Donald Trump just took his war on the free press to a new level of absurdity, filing an FEC complaint against the Washington Post for — wait for it — promoting its own reporting. Apparently, Bezos’ attempt to appease the MAGA crowd with his endorsement cop-out didn’t do the trick.
We had warned Jeff Bezos that his decision to capitulate-in-advance and block the Washington Post from publishing a Kamala Harris endorsement would lead Trump to push for even more. And now it’s here. The complaint claims that the WaPo’s decision to run ads promoting its reporting was “illegal corporate in-kind contributions” to Harris’ campaign.
Really.
And, yes, we just covered another of Donald Trump’s blatant attacks on the First Amendment with his crazy lawsuit against CBS over how it edited a 60 Minutes interview that the show did with Harris. But this story is more about Bezos, and the utter stupidity of thinking that capitulating to Trump and blocking the endorsement would magically make the MAGA world “trust” the Washington Post.
The FEC complaint is ridiculous on multiple levels. The crux of his complaint is based on a report in Semafor, that the Washington Post was doing paid promotion of some of its articles about the campaign, and tended to promote “neutral” stories about Harris, but “critical” stories about Trump. Really.
The Washington Post recently announced it would not endorse a presidential candidate, a decision the Post’s owner defended on the basis that “Presidential endorsements do nothing to tip the scales of an election.”
Yet, on October 30, 2024, the news website Semafor published a report titled “Washington Post pays to boost stories critical of Trump as subscribers flee.” The Semafor article discloses that, starting “on Monday,” October 28, 2024—just over a week before Election Day—The Washington Post has “aggressively ramped up its paid advertising campaign, boosting dozens of articles related to the election.”
As Semafor reported, this is no simple commercial marketing campaign.: “While the [Post] articles about Vice President Kamala Harris were relatively neutral in tone”—if not flattering—“and focused on her … digital strategy, her policy proposals, and her chances of winning …, the articles that the Post paid to highlight about [President] Trump told a different story.” In fact, Semafor reported, the Washington Post has paid to “boost[] multiple critical articles” of President Trump through this sudden, last-minute advertising campaign.
So, yeah, he’s now trying to make a thing about the Washington Post’s decisions on what articles it’s promoting through advertising. The simple reality is that the Post is advertising the kinds of stories it thinks will get the most attention. That some of those are about how Donald Trump is out of his mind isn’t on the Post. It’s on him.
This is all even more stupid given that Donald Trump himself claimed that the Washington Post’s non-endorsement was really an endorsement for Trump himself.
“The Washington Post and Los Angeles Times, and all these papers. They’re not endorsing anybody. You know what they’re really saying – because they only endorse Democrats – they’re saying this Democrat’s no good. They’re no good. And they think I’m doing a great job. They just don’t want to say it,” he said.
Once again, this is an example of Donald Trump trying to punish anyone who says anything negative about him, betraying his willingness to suppress speech that he doesn’t like.
But, at the same time, it should be a loud siren for those thinking that they, too, will capitulate-in-advance. It won’t magically make MAGA folks trust you or like you. They will only continue the attack and ask for more and more. Donald Trump won’t be satisfied until the Washington Post is full of pro-Trump propaganda and nonsense.
Bezos’ initial step towards that didn’t help. It only encouraged Trump to push for more.
