Overview
- An excerpt from a forthcoming book by Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman reports that Jeff Bezos told President Trump at a December 2024 dinner that the Washington Post was his “worst investment” and that “the people there are terrible.”
- Reporting says Bezos complained the paper’s business and editorial teams “don’t listen,” a remark that preceded his direction to reshape the Post’s opinion pages around personal liberties and free markets about two months later.
- Coverage links Bezos’s frustration to the Post’s reported losses of more than $100 million in 2024, which sources say factored into decisions to change editorial strategy and cut costs.
- In February 2026 the Post eliminated roughly one-third of its workforce, closed the sports desk and pared foreign coverage, and its publisher Will Lewis departed with Jeff D’Onofrio named acting publisher.
- The account is drawn from the Swan and Haberman book and has been widely corroborated in media reports but has not been independently confirmed by Bezos or the Washington Post, a point that shapes questions about owner influence and the paper’s future direction.