he’s a coward. He has no real plan, no real beliefs: there’s nothing he’s willing to go to the wall for except, perhaps, to remove people close to him who fail in their primary duty as a sycophant.
This is especially pathetic in the case of Big Law and Ivies with massive endowments. They can fight and doing so will be good for them in the long run. For law firms it shows that they have guts and no one wants a gutless lawyer. For Ivies it shows that they actually believe all that crap they spew about academic freedom.
Bear in mind that Trump’s power is a fleeting thing. He’s very likely going to lose the House and probably the Senate in 2 years and he’s done in four. There’s a small chance of him managing a coup, and a good chance he’ll try, but his antics are making him noxious not just to the citizenry but to huge chunks of powerful financial and industrial elites. Odds are he’s got his one term, and his health is bad enough that he may not even make that, though I suspect Vance would in many ways be worse.
But, again, if you give in to Trump without a fight, you’re telling there’s more he can get from you.
So fight.