Jeff Bezos Has Worst Response Ever to Washington Post Turmoil

Jeff Bezos finally broke his silence on the widespread backlash to two new hirings at The Washington Post.

In a memo to the paper’s top personnel on Tuesday, the billionaire technocrat backed the new CEO Will Lewis, a former lieutenant to right-wing media mogul Richard Murdoch, whose controversial appointment at the Post has made waves across the industry in the wake of reporting on his shady journalistic practices. 

“I know you’ve already heard this from Will, but I wanted to also weigh in directly: the journalistic standards and ethics at The Post will not change,” Bezos wrote in his message to staff. “To be sure, it can’t be business as usual at The Post. The world is evolving rapidly and we do need to change as a business.”

“You have my full commitment on maintaining the quality, ethics, and standards we all believe in,” Bezos wrote. Unfortunately, those words aren’t the most comforting, as the dirt on Lewis continues to pile up.  

Lewis was named as a central figure in a phone hacking cover-up at Murdoch’s News U.K., and continually hounded NPR’s media reporter David Folkenflik, urging him not to report on Lewis’s involvement ahead of his taking the reins at the Post. When the story did eventually break, Lewis allegedly pressured executive editor Sally Buzbee not to follow up on any developments to the story, downplaying its significance. Buzbee left her role as a result of restructuring under Lewis, but some of her former colleagues reportedly believe that Lewis’s pressure was to blame for her ouster. 

The message from the paper’s billionaire owner comes just days after the Post reported that Robert Winnett, Buzbee’s replacement, also had a hand in ethically murky reporting. Winnett is a former colleague of Lewis’s at the Murdoch-owned Sunday Times, whom Lewis tapped to lead news coverage after the 2024 elections. Winnett and Lewis allegedly published reporting that relied on fraudulently obtained phone and company records, according to The New York Times.

A former Sunday Times reporter, Peter Koenig, said Lewis assigned him to write a story based on stolen phone records. “His ambition outran his ethics,” Koenig told The New York Times. 

It’s unclear yet how Bezos can possibly rein in his new CEO’s soaring ambition to rebuild the paper, before it speeds past the Post’s ethics. But it’s easy enough to shoot a quick email from your yacht in Mykonos, and save the tough questions for when you’re back in the states. 

Donald Trump is taking aim at business leaders, saying they should be fired if they don’t support him.

In two long Truth Social posts on Tuesday quoting a Wall Street Journal article, Trump said “Business Executives and Shareholder Representatives should be 100% behind Donald Trump! Anybody that’s not should be FIRED for incompetence!”

Lately, Trump has attempted to line up the CEO and executive crowd behind him, but this is the first time he seems to have openly threatened them. Last week, he met with at least 80 CEOs, promising tax cuts and scaled-back business regulations if he’s elected president. Accounts of that meeting did not have the convicted felon and former president coming off well, with Trump reportedly rambling all over the place on different topics.

“These were people who, I think, might have been actually predisposed to him,” said CNBC’s Ross Sorkin. “And [they] actually walked out of the room less predisposed to him, actually predisposed to thinking ‘This is not necessarily—’ as one person said, ‘this may not be any different or better than a Biden thought, if you’re thinking that way.’”

Trump also proposed a plan to cut the federal corporate tax rate to 20 percent from 21 percent, which didn’t bring a lot of excitement from the audience. One attendee described the idea as “We’re going to give you more of the same for the next four years.”

Previously, Trump also tried to win over the support of oil and gas executives, reportedly promising them changes in policies if they contributed to his campaign.

Perhaps Trump’s recent posts came about because these meetings aren’t getting him the support he was seeking, and he sought to strike back at the CEOs. Maybe he thought they didn’t like his idea of leaving worker tips untaxed. Or maybe he got tired of proposing outrageous deals in exchange for total support, and decided an implicit threat would work better.

Whatever the case, it’s not likely that the richest and most powerful business leaders in America will respond kindly to Trump saying “support me or else!” Even if they do support him, history doesn’t look kindly upon business leaders who throw their support behind (wanna-be) dictators and autocrats.

Donald Trump and his allies did everything within their power to thwart Joe Biden’s presidency in 2020. Four years on, they appear to be more than comfortable with divulging the details on how they’re going to get it done this time.

During a Catholics for Catholics event at Mar-a-Lago on March 19, liberal documentarian Lauren Windsor caught the attention of Trump ally Roger Stone, who quickly spelled out the latest on their plan to secure the 2024 election.

“We’re working on this,” Stone said, noting that “overconfidence” in voter turnout was one of the biggest issues for Republicans.

But Trump’s side will be armed with “lawyers, judges, [and] technology” to challenge the official results if necessary, he told Windsor.

“At least this time when they do it, you have a lawyer and a judge—his home phone number standing by—so you can stop it,” Stone continued. “We made no preparations last time, none… There are technical, legal steps that we have to take to try and have a more honest election. We’re not there yet, but there’s things that can be done.”

In another conversation caught on audio by Windsor’s colleague Ally Sammarco, Stone goes on to say that Trump’s team is finally on “offensive footing” in terms of voter fraud and election monitoring.

In a separate portion of the audio recorded by Sammarco, Stone bragged that Trump’s trials were “falling apart” in Georgia, and his other legal charges were in peril around the country.

“We are beating them. I think the judge is on the verge of dismissing the charges against him in Florida,” Stone said, referring to Judge Aileen Cannon, who has allowed so many unnecessary and cumbersome delays in the classified documents trial that many legal experts wonder if it’s the Trump-appointed judge’s way of surreptitiously dismissing the trial altogether.

They’re delayed in New York City and they’re now delayed in Washington,” Stone continued.

Last week, Windsor caught Justice Samuel Alito and his wife divulging their private thoughts via similarly covert methods. In a secret recording captured during the Supreme Court Historical Society’s annual dinner on June 3, Alito was heard endorsing a fight to “return our country to a place of godliness,” whining that a ProPublica investigation into the lavish gifts that he and Justice Clarence Thomas had accepted from billionaires were a “little thing,” and claiming that the moral issues of the day “really can’t be compromised” between liberals and conservatives.

Steve Bannon’s impending prison sentence is driving Republicans crazy—and Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene is jumping on the stupidest idea in an attempt to keep him out of jail. 

Nearly two weeks ago, Representative Thomas Massie on X (formerly Twitter) floated the idea of rescinding the congressional subpoena for Bannon to testify to the House January 6 committee.

On Tuesday morning, Greene decided to piggyback onto the idea, posting that she would co-sponsor the effort and include Peter Navarro in resolution, and also suggested taking action against the committee’s members. 

Bannon’s criminal conviction comes from his defiance of that 2021 subpoena, leading to his referral to the Justice Department and ultimately his 2022 conviction on federal contempt of court charges. Bannon fought the case every step of the way, from attempting to turn the trial into a circus to delaying the sentence with last-ditch appeals. Unfortunately for Greene and other House Republicans, rescinding the subpoenas doesn’t magically mean no crime was committed.

While stalling his conviction and sentence, Bannon has attempted to interfere in Brazil’s politics as well as the upcoming election in the United States, and his radio show continues to serve as a haven for far-right Republicans to rant about whatever they want. In the days since he exhausted his appeals, Bannon has continued his usual activities, such as telling a Turning Point Action convention audience Saturday who exactly will be on Donald Trump’s anticipated “retribution” list and naming Justice Department officials. But now, after escaping prison once thanks to a Trump pardon over a border wall fraud scheme, he will soon be behind bars, and not in a minimum-security prison camp as he wants, but in a low-security prison like Rikers since he still has an open criminal case against him.

The Republican National Convention is fast approaching, and for all the whining Donald Trump has done about what a “horrible city” Milwaukee is, he may not even have to make the trip—considering that he will possibly be in jail.

RNC Chair Michael Whatley has been forced to prepare for this possible reality, as July 15 rushes toward him, and burdened with the responsibility of soothing his party’s anxieties by simply pretending that Trump is not a convicted felon.

During an interview on Newsmax Tuesday morning, host Robert Finnerty didn’t beat around the bush. “Mr. Chairman, how concerned are you that your candidate’s in jail the week of the convention?” he asked.

“We fully expect that he is going to be in Milwaukee and able to accept his nomination,” Whatley responded, not wanting to fan the flames of panic that have spread quickly through the Republican Party.

“Have you started that process of planning or preparing for the fact that maybe Donald Trump is forced to deliver his speech from some place like Rikers Island, or maybe prerecord a speech?” Finnerty asked.

“We will have every contingency covered, but I’m telling you this: We fully expect that he is going to be in Milwaukee to accept his nomination,” Whatley repeated. But he did not offer any details on how they intended to accommodate the presumptive nominee should he be an absentee.

Finnerty then asked if they would consider canceling the event in the case that Trump can’t attend in person.

“It is going to happen, and we are fully expecting to have him there,” Whaley insisted again.

Eerily enough, Whatley and Finnerty had a nearly identical conversation on Newsmax earlier this month. In the weeks that have followed, it’s still unnervingly unclear precisely what plans have been made if Trump’s sentencing on July 11 goes a certain way.

In other RNC news, the ACLU and a group called the Coalition to March on the RNC are suing the city of Milwaukee over ordinances that limit where protesters are allowed to gather. The city met with protesters in federal court on Monday, but no agreement was reached.

Milwaukee has sought to create a preliminary security zone stretching for blocks around the stadium, and the Secret Service are developing a smaller interior zone. “The security plan for the 2024 Republican National Convention, to include the security perimeter, is still in development,” said Secret Service Spokesperson Alexi Worley, per WISN. For all anyone knows, the Secret Service won’t need to be in attendance at all.