Gutless Jeff Bezos Kills The Washington Post’s Harris Endorsement

It appears Jeff Bezos is very afraid of Donald Trump. For the first time in 36 years, The Washington Post will not be endorsing a presidential candidate this election.

The Post’s editorial page editor David Shipley announced the news to shocked colleagues in a reportedly tense meeting Friday morning. The paper’s publisher, William Lewis, published a note to readers shortly thereafter confirming the news, writing that the newsroom is “nonpartisan” and wants to let readers “make up their own minds on this, the most consequential of American decisions.”

It’s a stunning announcement from the paper that proudly adopted the slogan “Democracy Dies in Darkness” just after Trump became president in 2017.

The news caught staffers completely off guard. In fact, the Post—reporting on the chaos within its own newsroom—noted that a presidential endorsement for Kamala Harris had already been drafted. The paper’s editor-at-large Robert Kagan resigned soon after the public announcement, and other staffers are similarly furious over the decision. One opinion writer, speaking anonymously to Semafor’s Max Tani, said, “If you don’t have the balls to own a newspaper, don’t.”

The Post’s union put out a statement pointing a finger directly at Bezos for the decision.

Marty Baron, the newspaper’s former executive editor, also slammed the decision. “This is cowardice, with democracy as its casualty,” he wrote on X. “[Donald Trump] will see this as an invitation to further intimidate owner [Jeff Bezos] (and others). Disturbing spinelessness at an institution famed for courage.”

The Post endorsed Joe Biden for president in 2020, calling out Trump’s threat to democracy as well as his “few accomplishments in his first term and no agenda for his second.” The editorial board has also previously condemned Trump’s role in the January 6 insurrection, his actions while in office, and his general rhetoric.

Suffice it to say, this is a major departure that can only be explained by cowardice from Bezos, one of the world’s richest people. The Amazon founder is likely worried about how a Harris endorsement would hurt him if Trump returns to office. Bezos has contracts before the federal government that could be at risk, including Amazon’s shipping and cloud computing services and his Blue Origin space company (also a government contractor).

The news indicates a troubling trend of billionaires already bowing to Trump. Earlier this month, Los Angeles Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong reportedly ordered the paper to avoid making an endorsement in the presidential election. On Wednesday, the LA Times’ editorials editor Mariel Garza resigned in protest, saying the decision made the paper look “craven and hypocritical” given its past reporting and editorials on Trump.

This story has been updated.

Almost half of all Americans view Donald Trump as a fascist, according to a new poll from ABC News/Ipsos.

The poll, released Friday morning, shows 49 percent of registered voters think of Trump as fitting the definition of a “political extremist who acts as a dictator, disregards individual rights and threatens or uses force against their opponents.” The survey also found that nearly two-thirds of registered voters say Trump departs from the truth.

The poll’s results seem to break down along political lines, with 87 percent of Democrats, 46 percent of independents, and 12 percent of Republicans calling Trump a fascist. The poll showed that 22 percent of registered voters saw Kamala Harris as a fascist, broken down to 41 percent of Republicans, 20 percent of independents, and 3 percent of Democrats.

The poll was conducted before Trump’s former chief of staff, retired General John Kelly, told The New York Times in an interview published Tuesday that the former president fit the definition of a fascist and had praised Hitler multiple times in the past. An article published Tuesday from The Atlantic also detailed Trump’s praise for autocrats and his desire to use the military against his political opponents.

Harris has called out the former president for his authoritarian wishes, saying on Wednesday, “We know what Donald Trump wants. He wants unchecked power. The question, in 13 days, will be: What do the American people want?”

Well, right now, the American people are almost evenly split in their choice for president, according to the latest polls, with some of them showing Trump ahead and others giving Harris the edge. With only 11 days left to go, Harris still has to convince more Americans that Trump is a fascist, and how dangerous that would be. Unfortunately, it appears many Americans openly embrace Trump’s fascistic ideas, such as putting immigrants in militarized camps. The question is whether those Americans will vote in large numbers.

Senator Lindsey Graham is sounding the alarms that another seismic terrorist attack is on the horizon—if Donald Trump doesn’t win the November election.

During an interview on Fox News’s Hannity Thursday, the South Carolina Republican baselessly argued that Vice President Kamala Harris’s border policies would cause another 9/11.

“That’s Donald Trump, Kari Lake, Sam Brown—let’s secure these Senate seats to help this president shut down the border before another 9/11 comes,” Graham said as the show’s outro music began.

“This is the most important election in our lifetime. Turn around those caravans. LindseyGraham.com,” Graham added.

A $118 billion bipartisan border deal was moments from coming to fruition earlier this year, before Republicans willingly tanked it in order to hand Trump fodder for his 2024 campaign. The deal would have tightened rules for asylum and created a standard for shutting down the southern border if undocumented crossings reached daily benchmarks, meeting practically every requirement set by the conservative caucus.

And run on the issue he has. At a rally earlier this month in Aurora, Colorado, the Republican presidential nominee amped up his Nazi rhetoric, weaponizing violent and dehumanizing language against immigrants, referring to them as the “enemy from within,” while advocating for harsher criminal punishments for the vulnerable demographic, including promising the death penalty.

“They took the criminals out of Caracas, and they put them along your border, and they said if you ever come back, we’re going to kill you,” Trump said.

“Think of that!” he continued. “We have to live with these animals. But we won’t live with them for long!”

Trump has made his own violent threats about his potential loss in recent months, including claiming that the nation would lose World War III if he failed to resume the Oval Office.

“We won’t even be in World War III, we’ll be losing World War III with weapons the likes of which nobody has ever seen before,” Trump said at a Nazi-attended conservative conference in Racine, Wisconsin, in June. “These are the stakes of this election. Our country is being destroyed. And the only thing standing between you and its obliteration is me. It’s true.”

A ballot initiative campaign to enshrine abortion rights in the New York state Constitution has raised more than $2 million toward its efforts—but only a sliver of that money has been spent on reaching voters. The lion’s share has gone toward consultants and overhead, according to Politico.

New Yorkers for Equal Rights has been organizing in support of the Equal Rights Act, or Prop 1, a measure that will prohibit government discrimination regardless of gender, age, ethnicity, pregnancy status, disability status, or sexual orientation. It will also codify abortion protections.

But New York voters may not actually know that, because Republican groups have been waging a fierce campaign against the measure by focusing on the amendment’s protections for transgender people, threatening that the measure could end women’s sports. Vote No on Prop 1 has spent nearly half a million dollars on ad spots to run during Jets, Bills, and Giants football games, according to the New York Post. In one ad, the group claims the measure will somehow aid in allowing noncitizen voting, which is not only illegal, it hardly ever happens.

And, so far, the advertising and outreach efforts of New Yorkers for Equal Rights have been practically nonexistent, which is surprising for a group that has raised so much money. But that’s because the bulk of their fundraising isn’t going toward voter outreach at all.

While the group had spent $1.3 million by the end of September, nearly $900,000, or 70 percent, went to hiring consultants, fundraisers, pollsters, and other staff. Only $226,000 was spent on direct contact with voters, according to Politico’s review of the committee’s campaign finance reports.

The group also received $744,000 in in-kind contributions, 85 percent of which went to cover staff, while only 14 percent went to advertising and outreach costs.

For comparison, high-profile campaigns for propositions in New York typically spend more than 90 percent of their funds on direct voter contact.

“That’s just malpractice,” said one consultant not affiliated with the campaign, who was granted anonymity to speak openly with Politico.

The campaign insists that more ads are coming. It launched a $500,000 advertising effort on streaming and digital media on October 8, which will appear on the next financial disclosure report. The group plans to have spent at least $2.4 million on direct voter outreach by the end of October.

New Yorkers for Equal Rights campaign director Sasha Ahuja said that the group was also planning to jump on a spike in voter attention as the election draws nearer.

“We went up on digital and streaming a month before the election and, like countless campaigns across the country, we’re concentrating our paid media efforts in the final weeks—when voters are most engaged,” Ahuja told Politico.

“Running a successful campaign in New York also requires top-tier staff and organizers—which is why we built out a robust ground game early, ensuring we can reach voters as Election Day approaches,” Ahuja added.

New York Governor Kathy Hochul and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries announced in June their support for the campaign, which planned to raise $20 million to spend on television ads, direct mail and organizing in support of the Equal Rights Act.* Democratic leaders hoped that putting abortion on the state ballot might motivate Democratic voters to support Democratic candidates in November, flipping back four swing districts that turned red during the midterm elections.

* This story has been updated to clarify who intended to raise the money.

Elon Musk is thumbing his nose at the Department of Justice, on Thursday night resuming his super PAC’s scheme to give away $1 million to a battleground state voter every day despite receiving a warning from the DOJ earlier in the week.

Musk’s pro-Trump America PAC announced two winners on X Thursday night: Jason from Holland, Michigan, and Brian from Eau Claire, Wisconsin. They join four other winners since Musk began the giveaway on Saturday to registered voters in swing states who sign the super PAC’s petition in support of the First and Second Amendments.

On Wednesday, it was reported that the DOJ sent a letter to America PAC warning that the scheme may break federal laws against paying people to register to vote. Legal experts have said that at best, Musk’s scheme falls into a legal gray area. Now it seems that the tech mogul is daring the federal government to take action against him and press charges, which would not only create a major media circus, but also result in a long legal battle against the world’s richest man.

Musk has thumbed his nose at the federal government and gotten away with it in the past. He faced penalties from the Securities and Exchange Commission for lying on X (formerly Twitter) about being able to take his Tesla car company private, but was able to stay on as CEO, only paying a fine and losing his board chairman position for three years. With his vast net worth, he could probably drag out any court case against him, even when the DOJ is involved. Moreover, if the DOJ were to hit Musk with criminal charges, the case would continue long after Election Day on November 5, and the tech mogul would likely still keep giving money away in the meantime.

In addition to his lottery, Musk is busy with his other efforts to return Donald Trump to the White House, including talking strategy with right-wing media baron Rupert Murdoch, keeping negative stories about Trump off of his X platform, and posting debunked conspiracy theories as well as misinformation.

The tech CEO is using his money in other nefarious ways as well, including a cynical ad campaign using Israel’s brutal war in Gaza to convince Arab American voters in Michigan that Kamala Harris is too pro-Israel, and Jewish voters in Pennsylvania that she opposes Israel’s actions. It seems that Musk thinks that his power and money allow him to influence politics in any way he wishes, and he clearly doesn’t fear repercussions from the government.