Fear Itself: Trump Tees Up the Terror

Jeff Robbins on Mar 25, 2025

When Franklin D. Roosevelt began his first inaugural address 92 years ago this month by asserting his "firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself," he was rallying his countrymen to overcome the paralyzing fear that had settled in after over three years of the Great Depression. That president wanted to ease Americans' fears.

This, of course, stands in the sharpest of contrasts with the White House's current occupant, whose express purpose -- expressed in a continual loop -- is precisely to induce fear, and not just fear but terror, and not just terror but terror of him in particular. It's simple: What he intends is to instill fear that if we disagree with him or oppose him or -- God forbid -- challenge him, we'll face his retaliatory wrath. He isn't sheepish about publicizing his expectation that he can frighten Americans into submission; he boasts about it, and he exults in the boasting.

FDR warned Americans not to be fearful. President Donald Trump wants them that way.

The president's firing of dozens of federal prosecutors who worked on criminal cases arising from his supporters' 2021 attempt to block the counting of electoral votes and their assault on Capitol Police officers, and the disciplining of FBI agents who have investigated things Trump doesn't want investigated, were messages to federal workers, from whom Trump has moved to strip employment protections: Swear allegiance to me, or you may be out of a job. The firing of inspectors general for the cabinet departments, whose job is to weed out illegal, unethical and corrupt conduct, sent the same message: Do what we say and say what we say, or you'll be on the street.

In a speech pointedly delivered at the Justice Department this month, Trump proclaimed that media coverage critical of him was "corrupt" and "illegal." Those opposing him were "bad people." Reporters who have criticized him are engaged in criminal activity. And "the people who did this to us should go to jail." "It has to stop," he told prosecutors. "It has to be illegal. ... It just cannot be legal. I don't believe it's legal."

The message to the press that they'll be punished if they don't play ball has been received. No media corporation with interests requiring federal approval or with subsidiaries, partners or affiliates subject to federal regulation would be wise to ignore Trump's threats of retribution. They know it. Trump knows they know it. And they know he knows it.

Rather than fight Trump, ABC agreed to pay $15 million to settle a defamation lawsuit he brought against it. Meta has agreed to pay $25 million to Trump to settle a lawsuit he filed against it for suspending him from the platform for using it to make fraudulent representations about the 2020 election. And CBS is reportedly considering settling a $20 billion lawsuit Trump filed against it because he didn't like the way "60 Minutes" edited an interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris during the 2024 campaign.

Pronouncements that the federal government will suspend research funding to universities unless they run their campuses the way he wants them to have struck fear into higher education. The universities are scrambling to bend their knees while simultaneously saluting. Executive orders threatening law firms with punitive actions because they promote racial and gender diversity have caused at least one major law firm to race to the Oval Office to cut a deal with the president to provide free legal services to interests he favors in order to escape retaliation. More than a few law firms, rather than stand up to a despot, have opted for a "duck and cover" approach, keeping their heads down rather than risk being the next target of Our Leader's disfavor.

Not everyone, however, is prepared to kiss the would-be dictator's ring. Trump's "border czar," Tom Homan, recently alleged falsely that Boston police were protecting undocumented immigrants who had committed crimes, and swaggered that "I'm coming to Boston, I'm bringing hell with me." Boston Mayor Michelle Wu had a response. "No one tells Boston how to take care of our own," she said last week in her State of the City address. "Not kings, and not presidents who think they are kings." These days, it appears, what Americans should be most afraid of are the consequences of surrendering to the fear deliberately being promoted from the White House.

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Jeff Robbins' latest book, "Notes From the Brink: A Collection of Columns about Policy at Home and Abroad," is available now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books and Google Play. Robbins, a former assistant United States attorney and United States delegate to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, was chief counsel for the minority of the United States Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. An attorney specializing in the First Amendment, he is a longtime columnist for the Boston Herald, writing on politics, national security, human rights and the Mideast.