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Quid Pro Quo: Bezos Likely Quashed WAPO Endorsement of Harris Because of Blue Origin [1]

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Date: 2024-10-27  

In what appears to be a pretty obvious quid pro quo, it looks like the motivation behind Jeff Bezos’ directing the WAPO editorial board to quash its planned endorsement of Kamala Harris, was in return for likely favored treatment of Bezos’ Blue Origin space services company.

Donald Trump today met with executives at Blue Origin—the space company owned and operated by Jeff Bezos...David Limp, the company’s CEO, and Megan Mitchell, its vice president of government relations...the same day that The Washington Post—also owned by Jeff Bezos—killed a presidential endorsement of Kamala Harris written by The Post’s editorial board. The paper reported that Bezos himself had nixed the endorsement.

During Trump’s tenure in the White House, Bezos/Amazon lost out on a $10 billion government services contract, allegedly due to Trump’s grievance over the WAPO’s endorsement of Hillary Clinton.

Bezos suffered for that forthright stance after Trump won the presidency. The Trump administration awarded a $10 billion cloud computing defense contract to Microsoft rather than Amazon in a move that was widely seen as politically motivated and was later canceled by the Biden administration.

It sure seems like Bezos has bent the knee because he doesn’t want to risk that sort of punishment again directed at any of his businesses should Trump get elected. Whether Bezos voluntarily approached Trump about killing the endorsement in exchange for favorable consideration of Blue Origin contracts in the future because he knows Trump is both venal and a completely transactional person, or Trump initiated the ask, it looks like Trump is already open for business should he once again be seated in the Oval Office. You can absolutely bet that companies across every industry have taken notice.

Welcome the kleptocracy.

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