WASHINGTON — Amazon founder Jeff Bezos dined with President Trump hours after overhauling the Washington Post’s opinion section — in the tech billionaire’s latest action to cozy up to the nation’s new chief executive.
Bezos, who bought DC’s major daily in 2013, on Wednesday declared that the paper’s historically Democratic-leaning opinion section now will feature “two pillars: personal liberties and free markets” and that “viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others.”
That evening, the world’s third-richest man had dinner with Trump, the president revealed in an interview with The Spectator World.
“I had dinner with Jeff Bezos last night,” Trump told the magazine Thursday as an aside while discussing how tech titans had warmed to him as he returned to office.
Bezos attended Trump’s pared-down inauguration inside the Capitol Rotunda last month — alongside Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, Apple’s Tim Cook and Google’s Sundar Pichai.
TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew also attended the inauguration as Trump vowed to spike a congressionally approved ban on the Chinese app, citing his concern about increasing the power of American firms to engage in political censorship.
The tech titans rushed to warm up to Trump as his victory appeared likely ahead of the Nov. 5 election, with Bezos withholding the Washington Post’s endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee.
Amazon has faced bipartisan antitrust pressure in Washington — while Facebook and Google have incurred GOP wrath by engaging in allegedly politically biased moderation, including banning Trump himself from posting content after the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot.
Amazon recently agreed to a $40 million deal to license a documentary about first lady Melania Trump, while Facebook parent company Meta settled a lawsuit with Trump over his 2021 deplatforming for $25 million.
The come-latelies follow Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, who has owned X, formerly Twitter, since 2022, who offered major financial backing to Trump’s campaign and now serves as chief of his Department of Government Efficiency cost-cutting initiative.
