President Donald Trump claimed in a recent interview that he dined with Jeff Bezos on Wednesday night – mere hours after the mega-billionaire owner of the Washington Post issued a stunning new mandate to the newspaper’s opinion section.
Earlier this week, Bezos – who had already drawn outrage from Post journalists and readers for seemingly currying favor with Trump with his earlier meddling at the paper – announced in a memo to staff that the Opinion page would focus on two topics that were near and dear to the Amazon founder’s heart.
“We are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets,” he declared. “We’ll cover other topics too, of course, but viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others.”
Bezos also informed staff that opinion editor David Shipley had decided to resign rather than shepherd this dramatic change, adding that he would “be searching for a new opinion editor to own this new direction.” Meanwhile, perhaps in an effort to head off the expected anger from the paper’s journalists, embattled publisher Will Lewis added in a separate statement that “this is not about siding with any political party” but instead “about being crystal clear about what we stand for as a newspaper.”
The “new direction” has been described as Bezos wanting to “mimic Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal” opinion section, with many wondering if the Amazon founder is further appealing to Trump and protecting his business interests with this announcement. Meanwhile, as Trump allies such as Elon Musk celebrated Bezos’ mandate, current and former Post journalists and editors have trashed the change.
“It no longer presents a variety of opinion but a propaganda push to benefit the owner,” recently departed senior opinion editor Amanda Katz noted, while the paper’s revered former executive editor Marty Baron labeled it a betrayal and said Bezos “has prioritized those commercial interests over The Post.”
Amid this brewing controversy at The Washington Post, Trump casually noted during a White House interview with The Spectator’s Ben Domenech that he shared dinner with the Blue Origin CEO the same night of the opinion page announcement. According to Domenech and the magazine's editors, the interview with Trump took place on Thursday evening.
“A lot of the people who played a significant role in that election, and particularly on the tech side of things, have come around to support you,” Domenech noted.
“Unbelievable. I had dinner with Jeff Bezos last night,” Trump said.
“How much do you trust someone like Jeff Bezos?” Domenech followed up.
“Who do I trust? I mean, who do you trust? Do you trust anybody? These are very smart guys,” the president responded. “And I always say to them, we have dinners together, usually started by them. I’m so busy with all of this. Between China, Russia, Ukraine, I’ve got more things happening. But I always love to just sort of look at them and said, ‘hi, where do you come from?’ ‘I came from Hawaii to have dinner.’ That was good. I said, ‘would you have been here if I lost,’ you know? ‘Would you have been here if I lost it?’ They never answer that question. Actually, they just sort of shy away from it.”
Axios, meanwhile, reported on Thursday that Bezos – who had long had a chilly relationship with the president – began forming an alliance with Trump last summer and privately urged the then-candidate to choose Doug Burgum as his running mate, calling the then-North Dakota governor an “excellent” choice.
Representatives for The Washington Post and Bezos did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
