Jeff Bezos Seemingly Bowed To Pressure From Donald Trump — And It Signals A Frightening Shift

Last week we watched two iconic newsrooms step away from endorsing candidates due to the cowardice of their billionaire backers, signaling a crumbling of our societal infrastructure. It’s failing. Norms are no longer normal this campaign season, which reached a new nadir Sunday with a disgusting racist, sexist and xenophobic display from former President Donald Trump, the man whom these billionaires covet through their acquiescence.
Our extensive reporting on this campaign season has proved, over and over again, that Donald Trump is not qualified to return to the Oval Office. We know this because, at HuffPost, we are a pro-truth, pro-fact, reality-based newsroom, grounded in pragmatism and dedicated to our audience’s health, happiness and safety — all of which are under threat in a Trump presidency. We’ve been beating the drum, with the support of our readers, warning all about the dangers of this man long before he came down that escalator in 2015 and went on to allow more than a million Americans to die of COVID-19 on his watch.
This should be disqualifying enough, but for many, it hasn’t been. In fact, none of “it” has been. And there’s a lot of “it.” The blatant racism; the hatred of immigrants in a country of immigrants; the sexual assault accusations; the mocking and denigration of our military and veterans; the collapse of his COVID economy; the lies and demagoguery that led to the assault on our nation’s Capitol and the loss of life on Jan. 6, 2021; his praise of Adolf Hitler. None of these things, plus countless more, have been disqualifying for nearly half the country as the race has remained deadlocked. And they’ve been particularly not disqualifying for those poised to benefit the most from Trump’s return to power: the billionaire elites.
The neglect and heel-turns from the ultra-wealthy are not for ideological or emotional reasons. This has little to do with policy or lawmaking and everything to do with convenience, cowardice and quid pro quo.
They know of profits — often engineered on the backs of underpaid and under-protected labor. They know of influence — in the form of turning platforms like the social network formerly known as Twitter into megaphones for racists and unfettered hate. But they know not of ethics, specifically the belief in a “separation of church and state” between their newsrooms and the moneyed ownership.
Last week, the news broke that both The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times killed editorials that would have endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris for president. Though there’s always been some debate about the purpose of publications endorsing political candidates, both newspapers have published endorsements for decades.
The decision to pull both editorials came from the very top — billionaire owners Jeff Bezos, who owns the Post, and Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, who owns the Los Angeles Times.
In the case of Bezos, his team at his space-faring company Blue Origin had met with Trump separately, shortly after the Amazon founder killed the endorsement. The Washington Post then reported on itself, saying the endorsement decision came directly from him.
Never mind the folly of bending the knee to a would-be president who has not yet won the election or been sworn into office. Never mind that this could have been an opportunity for Bezos to flex his own nearly $206 billion worth and stand up to the man threatening to bring fascism to our doorsteps. Never mind the storied Post — of Woodward and Bernstein fame, of former publisher Katharine Graham’s mettle — now of tarnished reputation that may take years to build back, if it’s ever able to with Bezos at the top.
Thus proving the quote “The billionaires will not save us.” They’re too busy kowtowing to a would-be authority. Who knows what was promised, if anything, but a non-endorsement after killing one for Harris is essentially an endorsement for Trump.
To paraphrase the Post’s Trump-era slogan, democracy didn’t die in darkness after all. It died in broad daylight, after a meeting with one of the richest men in the world. Afterward, the many journalists of the Post were left to pick up the pieces of their tarnished paper — some choosing to quit, others posting their disappointment and anger on social media. More than 200,000 digital subscribers as of Monday had dropped the Post, reportedly 8% of their subscribers. And the journalism world shook at this decision that took away so much through an action so pathetic and small.
I’ll say it again, the billionaires will not save us. They’re not even thinking of us. Instead, their mind is on their profits, their pockets, their shareholders and their ever-inflated sense of worth. These are not the macho, stalwart champions of the people; they are little children afraid of a feebleminded racist, sexist, xenophobic, homophobic, antisemitic, fascist, deranged megalomaniac bent on “destroying” his enemies with nothing but contempt for our political process, our military, our Constitution, our diverse population and our way of life.
In fact, these billionaire owners are doing irreparable harm by choosing to acquiesce to a potential power instead of protecting the integrity of their newsrooms.
But what would they know of integrity? These are individuals who have exploited labor to fatten their own wallets. They care more about mythological sojourns to Mars over the matters here on Earth. With all their wealth and influence, they could transform our world into a better place. Instead, they’d rather jockey for ever more cash in a fight for the number one spot as the biggest exploiter in the world, enabled by a failed businessman and would-be dictator.
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Bezos chose to kiss the ring rather than speak truth to power, which is— one of the main tenets of journalism. It’s our job to hold those who lead us (or aspire to lead us) accountable. It is our job to shine a light in that proverbial darkness the Post once wrote of. Instead, Bezos chose to turn out that light.