Maybe it’s just a coincidence that Jeff Bezos, whose company gave $1 million to Donald Trump’s inauguration and paid $40 million to license the First Lady’s story, had dinner with the president the night before he dropped his bombshell on the Washington Post staff. Just months after overruling his editorial team's decision to endorse Kamala Harris, the Washington’s Post’s billionaire owner has announced that his newspaper will only publish opinion pieces that reflect his personal ideology of “personal liberties and free markets.” Maybe it’s also a coincidence that Bezos’ various companies have billions of dollars at stake in government contracts.
The last time Bezos was forced to explain his interference with his newspaper’s editorial independence, he acknowledged the complications posed by his myriad business interests, writing in an op-ed ”that you can see them as a web of conflicting interests. Only my own principles can tip the balance from one to the other.” We now know those principles will tip the balance of the Washington Post’s opinion pages towards the personal views of a man who is very rich and very afraid of upsetting a volatile and vindictive president.
