Day 243: The Don's Authoritarian Playbook: Silencing Speech, Dismantling Dissent

Media Capitulation: All Ready to Kiss the Don's Ring

FCC Chair Brendan Carr, Donny’s handpicked hatchet man, has threatened to yank ABC’s broadcast license — not because they botched the weather report, but because Jimmy Kimmel had the audacity to poke fun at The Don. Yes, satire is now apparently a capital offense in Trumpworld.

And who stepped in to describe Carr’s antics as “mob boss tactics”? None other than Ted Cruz. Which is rich. When Ted Cruz calls you a mob boss, you’ve truly outdone yourself. This is the man who once fundraised off of his own Cancun getaway while his constituents froze — and even he thinks the FCC’s behavior looks like something out of The Sopranos.

And I resent being made to agree with Ted Cruz for once. It's actually shocking to find the odd Republican who has some level of a redline.

The Don’s Favorite Trick

This is, of course, part of the Donny Playbook™: when words hurt his delicate ears, stick a government agency on the offender. Yesterday it was the DOJ going after critics, today it’s the FCC looming over late-night comedy. Tomorrow? Maybe the Department of Agriculture will revoke Colbert’s right to buy lettuce.

Free Speech, For a Price

The message is clear: in The Don’s America, free speech isn’t a right. It’s a privilege, available only to those who clap hard enough during his monologues. Everyone else? Prepare to be silenced, fined, or branded an enemy of the state. It’s not “freedom of the press” anymore; it’s “freedom of the praise.”

Democracy, Sleeping With the Fishes

What’s truly dangerous isn’t Carr’s bluster — though it’s chilling enough — but the precedent. Every time Donny weaponizes an agency against critics, the line between democracy and authoritarian cosplay gets thinner. This isn’t about licensing, it’s about loyalty. If the FCC can muzzle Jimmy Kimmel, what’s stopping them from muzzling your local news station when they report on tariffs, climate change, or Donny’s latest golf tantrum?

So here we are: a late-night joke has the federal government acting like a crime family, with Donny in the role of thin-skinned capo di tutti capi. And democracy? Well, democracy just got told to take a long walk off a short pier.

Donny’s Absurd $15 Billion Crybaby Lawsuit Tossed in the Bin

The Mad King’s latest tantrum dressed up as a legal filing has ended the way most of his courtroom crusades do: with a judge rolling their eyes and tossing it straight into the trash.

This time, Donny was demanding a cool $15 billion from The New York Times, Penguin, and a couple of reporters, because they had the audacity to do journalism. The judge’s response? Nice try, but no. Not because Trump’s claims were baseless (though, of course, they are), but because the complaint itself read less like a legal document and more like a particularly unhinged Truth Social rant — “vituperation and invective,” in the judge’s polite phrasing. Translation: too much froth, not enough law.

Donny now has 28 days to refile, though if past is prologue, he’ll just churn out another doorstopper of legal gibberish, perhaps with more ALL CAPS and fewer coherent sentences. The merits of the defamation claims weren’t even touched — which is legalese for “don’t waste my time until you can spell-check.”

A Pattern of Failure

This is hardly Donny’s first attempt at gagging the press with lawsuits, and it certainly won’t be his last. He’s tried before against the Times, CNN, and pretty much anyone who dares to type his name without an honorific like “Dear Leader.” The results? Rejections, dismissals, and the occasional courtroom chuckle at the absurdity of it all.

Yet media companies continue to capitulate to the Mad King. If only we countless examples in history that could show how that course of action works out in the long-term (Spoiler: it doesn't).

These lawsuits aren’t meant to win. They’re meant to intimidate. To bleed media outlets with legal costs and scare smaller publishers into silence. It’s the same tired strongman playbook: declare yourself the victim, sue everyone in sight, then scream about “fake news” when the case inevitably collapses.

The judiciary, for all its faults, isn’t buying it. Not yet. This dismissal is another reminder that the First Amendment still has some teeth, and that no amount of authoritarian cosplay can strip journalists of their right to hold power to account.

Of course, Donny will call it a witch hunt. He’ll cry bias. He’ll claim $15 billion in “damages” to his delicate ego. But the truth is simple: his lawsuits are as empty as his promises, and just as laughable.

The press remains free, Donny’s still mad, and the courts? Well, they’re still capable of telling him to shove it in 30 pages or less.

Though do not doubt, the gagging orders are happening. We are under attack.

Donny Orders History Into the Dumpster

And just like that, a 43-year-old peace vigil, the nation’s longest continuous protest was snuffed out because Donny didn’t like the sound of it. Or rather, because one of his pet networks spoon-fed him the word “eyesore” during a press gaggle. Ever the impulsive monarch, Donny turned to his staff and barked, “Take it down. Take it down today, right now.”

Poof. Gone. Four decades of anti-nuclear protest, erased on a whim by a man who can’t tell the difference between “national security threat” and “hurts my feelings.”

Four Decades of Peace vs. One Moment of Petulance

The White House peace vigil wasn’t just some tent and tarp; it was living history. Since 1981, activists had kept it going — through Republican and Democratic administrations, rain and snow, even Donny’s first disastrous term. But now? A tarp was labeled a “safety hazard” (apparently, peace is flammable), and officers cleared the site under cover of bureaucratic babble about “unpermitted demonstrations.”

Never mind that activists already removed the tarp. Never mind that the so-called safety issue was thinner than Donny’s excuses about classified documents. The order came down, and the vigil was history.

The Spokesclown’s Punchline

White House mouthpiece Taylor Rogers twisted the knife: protesters, he sneered, are “welcome to continue wasting their time with deranged, far-left protests and crazy signs that have nothing to do with peace.”

Nothing to do with peace? That’s rich, coming from an administration that treats diplomacy like a bad Yelp review and nuclear weapons like party favors. The peace vigil was a reminder that ordinary Americans do care about avoiding global annihilation. But The Don doesn’t do reminders — unless they’re painted gold and embossed with his name.

Authoritarian Chic, Donny-Style

This wasn’t about a tarp. It wasn’t about security. It was about control. The Mad King cannot abide even a shabby tent across the street whispering the word “peace” while he bellows “LAW AND ORDER” into Fox cameras.

So he did what autocrats do best: he erased it. A living symbol of dissent dismantled because one reporter said “eyesore.” Call it the Trump Doctrine of Public Space: if it offends his royal aesthetic, it dies.

The vigil lasted 15,867 days. The order to destroy it? Five seconds of Donny’s petulant bluster. That, in a nutshell, is how democracy dies under this circus — not with a bang, not even with a whimper, but with a whiny command: “Take it down. Take it down today, right now.”