Amazon founder and owner of The Washington Post Jeff Bezos privately pitched an alternative vice president pick to President Donald Trump, just months before the newspaper killed its endorsement for Kamala Harris, a new book has claimed.
The seeds of the Trump-Bezos relationship were sewn over a pivotal summer phone call in July 2024, when the billionaire gave a nod to North Dakota governor Doug Burgum, who has since been picked as Trump’s Secretary of the Interior, according to the book by Axios senior political reporter Alex Isenstadt.
Bezos praised the president’s resilience after an assassination attempt was made on his life that month, while declaring that fellow businessman Burgum would be an “excellent choice”, according to two people who reportedly knew of the call.
The billionaire pick, who formerly ran in the 2024 Republican presidential primary before dropping out to support Trump, was nominated by the president to join his administration ahead of his second term.
He is the former owner of the software company “Great Plains Software” which he sold to Microsoft in 2001 for $1.1 billion and is now the foreseer of one of the president’s most controversial land bills: to “Drill, baby, drill.”
While Trump ultimately opted for Ohio Senator JD Vance, Burgum holds the power to ramp up domestic oil and gas production in a country that already produces roughly 21.691 million barrels of crude per day, according to the U.S. Energy Administration.
Bezos had evidently been fostering a relationship with Trump for months, according to Axios’ Alex Isenstadt, in his forthcoming book, "Revenge: The Inside Story of Trump's Return to Power".
Most recently, Bezos made the controversial call to overrule The Washington Post’s editorial branch over an email declaring that reporters were now under the instruction to write “in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets”.
The internal memo prompted a flash resignation from David Shipley, the Post’s opinion editor.
On 25 October 2024, just ten days before Trump took a landslide victory in the U.S. Election, Bezos axed a political endorsement at the Post that had been drafted in favor of Harris in the election.
“The decision not to publish was made by The Post’s owner – Amazon founder Jeff Bezos,” an article wrote, citing two sources briefed on the events. The newspaper had endorsed Trump’s opponents in the two previous elections.
As the ground settled following Trump’s victory, Amazon revealed it was donating $1 million to the Trump inauguration fund – just hours after Meta, the parent company of Facebook, had done the same.
Bezos joined Meta’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai at Trump’s inauguration on 20 January.
