S.E. Cupp: Trump the pirate demands tribute from the media
By S.E.Cupp
PUBLISHED: July
11, 2025 at 8:00 AM EDT
Over the course
of the last few months a “No Kings” movement has coalesced to oppose the
authoritarian policies of President Trump. Organized protests across all 50
states, coinciding with Trump’s military parade, were meant to draw attention
to Trump’s anti-democratic and increasingly monarchical consolidation of power.
In areas of
business and politics it’s undeniable that he acts like a wannabe king, feeling
little affinity for pesky intrusions that typically define a Republic, like
laws, the Constitution, or a separation of powers.
He’s also shown
an unsettling affection for dictators, from Russia’s Vladimir Putin to North
Korea’s Kim Jong Un, to Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, to Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro.
In fact, just this week,
Trump came to Bolsonaro’s defense, urging Brazil to drop its prosecution of the
former president for trying to overturn the results of his country’s 2022
election.
“He is not guilty of anything, except
having fought for THE PEOPLE,” Trump posted of Bolsonaro, a man who once said, “Let’s go
straight to the dictatorship.”
But while Trump’s
penchant for kings and dictators is clear, his hostile threats toward the media
make him more like a pirate.
Trump’s marauding of the American
media landscape began years ago, when, while campaigning in 2016, he threatened to
“open up our libel laws so when they write purposely negative and horrible and
false articles, we can sue them and win lots of money.”
The purpose was
obviously to silence journalists, whose job it is to hold powerful people
accountable. But it was also to terrorize them, and inflict maximum pain.
When discussing a failed 2006 $5
billion lawsuit he filed against Tim O’Brien and his book publishers for
suggesting Trump wasn’t actually a billionaire, he said of the
loss, “I spent a couple of bucks on legal fees, and they spent a whole lot
more. I did it to make [O’Brien’s] life miserable, which I’m happy about.”
He made good on
his threats in 2020, when his campaign filed three libel lawsuits in 10 days,
challenging what was obviously protected speech in opinion columns at The New
York Times, The Washington Post and CNN. All three suits were dismissed, one
with prejudice.
In 2022, he again sued CNN,
this time for $475 million over its use of “The Big Lie” to describe Trump’s
baseless allegations of election fraud. It was also dismissed.
Since then there
have been others, including a defamation suit against the Pulitzer Prize board
in 2022, but more recently a crush of threats and suits has sent a wave of fear
and panic across the media, as they are intended to do.
And sadly the
media is, in most cases, capitulating.
There was his lawsuit against
ABC News in 2024, in which ABC agreed to pay a $15 million settlement toward
Trump’s presidential library in a case over George Stephanopoulos’ use of the
word “rape” instead of “sexual abuse,” a distinction even the judge in
that case said was without a difference.
Then there’s the suit against The Des
Moines Register and Ann Selzer over a poll that showed him losing to former
Vice President Kamala Harris in Iowa. Just last week he
dropped the federal suit, but refiled it hours later in state court. That case
is still in progress.
Then there was
his suit against CBS News for editing an interview it conducted with Harris.
CBS, caught in the middle of a lucrative pending merger between parent company
Paramount Global and Skydance Media, also settled to the tune of $16 million.
Former “60 Minutes” correspondent
Steve Kroft weighed in this week,
calling it a “shakedown,” and likening it to paying “tribute to the king.”
And that’s
exactly what it is. It’s a ransom meant to appease the pirates in the Trump
administration.
In the early
1800s, a young America was forced to confront this very phenomenon. Pirates off
the Barbary Coast of Africa had been collecting tribute to allow our merchant
ships to sail safely to port. When ransom wasn’t paid, the pirates captured
ships, tortured American sailors, and either killed them or converted them
against their will to Islam.
The question for
then President Thomas Jefferson was clear, but difficult: “Whether their peace
or war will be cheapest?”
Ultimately it was
a war he convinced America to fight, in order for “our commerce to be free and
uninsulted,” but also so that other nations didn’t underestimate our power. We
won, and the United States never paid off pirates again.
We can’t keep
paying Pirate Trump. As long as we keep buying our safe passage through the
dangerous waters of covering him, he’ll keep looting and pillaging our
journalistic institutions, ensuring they remain under threat.
Because the hard
truth is, safe passage is just an illusion when pirates are in the area.
S.E.
Cupp is the host of “S.E. Cupp Unfiltered” on CNN.
