Jeff Bezos told President Trump that his staff at the Washington Post are ‘out of control’ and ‘crazy.’
The Amazon owner, who was once a thorn in Trump’s side, has set to remake the Post into a MAGA-friendly outlet from Trump’s second term.
He refused to allow the paper to make an endorsement for president in 2024 and has set much stricter rules on the Post’s opinion page in recent months.
Trump said during an interview with OutKick that he’s gotten to know Bezos recently and said that he expects them to get along great during his second term.
‘He is a good guy. I didn’t really know him in the first term. I mean, it’s such a difference between now and the first time,’ he told the outlet.
Trump said that he talked to Bezos ‘at length’ about how the paper went out of its way to protect Joe Biden during his term.
However, he added that he’s got it on Bezos’ authority that they’re trying to be ‘more fair’ but that he’s had it with his left-leaning Washington Post staff, especially after they’d run some negative articles about him.
‘He said, “This is crazy, I lose my fortune running this thing and they, you know, they’re out of control.” These people are crazy. They’re crazy people. They’re out of control.’
Donald Trump said that Jeff Bezos believes his staff at the Washington Post are ‘crazy’ as the owner of the leading liberal paper works to make sure he’s ‘more fair’ to the president
‘He is a good guy. I didn’t really know him in the first term. I mean, it’s such a difference between now and the first time,’ Trump said of Bezos
Trump cited Bezos’ appearance at his inauguration in January as a sign that many of the tech elite had shifted toward him on his second go around.
‘If you look at the inauguration, look at the people that were on that stage, here was a who’s who of a world that was totally against me the first time,’ he told Outkick.
DailyMail.com has reached out to the Washington Post and a spokesperson for Bezos for comment.
Bezos has been slowly edging away from his paper’s liberal leanings amid his budding friendship with the president and his allies.
The Amazon boss has begun playing a more active role in operations lately compared to when he first took the helm back in 2013.
He prompted fury among his liberal staff after he ditched a planned endorsement for Kamala Harris before last year’s election.
In November, he fired the Post’s long-time politics editor on the heels of Donald Trump’s election.
While earlier this month, he backed out of running a $115,000 front page advert targeting Elon Musk.
Trump added that he’s got it on Bezos’ authority that they’re trying to be ‘more fair’ but that he’s had it with his left-leaning Washington Post staff, especially after they’d run some negative articles about him
Jeff Bezos went with fiancee Lauren Sancez to the inauguration of Donald Trump
The decision came after Bezos was featured prominently at the 47th president’s swearing-in ceremony, after he announced his plans too donate $1 million to the incoming president’s inaugural fund.
Bezos and his fiancée Lauren Sanchez had earlier traveled to Mar-a-Lago for dinner with the then president-elect.
The Amazon boss, who owns the outlet, said he is ditching a traditional, ‘broad-based opinion section that sought to cover all views’.
He has also axed previous opinion editor David Shipley after he declined to get on board with the new regime.
‘We are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets,’ Bezos wrote on X on Wednesday.
‘We’ll cover other topics too of course, but viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others.
‘There was a time when a newspaper, especially one that was a local monopoly, might have seen it as a service to bring to the reader’s doorstep every morning a broad-based opinion section that sought to cover all views. Today, the internet does that job.’
Scores of readers have already began angrily cancelling their subscription in protest over the move.
However the decision has been lauded by Elon Musk, who wrote ‘Bravo Jeff Bezos’ above a post on X about the news.
‘I am of America and for America, and proud to be so,’ Bezos added. ‘Our country did not get here by being typical.
‘And a big part of America’s success has been freedom in the economic realm and everywhere else. Freedom is ethical — it minimizes coercion — and practical — it drives creativity, invention, and prosperity.’
The Post’s chief executive Will Lewis told staff that the changes were ‘not about siding with any political party’, the New York Times reports.
‘This is about being crystal clear about what we stand for as a newspaper,’ Lewis wrote in a memo. ‘Doing this is a critical part of serving as a premier news publication across America and for all Americans.’
