I used to work at the old, ink-stained New York Times, and we would sometimes go out drinking after putting the print paper to bed. There would often be one editor in the corner with a pile of singles that grew taller and taller. The bills were his generous tips for each drink, but he kept his hand on them until he went home for the night, then he released them to the barkeep.

Maybe parting with the money was really that hard. But I thought it was also a way this editor kept the waitress’ attention. Why pay in increments? Instead, if everything goes well throughout the night, there will be one big reward at the end.

I think this is the best way to understand President Trump’s “policy” toward Silicon Valley. To make sure these tech giants are attentive to his concerns, he will attempt to insert himself between them and the money flowing their way using whatever justification happens to be around.

If you take President Trump literally or seriously—take your pick!—you may think that he worries about the power of Silicon Valley. Why, just last week Trump hosted a social network conference—held in the East Wing of the White House no less—where the president and the assembled right-wing pot-stirrers made loud noises about the alleged bias that platforms like Twitter and Facebook have against conservatives. These claims by the president and other Republican politicians at congressional oversight hearings have become a perfect pantomime of principled outrage by everyone involved.

Noam Cohen Ideas Contributor Twitter Noam Cohen is a journalist and author of The Know-It-Alls: The Rise of Silicon Valley as a Political Powerhouse and Social Wrecking Ball, which uses the history of computer science and Stanford University to understand the libertarian ideas promoted by tech leaders. While working for The New York Times, Cohen wrote some of the earliest articles about Wikipedia, bitcoin, Wikileaks, and Twitter. He lives with his family in Brooklyn.

For example, Twitter announced last month that it would act against anyone, even a world leader, who engages in abusive speech like, oh, calling the British ambassador “a very stupid guy” and “a pompous fool.” In the case of a hypothetical world leader who tweets abusively, the platform promised to label the tweets as hateful without taking them down. Ordinary mortals tweeting the same abusive message, by contrast, would have the message blocked from the platform, and perhaps themselves, too.

Last week, the president put this new policy to the test when he used Twitter to tell four women of color who are members of the United States Congress to go back to the countries “from which they came.” Right on cue, Twitter said those comments didn’t violate their rules on abusive speech, without explaining to a Washington Post reporter how that could be. The company took no action. (In Casablanca, the corrupt police chief explains his arrangement with Rick, the café owner, after he orders an expensive bottle of champagne: “It is a little game we play. They put it on the bill, I tear up the bill. It is very convenient.”)

There have been similar pantomimes of faux conflict between Facebook and Trump. For example, Facebook, along with YouTube and Twitter, was pointedly not welcome at the recent social-networking event. And this week, the president and his treasury secretary went out of their way to raise questions about Libra, a new cryptocurrency promoted as a way to bring payments to the Facebook platform. But, of course, Facebook played an especially helpful role in Trump’s election—its negligence allowed the Trump campaign to misinform and agitate voters without consequences. And Trump’s most vocal supporter in Silicon Valley, Peter Thiel, has been on Facebook’s board since its inception and is a close adviser of Facebook’s founder, Mark Zuckerberg.

SUBSCRIBE Subscribe to WIRED and stay smart with more of your favorite Ideas writers.

When the Federal Trade Commission had to decide a proper punishment for Facebook for abusing its users’ privacy, the Republicans chose to hold their fire. By a 3–2 vote, the Republicans members of the commission approved a $5 billion fine, ignoring the objections of the Democratic members who wanted a stiffer penalty, greater restrictions on the company, and the inclusion of corporate officers like chief executive Mark Zuckerberg as bearing responsibility for the privacy violations.