For a year, people who have retained some basic sense of outrage have been pointing out that companies, industry groups, and private citizens have been booking events at Donald Trump's clubs and resorts as way of gaining the Great Orange One's attention. Because Trump refused to divest from these properties, the effect of their bookings is to give Donald Trump cash money, which is a bribe, which we at one point pretended was illegal or against the Constitution or something but which we now know to be the good Republican thing to do.
There's another less transparently corrupt way to get Donald's attention, however, and that is to make news in a manner that he will see and reward. For example, suppose you are an enormous American company seeking to take over another enormous American company, but there's a problem: your merger requires the approval of the United States Department of Justice, currently headed by, God help us all, on-again off-again Trump toady Jefferson Beauregard Sessions. It would greatly help things if Donald Trump thought highly of you. Perhaps playing along with the new Trump tax plan would gain his favor?
Disney is the latest to announce cash bonuses for its employees following the passage of the GOP tax bill last month.
The company announced Tuesday that more than 125,000 of its employees will receive a $1,000 cash bonus.
This would only work, of course, if Donald Trump heard about it, and Donald Trump is not known for a prodigious intake of information. Luckily Donald Trump is an obsessive fan of the news outlet run by the other company involved in your merger plan. If that news outlet were to tout the plan one early morning, making absolutely sure to link the bonuses to the visionary leadership of the Great Orange One, he would certainly become aware of it and ...
And lo and behold, the president who has made no attempts to pretend his Justice Department is anything more than a tool to inflict punishment on his enemies or reward his allies now considers you, as of that fine morning, an ally. And unlike the crowds signing up for new Mar-a-Lago memberships at newly inflated presidential prices, nobody involved is risking jail time.
As it turns out, there is another upside to Donald Trump if the Trump Justice Department just happens to approve of the sale of one mammoth American megacorporation to another; the Murdoch family will be keeping Fox News, detaching it from the rest, and the detachment might make it even easier for the Murdoch family to expand their news empire. It is not often that a president can do such an explicit favor for the one American news outlet he prizes while demonizing all the others. Let us all wait in suspense to find out what the administration will decide.