President Donald Trump said Jeff Bezos is doing “a real job with The Washington Post” in what appeared to be praise for the direction the billionaire is taking his newspaper.
The president’s comments came after Bezos last month demanded The Post’s opinion pages limit what they cover, the latest in a series of controversial changes brought in by the Amazon tycoon since his 2013 takeover.
Trump’s admiration for Bezos emerged when he spoke withSharyl Attkisson for her Sunday morning show, “Full Measure,” which airs on local Sinclair stations, and was picked up by CNN’s “Reliable Sources” newsletter.
Attkisson asked whether the media is “treating you better” in his second term. He replied the media “hasn’t changed” before switching his focus to tech companies that have cozied up to Trump since his election.
“What has changed is, I think, Facebook and Google and a lot of them have become …,” Trump said, without finishing his thought.
“I think a guy like Bezos has … I’ve gotten to know him. I think he’s trying to do a real job. Jeff Bezos is trying to do a real job with The Washington Post, and that wasn’t happening before.”
He added, “My first time, I had Google against me, I had Facebook against me, I had Instagram, I had everybody against me. The whole world was against me.”
Bezos sparked a newsroom backlash in February after announcing the editorial section would move away from its traditional broad focus and instead concentrate on “personal liberties and free markets.”
He added that “viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others.”
Weeks later, Post columnist Ruth Marcus reportedly quit the newspaper after a column she wrote criticizing the new vision for the opinion section was spiked.
Last year, The Post ended its tradition of endorsing presidential nominees, which led to an exodus of subscribers.
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In January, one of the newspaper’s cartoonists resigned after an editor rejected her sketch of Bezos and other executives bowing before Trump.