President Donald Trump’s approach to apologies stands the notion of public apology on its head. Rather than using the pulpit of the presidency to offer apologies on behalf of the state, Trump refuses to apologize and routinely demands and/or coerces apologies from others. We suggest that this combination stems from an authoritarian logic, and we urge lawful, non-wrongdoing* actors to resist it.
During President Trump’s second term, several notable individuals and entities have publicly declined to apologize to President Trump specifically or to the government more generally or to third parties despite his calls for them to do so. Most recently, the New York Times refused to apologize for an article about a preliminary intelligence report that questioned the significance of Iran attacks, doing so despite President Trump’s threatened litigation and demand that the Times “retract and apologize.” Three Assistant United States Attorneys who were placed on administrative leave noted in a letter that “one of the preconditions you have placed on our returning to the Office is that we must express regret and admit some wrongdoing by the Office in connection with the refusal to dismiss the case [against Mayor Eric Adams]. We will not confess wrongdoing when there was none.” After a governmental demand letter was sent to Harvard in error, the administration did not apologize for that error. Instead, the administration shifted blame to Harvard, claiming that “It was malpractice on the side of Harvard’s lawyers not to pick up the phone and call the members of the antisemitism task force.” The White House press secretary declared that “[Trump] also wants to see Harvard apologize, and Harvard should apologize for the egregious antisemitism that took place on their college campus against Jewish American students.” Harvard did not apologize in direct response to Trump’s call, but did (in our opinion appropriately) apologize after an internal investigation concluded Harvard failed both its Jewish and Muslim students. In another incident, 60 Minutes executive producer Bill Owens resigned rather than lose independent control over the program and apologize to President Trump per Trump’s request. Paramount, on the other hand, did settle litigation with President Trump on the same matter despite the likely legal frivolousness of the suit, though they also declined to apologize.
As apology scholars, when we think of public apologies in transitional governance moments, we think of heads of states apologizing for grievous wrongs, often as part of a larger project of transitional justice. But in this post, we describe a mirror image case of public apologies in transition. Here we reference not the emergence from authoritarian or other forms of oppressive governance but rather the decline of democratic governance in the direction of authoritarianism. In such situations, the role of apologies is reversed. Heads of states explicitly refusing to apologize for official wrongdoing, while demanding apologies to the state as part of a larger project of concentrating power.
We begin this post with a brief explanation of the traditional use of public apologies – some as part of larger transitional justice projects, some not. We describe the functions they are intended to serve and provide some contemporary examples. We then provide a brief summary of Trump’s relationship to apologies as a candidate, as a president, and in his administration writ large. We then discuss how executive branch refusals to apologize and demands for coerced apologies support an authoritarian logic. We conclude with an examination of why resistance to demanded and/or coerced apologies for lawful, non-wrongful behavior helps reinforce democratic values.
Traditional Public Apologies—Examples and Reasoning
When we think of state apologies for wrongs, we often think of apologies for state acts that were either unlawful or were “lawful” under the prevailing conditions at the time, but simultaneously awful and often unlawful under any just system of law. As examples, consider the Belgian apologies for colonial-era abduction of mixed-race children, the Netherlands’ apology for its role in the slave trade, or Canada’s apology for its mistreatment of native people. Sometimes, the state apologies are on a smaller scale, even offered to single individuals, such as when Canada apologized and made reparations to Omar Khadr for the Canadian role in his torture. The United States is no stranger to such practices. Think of President Ronald Reagan’s signature on the Civil Liberties Act which provided an apology to those Japanese Americans interned during World War II, President Bill Clinton’s apology to the African-American Tuskegee airmen who were infected with syphilis in a medical study without their consent, or President Joe Biden’s apology for Native American boarding schools. Note that in each of these examples, it is government executives offering apologies to the public or a subgroup of the public rather than receiving apologies from members of the public.
Apologies by state actors can serve a variety of purposes. An apology can serve to recognize or acknowledge actions of the state that have caused harm. This recognition communicates and affirms the core values that the state seeks to uphold. An apology can confirm, catalog, and communicate the facts about what happened—ideally contributing to a narrative based on a shared understanding of the underlying facts. An apology can signal to the public – including both the victimized group and public observers – that the state recognizes the problematic nature of what occurred. By doing so, the apology also indicates that the state will act differently going forward. By taking responsibility for the wrong, the state shifts any attributed blame from the victims back to the state, helping to restore the social and moral status of the person or group that has been harmed and devalued. When they include compensation, financial assistance, or other remedial measures, apologies may also help to more directly repair the concrete harm that was suffered. At their best, state apologies are mechanisms of accountability.
Trump Apologies
Apologies look quite different under the Trump presidency. As one Republican strategist has noted, “The president has always throughout his career had a stance of ‘never apologize, never back down.’” Of course, politicians on both sides of the aisle are often reluctant to apologize. And Trump’s refusal to apologize has not been absolute. First-term candidate Trump did apologize (poorly, in our opinion) for engaging in “locker room talk.” But as a second term candidate, Trump notably refused many other reasonable requests for apologies. In one instance, Archbishop Roberto González Nieves and Puerto Rico’s Republican party chairman asked candidate Trump to personally apologize after a comedian who performed during a Trump rally called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage.” Trump declined to apologize, instead describing the event as a “love fest.” In another incident, Senator Jack Reed called on candidate Trump to apologize for calling troops “losers and suckers.” Trump declined to apologize, instead claiming that the quote was false and that John Kelly, who surfaced the statement, should apologize to Trump. Candidate Trump similarly refused to apologize for reposting a video in which he “answered the question of ‘what’s next for America?’ with an image containing the words: ‘the creation of a unified Reich.”
President Trump has followed a similar playbook. For instance, Trump rejected the notion that either he or Michael Waltz should apologize for the Signal debacle in which war plans were discussed on an insecure communications platform with a journalist added to the group chat, saying, “I don’t think he should apologize. I think he’s doing his best. . . . It’s equipment and technology that’s not perfect and probably he won’t be using it again, at least not in the very near future.” He contended that the material was unclassified and that Waltz is a “very good man [who will] continue to do a good job.”
In addition to eschewing apologizing for himself or for the state’s behavior under his leadership, President Trump has repeatedly demanded apologies from many others. One particular target has been the media. Trump has demanded apologies for the aforementioned article on a preliminary intelligence report on Iran, from the New York Times after fact checkers disproved his claim that thousands of New Jersey Muslims cheered the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center, from ABC after George Stephanopoulos said on air that Trump had been found liable for rape, from 60 Minutes for challenging him on his allegations about Hunter Biden’s computer and in connection with a lawsuit related to editing of Kamala Harris’s interview (the executive producer said he will “not apologize for anything we have done”), and from Fox News for accurately noting that Trump’s forecast that Alabama was the most likely to be hit by Hurricane Dorian was inaccurate.
But Trump’s demands for apologies have not been limited to his media disputes. Trump has also called for President Biden to apologize to him for comments related to the restrictions on Chinese travel to the United States during the COVID-19 epidemic and to apologize to Christians for celebrating Transgender Day of Visibility. The Administration communicated its desire for an apology from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy after the White House visit that went sideways; the administration later claimed that it had received one in a letter. Trump also told Bishop Mariann Budde that she owed him and the public an apology for her public plea for mercy for LGBTQ+ and immigrants.
President Trump has also alleged that other powerful figures and entities have apologized to him, even when no evidence for such apology exists. For instance, Trump claims that Mark Zuckerberg apologized for Meta’s use of a fact check label on a photo of Trump with his fist in the air after he was grazed by a bullet. He said the New York Times issued an apology editorial after he won the 2016 election despite the NYT letter referencing its commitment to journalism and containing no discussion of wrongdoing or contrition. Similarly, he said that Colombia apologized “in less than an hour” after a dispute regarding treatment of Colombian deportees and that “Colombia apologized to us profusely . . . they even sent the presidential plane because they didn’t want inconvenience with us. . .” He claims that law firm Paul Weiss “‘acknowledged the wrongdoing’ of an attorney who investigated the president” despite the lack of a public apology or internal evidence of the same.
Others in the Trump administration seem to be following this approach to apologies: we do not apologize to you, you apologize to us. Trump border czar Tom Homan has explicitly directed ICE to approach its work without apology. Neither ICE nor government attorneys apologized for sending Kilmar Garcia Abrego to an El Salvador prison based on an administrative error. Instead, the administration placed on leave and then fired the attorney who simply admitted the error and pushed for the administration to follow the law. Rather than apologizing for using Signal to discuss details of a strike on the Houthis, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth smeared journalist Jeffrey Goldberg. The Washington Post has penned an entire article on Vice President J.D. Vance’s “repeated, callous and belligerent non-apologies,” the notable exception being his apology to Trump for calling him reprehensible. Relatedly, Attorney General Pam Bondi has said that Rep. Jasmine Crockett “must apologize immediately . . . [for saying] Elon Musk should be ‘taken down,’ not only to all Texans, but to our country, to the American shareholders of Tesla, because she is promoting violence.”
One might fairly note that even democratic regimes sometimes demand apologies. For instance, American courts sometimes order losing defendants to apologize to plaintiffs. Some scholars such as Nick Smith have suggested that such an “ultimatum from someone with power to cause significant harm” is problematic; he concludes “[i]n such cases the offender becomes a puppet of the state that speaks through her.” While we neither endorse nor criticize such practices here, we observe some meaningful differences. Court-ordered apologies follow rather than precede findings of fact. A party seeking an apology must demonstrate to the satisfaction of a court or a jury the underlying merit of their claim. The aggrieved party cannot force courts to order apologies through their own exercise of unchecked power. In similar fashion, the Harvard apology that we noted above came after the conclusions of an internal investigation rather than at the mere demand of the executive branch.
Why Trump’s Failure to Apologize and Demands for Apologies Matter
This simultaneous refusal to apologize for errors and misdeeds combined with the demand for apologies for lawful behavior matters and is evidence of a move towards authoritarianism. First, many of the demanded apologies would require the apologizer to affirm falsehoods and undermine historical truth. Just as apologies in transitional justice undo previous false narratives to restore truth and affirm the equality of citizens under the law, coerced or demanded apologies under transitions towards authoritarianism perpetuate false narratives and often undermine the equality of citizens under the law. For instance, were the New York Times to apologize for the article discussing a report assessing the limited efficacy of strikes on Iran, it would allow the Trump administration to bolster its (in our opinion) demonstrably false narrative that it succeeded in destroying Iran’s nuclear capacity. As a policy matter, enshrining such an untruth might build political capital in the short term but undermine effective efforts at long-term military planning and capability. More broadly, such an apology would undermine a free press committed to share the truth about the administration’s behaviors. Think, for instance, of Russia’s demand that the UK apologize for accusing Putin of authorizing a poison attack on a former Russian agent in the UK despite a fulsome inquiry concluding the same.
We worry that each actor that capitulates—the law firms, the universities, the journalists, and the news organizations—makes solidarity across actors more difficult. These apologies send a public message that it is cheaper and easier to yield—which it may often be in the short term— than to maintain one’s lawful position. But it is not just the capitulation, it is the capitulation plus apology that acutely undermines respect for truth, mechanisms of accountability, and the importance of robust dissent. The combination can also embolden an administration to escalate demands on these entities or others similarly situated. Of course, one can make too much of the slippery slope and sometimes abusive state behavior can stiffen resolve rather than break the spirit (think of civilian bombing during World War II which was largely a failure in getting citizens to pressure their states to give in).
In addition, executive branch demands for apologies are a public way to project the impression of state infallibility and strength to domestic and international audiences. When coupled with the failure to apologize for the administration’s own legal shortcomings, these coerced apologies communicate that accountability is a one-way street. Rather than the powerful apologizing for injustices, it is the powerful wielding demands for apology as an instrument of dominance. Rather than seeking to restore the social and moral status of a less powerful or victimized person or group, these demanded apologies seem more directed at diminishing the status of the target.
Now What?
Refusal matters. Each newspaper that refuses a retraction or an apology for lawful reporting despite an economic logic that might point in that direction reminds us of the importance and the endurance of a free press. Each university that refuses to settle with the administration and to apologize for untruths reminds us of the importance of academic freedom and the vitality of open transmission of knowledge and expertise. Each attorney and each law firm that refuses to provide free services to the administration and to allow the administration to claim an apology (even if none was given) for lawful behavior reminds us of the importance of the rule of law values and reinforces the integrity of the legal profession.
*Apologies are generally appropriate for unlawful and/or wrongful actors when the laws themselves are just and the violations are not. Readers may disagree as to any specific example we offer of lawful activity, but we feel confident that most law readers will find the majority of examples lawful. For an extended discussion of lawlessness under the Trump administration, we recommend our colleague Bill Watson’s forthcoming article on lawlessness.
