Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon and owner of The Washington Post, said on Wednesday that President Trump was “more mature, more disciplined” in his second term and defended his recent cuts to The Post’s newsroom.
“Trump has lots of good ideas and he’s been right about a lot of things,” Mr. Bezos said in a lengthy interview with the journalist Andrew Ross Sorkin on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.” “You have to give him credit where credit is due.”
Mr. Bezos has faced a great deal of criticism for what many perceive as attempts to curry favor with the Trump administration this time around, after clashing with Mr. Trump in his first term. Mr. Bezos sat at the dais at the president’s inauguration last year, and Amazon recently paid $40 million for a documentary about the first lady, Melania Trump, which it promoted with a $35 million rollout.
At The Post, which Mr. Bezos bought in 2013, critics have zeroed in on a series of decisions that seemed meant to appease Mr. Trump. Mr. Bezos ended presidential endorsements by The Post’s editorial board days before the 2024 election and after the board had drafted an endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee. A couple of months later, he shifted the direction of The Post’s opinion section, declaring it would advocate “personal liberties and free markets” and would not publish opposing viewpoints on those topics. The changes have caused a cascade of subscription cancellations over the past 18 months.
On Wednesday, Mr. Bezos said he had worked with all presidents regardless of political party and hoped to continue to do so because he was “on the side of America.”
When Mr. Sorkin, who is a financial columnist for The New York Times, asked about Mrs. Trump’s documentary deal, Mr. Bezos said he had no involvement. “The idea that somehow that is a way of buying influence is just not correct.”
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And he defended his changes to the focus of The Post’s Opinion section. Personal liberties and free markets “are founding pillars of America,” he said. “It’s one of the reasons that America has been so successful. We have an incredible history.”
Mr. Bezos stood by his decision in February to lay off more than 300 journalists at organization, representing nearly a third of its newsroom. The cuts decimated The Post’s sports, metro and international coverage.
“The Post needs to be a profitable enterprise that stands on its own two feet,” Mr. Bezos said in the interview. “Let me tell you why. Because it’s a measure of its relevance. If people won’t pay for our product, it’s not a good enough product. It would be like poetry without rhyming, it’s too easy.”
Mr. Bezos said he had told Post executives while planning the job cuts to “follow the data,” though he said he had told them to exempt investigative reporting from that edict, noting that “the heart of The Post is investigative reporting.” The Post this month received the prestigious Pulitzer Prize award for public service for its coverage of the Trump administration’s overhaul of the federal government.
“The Post is going to continue to be an important institution, in fact it’s going to be a more important institution because of this financial discipline,” Mr. Bezos said.
He added: “I don’t want it to be a charity. It doesn’t need to be and it shouldn’t be.”
Katie Robertson covers the media industry for The Times. Email: [email protected]
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