It’s good to see that all the major news outlets are standing together behind the three outlets that lost their White House press credentials because Donald Trump didn’t like their reporting. The three, CNN, MS NOW, and Politico, had apparently written something that hurt Trump’s feelings, so he decided to take revenge by banishing them from the White House grounds.

In a great display of solidarity, all the networks, including Fox News, abandoned their live feeds from the White House. This deprives Trump of what he values most: an audience.

Many of us were disappointed, if not altogether surprised, by the rapidity with which major institutions and prominent individuals abandoned principles and bent the knee for Trump at the start of his second term. The major universities stand out in this respect, as several, notably Columbia University, quickly abandoned principles of academic freedom to accommodate Trump in terms of what could be said or taught on campus.

It was especially disgusting to see that much of the assault on universities was ostensibly about protecting Jews from antisemitism. This came from an administration that has an ongoing problem with the neo-Nazi ties of various staffers rising to the surface. Elon Musk, its major campaign funder, and briefly co-president, is an open supporter of neo-Nazi political parties around the world.

Similarly, a number of law firms with long-established reputations for promoting civil rights and other liberal causes quickly entered into deals with the administration. To repent for the sin of trying to hire and promote people from disadvantaged groups, they signed an agreement to stop the practice and do free legal work for Trump’s chosen causes. (See Michelle Goldberg’s excellent New York Times column on this capitulation, which is based on a new book by Jacob Weisberg: Profiles in Cowardice: A Study of Collaboration in the Trump Era.)

Many members of the super-rich, with at least some credentials as committed small “d” democrats, quickly donned their MAGA hats and joined the inaugural celebrations. Centibillionaires Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg stand out in this respect. Bezos had bought and revitalized the Washington Post in 2013. When Trump won the first time, he changed the newspaper’s masthead to “democracy dies in darkness.”

Zuckerberg and his wife, Chan Zuckerberg, had donated hundreds of millions of dollars to support the electoral infrastructure. This was especially important in 2020, when the Covid pandemic created an unprecedented situation for carrying through a national election.

Rather than risk any of their hundreds of billions, both billionaires quickly embraced Trump. Bezos turned the Post into a right-wing megaphone. Zuckerberg canned anything remotely progressive from his philanthropic activities and Meta.

It should have been possible for a more unified response to Trump’s authoritarian threat. There were more than two months between the election and when Trump took office, but it seems the only thing this crew was interested in planning was its outfits for the inauguration.

The media did not react any better. When Trump decided to change the name of the “Gulf of Mexico” to the “Gulf of America,” it suspended AP from the White House press briefings because it did not go along with this absurdity in its reporting. (We can now wear Gulf of Mexico and Lake Ontario tee-shirts as political statements.) Rather than standing in solidarity with AP and walking out, the rest of the media collectively looked the other way.

But now they have recovered their integrity. They all know that the only sin the three banished outlets have committed is reporting. Trump is upset because reality contradicts his dementia dreams, and he doesn’t like that pointed out. But that is what real news outlets are supposed to do.

It has become increasingly evident that Trump fears reality like a vampire fears light. He has staffed his entire administration with sycophants. Even in the rare case they have some level of competency, they will gladly put it aside to do Trump’s bidding. The result is rising inflation and interest rates, a pointless and tremendously destructive war, an abandonment of any pretense to care about human rights or national sovereignty, and the return of measles.

That’s a real disaster, and it’s good that much of the media is prepared to tell the true story. Their act of solidarity should make it easier for more to regain their courage and join the throng of the formerly MAGA.

Dean Baker is a senior economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research and the author of the 2016 book Rigged: How Globalization and the Rules of the Modern Economy Were Structured to Make the Rich Richer. Please consider subscribing to his Substack, from which this is reprinted with permission.