Extorting the private sector
Kleptocrats subvert and manipulate the tools of power—including regulations, taxes, and/or prosecution—in order to pressure the private sector to take action for their personal benefit. Trump’s extortion of the private sector has reached the top echelon of America’s moneyed class.
ACTION 35 | Trump and Mark Zuckerberg fail to reach an agreement
As recently as August, Trump threatened to throw Meta’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg in jail should he interfere in the 2024 election. Zuckerberg's response since Trump was elected has been quite reserved. Since traveling to Mar-a-Lago on January 10, 2025, Zuckerberg has donated $1 million to the Inauguration Fund. In addition, Meta settled a $25 million lawsuit from Donald Trump that his lawyers had argued just months before was "without merit." Following the election, Mark Zuckerberg called Trump a "badass," removed much of the content moderation from his websites, and, the Wall Street Journal reports, is now trying to get his antitrust case before the Securities and Exchange Commission dismissed. As of April 2025, he has not been successful.
ACTION 36 | Amazon and the Trump administration trade favors
Jeff Bezos, one of the world's richest men, owns Amazon and the Washington Post, among other business ventures. During Trump’s first term, Bezos consistently supported editorial independence. Before the end of that term, however, Bezos would pay a heavy price. In 2019, Amazon was due to receive a $10 billion cloud-computing contract from the Pentagon, but the Pentagon suddenly denied Amazon the contract. According to one insider, Trump directed then Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis to “screw Amazon.” Bezos seemed to have learned his lesson. In August of 2024, Bezos had the Post's editors forego publishing an already-written endorsement of Kamala Harris. Like Zuckerberg, Bezos also donated $1 million to the Inauguration Fund. And, most notably, Amazon paid a $41 million licensing fee for a movie about Melania Trump, of which $28 million goes to the First Lady. Since then, Amazon has also acquired exclusive streaming rights to The Apprentice, the show which made Donald Trump more than $400 million. The direct financial benefits to Trump and associates have not been disclosed.
Unlike Zuckerberg, Bezos' efforts may have have paid off. When a New Mexico judge rejected Trump's $3.8 billion law suit against the Post, Trump did not challenge the ruling. When the Department of State issued a list of media companies they would not pay, they notably left the Washington Post unscathed. Additionally, the mogul reportedly remains confident that his space company, Blue Origin, will have a fair shot at competition with Elon Musk's SpaceX.
ACTION 37 | Threatening broadcasters
Trump has personally sued a number of broadcasters, including both Disney (parent company of ABC news) and Paramount/CBS for defamation. Disney chose to settle for $15 million and Paramount is said to be exploring a settlement as well. In both cases, reporters suggest that the networks’ decisions may have less to do with the legal specifics of the case and more to do with fear of retribution from President Trump, which could take the form of reputational damage, arbitrary enforcement of regulations, the cancellation of broadcasting licenses or, for Paramount Global, threats to block its planned merger with Skydance Media.
Beyond personal suits, it seems that the Federal Communications Commission, under the direction of Brendan Carr, who wrote the communications portion of the administration's blueprint Project 2025, has opened investigations into at least three broadcasters. Carr has begun probing NPR and PBS for how they announce donors, as well as NBC for its diversity policies. The actions have been condemned by three former FCC chairs. Democrats in the House of Representatives have opened a probe into abuses at the commission.
The pay-to-play message has been making the rounds. Warner Bros has been told to offer Don Jr a hunting show to earn some favor, but there is no evidence that it has acted yet.
In a successful test of New York's new law on retaliatory suits (referred to as an Anti-SLAPP law), Donald Trump was made to pay $400,000 to the New York Times. (For more on this, see "Controlling Information.")
ACTION 38 | Using tariff exemptions as leverage
The Trump administration's tariff policies have raised concerns about potential favoritism and the use of economic measures as leverage. While President Trump publicly stated that there would be no exemptions to the imposed tariffs, certain companies appeared to receive favorable treatment. Notably, in a repeat of its first-term move, Apple secured exemptions for several of its products, including iPhones and MacBooks, following behind-the-scenes discussions between CEO Tim Cook and administration officials. This led to questions about the transparency and fairness of the exemption process.
This pattern is not new. There was significant evidence of exemption bias during the first Trump administration. A study published in the Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis found that firms that made significant donations to the President’s party had a 29.7% chance of receiving an exemption in the 2018 tariffs. However, corporations that made significant Democratic donations, by contrast, stood an 11.2% chance of approval. A 2019 inspector general's report also found considerable irregularities in steel and aluminum tariff exemptions. According to Pro Publica, the pattern is holding this round of tariffs as well. The message is clear: loyalty matters.