In a blistering op-ed, President Donald Trump was slammed as “the real threat” to “personal liberties and free markets” by a Washington Post columnist after the paper’s owner, Jeff Bezos, said the publication would reject any content that opposes these two principles in its opinion section.
“If we as a newspaper, and we as a country, are to defend his twin pillars, then we must redouble our fight against the single greatest threat to ‘personal liberties and free markets’ in the United States today: President Donald Trump,” wrote Dana Milbank in an op-ed published Friday. “The rapidly spreading authoritarianism coming from this administration threatens all of our freedoms.”
Milbank elaborated by dissecting Trump’s trade wars, his challenges to legal immigration, his politicizing of law enforcement and the military, and his cherry-picking of which media outlets receive White House access as a few examples of the president’s violation of Bezos’ protected “pillars.”
“The consequences of Trump’s illiberal actions can already be seen. Inflation has accelerated. Jobless claims jumped more than expected. Consumer confidence has slid. The stock market has been volatile. Trump’s approval numbers have inched downward,” wrote Milbank.
Bezos, in announcing his overhaul of The Post’s opinion section in a letter to the paper’s staff, argued that the themes of personal liberties and free markets “are underserved in the current market of ideas and news opinion” and that a “broad-based opinion section” is no longer needed since diversifying viewpoints can be found elsewhere on the web.
His directive led The Post’s opinion editor, David Shipley, to resign.
Bezos and Trump reportedly had dinner together mere hours after Bezos announced the changes at The Post.
Since purchasing the paper in 2013, the billionaire Trump donor and Amazon founder has drummed up controversy over his editorial decisions. Last October, Bezos ended The Post’s tradition of endorsing presidential candidates, and last month, opinion cartoonist Ann Telnaes resigned after one of her cartoons critical of Bezos was killed.
Journalist Gene Weingarten, who spent two decades as a Post columnist, said in a Substack post Thursday that he’s heard of at least one Post writer having their work rejected in the wake of Bezo’s announcement this week.
Post media critic Erik Wemple had told colleagues that he would write about Bezos’ order, which Weingarten said is part of his job. But according to some Post staffers, Wemple’s finished column was rejected for publication, Weingarten wrote.
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“It was described to me by someone who saw it as ‘more mystified and saddened than outraged or appalled,’” Weingarten wrote of Wemple’s submitted work. “I have been told another respected opinions columnist has also submitted a piece on the same subject. Let’s watch and see what happens.”