A Washington Post columnist has flipped owner Jeff Bezos’ MAGA vision for the paper on its head—by using the opinion section’s two new “pillars” to skewer President Donald Trump.
Responding to Bezos’ declaration that the paper would from now on uphold ”personal liberties and free markets,” political writer Dana Milbank wrote, “In its plain language, this is unobjectionable.”
However, in the piece published Friday in the Post‚ Milbank seemed to interpret the principles’ application differently than the Amazon owner, who poured $1 million into Trump’s inauguration, might have preferred.
“But this much is clear,” the columnist continued. “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.”
Milbank pointed out Trump’s increasingly authoritarian self-styling in his second term. He has referred to himself as a “king,” and in the vein of Louis XIV, proclaimed, “We are the federal law.”
Just this week, Milbank observed, Trump’s administration moved to pick the news outlets who would be allowed direct access to the president.
On the economic side, Milbank argued that Trump’s tariffs on Mexico, Canada, and China—three of the country’s largest trade partners—are an attack on the free markets.
In scathingly precise detail, the columnist highlighted each way that Trump’s second term has run exactly counter to the two principles Bezos has embraced.
“Claiming monarchical powers, attacking the free press, starting trade wars, cutting off legal immigration, siding with despots over free countries, politicizing law enforcement and the military, assaulting the judicial system and injecting crony capitalism at the highest levels of government,” Milbank writes. “These are all the very antithesis of ‘personal liberties and free markets.”
In his statement announcing the the paper’s new editorial slant, Bezos wrote, “I’m confident that free markets and personal liberties are right for America.”
Milbank agreed: “I am, too. And that is why we must fight to keep Trump from destroying them.”
The MAGA makeover at the Post, when it was announced Wednesday, sparked outrage from the paper’s legendary former editor Marty Baron.
“I have always been grateful for how he stood up for The Post and an independent press against Trump’s constant threats to his business interests,“ Baron, who edited the paper from 2012 to 2021, exclusively told the Daily Beast. ”Now I couldn’t be more sad and disgusted."
Bezos’ move, which caused editorial page editor David Shipley to resign in protest, also horrified the paper’s staff. Top economic reporter Jeff Stein called it a “massive encroachment,” while columnist Philip Bump wrote simply, “What the actual f---.”
Bezos, who once fashioned himself as a hands-off owner, sparked outcry, staff resignations, and a subscriber exodus when he killed an October editorial endorsing Kamala Harris for president.
