Jeff Bezos, the billionaire owner of the Washington Post, continued to face criticism over the weekend. That’s because the paper’s aerospace executives met with Donald Trump on the same day the paper blocked its editorial team from publishing articles supporting his opponent in the U.S. presidential election. election.
News opinion leaders from the Washington Post flew to Miami to meet with Bezos in late September 2024, The New York Times reported. Bezos was reportedly reluctant to allow the paper to endorse him in the November 5 election.
Amazon and space exploration company Blue Origin are among the Bezos-owned companies still competing for lucrative federal contracts.
And the Post announced Friday that it would not endorse a candidate in the Nov. 5 election, after its editorial board had already drafted an endorsement for Kamala Harris.
Friday’s announcement did not mention Amazon or Blue Origin. But within hours, he spoke briefly with President Trump after a campaign speech in Austin, Texas, as the Republican candidate seeks a second term in office.
According to the Associated Press, Trump met with Blue Origin CEO David Limp and Megan Mitchell, vice president of government relations.
Meanwhile, CNN reported that Amazon CEO Andy Jassy also recently reached out to the former president to speak on the phone.
These reported proposals were watered down by Washington Post editor-in-chief and longtime columnist Robert Kagan, who resigned on Friday. He claimed on Saturday that if the Post had endorsed the Democratic vice president as planned, the meeting between Blue Origin executives and Trump would not have taken place.
“Mr. Trump waited to make sure Mr. Bezos did what he was going to do before he met with the Blue Origin people,” Kagan told The Daily Beast on Saturday. “This shows that a deal actually took place, that Mr. Bezos, or through his subordinates, communicated directly with Mr. Trump and they set up this quid pro quo.”
Post publisher Will Lewis, who was hired by Mr. Bezos in January, defended the paper’s owner, saying the decision that led to the surge in support for Ms. Harris was Mr. Bezos’s. But that did little to assuage the newspaper’s internal criticism and wave of subscription cancellations.
Eighteen Washington Post opinion columnists signed a column opposing the decision, calling it a “terrible mistake.” The newspaper has already endorsed candidates this election cycle, including in the race for a Senate seat in Maryland. The Washington Post endorsed Hillary Clinton when Trump was elected president in 2016. When Trump lost in 2020, she supported Joe Biden despite Trump’s promise to retaliate against those who opposed him.
Amid criticism of the Post’s decision on Friday, former and current employees said Trump, who has openly expressed admiration for authoritarian rule, appealed to voters to return him to office. It cites the danger to democracy posed by Mr.
Former Washington Post reporters Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, who covered Watergate, said the decision was “disappointing, especially so late in the election process.”
“This is a despicable act at the expense of democracy,” former Washington Post executive editor Marty Barron wrote in a post for X.
The newspaper’s cartoon team created dark, amorphous images to protest the decision, playing on the slogan “Democracy Dies in Darkness,” which the newspaper adopted in 2017, five years after Bezos’ takeover. was published.
Prominent readers, including best-selling author Stephen King and former congresswoman and vocal Trump critic Liz Cheney, joined many others in protesting by canceling their subscriptions to The Washington Post.
The Post’s disapproval was announced shortly after Patrick Soon-Shiong, the billionaire owner of the Los Angeles Times, refused to allow the editorial board to publish a pro-Harris article.
Many have noted how the Post and Los Angeles Times’ stances fit the definition of “anticipatory obedience” outlined in Tim Snyder’s best-selling guide to authoritarianism, “On Despotism.” pointed out. Snyder defines the term as “the surrender of one’s power to a willing authoritarian” before the authoritarian is in a position to force the handover.
Bezos is the second richest person in the world after Elon Musk, who has become a prominent supporter of Trump’s campaign for a second term in office. He bought the Washington Post in 2013 for $250 million.
In 2021, Bezos stepped down as Amazon’s CEO and claimed in a podcast interview that he intended to devote more time to Blue Origin.
The New York Times reported that Bezos began deepening his involvement with the paper in 2023 after the paper faced significant financial losses, a wave of employee departures and low morale.
His selection of Lewis as publisher in January appears to have done little to boost morale at the paper. As The New York Times reported, the newspaper’s employees and followers said that despite allegations that Lewis, as a journalist in London, “improperly obtained phone records and company records for newspaper articles.” He was concerned about what he had brought to the Post.
Nevertheless, Bezos wrote in a June 2024 memo to newsroom leaders that “the standards and ethics of journalism at The Post remain unchanged.”
