Isn’t Jeff Bezos a Trump Ally?
Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon and owner of the Washington Post, has moved from being one of Donald Trump's most prominent antagonists to something that looks very much like an ally, though it is a relationship built more on business calculation than ideological conviction.
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The two men spent Trump's first term at war. Trump tore into Jeff Bezos throughout that first presidency, and was deeply angered by the Washington Post's critical coverage, deriding the paper as the "Amazon Washington Post." He even called Bezos "Jeff Bozo" and, in 2019, Amazon sued the Pentagon, alleging Trump had blocked the company from securing a $10 billion cloud-computing contract because of his animus toward the Post and its owner.
The détente came quietly, well before the 2024 election. Bezos privately urged Trump to pick Doug Burgum as his vice president, calling Burgum an "excellent" choice, in a phone call that showed Bezos was engaging with Trump on political issues months earlier than publicly known. Then, he stopped his newspaper's editorial board from endorsing Kamala Harris for president. Bezos quickly congratulated Trump for his election victory, and Amazon donated $1 million to Trump's inauguration fund. Bezos and his fiancée, Lauren Sánchez, attended the inauguration.
What Bezos got, and what it cost him
The Wall Street Journal described the shift plainly: Bezos "has gone from an avowed enemy of the president to an energetic ally." Trump hosted Bezos for a private dinner in the Rose Garden, frequently asks whether he will be attending other events, and talks and texts with him regularly.
The business benefits have been concrete. The Wall Street Journal reported that Bezos's Blue Origin space company's federal contracts accelerated in Trump's second term, with Blue Origin awarded over $1.1 billion in contracts from NASA and the Department of Defense. Bezos also benefited greatly from Trump's 2025 tax legislation, which gave large tax cuts to the wealthy and corporations.
At the Washington Post, Bezos moved the opinion pages sharply. He shook up the paper's opinion section, announcing it would focus on "personal liberties and free markets," a move that followed his decision to end the newspaper's tradition of endorsing presidential candidates. Both moves cost the Post subscribers, staff resignations, and a wave of backlash.
Trump, for his part, noticed and approved. "I've gotten to know him, and I think he's trying to do a real job," Trump said. "Jeff Bezos is trying to do a real job with The Washington Post, and that wasn't happening before."
The alliance is real, but it has cracks. Observers describe the relationship as one of convenience. The FTC and 22 states sued Amazon, alleging the company engaged in deceptive and unfair practices in its online search advertising auctions. Bezos may have calculated that proximity to power was safer than opposition to it, but the protection has not been total.
Follow-ups
The nickname is actually "MSDNC," not "MSNOW," and it is a portmanteau that mashes "MSNBC" with "DNC," the initials of the Democratic National Committee, to brand the network as a political arm of the Democratic Party rather than an independent news outlet.
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