National Review senior editor Charles C. W. Cooke, on today’s edition of The Editors, wasn’t surprised by Jeff Bezos’s recent letter to WaPo’s staff shifting its editorial stance on the opinion pages, and said that, “If I were Jeff Bezos, I would have come to this conclusion a while ago.”

“I suspect he did so for a number of reasons,” continued Cooke. “One, he’s probably tired of losing $100 million a year employing boring mediocrities.”

Cooke pointed out that people find WaPo unreliable, “which we know bothers [Bezos] because he put out a separate missive when he said that the Washington Post would no longer be issuing editorial endorsements, in which he acknowledged that people hate the media and the Washington Post is part of that, and that if you create a product that no one trusts, there’s no point in that product.”

There may also be an entrepreneurial side to Bezos’s move, Cooke said: “The Wall Street Journal has been criticized recently for moving a little bit to the left. Perhaps he sees the chance to take some of its readers. And there’s a cynical side to it, I’m sure. Trump won. There’s been a vibe shift.”

“He is . . . among the people who I think have realized that the Democratic Party’s current makeup and issue set is inimical to their interests.”

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