It is called the protection racket, and it begins with a gangster saying to the proprietor, "Hey, nice business you got here; be a shame if anything happened to it."

This is an act of extortion, where the gangster promises not to destroy the proprietor's business if the proprietor agrees to do business in a way that benefits the gangster.

This is exactly what CNN did to a number of business owners last week. What the gangsters at CNN want is to silence the political right, to chill our speech, to remove us from the debate, to end our influence.

And so, because CNN is losing in the open arena of ideas as its ratings bottom out, the anti-Trump cable channel has now decided to silence us using the protection racket — to intimidate our advertisers under the guise of journalism.