Jeff Bezos Congratulates Trump After Washington Post’s Non-Endorsement Fiasco

Multibillionaire Jeff Bezos congratulated former President Donald Trump and wished him “all success in leading and uniting the America we all love” following his election win this week.

“No nation has bigger opportunities,” the Amazon founder and owner of The Washington Post said in a post on X, formerly Twitter, Wednesday morning.

The business magnate last month was accused of spiking the Post’s endorsement of Democratic nominee Kamala Harris over Trump, causing several staffers to resign and reader subscriptions to plummet.

It was the first time since 1976 that the Post did not endorse a candidate. The paper’s editorial board endorsed Trump’s opponents in 2016 and 2020, and Trump complained about the paper’s at-times-critical coverage of him.

Bezos defended the paper’s decision not to endorse a candidate, claiming newspaper endorsements are pointless to voters and they only demonstrate bias.

Shortly after news of the spiked endorsement broke, The Associated Press reported that Trump met with leaders from Bezos’ aerospace company Blue Origin in Austin, Texas, raising speculation that the paper’s silence was part of a deal between the parties.

“Trump waited to make sure that Bezos did what he said he was going to do — and then met with the Blue Origin people,” columnist Robert Kagan, who resigned as the Post’s editor-at-large following the news, told the Daily Beast. “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.”

Bezos’ last post on X before his Wednesday well-wishes also praised Trump.

In July, he wrote that the former president “showed tremendous grace and courage” in the midst of an assassination attempt at his campaign rally.