A MAGA Makeover

When Donald Trump takes the oath of office around noon on Monday, he will return to power with an unprecedented amount of support from media and technology companies, many of which are openly catering to the MAGA leader to avoid being targeted by an administration that has made no secret it will wield the powers of the federal government to punish critics.

Never before have the titans that shape the world's information economy been so warm to Trump, despite the fact that the president-elect and his close political allies have been outspoken about the ways in which his administration will warp democratic institutions to push an extremist political agenda.

When Trump was first elected in 2016, he was met with significant resistance. News organizations treated him to a torrent of unafraid critical coverage and technology companies implemented safeguards after grappling with the reality that their laissez-faire approach to misinformation played a role in fanning the flames of the MAGA movement. Then, when Trump refused to acknowledge his 2020 election defeat and incited an insurrection on the U.S. Capitol, newsrooms (rightly) portrayed him as a threat to democracy and social media companies exiled him from their platforms.

Now, four years later, Trump has largely bent media and technology companies to his will. Industry leaders, many of whom are facing various business challenges and are wary of provoking a president eager to weaponize his office against dissenters, have largely chosen appeasement over confrontation.

On the technology front, the shift is stark. Mark Zuckerberg has removed third-party fact-checking and allowed for users to degrade the immigrant and LGBTQ communities on Meta platforms; Elon Musk has transformed Twitter into a right-wing cesspool called X; Google has restored Trump's account on YouTube; and TikTok has made it abundantly clear that it will bend the knee in order to continue operating from within the country (ironically, by having signed the divest-or-ban law over fears of the platform being exploited politically, President Joe Biden has all but ensured the app will be politically exploited by Trump, who will have his thumb over it).

In the media space, the landscape is similarly troubling. Under Warner Bros. Discovery's ownership, CNN has significantly softened its coverage of Trump, moving to sideline hard-charged journalists like Jim Acosta while making dishonest MAGA pundits like Scott Jennings a core part of its political coverage; Jeff Bezos has signaled excitement for Trump's return and already blocked The Washington Post from endorsing Kamala Harris; Patrick Soon-Shiong has vowed to make the Los Angeles Times more MAGA friendly after also blocking a planned endorsement of Harris; Mark Lazarus has privately discussed tweaking MSNBC's coverage over concerns Republicans don't feel they can get a fair shake from the network; Disney settled a lawsuit Trump filed against ABC News and made a $15 million donation to his future museum; and Paramount executives have reportedly discussed settling an absurd lawsuit Trump filed against CBS News over fears it could hold up its acquisition deal with David Ellison's Skydance Media.

Even in right-wing media, Trump has considerably improved his standing. In 2016, Trump did face some criticism from Fox News and popular figures, such as Ben Shapiro and Glenn Beck. After the insurrection, Rupert Murdoch even vowed to make Trump a “non person.” Today, the right-wing media universe protests not. Shapiro, Beck, and even Megyn Kelly now enthusiastically support the MAGA movement. Meanwhile, Fox News is back to producing an endless stream of pro-Trump propaganda.

The cumulative effect is staggering: billions of people worldwide are set to consume news and information over the next four years that is shaped in ways far more favorable to Trump, even as he poses an unprecedented threat to America’s founding democratic principles.

It’s not to say that there are not some bright spots. Not everyone has fallen in line. Plenty of standout journalism is still produced on a daily basis. And the rapidly evolving nature of the news media landscape has produced some outlets (like this one) that are committed to delivering unvarnished reporting and analysis.

But it’s all against a larger, weakened institutional framework. The antibodies in the system that once checked Trump’s power have certainly been significantly depleted, leaving an information environment dangerously susceptible to his distortions — a disturbing shift that will bring with it profound implications for society.