When You Give a Bully Your Lunch Money

President Donald Trump, today in the Oval Office alongside his “very good friend” Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman, after ABC News reporter Mary Bruce had the temerity to pose a question regarding Mohammed having ordered the brutal murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018:

People are wise to your hoax. ABC, your company, your crappy company, is one of the perpetrators. And I’ll tell you something, I think the license should be taken away from ABC because your news is so fake, and it’s so wrong. And we have a great commissioner, a chairman, who should look at that.

Also from Trump, regarding Khashoggi’s murder:

A lot of people didn’t like that gentleman that you’re talking about. Whether you like him or didn’t like him, things happen.

Things happen, indeed.

Disney (ABC’s owner), a year ago settled a lawsuit Trump filed against ABC News — a lawsuit most experts agreed ABC would have won — for $16 million, in what clearly amounted to a bribe.

Yours truly, last month, in a post on Apple’s capitulation to Trump regarding the ICEBlock app for iOS:

When you give a bully your lunch money, they always come back for more.

I think Bob Iger gets that now. “Fuck you, make me” remains the correct response to these threats.

★ Tuesday, 18 November 2025