Jeff Bezos Enables Trump’s Democracy Threat: Outgoing Washington Post Columnist

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos “and his cronies” enable “the most acute threat to American democracy” – President-elect Donald Trump – a Washington Post columnist warned Monday when she resigned from the Bezos-owned newspaper.

the columnist, Jennifer Rubinis the latest post employee to stop after a series of Trump-friendly measures from the mega-billionaire Bezos, Amazon and other Big Tech companies after the November election.

In an interview with CNBC on Monday, Rubin said she felt it was important to publicly call out Bezos, the Post and other outlets for taking what she characterized as a knee-jerk approach to Trump.

Rubin, who for years had identified himself as a conservativessaid in 2020 that she no longer considered herself one, arguing that “there is no conservative movement or party today” and that “there is a Republican Party that is steeped in racism and intellectually corrupt of right-wing nationalism.”

Rubin’s scathing criticism on Monday – which was targeted ABC and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, as well as “corporate-owned cable TV networks” — came when she announced she was helping to launch a new media, The contrarianon Substack.

She said The Contrarian will “provide fearless and distinctive reported opinion and cultural commentary without false balance.”

Rubin sharply contrasted her new business with her former employer and other media companies, a number of which she said have “distorted to get pro-Trump votes.”

“Corporate and billionaire owners of major media outlets have betrayed the loyalty of their audiences and sabotaged the sacred mission of journalism — to defend, protect and advance democracy,” Rubin said in a statement.

CNBC has requested comment from spokespeople for Bezos and the Post about Rubin’s statement on Monday.

“The Washington Post’s billionaire owner and incumbent management are among the offenders. They have undermined the values ​​central to The Post’s mission and all journalism: integrity, courage and independence,” Rubin wrote.

“I cannot justify staying at The Post,” she wrote. “Jeff Bezos and his cronies are accommodating and enabling the most acute threat to American democracy — Donald Trump — at a time when a vibrant free press is more critical than ever to democracy’s survival and ability to survive.”

Since the fall, Bezos has been under fire for actions that are seen as a favor to Trump. These include killing a planned Post editorial page endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris in the presidential race, a $1 million donation from Amazon to Trump’s inauguration fund and Bezos visiting Trump at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Palm Beach, Florida.

On the day news broke that the Post endorsement had been killed, Trump met in Austin, Texas, with executives from the Bezos-owned space exploration company Blue Origin, among them CEO David Limp.

“None of us could imagine (former Post publisher) Katharine Graham sending LBJ or Nixon a $1 million check,” Rubin said in his statement, referring to former presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon.

Trump during his first term sharply criticized Bezos, the online retail giant Amazon and the Post. In a 2019 lawsuit, Amazon claimed it lost $10 billion cloud computing contract with the Pentagon to Microsoft because Trump had used “improper pressure … to harm his perceived political enemy” – Bezos.

One of Rubin’s colleagues, former Post cartoonist Ann Telnaes, recently resigned from the paper after it refused to run a cartoon by her depicting Bezos, Zuckerberg, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Los Angeles Times publisher Patrick Soon-Shiong , imploring Trump as president-elect towered over them.

The cartoon also featured Mickey Mouse, the mascot of the Walt Disney Company. Disney owns ABC News and recently agreed to settle a defamation suit against Trump by saying it would donate $15 million to his presidential foundation and museum.

Soon-Shiong, like Bezos, had killed a planned endorsement of Harris by the LA Times.

Meta and Altman are also donating $1 million each to Trump’s inaugural fund.

Rubin told CNBC that the number of billionaires donating to Trump after being the target of his criticism was striking.

“When is enough billions (of dollars) enough billions?” Rubin asked. “I was under the impression that these people were best placed to resist authoritarianism, and it turns out they were the quickest to fall in line.”

“I think they have financial interests that are very dependent on the government,” she said. “For all the talk of Silicon Valley’s independence, they are largely dependent on the government’s broadside.”

“They didn’t become billionaires by thinking of others,” Rubin said.