You Have What Trump and Musk Want

Mother Jones illustration; Roberto Schmidt/AFP; Anna Moneymaker/Getty (2)

“Sit down and read. Educate yourself for the coming conflicts.”

It was a widowed, immigrant seamstress who said that, a woman who had no business standing up to the powers that be. Robber barons held unquestioned sway in her day. Politicians divvied up the government as spoils to their cronies. Women, let alone older women, those who were poor, or without a man at their side, were supposed to vanish into the woodwork. And yet Mary Harris Jones, the labor organizer known as “Mother” Jones and the namesake of this magazine, claimed a power of her own. For the past month, I haven’t been able to get her words out of my head.

It was the “Sit down” that caught me. Such intention in that command, the opposite of the way we drift through our streams of content. Stop. Take a moment. Decide. To “educate yourself for the coming conflicts.” Conflicts are coming, and there is work to do in them, work that you need to “prepare” yourself for.

And also, the certainty that “to educate yourself” is useful. That knowledge is a tool you’ll need. Right now the power of knowledge seems so tenuous. Does truth really matter, when people seem so committed to believe whatever they want to believe?

In Mary Harris Jones’ time, a lot of beliefs were strongly held too. That 12-year-olds should pull 12-hour shifts in factories and mines. That women didn’t have enough common sense to vote. (That one, even Harris Jones believed!) That workers deserved no say about the conditions in which they labored.

Challenging this status quo was difficult, even dangerous. The US government suppressed dissident journalists and enabled mob violence. The Elon Musks of the day owned printing presses and could drive policy with the stroke of a pen (“you furnish the pictures, I’ll furnish the war”).

And yet, so many people found ways to stand up for what was right. How? Part of it, was by heeding that advice—to “sit down and read”—to see beyond the present moment, the latest bit of political mayhem. They educated themselves and helped others do the same.

At Mother Jones and our sister radio show and podcast, Reveal, that’s the tradition we stand in: We are here to help you stay focused on the bigger picture, not just the chaos of the day. (And we can do it only because of your support—please consider donating to keep our nonprofit newsroom alive.) As our editor in chief, Clara Jeffery, wrote to the newsroom a few days ahead of the inauguration:

We’ve learned from Trump 1.0 that he rules by chaos. The constant fusillade of actual insanity and crazy threats that never quite materialize—it can really destabilize the media. We cannot ignore the firehose—but we can pick what to focus on, and coach audiences how to keep their eye on the ball too. For starters, let’s prioritize what they do, rather than just what they say.

Why is this so important? In part because “what they say” feeds the deluge of content that passes for our political discourse. Cable chatter, blogs, online videos all endlessly aggregate and disaggregate stuff that was said, and stuff that was said in response, ad infinitum. That’s not by happenstance. There’s a reason why that is so, and as with most things, you find it by following the money.

The Media Oligarchy

The magazine cover below was sent to the printer more than a year ago, and yet it’s almost exactly the cast of characters we saw on stage on January 20: Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and of course Elon Musk front and center. There were even more billionaires on that stage—my colleague Tim Murphy listed them all in this excellent piece—but the overlords of the attention economy were particularly notable. As the media critic Oliver Darcy noted, Trump began his second administration “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.”

Corporate control of media has always been a problem, but the speed and enthusiasm in the latest round of knee-bending has been stunning. TikTok put on an absurd performance of pretending it was “saved” by Trump (who initially pushed to ban the service). Mark Zuckerberg promised more “masculinity” at Facebook and threw the woman who helped build the company under the bus (because some guys don’t feel truly masculine unless they insult women). Musk didn’t need to crawl to Mar-a-Lago, because he had his own $2,000-a-night hideaway there already.

In the end, it’s not surprising for ultrawealthy corporate leaders to end up on the side of the party that supports ultrawealthy corporate leaders. Tech bros were aligned with moderate and liberal causes only when that course seemed profitable to them, and in 2025, with AI and crypto riches in their sights, it no longer does. They want a government that stays out of their way, except to give them massive contracts. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman performed one of the more cringey genuflections when he wrote—just days after Trump endorsed Altman’s multibillion-dollar Stargate project—that he’d only been a Trump critic because he wasn’t doing “more of my own thinking.” (Full disclosure: Mother Jones has sued OpenAI for using our journalism to train its models without permission.)

So much for the companies that control our information pipelines. How about the ones that produce what’s left of journalism?

It’s always been clear that, when push comes to shove, corporate media owners will not put journalistic mission over corporate bottom line. What we’re been learning lately, though, is that they’re not even waiting for push to come to shove.

Here’s Darcy’s roundup: “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.”

And that was just what had happened before Trump was inaugurated. Since then we’ve seen MSNBC ditch Joy Reid, the only Black woman hosting a primetime cable show; Jeff Bezos publicly dictate the direction of the Washington Post’s opinion page; and so much more.

All these companies employ great journalists who deserve appreciation and support. But the people who run the shop know that Job One is not to serve the public interest; it’s to deliver quarterly returns. Why else would Bezos’ Amazon, which in the first Trump administration found itself investigated for antitrust violations and denied a multibillion-dollar Pentagon contract, pay $40 million to make a “documentary” about Melania Trump (for which she gets paid $28 million as an executive producer)? Why else would the LA Times’ Soon-Shiong cozy up to an administration whose actions are critical to the biomedical research Soon-Shiong built his fortune on? 

But in their moment of frenzied adulation, the media bigwigs may have forgotten who their customer base is. Fewer than one-third of Americans eligible to vote (and fewer than half of actual voters) cast a ballot for Trump. Catering to his fan club alone may not turn out to be the best business decision once the majority gets its mojo back.

Picking Yourself Up Off the Floor

What would that take though? The lawless steamroller of the past month has been brutal. I, at least, had forgotten what it feels like when every headline seems to spit vitriol at you. Freezing cancer trials and depriving people with HIV and AIDS of life-saving drugs. Asking government employees to rat on each other for the crime of supporting diversity. Scaring children about going to school and stopping food deliveries to starving people. Insulting, demeaning, and erasing trans people. Flashing a right-arm salute, cracking “jokes” about the Third Reich, and all but telling Vladimir Putin that he can truly do “whatever the hell he wants” in Ukraine and elsewhere.

These are what social scientists call transgressive moves—intentionally boundary-violating, norm-breaking displays, intended to send a message. The message is “suck it.”  It feels miserable watching it, and it feels worse to realize that watching it, and feeling miserable, is exactly what we are meant to do.

But that’s the key: We don’t have to do as we’re meant to do.

The currency of today’s oligarchs is attention. It is what makes them money and what gives them power. Admiration or outrage, it doesn’t matter: When we give them our attention, they define the terms of discussion.

Whether and how we give it to them, though, is our choice. It may not always feel that way—how could we not be mesmerized by the dismantling of democratic structures? But keep in mind: In Mary Harris Jones’ day, workers felt the same way about their labor. How could they possibly withhold it, when the bosses had all the power? Yet they found that doing it together flipped the script. It gave them power.

We also have the ability to withhold our attention—or rather, to choose whom we give it to.

Increasingly, people have begun doing that. Some are deleting Facebook or nuking their Twitter accounts. Some are staying on the platforms they enjoy, but changing the way they use them: Notifications turned off, phones put away at certain hours, whatever works.

This is not the same as disengaging. You don’t need to doomscroll at every hour of the day to follow what’s going on. That’s our job, as journalists in an independent newsroom: We try to stay aware of all of it, but also to focus on what’s most important, what is truly worthy of your attention. Like this amazing public school teacher.

So let’s do this together. Here at Mother Jones, we’ll watch the chaos and bring you the stuff that matters most. If you want to “sit down and read,” we’ll have you covered. If you prefer to listen to a podcast (or radio show), or watch videos, we’re there for you as well.

We’ll bring you reporting about the things that are outrageous, and the things that are inspiring. We’ll cover the ways in which people are taking action to defend their values, their communities, and their freedoms. Because those “coming conflicts”—they have already begun, and it’s vital that people see how other people are standing up. (If you’re on Bluesky, consider following Clara, our editor in chief, who is keeping tabs on the town halls and protests happening everywhere—and has just written a terrific column on her, and my, formative early experience of the antiapartheid movement.)

There’s going to be a lot of stuff that requires our attention in the coming months. Let’s use it wisely.

And last not least: To do our job for you, we need your support. Independent, investigative reporting is one of the few checks and balances we have left, and it’s rapidly eroding with the billionaire takeover in media. So please consider donating in whatever way works for you. That’s what makes it possible for us to stay focused on the most important stories—because our newsroom’s survival doesn’t depend on racing after the headlines or accommodating the powerful. And it never will.