Jeff Bezos Praises Donald Trump’s ‘Extraordinary Comeback’ After Tech Mogul Spiked Washington Post’s Presidential Endorsement

Mega-billionaire Jeff Bezos congratulated Donald Trump on his election-night victory. The comments by the Amazon founder and one of the world’s richest people came after Bezos fomented a major backlash when he decreed that the Washington Post, the iconic newspaper he bought more than a decade ago, would not endorse a U.S. presidential candidate this year.

“Big congratulations to our 45th and now 47th President on an extraordinary political comeback and decisive victory,” Bezos wrote in a post on X, the social platform owned by Trump supporter Elon Musk. “No nation has bigger opportunities. Wishing @realDonaldTrump all success in leading and uniting the America we all love.”

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Bezos touched off a backlash after the Washington Post, less than two weeks before the Nov. 5 election, announced it would not endorse a candidate. That led more than 200,000 readers, about 8% of the newspaper’s base, to cancel their subscriptions over the course of three days, NPR reported.

Critics saw the Post’s move to stop endorsing presidential candidates as an attempt by Bezos to curry favor with Trump in the event Trump won a second term.

In a Washington Post article posted Oct. 28, Bezos defended the move and insisted that “no quid pro quo of any kind” was involved in the decision to stop endorsing U.S. presidential candidates. Rather, according to Bezos, the decision was intended to bolster consumers’ trust in the Post amid a dramatic decline in consumers’ faith in mainstream news outlets.

“Presidential endorsements do nothing to tip the scales of an election. No undecided voters in Pennsylvania are going to say, ‘I’m going with Newspaper A’s endorsement.’ None,” Bezos wrote. “What presidential endorsements actually do is create a perception of bias. A perception of non-independence. Ending them is a principled decision, and it’s the right one.”

Bezos acknowledged that Dave Limp, the CEO of Bezos’ aerospace company Blue Origin, did meet with Trump on Oct. 25 and that “I sighed when I found out, because I knew it would provide ammunition to those who would like to frame this as anything other than a principled decision.” According to Bezos, “the fact is, I didn’t know about the meeting beforehand. Even Limp didn’t know about it in advance; the meeting was scheduled quickly that morning. There is no connection between it and our decision on presidential endorsements, and any suggestion otherwise is false.”

The Post’s editorial board had reportedly already drafted an endorsement of VP Kamala Harris before word came down last week that Bezos was ending the practice. “This is cowardice, with democracy as its casualty,” former Washington Post editor Marty Baron said about the paper’s decision in a post on X, adding, “@realdonaldtrump will see this as an invitation to further intimidate owner @jeffbezos (and others). Disturbing spinelessness at an institution famed for courage.”