Jeff Bezos killed the Washington Post's support for Kamala Harris

The Washington Post said Friday he would not support any presidential candidate this year and would never again break with decades of tradition and sparked immediate criticism of the move.

But the newspaper also published a article by two journalists revealing that editorial page staff had written an endorsement of Democratic candidate Kamala Harris over Republican candidate Donald Trump in the election.

“The decision not to publish was made by the owner of the Post. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos,” the article said, citing two sources briefed on the events.

Trump, when he was president, criticized billionaire Bezos and the Post, which he purchased in 2013.

THE newspaper in 2016 and again in 2020 he endorsed Trump's agenda election his opponents, Hillary Clinton and President Joe Biden, in editorials condemning the Republican in direct terms.

In a 2019 lawsuit, Amazon claimed it lost $10 billion cloud computing contract with the Pentagon to Microsoft because Trump used “inappropriate pressure…to harm his perceived political enemy” Bezos.

Since 1976, the Post had regularly endorsed presidential candidates, with the exception of the 1988 race. All of these endorsements were for Democrats.

In a statement to CNBC, when asked about Bezos' alleged role in rescinding the endorsement, Post communications manager Kathy Baird said: “This was a decision by the Washington Post not to endorse , and I refer you to the publisher's statement in its entirety.”

The Post published a third article Friday evening, signed by opinion columnists » for the newspaper, which declared: “The decision of the Washington Post not to support the presidential campaign is a terrible mistake.

“This represents an abandonment of the core editorial beliefs of the newspaper we love and have worked for for 218 years,” the column read. “This is the moment for the institution to clearly express its attachment to democratic values, the rule of law and international alliances, as well as to the threat posed by Donald Trump poses to them the precise arguments made by the Post in supporting Trump's opponents in 2016 and 2020.

CNBC has requested comment from Amazon, of which Bezos remains the largest shareholder.

Will Lewis, publisher and CEO of the Post, wrote in an online article explaining the decision: “The Washington Post will not support a presidential candidate in this election. Nor in any future presidential election. »

“We are returning to our roots of not supporting presidential candidates,” Lewis wrote.

“We recognize that this will be interpreted in a variety of ways, including as tacit support for one candidate, or as a condemnation of another, or as an abdication of responsibility,” he wrote.

“It's inevitable. We don't see it that way. We see it as consistent with the values ​​The Post has always stood for and with what we hope for in a leader: character and courage in the service of ethics American, reverence for the rule of law and respect for human freedom in all its aspects.

Seven of the 13 paragraphs in Lewis' article are either quoted at length or refer to statements by the Post editorial board in 1960 and 1972 explaining why the paper did not support presidential candidates during these years, which included its identity as an “independent newspaper”.

Lewis noted that the newspaper supported Jimmy Carter in 1976 “for reasons understandable at the time” that he did not identify.

“But we had it just before that, and that’s what we’ll come back to,” Lewis wrote.

“Our job as the capital newspaper of the most important country in the world is to be independent,” he wrote. “And that’s what we are and what we will be.”

Post editor Robert Kagan, a member of the newspaper's opinion section, resigned following the decision, several media outlets reported.

More than 10,000 reader comments were posted on Lewis' article, many of them lambasting the Post for its decision and saying they were canceling their subscriptions.

“The most important election in our country, a choice between fascism and democracy, and you sit out? Cowards. Unethical, fearful cowards,” one comment wrote. “Oh, and by the way, I'm canceling my subscription, because you put business before ethics and morals.”

The announcement came days after Mariel Garza, director of The Los Angeles TimesThe editorial board resigned in protest after the newspaper's owner, Patrick Soon-Shiong, decided not to run for president.

“I am resigning because I want to make it clear that I am not OK with silence,” Garza told the Columbia Journalism Review. “In dangerous times, honest people must stand up. This is how I stand up.”

Soon-Shiong, like Bezos, is a billionaire.

Marty Baron, former editor-in-chief of the Washington Post, called the newspaper's decision “cowardice, with democracy as the victim.”

@realdonaldtrump will see this as an invitation to further intimidate owner @jeffbezos (and others),” Baron wrote. “Disturbing spinelessness at an institution known for its courage.”

The Washington Post Guild, the union that represents the newspaper's staff, said in a statement posted on the social networking site national, take the decision to no longer support the presidential election. candidates, especially just 11 days before elections with immense consequences. »

“The message from our Executive Director, Will Lewis, and not that of the Editorial Board itself, makes us concerned that management is interfering with the work of our members in the editorial office,” the Guild said in the statement, which reported on the newspaper's reporting on Bezos' role in the newsroom. decision.

“We are already seeing cancellations from once-loyal readers,” the Guild said. “This decision undermines the work of our members at a time when we should be building the trust of our readers, not losing it.”

Former Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, whose reporting on the Watergate burglary during the Nixon administration earned the paper the Pulitzer Prize for public service, said in a statement: “We respect the traditional independence of the editorial page, but this decision 11 days before the 2024 presidential election, we ignore the overwhelming evidence from the Washington Post on the threat that Donald Trump poses to democracy. »

“Under the leadership of Jeff Bezos, the Washington Post news department has used its abundant resources to rigorously investigate the danger and damage that a second Trump presidency could cause to the future of American democracy and that makes this decision even more surprising and disappointing, especially at the end of this period of the electoral process,” Woodward and Bernstein said.

Post columnist Karen Attiah, in an article on the social media site Threads, wrote: “Today is a real stab in the back.”

“What an insult to those of us who literally put our careers and lives on the line to speak out against threats to human rights and democracy,” Attiah wrote.

Rep. Ted Lieu, a California Democrat, wrote in his own tweet when the news broke: “The first step to fascism is when the free press cowers in fear. »

Trump told Fox Business News in August that Bezos called him after the Republican narrowly escaped an assassination attempt in July at a campaign rally in western Pennsylvania.

“He was very nice even though he owns the Washington Post,” Trump said of Bezos.

Bezos last posted to X on July 13, hours after the assassination attempt.

“Our former president showed extraordinary grace and courage under literal fire this evening,” Bezos wrote in the tweet. “I am so grateful for his safety and so sad for the victims and their families.”

Trump met on Friday in Austin, Texas, with executives from Bezos-owned space exploration company Blue Origin, including CEO David Limp, the Associated Press reported.