Billionaire Amazon founder Jeff Bezos complained to President Trump about the Washington Post, calling it his worst investment, according to a new book by journalist Maggie Haberman.
This should come as a surprise to no one considering the massive amounts of money lost by the paper in recent years and the public resistance to change at the company by journalists and others. The people who work there behave as if the paper belongs to them.
FOX News reports:
Jeff Bezos reportedly told Trump the Washington Post was his ‘worst investment’ before staff cutsAmazon founder Jeff Bezos told then-President-elect Donald Trump at a December 2024 dinner that The Washington Post was his “worst investment” months before he authorized sweeping staff cuts at the newspaper, according to a forthcoming book by New York Times journalists Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman.Bezos reportedly vented to Trump about the people running the Post’s business side after the newspaper lost more than $100 million that year.”The people there are terrible,” Bezos told Trump, according to an excerpt obtained by The California Post.The book, “Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump,” claimed Bezos contrasted the Post with his other companies while telling Trump that newspaper leaders were not following his direction.”They don’t listen. My other companies, they listen,” Bezos said.Trump, who had repeatedly criticized the Post’s coverage of him, complained directly to Bezos about the newspaper during the dinner, according to the book.”This Washington Post is really unfair. You’ve got to take better care,” Trump told Bezos.Swan and Haberman wrote that Bezos and Trump found common ground over their complaints about the paper, although they were frustrated for different reasons.
More from the New York Post:
Bezos this February authorized the sweeping downsizing of the celebrated Watergate paper, eliminating roughly a third of its workforce, including all staff photographers and the sports section.Bezos’ candor with Trump was described by Swan and Haberman as part of a larger effort by Big Tech titans to cozy up with the incoming president, who had spent his four years in political exile railing against what he viewed as bias by news outlets and major internet platforms…“In Trump’s telling, Bezos told him he had lost half his friends over the investment,” the authors write. “Bezos would tell others that wasn’t quite right: He hadn’t lost friends, but people close to him had urged him to sell the newspaper.”Trump said in an interview for the book that he “hated” Bezos during his first term under the mistaken belief that the billionaire controlled what the newspaper wrote.“He said they write stories about him. And I didn’t believe him the first time, first term. And I hated him for it,” Trump recalled. “And then I believed him.”
Jeff Bezos could dissolve the Washington Post tomorrow and few Americans would notice.
Unless you really want to read pieces criticizing Erika Kirk’s wardrobe.
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