Amazon founder Jeff Bezos told then-President-elect Donald Trump at a December 2024 dinner that The Washington Post was his “worst investment” months before he authorized sweeping staff cuts at the newspaper, according to a forthcoming book by New York Times journalists Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman.
Bezos reportedly vented to Trump about the people running the Post’s business side after the newspaper lost more than $100 million that year.
“The people there are terrible,” Bezos told Trump, according to an excerpt obtained by The California Post.
The book, “Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump,” claimed Bezos contrasted the Post with his other companies while telling Trump that newspaper leaders were not following his direction.
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“They don’t listen. My other companies, they listen,” Bezos said.
Trump, who had repeatedly criticized the Post’s coverage of him, complained directly to Bezos about the newspaper during the dinner, according to the book.
“This Washington Post is really unfair. You’ve got to take better care,” Trump told Bezos.
Swan and Haberman wrote that Bezos and Trump found common ground over their complaints about the paper, although they were frustrated for different reasons.
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“Bezos commiserated with Trump over their December dinner, indicating that he, too, was deeply frustrated with the Post, though for a different reason,” the authors wrote.
Trump told the authors that he had once believed Bezos personally controlled the Post’s coverage during his first administration.
“He said they write stories about him. And I didn’t believe him the first time, first term. And I hated him for it,” Trump said. “And then I believed him.”
The book said Trump claimed Bezos told him that buying the Post had cost him friendships, though the authors wrote that Bezos later said people close to him had urged him to sell the newspaper.
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The dinner came after the Post withheld an endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential race, a decision that prompted subscriber cancellations and internal backlash.
Bezos defended the move in an October 2024 opinion piece, saying presidential endorsements hurt media credibility.
“Presidential endorsements do nothing to tip the scales of an election,” Bezos wrote. “What presidential endorsements actually do is create a perception of bias.”
In February 2025, Bezos announced that the Post’s opinion section would focus on “personal liberties and free markets,” and the Post reported that opinion editor David Shipley resigned after the shift.
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“We are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets,” Bezos wrote in a note to staff.
The Post laid off one-third of its staff in February 2026, eliminating its sports section, books coverage and several foreign bureaus, according to the Associated Press.
“We can’t be everything to everyone,” executive editor Matt Murray told staff in a note.
A Washington Post spokesperson declined to comment to The New York Post.
Will Lewis, the paper’s former publisher and CEO, stepped down days after the layoffs. Jeff D’Onofrio, the Post’s chief financial officer, was named interim CEO and publisher.
Fox News Digital reached out to The Washington Post for comment, but did not immediately hear back.
