Jeff Bezos’ Manifesto of Impotence
The second richest man in the world believed he could reverse the damage he already did by writing an op-ed.
That was his first mistake.
Jeff Bezos starts his column by pointing to the decline in trust in journalism. Seemingly including himself, the second richest oligarch in the world, in the profession of journalism, Bezos complains, “Our profession is now the least trusted of all.”
Bezos then deigns to explain (it’s not clear whether he believes he’s writing for disgruntled subscribers or his employees who actually are in the profession of journalism) via analogy: Newspapers, like voting machines, must not only be accurate but must be perceived as accurate.
Bezos then attempts to defend this analogy, but in the process, asserts — without presenting any evidence — that perceived bias is the reason “most people” distrust the media.
Most people believe the media is biased. Anyone who doesn’t see this is paying scant attention to reality, and those who fight reality lose. Reality is an undefeated champion. It would be easy to blame others for our long and continuing fall in credibility (and, therefore, decline in impact), but a victim mentality will not help. Complaining is not a strategy. We must work harder to control what we can control to increase our credibility.
There’s so much logical collapse that gets papered over in this pablum. Which parts of “most people” believe the media is biased? More importantly, do they believe in or value “reality”? Because if many of them don’t — spoiler alert! the people squawking most loudly about media bias do not believe in empirical reality — then you’ve wildly misdiagnosed the problem. Those people won’t decide whether to trust voting machines based on anything the vendors do — just ask Dominion about that! They’ll decide whether to trust voting machines based on faith. And no amount of pandering will change that until you change the foundation on which their faith in propaganda is built.
Reality is in fact on the ballot this year, the race remains neck and neck, and you, Jeff Bezos, decided to go down without a fight.
Having declared that, “We must work harder to control what we can control to increase our credibility,” Bezos does a number of things to piss away his own credibility:
- He attributes his last minute decision to spike presidential endorsements and only presidential endorsements to “inadequate planning.”
- He naively disavows any quid pro quo because his Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp “didn’t know about” the meeting Trump would schedule immediately after Bezos spiked the Kamala Harris endorsement “in advance; the meeting was scheduled quickly that morning,” as if Bezos and his executives are helpless in the face of Trump’s manipulation.
- He admits that, “Every day, somewhere, some Amazon executive or Blue Origin executive or someone from the other philanthropies and companies I own or invest in is meeting with government officials,” but doesn’t consider whether that’s a credibility issue more pressing than presidential endorsements.
- Rather than doing something to address those credibility risks, Bezos instead asks his still undefined reader to just trust him. “I assure you that my views here are, in fact, principled.”
- Bezos again conflates lack of credibility with a market for views that pointedly don’t aspire to reality. “Lack of credibility isn’t unique to The Post. … Many people are turning to off-the-cuff podcasts, inaccurate social media posts and other unverified news sources.” Even as a business proposition, Bezos is unaware of what product he is selling, of what product competitors eating into his market share are selling.
- Denying, again, any motivation of personal self-interest, Bezos then asserts — the same week his own boneheaded decision (if you believe reality) or failure of adequate planning (if you believe Bezos’ excuse) led to 200,000 subscribers fleeing the paper — that “allow[ing] this paper to stay on autopilot” is what will lead it to “fade into irrelevance.”
Dude: You just did something that made both the paper itself irrelevant (by spiking the work of its leaders) which then led longterm supporters to flee. You did that. It’s not autopilot that is making the WaPo irrelevant. It’s Bezos-pilot. It is your misdiagnosis of the problem and boneheaded decisions based on that misdiagnosis.
That’s why it irks me that Bezos doesn’t adhere to basic standards of disclosure. He is tagged on his byline as nothing more than, “the owner of the Washington Post.” And while he admits in his column that he owns the company whose CEO naively took a last minute meeting after Bezos spiked the Harris endorsement, and admits that there is some uncatalogued group of “other philanthropies and companies” that leads him and his executives to “meet[] with government officials” on a daily basis, he does not disclose what they are in his bio.
He doesn’t reveal that if Trump wins he’ll get massive tax cuts that will let him further accumulate wealth. He doesn’t describe that he owns a massive network of warehouses whose labor fights will be decidedly more contentious under a Harris Administration. He doesn’t mention the cloud contracts that led to a sustained conflict with the cronyist Trump Administration.
Now you may believe that none of those things would influence the boneheaded decision Bezos made or the way he implemented it. But he’s not going to address them — like a voting machine operator would — by laying out those possible conflicts according to the standards of journalism.
Nope. Instead, Bezos is going to claim he’s nothing more than a humble little newspaper owner. He’s just going to ask you to trust him at his word. “I assure you that my views here are, in fact, principled.”
It’s that pablum paragraph, unworthy of a college freshman, that’s the real tell, though. “Reality is an undefeated champion!!” “Those who fight reality lose!!”
The fight against fascism is substantially a fight to defend reality over propaganda. The reason to make an endorsement, this year, is precisely to defend a reality that needs a vigorous champion, not to capitulate to the Substackers offering listeners what their faith in a strongman leads them to want to hear.
Ah well. Instead of joining that fight, the second richest man in the world confessed, right there in print, that he believes reality will win without a fight.
Update: I added the line about faith in voting machines after I first published.
His op-crapfest is the definition of cowardice.
I’m still trying to decide:
1) He wrote this?
2) He called his crisis management PR team to write this?
3) He had AI write this?
4) His crisis management PR team had AI write this?
5) Lauren Sánchez wrote this for her fiancé?
BTW: He could just set up a trust to fund the paper and walk away. This would allow the paper autonomy.
Or
Mark Cuban! I think there is a paper you could buy ASAP!
Mark will wait a bit, because the price is probably getting better by the hour.
Bezos has done to the Post what Musk did to Twitter, as far as valuations go.
Buffet, Bezos, Musk, Murdoch, Bloomberg, etc. all want to own media companies to promote their beliefs and perspective. When you have as much money as those folks, short term profitability is nothing. Long term control of the media and its perspective is the only thing that matters.
Where to begin with this. First, tell me when and with what coverage you had a problem between the year noted below and 2020:
The Buffalo News (1977)
Omaha World-Herald (2011)
Richmond Times-Dispatch (2012)
Winston-Salem Journal (2012)
The Eagle (Bryan-College Station TX) (2012)
Waco Tribune-Herald (2012)
Tulsa World (2013)
The Greensboro (2013)
News & Record (NC) (2013)
Roanoke Times (2013)
Press of Atlantic City (2013)
WPLG-TV, Miami FL, ABC affiliate (2014)
Business Newswire (2006)
With the lone exception of Business Newswire, those were owned by Buffett’s Berkshire-Hathaway until they were sold in 2020. Do you recall thinking, “Wow, their journalists and editors are really biased for Warren Buffet!”
Can you point to anyone including businesses reporting a problem with Business Newswire, ever?
Point to a story published by any Bloomberg LP subsidiary which caused you to think, “Wow, their journalists and editors are really biased for Michael Bloomberg!” Michael Bloomberg launched his business data and reporting network in 1981 with three other co-founders. Can you even name them? I can point to one story in particular that ran counter to the entire market and I’m thankful Bloomberg stood behind it.
The problem you’re fishing for is far more specific. It can’t be addressed if you can’t be more specific.
Thank you for this dissection of Bezos attempted effort at self justification.
His arguments are fatuous from beginning to end.
The heart of his case is that:
the appearance perception of any conflict of interest on his part is a mere Co-inky-dink of bad timing and bad planning;
and nothing to do with any perception he had of potential threats to his wider financial interests;
And his journalistic decision was in the finest tradition of journalistic ethics—
as exemplified by the moral example provided by considering the case of the necessity of a public perception of integrity of voting machines!!!
Bezos conveys no sense
of understanding the purposes of journalism,or the ethics of journalism;
of having considered the ethics of journalism in times of political crisis, or of having consulted any expert in journalism, or in the ethics of journalism.
But he conveys a strong sense of having relied on political hack journalist Will Lewis, to craft something which has a the most superficial veneer of plausibility, enabling Bezos to assert “It’s time to move on”
Ughhhh
“nothing to do with any perception he had of potential threats to his wider financial interests;” He may also fear retribution from TFG if he supports Harris and tfg ends up in the WH again.
Yep
But that was necessarily implied by
“The heart of his case is that:
[etc] ….”
“It’s time to move on.”
I agreed and cancelled.
Sorry? He conflate his CEO’s meeting with a political campaign candidate as a benign and usual meeting with government officials. Newsflash: Trump isn’t a government official. Hasn’t been for four years. He doesn’t represent the government of the United States.
He’s wish-casting. When you have that much money, it actually has a chance of working.
I’m glad that scrotum-massage of an op-ed appeared a day after my subscription was cancelled.
I think Bezos’s conflation is a little different and more insidious: he’s implicitly equating *all* government officials with Kamala Harris and the Harris campaign — with whom he has not met, AFAIK — in order to both-sides his proxy’s actual, reported meeting with Trump. It either presumes or implies that the Biden administration is as corrupt, kleptocratic, and mafia-like as Trump’s administration was.
Through the whole column, Bezos bemoans the perceptions of “the media,” as if he owns every media outlet. Missing, though are specific thoughts about the media he actually owns.
If he believes what he wrote, he will abolish the editorial page.
Bezos appears to desire only a “he said/she said” model of journalism. Other media outlets will benefit from the departure of actual reporters who want to tell you not just what was said, but what it means and who is telling the truth.
Bezos (as quoted in the post): “Our profession is now the least trusted of all.”
Didn’t know that Bezos is a journalist, or does he mean the profession of billionaire entrepreneurs? Then he would be right.
Buying a paper doesn’t make you a journalist any more than buying a zoo makes you a lemur.
Well, crap. I always thought it was politicians who were the least trustworthy, until COVID. Then they told us it was epidemiologists and public health officials (who were acting politically), because they needed a scapegoat for their own incompetence. Lately, it’s been Supreme Court justices (who are acting politically).
Now it’s journalists, who are (of course) acting politically. Left unsaid is the billionaire oligarchs who are acting politically (and always have been, since the slavers and rail barons).
Nope — it’s still politicians, all the way down, that you can’t trust. And Bezos is an unelected politician.
The word that makes his statement incorrect is ‘now.’ I started newspapering in 1966, and we used to take a kind of perverse pride that we were ranked. socially, below undertakers.
Every city’s paper had a disparaging nickname. In Raleigh, the News & Observer was the Nuisance & Disturber, and so on.
Just had to salute you, Harry, for your service to the Nuisance & Dusturber. That’s wonderful.
Bezos speaking up undermines the earlier statement by Will Lewis, publisher and CEO of the Washington Post, that tried to shift the blame away from Bezos:
> In a statement to CNN on Saturday, Lewis pushed back on reports about Bezos’ role in the endorsement decision.
>
> “Reporting around the role of The Washington Post owner and the decision not to publish a presidential endorsement has been inaccurate,” Lewis said. “He was not sent, did not read and did not opine on any draft. As Publisher, I do not believe in presidential endorsements. We are an independent newspaper and should support our readers’ ability to make up their own minds.”
https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/26/media/washington-post-jeff-bezos-endorsement-turmoil/index.html
That statement from Lewis really doesn’t say very much.
It’s perfectly consistent with the statement that Bezos ordered the post not to endorse any candidate, and even ordered Lewis to write an explanation of why.
My understanding of what the function of an Editorial Page is, is to present a variety of views, in addition to that of the Editor of the Page. It is an example of an exercise of democratic action in an instrument for public dissemination. It is a chance for leaders in a community, or a country, from all walks of life, to express their ideas regarding the quality of life in their community, state, and country. Bezos has no idea of what a newspaper is for, or what an editorial page is for. He only sees it as an instrument for his power.
re editorial page function:
this only applies if people can READ !!!
Dan Froomkin, a former WaPo employee, was absolutely livid:
(Internal links — lots of them! — omitted.)
From Bezos:
Yes, Jeff, they do. Or at least, they did. But they have had their work thrown to the curb.
There will be lots of interesting conversations between WaPo journalists and editors at other outlets. “You know, we could certainly find a place for you here, if you’d like to work at a place that appreciates what you do . . .”
Thank you for posting Dan Froomkin’s take.
If you support the Constitution and rule of law, then Trump’s actions in the aftermath of the 2020 election should be disqualifying, not in the legal sense but in the political sense. The evidence accumulated by the Jan 6th Committee and the evidence made public by Special Counsel Smith are sufficient to conclude that Trump should not be considered an acceptable candidate.
Bezos could have maintained his principle of independence by excluding Trump from consideration and stating that he would not endorse any of the other three.
And we shouldn’t forget that the evidence provided in the documents case reveals a man with reckless disregard for the nation’s defense secrets.
“It says: We are so terrified of a Trump presidency that we are bending the knee in advance. Most importantly, it makes clear that owner Jeff Bezos doesn’t want to lose government business in a second Trump administration.”
Perhaps among the least cowardly people in the nation are Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss. Nice to be able to hold your head up high, even if all they get from Rudy is a few million.
So much for hands-off ownership. He saved up for a big one, for just this type of timed control.
I think of the SCOTUS similarly. McConnell’s power play appointments were for Roe. The immunity case travesty was a bonus for the right. We’ll see if they try to interfere with the election.
I hope Bezos and the rights’ machinations eventually hurt them.
“I hope Bezos and the rights’ machinations eventually hurt them.”
I want to say something, and it is in no way directed to you, but your comment got me thinking (the same way as you).
This is clearly escalating, as evidenced in your Comment. Trump et al escalating, SCOTUS escalating, Musk escalating, and now we have Bezos escalating,
This is a fight. Started with people looking for a fight and now throwing all they got at us.
We’re way past “Hope” (Obama) or Conciliation (remember Biden’s campaign?). Now we’re at “We Fight We Win” and clearly sizing up our opponenent. This requires clear eyes and resolve. There is no other way to defeat FASCISM.
I am very proud of the way that NY justice stood up. Need more of this.
When Trump said that if he doesn’t win in November, “the Jewish people would really have a lot to do with that if that happens.”
Count on it motherfucker!
And crucially in this fight, the democrats (small d) are united, not divided as in 1933 in Germany.
Marcy, (bluenose dolphin),
Womp womp. Tuba signals the end. Garbage. It’s on the menu. I’ve canceled my subscription to WaPo too. Marcy, thank you for schooling the billionaire’s writing without redlines. Just the facts. If the student wants to improve they will read your words and submit a corrected paper. I’m not holding my breath.
People with principles do not have to say “I assure you that my views here are, in fact, principled.”
Lawyers have a bromide: “When the client says, ‘It’s not about the money, it’s the principle of the thing’ — it’s about the money.”
His editorial defense could have been much simpler and more elegant, along the lines of: “Person, Woman, Man, Typewriter, Newspaper”.
There! He just aced it! Nothing more need be said! Smartest newspaper owner in the world!
Sidney Blumenthal has a great opinion piece in The Guardian:
We are witnessing the making of a fascist president in real time.
Blumenthal reminds about many of Trump’s attempts to interfere with the DoJ in his first term, the actual content of the Mueller report, Trump’s corrupt use of pardons, and other abuses of power.
And then we have Trump’s Rally at Madison Square Garden, which was patterned after a pro-Nazi rally from the 1930’s and filled with weird speakers spouting vile, racist rhetoric.
The Bulwark podcasters, Tim Miller and Bill Kristol (former-R and Never Trumpers) were joined by Robert Kagan (the editor who resigned from WaPo after Bezos killed its planned endorsement of Harris) to discuss both that and the MSG stuff:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsvdTqevPfw
Kagan describes the hateful rhetoric at the MSG rally as “the movement is baring its teeth, its showing its claws”. He thinks MAGA and Trump’s appeal are explicitly about race—“White supremacy and White Christian supremacy.”
“White supremacy and White Christian supremacy.”
Please don’t write Christian with a capital “C,” or without the ending, “-ist.”
You might write instead, what a Georgian from Savannah once called the “evil christians.” (Small “c,” for extra contempt.)
Independent of this — He’s shown the judgment to give up Mackenzie Scott for a bimbo. This whole stunt fits his MO. Nice yacht. Damaged paper.
I like the Bloomberg headline: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-10-28/jeff-bezos-explains-post-s-decision-not-to-endorse-a-candidate = Bezos Says Post Withheld Endorsement to Fight ‘Credibility Gap’
Why write at all if he intended to be dishonest? Why add further insult to readers? And the way it came out, Bezos spiked our already written Harris endorsement, that did more for the Harris campaign than a vanilla endorsement ever would have. Jeff’s lost his mojo. Former risk taker. Current yacht owner. Clueless oligarch. Give him a Tesla and tell him to stand in the corner.
Saying dishonest was said in haste. As a circumstantial inference I should not have made. I cannot read his mind and he may have believed the editorial was spot-on honest and would help.
What he wrote does speak for itself. And each of us is entitled to circumstantially react to it. He passed leadership responsibility at Amazon to another and seems adjusting to enjoying his money while reportedly driven in Amazon early days. But he did step into things at the Post, always the owner with the last and final say. His people at the paper had other ideas, which he squelched. From that he is judged. And, doing that raises the question what other shaping hand may be there? Or has been there?
Jeff Bezos wants us to believe that — ten days before a hotly contested presidential election and hours after he made what he knew would be a widely ridiculed decision — no one told him about scheduling a meeting with Donald Trump? That’s not a staffing or communications model that would produce the world’s second richest man.
No evidence for this, but I think it is highly likely that Bezos wanted a meeting with Trump to talk about Blue Origin, and Trump let it be known — if not to Bezos or the Blue Origin CEO, then to one of their minions — that no meeting would be possible until after the WaPo made its endorsement decision.
Wonder of wonders, a non-endorsement is announced, and suddenly on that very same day Trump has time on his schedule to meet.
I agree…highly likely.
“I’d like you to do us a favor, though.”
Or Trump saw the non-endorsement and invited the Blue Origin execs to make it appear that Jeff Bezos had engaged in quid pro quo. Typical mafioso move to make it look to the world that someone is loyal to the Don.
also, somehow his team and he himself had no idea an election might be happening in November 2024…just bad timing on their part…(rolls eyes, both of them)
“I assure you that my views here are, in fact, principled.”
Like size or brains, if you have to brag about it, you rarely have it. Does Jeff Bezos not know how much this script makes him sound like Donald Trump? Does he not care? Or was that the point?
It’s a sales technique.
I could see him in Jack Lemon’s role in Glengary Glenross, with Trump in Alex Baldwin’s.
It’s not often that you see a Glengarry Glenross reference in a political comment, but that one is spot on. Brilliant movie, too.
Lemmon, Alec, Glengarry Glen Ross.
Ahem.
He could have said the Post no longer does endorsements… and added why he personally thinks Trump is unfit for office…. Oops that’s probably a bridge too far…
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If these oligarchs really cared, they’d decide that they have more than enough, retire, put their companies in non-profit trusts, donate everything except enough to live beyond comfortably forever, and quietly disappear. The very fact that Bezos is putting up a fight to get more shows that he can’t be trusted. Likewise for all of them. Never trust greed.
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Anyone who becomes the first or second richest person in the world does not know the meaning of enough.
..nor the meaning of Democracy.
Kurt Vonnegut and his friend and fellow author, Joseph Heller, went to a party at a billionaire’s mansion in Shelter Island, New York.
They walked in and found themselves in a room filled with artwork by the likes of Monet and Picasso, like an art gallery.
Vonnegut turned to Heller and asked, “How does it make you feel that our host only yesterday may have made more money than your novel, Catch-22, earned in its entire history?”
Heller replied, “Yeah, but I have something he doesn’t have. I have enough.”
Source: https://www.anecdote.com/2023/01/174-we-have-enough/
Reminds me of a true story in my life. My middle-class family once owned a small apartment building in L.A. and we had a property manager overseeing the property. This property manager was a very wealthy millionaire realtor who owned numerous properties in the Los Angeles area.
When we were interviewing with him to take over from our previous property manager (a sordid tale, but irrelevant to this post) he made a big point of telling us that he had a room in his house (likely a mansion) that was a dedicated “art viewing” room that was filled with famous artworks. He went on at length about how sitting in this room viewing these artworks gave him such pleasure and was so relaxing to spend time in and he, in an empty gesture, invited my family to come over some time and have a look. We never went. The guy clearly was an egomaniac who was so proud of his mini-empire of L.A. real estate and his expensive art collection who used his art collection as a deflection from a permanently guilty conscience that he suppressed, which was due to his treating building tenants like sub-humans and using the cheapest-possible contractors, if not outright stiffing them. Sound familiar? Unfortunately, we didn’t have much of a choice and so went with him and his company for 2 years of sub-par management before the building was sold.
“Those who fight reality lose!!”
That script suggests that Jeff Bezos encourages the spread of learned helplessness, but not journalism that investigates and evaluates what it finds. Whatever that is, it’s not journalism.
Yup!
When WE fight, WE win.
This latest escaltion, intended to rile up his supporters, has awakened his opposition instead.
“…journalism that investigates and evaluates what it finds.” There are facts and there are opinions but there is not always a clear line between the two. On the other hand an opinion page endorsement for Harris can easily be substantiated by the facts that TFG is fascist based on his own words. That would be responsible journalism.
When Bezos bought the post, folks fear was that he would use the newspaper to push his own agenda by stepping into editorial decisions. We were assured that was not the case. Like Elon was just going to expand free speech on twitter. Who would have guessed that a billionaires hubris would make him do the very thing he said he wouldn’t do?
It’s a free press if you can afford to buy it.
Where on earth did this dipshit get the idea that people who fight reality always lose? If your goal is to wreck the current political structure, the reality. we currently face, then it’s quite possible to win. The examples are everywhere, including our own Revolution. And the horrific costs of battle are also clear from history, starting with our Civil War.
Where? When you run the Amazon Borg, assimilating company after company into your collective, the phrase “Resistance is futile!” is constantly on your lips.
Bezos: “I run things. Period. That’s reality. Fight me and you lose.”
It seems impossible that Bezos has never seen or heard *Hamilton*, which should have been all the warning he needed about the dangers of the “I’ll write my way out” strategy.
Apparently WaPo has lost over 200,000 subscribers already because of this act of moral cowardice.
In addition to Robert Kagan, The Guardian reports that more members of WaPo’s editorial board have resigned.
Molly Roberts’ full letter, shown in the linked article, is worth reading.
“Presidential endorsements do nothing to tip the scales of an election. No undecided voters in Pennsylvania are going to say, “I’m going with Newspaper A’s endorsement.” None. What presidential endorsements actually do is create a perception of bias.”
Thus does Bezos destroy any sense of personal or corporate integrity at WaPo.
Why tell the truth? To “move the needle”?
Or simply because one has chosen the path of integrity and honesty regardless of its effect on public opinion.
The Watergate investigation didn’t move the needle in ’72.
Still it was worth pursuing even if it never moved the needle.
I can’t tell if Bezos is gaslighting us or if he genuinely doesn’t grasp the weight of WaPo’s legacy with regard to the American presidency. The only modern president to resign to avoid impeachment and conviction did so primarily because of WaPo’s reporting.
Legacy aside, how can Bezos not grasp the fucking math? If the race is this tight during the last two weeks, every fucking vote matters, and those last handfuls of deciding votes could be swayed by an endorsement given WaPo’s legacy.
Or does Bezos think that a single article like NYT’s Halloween Surprise in 2016 — the dreadful POS “Investigating Donald Trump, F.B.I. Sees No Clear Link to Russia” — couldn’t possibly have an effect on an election?
I do not know whether Bezos alone owns WaPo, it is private with minority shareholders, or is public, but if there is a trading market depressed by this situation, there likely is a lawyer with a client who could sue based on this reality. A conscious act foreseeable as depressing share price, etc.
My understanding is he owns it all, outright, to have no fears of a shareholder suit.
Bezos created an LLC — Nash Holdings — to function as a holding company which owns WaPo. Nash Holdings is private and presumably held by Bezos alone as it is not listed and there has been zero mention of other owners. WaPo published his statement referring to him as “our owner.”
He could give a shit about anybody else. Not even the rest of this democracy to which WaPo’s tagline refers, though I guess we should have viewed it as an intention rather than a warning.
He’s fucking with us, nothing less…
…but if this works we can expect more.
The press is doing everything within their power to fight the magnificence of the phrase, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! They can’t stand the fact that this Administration has done more than virtually any other Administration in its first 2yrs. They are truly the ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 5, 2019
Plus for 9 years “fake news” has been spewed from this immature, insecure bully. Send him to Siberia permanently.
by coincidence i attended a screening of “Union”, a documentary following a group of Amazon Staten Island warehouse workers trying to form a union to improve their truly heinous working conditions, a few days ago. It was one of the most depressing films I’ve ever watched. no matter what you’ve read about the warehouse conditions, seeing it through the employees eyes (and under cover footage inside) is sobering. They truly are treated as cogs in a machine, used up and spit out at an insane pace (they cite a 150% staff turnover rate every 6 months). The film is screening in a few theatres right now, but is having trouble lining up a streaming service as…they are all owned by Bezos or his fellow anti-union billionaire cronies. The film website is “Unionthefilm (dot) com”.
also, can’t remember where i just read this, but documentary filmmakers are saying they’re starting to have to choose more “feel good” stories and steer away from hard hitting political topics in order to secure financing and distribution. another way the Billionaire Tech Dude Bros are re-shaping our world.
Hey thank you for this! There’s been a couple Amazon (filmed undercover) docs, one filmed in the UK and the other in Canada a few years ago, they’re on Youtube. Having worked carrying mail during the period when USPS held the sole-provider contract for Amazon, before they had their own fleet, it was literally one of the levels of hell–a typical route being 47 miles, with 550 mailboxes. Imagine a 58 year old male or female carrier carrying their normal mail route and then, when we got the contract 300+ parcels per day 5 and 6 days a week, easily 90% of them Amazon (Sundays were not mail days but became mandatory carrying days, 225-300 parcels average per Sunday). Carriers are some of the most incredible people I’ve ever worked with for stamina… bit toxic tho lol
Thank you very much for the link, Rosalind! I had almost forgotten the Amazon workers’ fight to unionize. Now it seems to me that might be the “real reason” why Bezos could not allow a Harris endorsement, taking her stance on unions into consideration.
With this statement, following the decision to not endorse, Bezos has enacted the formal adoption of Bothsidesism as a core principle of Institutional Journalism.
Meanwhile, I just enacted a follow-up on my Friday WaPo cancellation, and actually got a full pro-rated refund on my subscription, which though cancelled would have run through next September. At least that what the seemingly live agent in the chat seemed to tell me. (Update: just got notice that my refund is on the way.)
Bezos would do well to remember that sometimes it’s better to remain silent and be thought a fool
Billionaire who has no journalistic integrity: “People don’t trust journalism.”
Billionaire who tried to steal an election: “People don’t trust elections.”
There’s a more basic point that Bezos doesn’t get, quite aside from the shoddiness of his argument: an endorsement is an editorial, the whole point of which is to pick a side and argue for it, that is, bias, but bias supported with arguments.
Today I’m thinking of Elizabeth Warren’s BILLIONAIRE TEARs coffee mugs.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/elizabeth-warren-billionaire-tears_n_5dccc1d6e4b0a794d1fa712d
Elizabeth Warren to Billionaires [2019]
In the linked article, there’s an embedded link for Warren’s
Calculator For the Billionaires
You can “Pick a billionaire to see how much they would pay under Elizabeth’s wealth tax”. The choices are Bezos, Musk, Bloomberg, Zuckerberg, Gates, Walton, Dimon, C. Koch.
correction
Thank you Harpie. Senator Elizabeth Warren is always clear and direct.
Kudos for this, Marcy: “There’s so much logical collapse that gets papered over in this pablum.”
I trust actual journalists. Billionaires, on the other hand…nope.
This has the makings of a banal TV show, ‘Mistrust, He Simpered’, about the exploits of a pitiful, beleaguered billionaire who somehow can not gain the trust of the local townspeople as he confronts their complaints about poor pay and lack of benefits. His catchphrase would be something along the lines of “There’s a principle here, if only you people would acknowledge it”.
I’ve had enough of Bezos’ shenanigans— cancelled my Post subscription yesterday. “…dies in darkness” indeed.
It occurs to me that the political consequences of the failure of the Washington Post and LA Times to endorse Harris have been much more significant, and immediately positive, than their endorsements would have been. This may have been unintentional, but we can be grateful for it.
If the papers had published their endorsements, it would have had almost no impact. It would have been predictable, unremarkable, and instantly forgettable. (I doubt we’d be discussing it in this forum.) Instead, we have a dramatic and effective demonstration of the reality of the central message of the Harris campaign: that Trump is a fascist whose disrespect for the rule of law would cause even oligarchs to bend the knee. This event is reverberating widely, far more widely than any endorsement would have done.
Sometimes, actions speak louder than words: Bezos signaling that he is scared of Trump is much more potent than yet another politician using the “F” word.
The victims here are the WaPo staff, of course. But that’s always the case with solipsistic billionaires….
I have a question directed to anyone who cares to reply.
Is the REACTION to “the failure of the Washington Post and LA Times to endorse Harris” and their motives WIDE, or is it being understood by already well-informed folks?
Second part: If the reaction is NOT widely felt, then the lack of Endorsements would have a larger impact because those would be more obvious to the general public.
Here’s a separate example, locally:
“The mayor [Swagger Adams] said Saturday he doesn’t believe it’s appropriate to label Trump a fascist or compare him to dictators like Adolf Hitler. ‘My answer is no,’ Adams told reporters. ‘I know what Hitler has done and I know what a fascist regime looks like.’”
This from a guy who does NOT “know what a fascist regime looks like.”
A guy who allowed encouraged Turkish goverment, Chinese government, and Russian government into his administration’s actions.
source: “New York Daily News
UPDATED: October 28, 2024 at 9:06 PM EDT
Bezos pushed a big red button labeled “journalist self-image/regard”. Possibly the best possible way to guarantee a tsunami of outrage from journalists, who identify very strongly indeed with the ideals of their profession. If he truly didn’t understand the reaction it would have he makes Musk look sober and insightful. I imagine not even that British public school trained turd polisher Willis could write a Trump endorsement with a straight face, but killing a Harris endorsement could only be aimed at 1 reader.
Willis? Do you mean the WaPo’s publisher, Sir William Lewis?
William Lewis was born and raised in Hampstead Garden Suburb, North London, England. His father David Lewis M.B.E, (2010) [8] worked as a Managing Director of a packaging company and his mother Sally was a teacher. Lewis’s primary education was at Brookland Junior school in Hampstead Garden Suburb
His secondary education was at Whitefield school, a comprehensive school in the London Borough of Barnet. After achieving his A levels, Lewis studied for a BSc in politics and economics at Bristol University,
Hampstead Garden is a leafy suburb in LBBarnet, it has a Lutyens designed central square and church. Middle class parents. Lewis’s comprehensive school sold off part of its playing field so Tesco could build a supermarket. No doubt because of its catchment area is an academically successful one Lewis’s brother 10 years his senior went to Brasenose College Oxford, and eventually became PM Gordon Brown’s Director of Communications, Bristol Uni is a highly regarded red brick University. But all of this is solidly conservative middle class.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Lewis_(journalist) And linked pages
The Fathers MBE was for services to education as chairman of governors at the Whitfield School , Announced In Queens Birthday honours June 2010. Lewis’s brother left his job as Gordon Brown’s aide in May 2010 when Brown ceased to be PM
In 2010 Will Lewis was named journalist of the year for his role at the Telegraph in revealing the Parliamentary expenses scandal lWHO h brought down the Labour Speaker of the Commons.
W Lewis moved on to News International
In July 2024 former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced London police are looking into claims Lewis was involved in a 2011 mass cover-up of phone hacking by British tabloids. [47]
There’s much to be curious about in the intersection of class politics and journalism in the U.K. and not hard to put together.
Inaccurately snarking about Public School boys with homophobic double entendres is a “damned poor show” Queens Whiz , “could try harder”
Correction;
SteveBev
October 30, 2024 at 2:54 am
‘lWHO h brought down ’ => ‘which brought down’
Queens Whiz was a serendipitous auto-corrupt for Cheez Whiz
In the event of a Harris Administration, what moves get taken to inhibit Bezos and Musk? Is Musk criminally charged with election violations, or investigated for crimes related to sharing secure data with the Russians? Are Blue Origin, or Amazon, sidelined in the awarding of government contracts and the Post blackballed from the White House under his ownership. Or do we, again, decide that “we don’t do that”, either out of fear or peace, and let impunity be the implied law of the land?
Start with specificity. What is it exactly you want to inhibit?
We don’t write and enact laws targeting individuals for prosecution. Laws are supposed to serve the general public welfare; what isn’t being served?
In Musk’s case the feds are already investigating his PAC’s $1M solicitation of votes, and the Philadelphia DA has sued him. In Bezos’ case and in Musk’s, there sadly no law against being a massive douchebag.
I might take issue with your use of the term “sadly” here. I would be in trouble with some folks I know, were there such a law. :)
For example, I believe – solely on media reports, so I understand the limitations- that Elon Musk may have committed crimes relative to his role in financing the pennsylvania giveaways. I believe strongly that a Harris DOJ should complete an investigation of this and, if they believe a crime has been committed in any way, they should move to indict Musk and have him face trial. I fear, however, that the weight of his megaphone with X, any potential impact to millions of Tesla shareholders, directly or indirectly, as well as the geopolitical power of Starlink are pretty daunting. I fear they may decide to “move on”, and just let impunity be solidified amongst a set of our society who more and more find no real accountability at all in the big or small. I respect the Philadelphia DA, but a civil fine is hardly an impediment to Musk. As far as Bezos, there is certainly no law against being a massive douche, but there is an obligation to serve the public by associating our tax dollars with parties that uphold our values, so long as the public isn’t the victim. If its true that he feared that Trump would harm his business interests, but Harris would just carry on as usual, allowing business as usual is a form of impunity
And
Isn’t Bezos breaking the PAC coordination laws by appearing at multiple Trump events, touting Trump talking points, endorsing Trump?
Coordination would have been prohibited. But that was before two recent FEC decisions that allow certain forms of coordination, exceptions that appear to swallow the rule.
The press has virtually ignored the changes. That lack of coverage highlights Marcy’s point that, if Trump wins and democracy dies, the so-called free press will bear much of the blame.
https://ohiocapitaljournal.com/2024/07/25/campaign-finance-watchdog-raises-alarm-about-recent-fec-super-pac-decisions/
I think that Frank is referring to THE APPLICATION of the Law (enforcement) and not “write[ing] and enact[ing] laws targeting individuals for prosecution”.
Previous examples include: Stuff the Barr has been accused of here, Ford’s pardon of Nixon has been discussed here, Obama’s “looking forward, and not back” and not pursuing the bankers.
Frank wrote, “what moves get taken to inhibit Bezos and Musk?”
I don’t know how you glean that Frank means “THE APPLICATION” of law when Frank doesn’t spell out how both men have violated any laws. In Musk’s case there has been action by law enforcement, it’s just not what Frank demands when he wants to happen; this suggests either an inadequacy in existing law or a misunderstanding on Frank’s part.
Law is supposed to be based on reason and not emotion or bias. We don’t target people simply because we don’t like them or they have too much/too little money. Point to the violation of law and then research its enforcement. If there’s no applicable law and the public has a compelling interest, work to fill that void.
Lastly, let Frank speak for himself.
Replying to Rayne
October 30, 2024 at 6:34 am
Speaking for myself, I know there to be Political influence on both application and enforcement of the law.
There are 2 separate problems:
1. Political influence (the examples I cited are: Barr, Ford on Nixon, and Obama on Bankers.
2. Better laws, which you have clarified with ” If there’s no applicable law and the public has a compelling interest, work to fill that void.” I have undersood this.
Marcy has correctly pointed out his sloppy use terms like “most people” to generalize when he should be specific. It’s worse than that. One of the first rules of writing, and of business, is “know your audience.” Part of the problem with this piece is that he can’t decide who he’s talking to. His staff? The public? The subscribers? Trump? Himself? Toward the end he unironically says:
He’s identified a problem and then replicated it all in the same breath and without a shred of self awareness. However, he’s still using ambiguous language like “a certain elite.” The term elite in this context sets off alarm bells that he’s not talking about he media, but adopting the right’s characterization of the left. Here he also recognizes that THE SUBSCRIBERS are leaving, but only as something that happened in the past, not as the whole reason he’s writing this piece.
Here’s where Bezos failure as a writer is a symptom of his failure as a business leader. His customers are leaving because he doesn’t understand them. He’s pining for an idealized past with a larger, less elite audience–implying the problem is one of editorial choices rather than say, I don’t know… the fucking internet that made him a billionaire?! Totally clueless.
Their most recent Pulitzer was for Editorial Writing, taking a deep dive into how foreign authoritarians seize and maintain power, now using information technology alongside other more classic authoritarian tools.
But I guess writing editorials about authoritarians in other countries is fine with Jeff. It’s just writing about authoritarians here at home that is a problem.
head meets desk
The Bezos piece provides a nice case-study against too much power with only one brain to manage it. His excuses and responses boiled down to:
– ignorance (didn’t know about the Blue Origin meeting)
– poor planning (timing of decision was unintentional)
– arrogance (there’s no way he could know that the endorsement would not have moved a single vote)
– whining (my life is complicated)
– justification based on past behavior (I took good care of your dog for 11 years, but I throw it out the window one time and now you’re mad?)
He says, “To win this fight, we will have to exercise new muscles.” His companies should look for some good independent directors, because someone needs to make sure he knows about key meetings, plans ahead for presidential elections, stays informed about how the world works, and gets to where he needs to be, because life can be complicated.
Although, now that the WaPo isn’t endorsing anyone, I guess Bezos could personally endorse a candidate without worrying about influencing the paper, right?
I’ve been thinking along the same lines.
This is a self-inflicted wound by a careless man.
I am pleasantly surprised, however, by the fact that he deigned to engage with the masses by publishing an explanation. Maybe he doesn’t like the image of him bending the knee to kiss Trump’s ring.
Additionally, over 300 Gannett outlets are refraining from endorsing any national candidates:
https://thehill.com/homenews/media/4958134-300-gannett-outlets-not-endorsing-presidential-national-races/
SMH.
Funny to hear Jeff Bezos’ take on hard, cold reality. Because I think people expect the press to illuminate that reality with evidence-backed reasoning, while maintaining the independence to present unvarnished conclusions (and, yes, editorial opinions based on those conclusions) regardless of how inconvenient those in power may find them.
Instead, the Bezos Bozos of the world have given us a self-absorbed, supine press that reacts chiefly to itself and its own public reflection, like a dog chasing its tail in a mirror. They skip over filming the substantive documentary, and present us instead with endless “guy in an Ohio diner” reaction vids and he-said, she-said pundit pillowfights from which viewers are encouraged to pick a side and “decide for themselves”.
Well, sure, Jeff, the decision is mine, but I wanted you to inform it by giving me facts and analysis that lie beyond my reach. Not by surveying the equally ignorant and repackaging the statistics as “breaking news”.
And then, of course, the leash gets yanked at these critical moments, destroying our trust in whatever shreds of journalistic integrity remain amid the apparatchiks.
A sad day. I already canceled WaPo a year ago over their undermining of Biden. This week I dumped Amazon Prime and e-mailed [email protected] to tell him why, for whatever that’s worth.
You hit it on the head and I respect that you let them know how they’ve abandoned their job with your cancellations and letter. I cancelled a while ago and, I too, write to the bosses to let them know how to do better.
One paragraph in today’s “Letters to an American” jumped out at me: “The racism and fascism Trump’s MAGA Republicans displayed at Madison Square Garden is usually expressed within their media bubble, where it passes for normal conversation. The backlash against it among people in the real world appears to have shocked the Trump campaign so much that the candidate is running away from his own closing argument.”
Seeing this shit, in our faces at Madison Square Garden, which local people know as the home of the Knicks, but not the Bund, has pissed us off. Big time
All the publishers I ever worked for, except one, were the children or grandchildren of men who had started or built up the papers. Some were better than others but not one got the job on merit. Bezos demonstrated a tin ear by hiring Lewis. (And I would have said the same about almost any other Briton; their journalistic standards are as different from mine as chalk and cheese.)
Unlike many here, I will not cancel my Post subscription. Newspapers are collegial enterprises; no one person directs or controls the output, compromise is constant. Over 45 years, my byline appeared next to hundreds of stories that I thought were embarrassingly stupid, and I guarantee my colleagues thought the same of some of mine. My brother, the professor, could never understand why I put up with it. He ran his lab exactly as he wanted it run. (“Being tenured means never having to say you’re sorry,” he liked to say.)
A newspaper is a smorgasbord. Try to avoid the fish that’s been out too long.
Newspapers may be collegial, but they are not democracies. Editors ride herd on reporters, providing both direction about what stories to cover and spiking stories they believe ought not to run (at least in the form presented). Owners ride herd on editors, hiring those who follow their lead and firing those who do not.
Bad leadership grinds good reporters into dust, and readers are the losers as a result. In this case, it would appear that 10% of the WaPo readership is tired of losing, and looking elsewhere for news that the company is willing to stand behind.
“He said/She said” is no way to run a newspaper, and that’s what Bezos has made the Official Policy of the WaPo. Readers deserve to know not just what he and she said, but who was speaking the truth as well as what it all means. Endorsements are a time when a news outlet looks back on all their reporting over the whole of the campaign, lays it next to all their reporting about the issues and concerns facing the public in this moment, and telling its readership “after all this research and reporting, here’s who we believe is best suited for this office.”
But all Bezos wants is the “he said/she said” part of that equation.
The style of newspaper management that you describe (at, e.g., the Johnstown Herald-Tribune, the Cleveland Press and Plain Dealer, the Akron Beacon Journal) began disappearing in the mid-1980s, owing to consolidation and the rise of private equity, which treats them and their assets as if they were inefficient conglomerates that were worth more broken up or squeezed dry, rather than continuing to operate as a going concern. That movement has only accelerated since then.
It’s why I think private equity, hedge funds, and VCs should be treated as private banks and not allowed to buy businesses outside the financial sector.
It is easier to have noble principles when you are making lots of money. Corporations get mean when they get lean.
But individual ownershjp/management also throws up characters like Bob McCormack, whose influence was arguably worse than Murdoch’s.
Shorter Bezos: I’m a billionaire and you’re not.
Jeff.
Say less.
Anyhow you have to give the NYT some credit here, at least from a gamesmanship standpoint. They are more clever in terms of their low-key enablement of Trumpism for eight years ensuring their continued access in spite of allowing the Editorial Board to engage in performative, fig-leaf resistance to fascism.
I’m 73, a tech dinosaur. I go to the website of the brand of tennis shoes I wear and click on the type & am forwarded to Amazon to make my purchase. WE have NO antitrust. A basic to preserve Democracy. I won’t mention Glass-Steagall…………
So now the most vile treasonous nazialike is running to completely destroy Democracy & we’re having to argue in complete absurdities.
Adding in the reality, is on this path, climate change will sink Bezo’s fucking yacht, like what happened in Italy not long ago. Will We survive climate change? Someone of tech immediately could do a post including on one of these newspaper sites of Jeff Bezo’s fucking yacht and photos of the Italian yacht side by side that sank by a freak tornado, hopefully able to get graphic photos of the dead people who were on in it. THANKS JEFF FOR YOUR FUCKING ENDORSEMENT!
SIC ACTOR MALUM
Democracy Dies in The Dark-
Epigraph for Our Age,
Arise now Bezos, oligarch
To declaim upon His Page:
He’s truly journalism’s last great sage !
Opaque, fixed principles true, have been;
For, dues complex, principals, ache unseen!
What is true integrity?
(Answer proof for gains)
Perception trumps reality
(Obedience remains)
Better is discretion (tho dim and darkly pious)
Yet valor for democracy, is hailed a sin of bias!
Beige as my personality
Equi—valency is gamed
Zone of faux neutrality
Obeisance (by others named).
Shamelessly, is thus the motto shamed!
Limp
Laptop Comer, where’s that dude
That guy who loves a dick pic nude
The prick who relishes what’s rude
He’d Schlapp this down, not in the mood
But in this race, a neck to necker
We remember David Pecker
What he said to Gavin deBecker
about a Saudi hack and high-tech(er)
Nothing to see, no MBS
Nothing here to second guess
No MAGAzine to hide a mess
No Khashoggi murder to confess
As we approach this November
We recall the dreadful ember
of a coup plotter and Pretender
endangering even a Johnson member
Oranges of greed show cowardice too
Blue Origin has had a change in its hue
Bezos is all about the thumbscrew
We’ve all seen it, it’s now in plain view
He makes his workers have to scrimp
His ethics no better than a Putin pimp
Like the tragedy of the Hindenburg blimp,
His cock up has been consigned to Limp
Chapeau
Low hanging fruit ;-)
Where are the calls to boycott Amazon? He doesn’t give a flying f about the revenues of the Wapo. He bought it to have the impact that it just did. He already made his money on that investment.
That would be difficult to arrange. I would not join Amazon Prime during the Covid Crisis BECAUSE PRIME ONLY HAD TOILET PAPER FOR ITS PRIME MEMBERS!
But, you have to accept that most Americans are self-centered and not very concerned with the common good (which is how we got to this place we’re in). I even had someone close to me admonish me for withstanding Amazon’s extortion, by explaining to me that it was the majority who used Amazon Prime and it was I who was the outlyer. Like I was only hurting myself.So much for getting consumers to consider the Common Good.
Democracy dies in darkness, according to the Washington Post.
Jeff Bezos has turned out the light.
Such an absolute fucking coward. Canceled our Amazon accounts. He can go fuck himself and his hundreds of billions.
I’m very sorry for the OT, but if anyone knows people who disagree with Biden/Harris on Gaza and are asking why they should vote for her, please show them THIS video from Bernie Sanders:
“I disagree with Kamala’s position on the war in Gaza. How can I vote for her?” Here is my answer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vf5MThSniiY Bernie Sanders 10/29/24
On the whole, I trust real journalists (like the Post employs/employed) far more than I trust guys with 400′ yachts and silicone side-pieces.
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sry, OT (but kind of onT) Renata in a German tv public service announcement just said we had a bad day, and the Russian comment bots agree. Other laboratories also agree.
She said,”well Georgia was sort of laboratory for the EU in promoting European values, human rights, rule of law .. for some time it was a poster child of the EU, and now the situation is quite the opposite..”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZ1USuiDbeU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hyk-Vdd_Qrk
I’m glad to be one of the 200,000+ who cancelled their WaPo subscriptions on Friday. It forced me to take an careful look at how I get my news and to restructure my online sources.
I’m kinda grumpy about what might happen to good journalists if the paper enters a decline.
And then I’m wondering why one of the wealthiest persons on the planet isn’t trying to quietly buy up all of Trump’s debt.
Bezos looks at that Leans Left label in his Ground News app and grits his teeth. “This can be fixed!”
Amazon stock up 1.3% today.
It’s almost like stuff like this doesn’t matter.
It’s worth remembering that at his height Rockefeller was likely worth even more dollar to dollar than Bezos or Musk, and some estimates suggest it may have been both combined. We survived then by pushing onward, we’ll survive now. Perhaps I’m being a little rose colored in my perceptions, but this feels akin to the last desperate grasps for air of another wave of dying intolerance. It doesn’t mean people won’t get hurt, and hopefully there’s enough of us reasonable in society to try to help those hurt, but it does hopefully mean it does matter in that long bend of justice
Yes. Useful to consider that, c. 1911, when the original Standard Oil was broken up, John D. Rockefeller Sr (1839-1937) was already the richest man in the world. But that was before several developments made him far richer.
That is, BEFORE petroleum products became the principal lubricant and fuel for industry, transportation (shipping, rail, and road and air transport), energy production, and warfare. And before it became the feedstock for the petrochemical industry, which made plastics and “artificial” fertilizer ubiquitous.
Rockefeller also managed to undo much of the effect of the 1911 break up of Standard Oil, by orchestrating clandestine cross-ownership arrangements and interlocking directorships of the companies into which Standard Oil was broken.
Nailed it. Bezos. “The truth doesn’t matter in journalism and our work is pointless. Please subscribe.”
My first take on Bezos’ column came at it from a different direction. Take his analogy literally: Why do people doubt the accuracy of voting machines? Donald Trump and his minions tell lots of lies about them to undercut belief in their accuracy. No one has any demonstrated facts that they are not accurate, tests show that they are even more accurate (at least reproducible) than hand counting. Chavez is dead and has been dead. Why do people doubt the news media and question its accuracy and fairness? Again, one primary cause is Donald Trump and his minions shouting “fake news” and “enemies of the people” at news media.
The obvious lesson I gain from his analogy is that to restore belief in news media, Bezos should be taking on the lies and “alternative facts” spewing from one candidate and campaign, and at least endorsing against that candidate. Dominion and Smartmatic aren’t going to restore faith in the accuracy of their machines by laying low. They are fighting back in courts, where at least some facts actually matter.
I cancelled my subscription to WaPo, despite that meaning I get annoying banners about how many hours left in my subscription and more annoying popups offering super discounts if I would only re-subscribe until my current access expires in 2 weeks.
Good advice regarding the right wing rush to fascism, do not obey in advance. The LATimes and WaPo decline endorsing either candidate.
How to combat it elsewhere? Canceling a subscription is one thing, how to respond when your sitting Senator declares she won’t vote for either Harris or Trump?
I watched some of Bannon’s presser. Sloppy Steve said 1) he had already spoken to Trump and 2) the 2020 election was stolen. He has no remorse and is as arrogant as ever.
He got pushback from Tim Miller. And he got trolled by Robby Roadsteamer.
Jimmy Kimmel did a good segment for Republicans on Trump’s lies.