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Despite the gloom and doom surrounding the results of November 5, it would be nice to end the year with a glimmer of hope: the certainty that at least one guardrail against a Trump dictatorship was still in place. Alas, that’s not the case.

Two other guardrails, the courts and the Congress, were already lost. The Roberts Supreme Court has already signaled that Trump can do anything he wants, and they’ll do nothing to stop him. And today’s feckless Republican senators and representatives are so afraid of Trump, they’ll vote for anything and anybody he wants, even an alleged alcoholic and sexual abuser for secretary of Defense and a vaccine and fluoride denier for secretary of Health and Human Services.

But not all was lost, we thought momentarily. We still had the media. We had our watchdogs in the press. They’d still be on the job, telling the truth, informing the American people and holding Donald Trump accountable.

Nope! Forget about that third guardrail. As we move closer to the autocracy Trump has threatened, there will be no leaders in the media to stand up for democracy. Why? Not because Trump shut them down. He didn’t have to. Because, in a disgraceful, colossal act of “anticipatory obedience,” media owners have thrown in the towel. One by one, some of the biggest names in the media have waved the white flag of surrender.

The Washington Post. Before November 5, owner Jeff Bezos killed an editorial endorsing Kamala Harris. Shortly after Trump’s election, Bezos said he was “actually very optimistic” about Trump’s second term. This week, he made the obligatory trek to Mar-a-Lago to kiss Trump’s ring (?) and donate $1 million to the Trump Inauguration Fund.

Meta. Once one of Trump’s biggest critics – who even kicked Trump off Facebook – Meta owner Mark Zuckerberg also made the pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago, kissed Trump’s ring (?), and kicked $1 million into the Inaugural Fund.

MSNBC. Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, hosts of “Morning Joe” and outspoken Trump critics, were the first to rush to Mar-a-Lago to embrace Trump – and later aired an on-air apology to comments critical of Trump’s defense secretary nominee Pete Hegseth made by guest David Frum.

The Los Angeles Times. Owner Patrick Soon-Shiong also killed his paper’s planned endorsement of Kamala Harris. Since the election, he’s announced plans to apply a “media bias test” to the paper’s future political reporting. Last week, he nixed an editorial opposing the Senate’s use of recess appointments, instead of the constitutional confirmation process, to consider Trump Cabinet nominations – unless the paper also ran another editorial expressing the opposite point of view.

ABC News. In the most shocking display of media cowardice, ABC News suddenly announced it was caving in, settling Trump’s defamation lawsuit against the network and donating $15 million to a future Trump presidential museum. ABC surrendered without a fight, even though most legal scholars said there was no way Trump would win the case. Host George Stephanopoulos did not defame Trump when he said he’d been found “liable of rape” by a New York jury – because that’s exactly what the judge in the case said on the record.

And what did these media moguls expect to get from Trump in return for their slobbering kiss on the cheek? Respect? Cooperation? Support? No more accusations of “fake news?”

Fuhgeddaboudit! At a news conference this week, Trump again charged that “Our press is very corrupt, almost as corrupt as our elections” – and then proceeded to file a lawsuit against the Des Moines Register and pollster Ann Selzer for releasing a pre-election poll showing Kamala Harris ahead in Iowa by three points. She was wrong. Trump won Iowa. But Trump still accuses the Register and Selzer of “election interference.” He’s also promised to sue CBS News, Politico and the Washington Post’s Bob Woodward.

Watching this embarrassing parade of media moguls bending the knee, it was chilling to see this headline in The Hill: “Trump Settlement with ABC Alarms Democrats.” What? Alarms Democrats? No! ABC’s surrender should alarm us all. And so should the efforts of Bezos, Zuckerberg, Soon-Shiong and others to cozy up to Trump.

Why? Because it means, out of fear of Trump, that many in the media will be prevented from doing their job: providing transparency, telling the truth and holding politicians accountable. And without a fearless free press, we’re lost. As Walter Cronkite warned: “Freedom of the press is not just important to democracy, it is democracy.” You can bet he wouldn’t be crawling to Mar-a-Lago.

(Bill Press is host of The BillPressPod, and author of 10 books, including: “From the Left: My Life in the Crossfire.” His email address is: bill@billpress.com. Readers may also follow him on Twitter @billpresspod and on BlueSky @BillPress.bsky.social.)

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