Jeff Bezos Says He Is “Proud” of Decision to End Endorsements at Washington Post, “Very Optimistic” About Second Trump Term

Amazon founder and Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos doubled down on his decision to end the practice of endorsing presidential candidates, saying Wednesday, “It was the right decision, I am proud of the decision we made.”

“I’m actually very optimistic this time around,” Bezos said on stage during a wide-ranging interview at The New York Times’ DealBook Summit in New York. “He seems to have a lot of energy around reducing regulation. If I can help do that, I’m going to help him.”

“We do have too many regulations in this country,” Bezos added.

The comments follow Bezos’ October decision to prohibit The Washington Post, which he owns, from endorsing a presidential candidate, a move that led to tens of thousands of people canceling their subscriptions and protests from journalists with a deep history at the newspaper.

At the time, Bezos wrote in an op-ed in the newspaper saying editorial endorsements create a perception of bias at a time when many Americans don’t believe the media, and do nothing to tip the scales of an election.

On Wednesday, he said he would try to talk Trump “out of the idea” that the press is the enemy.

“You’ve probably grown in the last eight years,” he said to journalist Andrew Ross Sorkin. “He has, too. This is not the case. The press is not the enemy.”

Trump had railed against Bezos and his companies, including Amazon and The Washington Post, during his first term. In 2019, Amazon argued in a court case that Trump’s bias against the company harmed its chances of winning a $10 billion Pentagon contract. The Biden administration later pursued a contract with both Amazon and Microsoft.

via: AP

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