Ex-WaPo editor claims Jeff Bezos colluded with Trump to kill Harris endorsement: Quid-pro-quo
A high ranking former editor at the Washington Post is claiming that the paper’s billionaire owner, Jeff Bezos, entered into a quid-pro-quo agreement with former President Donald Trump to kill the newspaper’s planned endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris.Longtime Post editor-at-large Robert Kagan, who quit after the non-endorsement on Friday, told The Daily Beast that Trump met with executives at Blue Origin – the space company owned and operated by Bezos – after the Post’s announcement, suggesting Bezos entered a deal with the possible next president.“Trump waited to make sure that Bezos did what he said he was going to do, and then met with the Blue Origin people,” he reportedly said.“Which tells us that there was an actual deal made, meaning that Bezos communicated, or through his people, communicated directly with Trump, and they set up this quid pro quo.”Despite the timing of the alleged meeting, Kagan provided no proof of a quid-pro-quo.Reps for Trump, Bezos and The Washington Post did not immediately return requests for comment.Kagan, who has been a longtime critic of Trump, said the alleged collusion between Bezos and Trump had “been in the works for some time” and will lead to “a lot of censorship” in the media as billionaire fold to Trump’s demands to line their own pockets, the outlet reported.
Kagan abruptly resigned from his longtime position after CEO William Lewis announced the paper would not be endorsing a presidential candidate in 2024, nor in any future races – breaking 36 years of tradition at the paper.The newspaper published an article on Friday written by two reporters saying that editorial page staffers had already drafted an endorsement for Harris over Trump, and were awaiting approval from Lewis and Bezos before it was killed.
Bezos, the second-richest person in the world with a net worth valued by Bloomberg Billionaires Index at $209 billion as of Friday, was a frequent target of Trump during his ...