“What’s with the art?” my neighbor Swamp Rabbit asked.

I told him it was a draft of a cartoon by Ann Telnaes, who resigned from the Washington Post last week after her editor refused to publish the cartoon, which depicts Amazon and Post owner Jeff Bezos, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, AI CEO Sam Altman, LA Times publisher Patrick Soon-Shiong and Walt Disney Company mascot Mickey Mouse signaling their fidelity to President-Elect Donald Trump.

Swamp Rabbit nodded and said, “Okay, but what’s with the money bags?”

I rattled off some background facts: Bezos and Soon-Shiong blocked their respective newspapers from endorsing Kamala Harris for president. Amazon and Meta are making million-dollar donations to Trump’s so-called inauguration fund. Altman is making a million-dollar personal donation to the fund. Disney has agreed to pay $15 million to settle a weak defamation suit Trump recently brought against ABC News, which is owned by Disney.

“Enough,” Swamp Rabbit said. “A gang of billionaires are bowing to kiss Trump’s ass so that he won’t interfere with them trying to make a zillion more dollars over the next four years. They’re greedy, cowardly pigs. This surprises you?”

It does. Bezos and Zuckerberg were opposed to Trump a few years ago. Zuckerberg had Trump banished from Facebook and Instagram at one point. Bezos sued him in 2019, during Trump’s first term in office. Altman, whose company developed the ChatGPT chatbot, was a big donor to the Democratic Party. Disney could have easily beaten Trump’s lawsuit, according to many legal experts.

“My point is that these are enormously wealthy and powerful guys who know Trump is an enemy of democracy and could have fought him in court during his second term if he tried to sabotage their businesses,” I said.

I read to him from Telnaes’s farewell-to the-Post dispatch: “As an editorial cartoonist, my job is to hold powerful people and institutions accountable. For the first time, my editor prevented me from doing that critical job.”

And from historian Timothy Snyder’s book On Tyranny, which I mentioned a few months ago: “Do not obey in advance. Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given.”

Swamp Rabbit shrugged and repeated, “Greedy, cowardly pigs. This surprises you?”