Bulwark Takes - Jeff Bezos Did What?!

Episode Date: February 26, 2025

Sam Stein and John Avlon discuss Jeff Bezos announcement of changes at The Washington Post opinions pages to only be "in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets," and many Republicans are also bending the knee to Donald Trump.  Read more John Avlon in The Bulwark, "Senate Republicans Perfect the Art of Appeasement"

Hey guys, me Sam Stein, managing editor at The Bulwark. I'm here. I can't believe we're doing this. I'm here with Jon Avalon, my old boss, and I get to host him now. This is amazing. Jon, good to see you, bud. We're going to talk about your piece. We're going to talk about Jeff Bezos. Big news this morning from The Post. the site, it kind of looks at the broader issue of acquiescence and how the Republicans basically, to Trump's credit, I guess, bent the knee for him on all sorts of ways. And what it says about our politics. Talk a little bit about that. And then I want to tie it into the Bezos conversation. Yeah, I don't think it's to Trump's credit. I think it's to their discredit. You don't? I was going to say, it showed that he was right in his initial calculation that they always bend the knee. Well, you know, and when he said, you know, they always bend the knee, I took it with

almost a sense of contempt and amazement. Like, I can't believe how ridiculously, you know, how easy this is. People fold out of, in the face of fear and greed. And these are fully fledged adults and U.S. senators who have six year terms and constitutional responsibilities who took an oath to uphold that constitution. And, you know, throughout human history, people have struggled against far longer odds and far graver threats than a primary. And albeit a primary from Elon Musk is a serious threat in today's Republican party, paid for by Elon Musk. It's outside the American norm. That's the threat that a member of the U.S. Senate told me has been levied.

And I can understand that being particularly persuasive for people up in 26. But that's only a third of the chamber. It's like, why are you in the business at some point? Well, that's it, right? Is country over party being abandoned by those folks? Certainly not rhetorically, but those are the stakes, right? That's the underlying issue. And, you know, for folks who've been paying attention to me as a columnist and author, I mean, I've been warning about the dangers of hyper partisanship and polarization since my first book, which came out literally, you know, 20 years ago. Right. And, and my books about the founding fathers, they all warned about this stuff. And so when you see people abandoning anything resembling the politics of the golden rule,

that's where you get a bit despairing, because even beyond the normal partisanship and brinksmanship, you know, there need to be certain unifying standards. And particularly the Patel confirmation was to me. And why that one? I mean, I get it, but I'm going to come to your reasons. Hegseth, they came within three and Tom Tillis backed out in the face of what he described to colleagues as credible death threats brought to him by the FBI. But, you know, he had asked that I think Hegseth's sister-in-law, you know, go public on her accusations. And there seemed to be an understanding. And instead it was, you know, it was Collins and Murkowski who also voted against Patel and as well as Hexeth and McConnell. And then, you know, they've seemed to be surprised and taken aback when Tillis walked away. For Patel, I mean, here's a guy who by any objective standards, if you look at the intentions

of the FBI 10-year term, which is apparently now window dressing if Republicans are in office, and Democrats have been deferential in even keeping Republican appointees up or reappointing Republicans who'd been named previously because it needs to be above partisan politics. And here you've got someone who literally has a book in which he publishes an enemies list. An enemies list. We didn but i i think i think you know what i was pushing back against is um the temptation to find it comical or the temptation to drift into cynicism which is sort of the black lung disease of journalism. Because I'm accused often of being too cynical in treating a comment. I don't find you cynical at all. As I have said privately and publicly, I think you are the best all-around player, coach in the business. And it's because you're both experienced but have your ideals.

Thank you. Let's expand this. Okay. So you write about all the acquiescence. I think you make the valid point that we can't both sides this stuff. There's no alternative universe in which – Correct. Future president Wes Moore picks, I don't know, Joy Reid to be –

Even that wouldn't rise to the same level unless you publish a book with an enemies list. But yes. Right. Exactly. Exactly. It doesn't make sense. You can't actually, there is no both sides.

Then we're talking though about the larger issue, which is sort of institutional decay. And to that degree, it's, you know, the Senate is an institution. It basically forfeited its power, at least the Republicans did. And then you have the press. And this is how we can shift over to Bezos, which is the press, obviously, during the first Trump term was, to borrow a word, a bulwark against what was going on there. And now this time around, what we see is both a direct frontal assault on the press by the White House in the form of excluding outlets they don't like from the pool. And we get announcements like this morning, although I think it's a little bit more nuanced.

But just to get people to read, this morning, Jeff Bezos, publisher of The Washington Post, obviously incredibly wealthy, a multi-billionaire with business before the government, founder of Amazon. He says essentially that the opinion page of The post is no longer going to publish anything but a support and defense of two pillars, personal liberties and free markets. And then he says this, quote, we'll cover other topics too, of course, but viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others. Okay. So there's multiple ways to view this, right? What's your initial take here? My initial take is to not assume the worst, although I'm acutely aware that, for example,

when Elon Musk bought Twitter, I was skeptical. But I also said of his desire, you know, as a as someone who is a centrist, if he wants to do things like make algorithms more transparent, you know, as a, as someone who is a centrist, uh, if he wants to do things like make algorithms more transparent, you know, that there were, there were positive things. So there was room for improvement on the old. Right. In the abstract, these things are very defensible. If not, you know, you can even make the case that they're good. Uh, yes. Uh, you know, yes. If, if you believe in, in classical liberalism, not to put it in amber, but the idea of free markets and free people and, you know, the things that there's a broad degree of historic bipartisan consensus for to the extent that politics has ideas underneath it, which I would still like to think it does, as opposed to just tribal resentments and grudge matches. You know, the idea of basically called free markets and free people.

OK, you know, and I would also, you know, like to think that, you know, owners get a degree of deference. Now, traditionally, the best owners have a broad patriotic impulses, but they don't get involved in much of the day to day, right? They hire, it's sort of a republic model. They hire individuals to be good stewards who are not inconsistent. And who they believe will generally reflect what they believe. Correct. Now, you know, I think it was a deal book, Bezos explained that his initial decision to cancel the Kamala endorsement had been long planned and was unfortunately timed. And again, I think it's important, as Barack Obama once said, democracy depends on an assumption of goodwill among fellow citizens.

OK. And so on the other hand, he also sort of said he thought we would find a more tempered, responsible Donald Trump this time around. And whether that was the triumph of hope over experience, you experience, I think that answer should be self-evident. I was troubled to see that David Shipley, the- Yeah. So the other news here is that David Shipley, the actual opinion section editor, who's been there for a couple of years, won some awards for his work. He left because Bezos said, either you get on board enthusiastically or you probably should leave. And Shipley said, OK, I'll leave. Yeah. And obviously that's against a larger backdrop of drama at the Post. To me, it comes down to this, right? If papers historically, and this is me as a former editor in chief and editor of two anthologies of America's greatest newspaper columns. You know, it's, you know, in the past, we had a lot of partisan papers,

but there's always a third tradition of papers that tried to rise above it. Right. Right. And the question is, for me, first of all, who does he hire? Because we already have a Wall Street Journal editorial page. Right. And that's what this is. I mean, in the abstract, again, this seems to me like we want to make our opinion page like the Wall Street Journal, which is we stand for certain things and we all pine about those and we'll hit the nail on the head time and time again. Right. Which makes a lot of sense for the Wall Street Journal. Right. time again, right? Which makes a lot of sense for the Wall Street Journal, right? And by the way, I mean, Peggy Noonan is someone I think very highly of personally and professionally, right?

And again, especially in the columnist business, it's not that you have to agree all the time, right? It's supposed to be thoughtful and provocative. But that's what's troubling about this to me, interjecting here, is that when he says that we won't publish viewpoints opposing those pillars, okay. I mean, first of all, the pillars are too broad. What does it mean to be pro-personal liberties, right? Like you can, I don't know. I, you can make a variety. Let me make a provocative case that if you take this on its face and have philosophical continuity, then it could be this page will be relentlessly hostile to the agenda of the Trump administration. Yeah, well, sure.

Right? No, but- Anti-tariffs, right? You know, we're going to do markets for people. If I had gone in a time machine from 2015, and I was told that 10 years from now, America would have a foreign policy reoriented to align with Russia and a trade policy that was protectionist and embracing tariffs, particularly against our allies in NAFTA in North America. I would assume Bernie Sanders is president. There is some sort of horseshoe connection here.

There is a huge degree of horseshoe connection. To your point, though, is the WAPO opinion page going to now be pro-drug legalization? Are they going to be pro-abortion? Will they be opposed to vaccine mandates? Like these are – I mean these are not small matters. These are really interesting questions, right. And this is where – this is where it's always about the wise balance, right? That's why you have to have an open – in my book, that's why you should have

an open debate opinion page and not a rigid one. I agree, which, by the way, was not in the case of the Washington Post historically, sort of a both siderisms either, right? You had a diversity of opinions. But, and this sort of gets to, you know, one of the sort of libertarian questions. I appreciate philosophically consistent libertarians. I've always thought actually there's a reasonable degree of overlap between the center left and libertarians who are not of the inside joke, the privatizing lighthouses crowd. There's a wise balance. But if the libertarian focus, all individual rights end up being almost exclusively about property rights, right? This was the libertarian – and I'm putting that in quotes – arguments for Lester Maddox in the 1960s.

Deep cut, but go here with me, people. This is classic Avon, but go ahead. This is what she got. Somehow we're going to get this tied back to an obscure Lincoln quote. Oh, I could do that too. But, you know, Lester Maddox was briefly a hero of a certain brand of libertarian or populist conservative at the time because it was his right as the owner of his establishment to not allow African-Americans to eat them. Right. This was a libertarian. It's hard for people to appreciate, but this was a libertarian argument, which was, you know, a conservative argument at the time. But again, it placed property rights as primacy over personal liberty, right, or freedom of, you know, and so it goes back to those questions.

If you're going to be really consistent about personal liberty in the broadest sense, and, you know, also, by the way, open question, what does this mean for foreign policy coverage inside The Washington Post? Well, as of now, the Post reporters I've heard from say they have had no intrusion on what they're doing on that side of the equation. No. But I think – to a person, they're freaked out though. I mean they think that – and I think there's a fair reason to be skeptical, right? Like Bezos obviously is in the business of trying to ingratiate himself with the Trump White House. I don't think that's controversial to say. I don't think that's –

Here's the interesting thing, right? You don't think that's controversial to say. I don't think that's controversial. Here's the interesting thing, right? You don't think that's controversial to say? I would like to think that someone as talented and massively wealthy as Jeff Bezos would have more independence and integrity than simply trying to ingratiate. But it illustrates the dangers of the kind of dynamic we've got right now. Throughout human history, whenever, for lack of a better term, oligarchs think they can channel a demagogue in a constructive direction to benefit their interests, it never ends well. And again, I hesitate to use the term oligarch because it's too loaded and other American. But, you know, this is this is the danger of following along this path if you pay attention to history.

Right. And, you know, traditionally, if you're a steward of an organization like The Washington Post, you're building on a foundation. And again, I think sometimes, you know, we are a center-right country by instinct. And I think sometimes that takes more imagination on the part of folks on the left than they sometimes, you know, credit that they want to give or understand. That's practical. I can get the electoral side of that. But the question is, why this? Why now? What does it mean in practice? And if it's just, oh, we're taking a long way around to rediscover the underpinnings of liberal democracy, well, then what's the necessity of kind of closing off debate and narrowing the focus like this? Yeah, I agree with that. What leads a guy like David Shipley, who I think originally was at Bloomberg, who is not who is broadly centrist, you know, to say not for me. And the danger is, is that it's it's the the the intentions and the promises quickly get narrowed to reflect an agenda and an agenda that reflects partisanship, not ideas.

And that's where it'll be interesting to see. Not interesting to see, because I think this is part of a more troubling trend. Yeah. Right. I agree. And because again, if you're actually going to apply those two ideas consistently, then I could see this editorial page being philosophically at locker heads with the Trump administration on a day-to-day basis. But somehow, I mean, yeah. And it comes down to – and it does come down to whether Bezos is being sincere about wanting these two pillars to guide all the coverage or if this is part of a larger play to not get in loggerheads with the Trump White House. And ultimately, as of now, I think it's fair to say there's enough data points to be worried. It doesn't mean that it's going to end up that way, but there is enough data points to be worried. Yes. But the, the, the journalism, the Washington post has been doing is great. It is excellent. And, and, and has been happening under his ownership and, and, and, and, you know, let me just say that I want to emphasize that

because I think people look after the endorsement issue, there was a mass exodus of subscribers and there was also frankly a lot of journalists, good quality journalists who left. And the Post newsroom has wildly risen to the occasion considering those circumstances. Their coverage of Doge, of Trump, of this administration has been exceptional. Honestly, it's been exceptional. So take some comfort in that, right? I do take comfort in that. But I feel for them because I think they are not being given – the owner is not doing them any favors with how he has handled, which could be defensible editorial decision-making. I'm totally fine with getting rid of presidential endorsements. I think there was virtue to what Bezos was saying about the need to not do those things.

I can see- And if you always endorse Democrats over 60 years, but you're not allegedly a Democratic paper, like, yeah. Yeah. I can see why that's a problem. Obviously, do it at a different timeline than- Correct. Whatever. And then you can even make the case, as we have, that what he's talking about for the opinion section here is defensible. But I just think the context, the broader context, has made it really tough on the newsroom. I mean, the people in the newsroom tell me it's made it tough on the newsroom. Of course.

Well, we've seen a lot of exodus of real talent to the Atlantic and other places who are, I think, are best in class right now. Look, I think that a lot will depend on who replaces Shipley, and that will sort of give away a lot of this. If it's actually about refocusing or principle focus, then that will be clear and it will not end up being an exercise in sort of articulated toadyism. And I hope very much hope that's the case. You know, and look, I say this, I wrote an essay in a book called The Center Must Hold that came out last year. It's an international take on centrism, a bunch of different essays. I wrote the journalism piece. And I do think there's a principled way to be centrist, which is sort of

what I say is nonpartisan, but not neutral, right, on issues of fact and principle. And I think a lot of people who often try to sort of, a lot of the strategies of being centrist on the one hand, on the other, that folk, you know, like, don't work. So I think a lot will be revealed when we see who replaces David Shipley. But again, if this is just about corralling things to be in line with a current administration rather than deeper ideas and ideals, which is the promise, then that's contrary to the purpose of an editorial page. But again, the reporters at The Washington Post have been doing an excellent job under Bezos' ownership covering this administration. And that needs to be understood and I think appreciated in context as well. All right, man. Well, that was a good, healthy conversation done in under 20 minutes. There you go. That's all you need in the morning.

All right, Avalon, appreciate you, brother. Thank you so much for joining us. All right, man. Anytime. Take care.