Trump wants to force the UK to do Musk’s bidding
After the tariffs comes the extortion
Thank you for reading. If you want to support my journalism by subscribing, there is a subscription sale this week. Full details at the end of the piece, but the upshot is you have access to all posts, archives, podcasts and debates for £48 ($62) a year or £0.92 ($1.19) a week
The US is lobbying the UK to emasculate its laws that protect children and adults from online pornography, incitements to violence and to suicide, fraud, terrorism and child sexual abuse.
Readers who have not been paying attention might have thought that American conservatives were against all of the above.
Not in the age of Trump they’re not.
After all, what’s a little child pornography when set against Elon Musk’s profits?
We know from the Guardian that in March the US State Department went to the British media regulator Ofcom to challenge the UK’s Online Safety Act. It gives the regulator power to issue fines of up to £18m or 10% of worldwide revenue if social media companies fail to take “robust” steps to prevent, for instance, the promotion of extreme pornography.
It’s the most naked example I have seen of how the Trump administration has become an enforcer for Musk’s business interests and far-right political project. The two go together.
Obviously, Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and all the other tech barons, who have embraced Trump, want to keep profits high and costs low. They do not want the expense of paying more lawyers and moderators. And if, say, their businesses continue to encourage teenagers to starve themselves to death, then that they think is a price worth paying.
But since Trump’s re-election, it’s not just business concerns that are driving his administration. Musk has turned X (Twitter) into an instrument of far-right foreign policy. He has used his control of the algorithm, and his 218 million follower count, to boost extreme and violent movements across Europe.
In the UK he supported mobs on the streets threatening to burn Muslims and asylum seekers alive. It’s a fair guess that the Trump administration may be intervening to head off an inquiry by the British Parliament into how not just X, but Facebook and TikTok, “encourage the spread of content that can mislead and harm”.
Meanwhile, Musk has supported the far-right Alternative for Germany, and at all times and in every European country he has been the willing enabler of and useful idiot for Vladimir Putin.
It a sign of how servile Europe has become before American power that there is so little outrage about Musk’s incitements to neo-fascism. Here is the richest man in the world and a member of the American administration cheering on violence on the streets of America’s allies. Are we are meant to suck it up and in the case of my country offer Musk legal immunity?
Apparently, we are.
Michael Savage, Daniel Boffey and Ben Quin, the Guardian journalists who broke the story rightly emphasised the political dimension to the lobbying from the Trump administration. They reported that in March a delegation from the US State Department held meetings with the British media regulator, Ofcom, the Foreign Office and the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), a US group that funds and campaigns on conservative issues.
The delegation was not made up entirely of impartial State Department officials.
“Among the group was Samuel D Samson, who previously worked for US conservative organisations. On the day of last year’s US election, he tweeted: ‘Today we choose God over Pagan idols’.”
It’s odd that a servant of God himself and an enemy of paganism should seek to attack British laws that penalise the dissemination of child pornography – but that’s American Christianity for you.
The Trump administration therefore has two objectives. On the one hand, it just wants to make life as easy as possible for American tech firms. On the other, it wants to protect the power of its chief propagandist who wishes to remould Europe in Trump’s image.
The scandal reveal an under-reported reason why tariffs appeal to Trump: they offer enormous opportunities for corruption. Trump’s barely sane policies may tank the American and world economy, but they open wondrous possibilities for bribery and extortion. If, as in the case of the UK, you want a new trade treaty, or if, as in much of the rest of the world, you want exemptions from sanctions, you need to show the crime family on the Potomac some respect.
Yesterday, Trump’s son Eric was quite explicit. The crime family was open for deals on a first-come-first-serve basis, he said,
As the US newsletter, The Hill reported
“Eric Trump advised the many countries that will face new tariffs on goods imported to the U.S. to act quickly to negotiate with his father. ‘I wouldn’t want to be the last country that tries to negotiate a trade deal with @realDonaldTrump,’ the younger Trump, who serves as vice president of the Trump Organization, wrote Thursday morning on the social platform X. ‘The first to negotiate will win — the last will absolutely lose. I have seen this movie my entire life’.”
Leave aside the monarchical decadence of the once proud American Republic, which sees the son of its president-king lay out terms for foreign powers, and consider that it is quite clear that the price of a trade deal with the US is for the UK to give Musk what he wants.
Keir Starmer’s government is already offering to lower taxes on US tech firms, if that’s what it takes to get a deal with the US.
I don’t think he will get away with abandoning online safety laws to please Trump, Musk and their friends, too – if that is what they demand.
Leaving everything else aside it would be a personal humiliation if Starmer were to grovel before Musk – given that Musk has declared that he wants to remove him from power and install a far-right government.
Beyond that, left, right, and centre would unite against him. Children’s charities are already warning against selling out to the US.
I do not believe that most Americans understand that the UK and Europe are not polarised like the US. There are not equal camps of pro- and anti-Trump voters. The new administration is unpopular with everyone except the radical right.
If Starmer were to weaken laws on child pornography and incitement to violence to please what most of us are now viewing as a hostile foreign power, the political price would far outweigh any trifling economic gain he might bank.
Dear Readers, this week I am running a spring subscription sale. If you sign up as a paying subscriber, you will have access to all posts, archives, and debates – at a 20% discount.
By my calculations, the offer takes the price of an annual subscription down from £60 to £48 ($62). This works out to £0.92 ($1.19) a week, which strikes me as a pretty good deal!
With Trump and Putin tearing our world apart, I am writing more than ever. I am hugely grateful to all subscribers. You allow me to keep working without pressure from advertisers, sponsors, or media magnates.
The sale will last until Friday April 4.
All my best wishes,
Nick