Alone and Abandoned – How Trump’s Divide and Conquer Strategy Is Succeeding

 

Media moguls on the stage at Trump’s Inauguration

Alone and Abandoned – How Trump’s Divide and Conquer Strategy Is Succeeding

PETER ON THE WRITERS’ HANGOUT PODCAST!

“We believe in maintaining, by affirmative efforts, a membership of partners and associates reflecting a wide variety of religious, political, ethnic and social backgrounds, characteristic of that community. We believe that through this policy we may bring to the service of our clients greater breadth of understanding and wider contacts with the world at large, while enriching our personal lives and demonstrating the value of democratic principles as applied to the organization of a law firm… We refuse to be deterred by the unpopularity of a client or his cause from accepting a matter which justice and professional responsibility prompt us to take.” 

1963 Statement of law firm Paul Weiss’ principles

We’ve watched major universities with solid legal positions against Trump efforts to bring them to heel… cave like a house of cards. Like prestigious Columbia University’s putting several regional and ethnic studies programs (like their Middle Eastern and African American programs) into de facto Trumpian “receivership.” Columbia, reeling from charges of antisemitism which could be more directly dealt with, allowed an overall surrender on anything that could be viewed as DEI related and curricula dealing with ethnic studies relating to individuals who may be involved in civil rights or other protests. In what should have been a national university outrage against government interference with academic free speech, the fear of losing federal funds as mandated by Trump or his henchmen (including Musk), brought a wall of silence to American academia.

Columbia was just the most recent and obvious example, but Trump had no trepidation cutting $175 million of federal funds to his own alma mater (University of Pennsylvania where Wharton is contained) pending fixing their DEI issues, and the California state University system (focusing on Berkeley and UCLA) is a more recent Trump target. As each of these institutions is challenged, they now know that among their fellow institutions of higher learning, they are alone and abandoned. It’s every school for itself.

As Trump has sued large corporations where their larger asset base may include media – print, online or in some form of telecasting networks – for a distorted view of “defamation” that would otherwise die under the judicial standards (e.g., as set forth in the 1964 Times vs Sullivan Supreme Court ruling), instead big checks flowed to settle the legal claims as well as to Trumpian causes. Trump has so many tools to apply to make their lives miserable, from tax audits to federal license renewal to DOJ investigation, that fear cowed CEO everywhere, particularly in media, that may be critical to Trump or his policies. The new chair of the FCC announced that any media companies that support any form of “DEI discrimination” have no shot at getting their mergers approved. See numbers of top media executives at Trump’s inauguration above in privileged spots.

But something that really hit home for me is the overall reluctance of law firms, with Trump-revoked necessary security clearances necessary to represent clients with government contracts and being told that they were likely to find fierce resistance from government lawyers. Mega-legal powerhouse law firms Perkins Coie and Covington & Burling were unwilling to take sure winners to defeat this practice to court. The time it would take to win, they reasoned, would destroy their practice. There was not the slightest evidence that other law firms, perhaps the expected mass of law firms might come to their aid, boycotting essential legal services needed by the government… Those firms were essentially alone and abandoned. The list of good lawyers willing to represent clients against Trump’s and Musk’s government dropped like a stone.

When a like attack against an equally powerful law firm, Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP, the firm not only caved to Trump demands but agreed further as noted below. The Wall Street powerhouse, becoming yet another big firm alone and abandoned by its competitors whose practices are subject to the same Trumpian demands and mandates. They believed they had no choice. After all, it was now clear that AG Pam Bondi’s DOJ and Kash Patel’s FBI were simply lackies for the President, waiting to implement his “retribution.” For decades, Paul Weiss was governed by the principles enunciated in part in the above cited statement of principles. No longer. As stated in an email to Paul Weiss staff, Brad S Karp, Chairman wrote why he accepted the horrific settlement with the Trump administration. Here is an excerpt from that email:

“Late in the evening of Friday, March 14, the President issued an executive order targeting our firm. Since then, we have been facing an unprecedented threat to our firm unlike anything since Samuel Weiss first hung out a shingle in downtown Manhattan on April 1, 1875 — almost exactly 150 years ago. Only several days ago, our firm faced an existential crisis. The executive order could easily have destroyed our firm. It brought the full weight of the government down on our firm, our people, and our clients. In particular, it threatened our clients with the loss of their government contracts, and the loss of access to the government, if they continued to use the firm as their lawyers. And in an obvious effort to target all of you as well as the firm, it raised the specter that the government would not hire our employees. We were hopeful that the legal industry would rally to our side, even though it had not done so in response to executive orders targeting other firms. We had tried to persuade other firms to come out in public support of Covington and Perkins Coie. And we waited for firms to support us in the wake of the President's executive order targeting Paul, Weiss. Disappointingly, far from support, we learned that certain other firms were seeking to exploit our vulnerabilities by aggressively soliciting our clients and recruiting our attorneys… [The agreement with the Trump administration] had three primary components. First, we reiterated our commitment to viewpoint diversity, including in recruiting and in the intake of new matters. Second, while retaining our longstanding commitment to diversity in all of its forms, we agreed that we would follow the law with respect to our employment practices. And third, we agreed to commit $10 million per year over the next four years in pro bono time in three areas in which we are already doing significant work: assisting our Nation's veterans, countering anti-Semitism, and promoting the fairness of the justice system.”

So Trump has successfully installed the Sword of Damocles over big media, has taken control of university academic programs teaching about foreign cultures in a manner Trump finds woke or uncomfortable to MAGA, and powerful law firms, even individual practitioners, with government practices, will hold back representing clients and issues that are antithetical to Trump’s personal beliefs even if they are targeting protecting basic constitutional rights. Where is the Democratic Party in all this? A recent poll showed half of all Californians are so disenchanted with the “Blue Wimps” that they would even consider voting for a Republican for governor.

I’m Peter Dekom and this is a message to elected and aspiring Democrats, eliciting the words of Donald John Trump himself: “If you don’t fight like hell, you won’t have a country anymore.”