Can a tiger change its stripes?
Not a soul should trust him, but tech mogul and Lex Luthor look-alike Jeff Bezos is saying and doing a lot of the right things, at least at this point in President Donald Trump’s second term.
Bezos, who owns Amazon, Amazon Studios, The Washington Post, and at least one annoying megayacht, among many other things, appears to have his sights set on radically transforming his newspaper.
Signs of this actually cropped up before Trump beat failed presidential candidate Kamala Harris in the November general election.
If you’ll recall, Bezos made waves before the election when he made the executive decision to withhold The Washington Post’s presidential endorsement, which obviously would’ve gone with Harris the Democrat.
The 61-year-old mega-billionaire argued that trust in the media was low already, and something as divisive as an endorsement would only fuel that fire. Which … isn’t exactly wrong.
Bezos then made waves again post-election, when — for better and worse — wiggled his way into Trump’s tech bro circle, which includes the likes of DOGE head Elon Musk, Apple CEO Tim Cook, and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
Now, Bezos is making waves still, this time with a rather notable shakeup at the Post:
I shared this note with the Washington Post team this morning:
I’m writing to let you know about a change coming to our opinion pages.
We are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets. We’ll cover other topics too…
— Jeff Bezos (@JeffBezos) February 26, 2025
According to Bezos, the general populace found out the same day as his staff.
Bezos’ big Thursday revelation was that his papers’ opinion section will focus mainly on “two pillars: personal liberties and free markets.”
Nothing in there about opinions on Trump being a despot, or inflammatory attacks on the Trump administration, or whatever the leftist cause of the month happens to be.
Nope. Just “personal liberties” and “free markets.”
Part of this shakeup, Bezos noted, was the departure of the editorial page editor, David Shipley, who apparently couldn’t fully get on board with the paper’s new direction.
“I offered David Shipley, whom I greatly admire, the opportunity to lead this new chapter,” Bezos posted to X. “I suggested to him that if the answer wasn’t ‘hell yes,’ then it had to be ‘no.’
“After careful consideration, David decided to step away. This is a significant shift, it won’t be easy, and it will require 100% commitment — I respect his decision. We’ll be searching for a new Opinion Editor to own this new direction.”
Unsurprisingly, Bezos’ shift away from hyper-divisive politics was not met well by the screeching rank and file of the far left.
First, right out of the Democrat playbook, Bezos was blasted as a “fascist” in the comments under his post:
You’re a fascist.
I can’t wait until WaPo goes under.
— Art Candee ???????? (@ArtCandee) February 26, 2025
Then came the performative cancellations to WaPo:
Last straw pic.twitter.com/wkaLGoVHk4
— Jeffrey Evan Gold (@jeffgoldesq) February 26, 2025
Sorry, Jeff, after decades of being a subscriber, I cancelled my subscription. You picked a side, and it was the wrong one.
— ????????????????????????_???????????????? (@SundaeDivine) February 26, 2025
(No word on whether these brave warriors will also quit using Amazon.)
Look, this writer personally trusts Bezos about as far as he can throw him. But even I can’t deny that he’s at least putting his bountiful money where his mouth is.
And the fact that the left hates it only reinforces that feeling.
But reinforcement bias is a thing, so it would behoove conservatives to approach Bezos — and his apparent newfound philosophies — with cautious optimism, at best.
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