Intimidation: the action of frightening or threatening someone, usually in order to persuade them to do something that you want them to do.

I have to give credit where credit is due. Somehow, Donald Trump has intimidated an entire political party — one of the two major American political parties — to stand by and support him, despite all of his unethical, illegal, misogynistic, racist, amoral, and criminal actions.

In the latest issue of The Week magazine, there is an excerpt from an article that Michelle Goldberg of the New York Times wrote. It’s just the latest example of Trump’s winning through intimidation.

Goldberg’s article is about a new movie titled The Apprentice. The movie covers Donald Trump’s rise to fame under the tutelage of his Machiavellian mentor, lawyer Roy Cohn. Cohn was the young lawyer and prosecutor who came to prominence for his role as the chief counsel to the now disgraced Senator Joseph McCarthy during the Army–McCarthy hearings in 1954. Cohn assisted McCarthy’s investigations (witch hunts) of suspected communists that destroyed the careers and the lives of so many talented and creative people.

Back to the present time, American audiences may never see The Apprentice, an unflattering film that features “extraordinary” performances by Succession star Jeremy Strong as Cohn and Sebastian Stan as the young Trump.

Film distributors in many countries have bought rights to show it. But U.S. movie studios reportedly became afraid to touch The Apprentice after Trump’s lawyers attacked the film as “foreign interference in America’s elections” and have threatened to sue those who promote or distribute the film.

Corporations have seen the boycotts the MAGA right launched against Bud Light and Disney, and fear that if Trump is re-elected, he will actively use federal regulators to punish them. In his first term, Trump’s Department of Justice tried to block AT&T’s purchase of CNN’s parent company, Time Warner, to punish the news network for its coverage of him.

Trump ally Kash Patel has warned journalists and the media that if Trump gets a second term, “we’re going to come after you, whether it’s criminally or civilly.” The fear of releasing this movie in the U.S. is a “sign of democratic decay,” writes Goldberg, and it portends “greater self-censorship to come.”

The mantra of the man who might be the next President of the United States might very well be “Winning Through Intimidation.” It has served him well.