The Washington Post spent years lecturing America about threats to democracy.
Now a new book reveals its own owner called it a disaster – to Donald Trump's face.
What Bezos said to Trump at a private December dinner is going to make your whole week.
Bezos Told Trump the Staff Was Terrible – Then Fired 300 of Them
The conversation comes from Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump, a forthcoming book by New York Times reporters Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman, set for release June 23.
Bezos vented about the Post's business leadership after the paper bled more than $100 million that year.
"The people there are terrible," Bezos told Trump. "They don't listen. My other companies, they listen."
https://twitter.com/OffThePress1/status/2067588106421674322?s=20
Trump had his own complaints ready.
"This Washington Post is really unfair. You've got to take better care," the President told Bezos.
Swan and Haberman wrote that the two men arrived at the same frustration from opposite directions – Bezos furious about the losses, Trump furious about the coverage.
Two months after that dinner, Bezos fired more than 300 Washington Post employees.
The Numbers Behind the Collapse
The math on the Washington Post is brutal.
The paper lost $100 million in 2025, $100 million in 2024, and $77 million in 2023 – $277 million in losses across three years, according to the Wall Street Journal.
That figure exceeds the $250 million Bezos paid to buy the paper in 2013.
The Post's February 2026 layoffs gutted one-third of the newsroom, shuttered the entire sports section, closed foreign bureaus across the Middle East, Asia, and Eastern Europe, and eliminated books coverage entirely.
https://twitter.com/WesternJournalX/status/2067626540901486620?s=20
The Washington Post Guild reported the paper had shrunk by 400 employees over three years.
After Bezos blocked an endorsement of Kamala Harris in October 2024 – one the editorial staff had already written – more than 250,000 subscribers canceled their subscriptions.
Then another 60,000 canceled after the mass layoffs in February 2026.
The paper that once broke Watergate cannot hold onto readers willing to pay $10 a month.
What Trump Figured Out That Bezos Couldn't
Trump told Swan and Haberman that during his first term, he believed Bezos personally controlled what the Post wrote about him.
"He said they write stories about him. And I didn't believe him the first time, first term. And I hated him for it," Trump said. "And then I believed him."
Trump spent years treating Bezos as the enemy when the real enemy was a newsroom that had built an entire identity around opposing him – and treated its readers as foot soldiers in that fight.
When Bezos finally tried to pull the paper back toward independence, his own staff revolted.
Bezos announced in February 2025 that the opinion section would focus on "personal liberties and free markets."
https://twitter.com/FoxNews_Flash/status/2067563095250329864?s=20
Opinion editor David Shipley resigned over the shift.
Readers don't subscribe to a newspaper to be mobilized for someone else's war.
The People Running the Post Destroyed It
The paper's leaders "don't listen" – Bezos said it to the President of the United States.
For years, Washington Post journalists operated as if their job was to stop Donald Trump – and charged subscribers for the privilege.
When Trump won anyway, and when Bezos started asking hard questions about a business hemorrhaging $100 million per year, the staff blamed Bezos.
The Washington Post Guild called the February layoffs "a failure of leadership and vision."
They were right about the failure.
They had the wrong person in mind.
A newspaper that spent a decade telling conservatives they were threats to democracy cannot then be surprised when conservatives stopped reading it.
A newsroom that ignored its own owner's direction cannot then be surprised when the owner stops writing checks.
Bezos paid $250 million for a paper that cost him $277 million more in losses and spent a decade calling its best customers fascists.
The only surprise is that it took this long.
Sources:
- CJ Womack, "Jeff Bezos reportedly told Trump the Washington Post was his 'worst investment' before staff cuts," Fox News, June 18, 2026.
- Alexandra Bruell, "Washington Post Lost $277 Million Over Three Years," The Wall Street Journal, February 2026.
- "Washington Post lays off one-third of its newsroom," Poynter, February 4, 2026.
- "After non-endorsement, 250,000 subscribers cancel The Washington Post," The Washington Post, October 30, 2024.
- Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman, Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump, Simon & Schuster, June 23, 2026.
