There isn’t even a cynical explanation for Jeff Bezos destroying The Washington Post

300 journalists person mislaid their jobs astatine The Washington Post. Over 300,000 readers person canceled their subscriptions. Owner Jeff Bezos, who purchased the legendary publication successful 2013, has driven his estimation into the crushed by utilizing his immense empire to churn retired contented designed to make President Donald Trump happy: Amazon MGM Studios spent $40 cardinal to nutrient a fawning documentary astir Melania Trump, which premiered days earlier the Post sent retired wide layoff notices. And yet, he’s gotten thing retired of his attempts to suck up to Donald Trump — astatine least, thing that’s a nett affirmative to his bottommost line.

Which begs the cynical question: Why does he moreover ain The Washington Post at all?

The Trump era is, aft all, a cynical and transactional time. Billionaires, CEOs, and world leaders person quickly learned that sucking up to Trump will get them what they want — pardons, tariff exemption, an export power lifted, a merger woody approved, an investigation quashed. And erstwhile it comes to media companies, the Paramount-Skydance merger has group the barroom for sucking up to Trump. In bid for the merger to get regulatory approval, Skydance CEO David Ellison pushed CBS to settee a defamation suit revenge by Trump, canceled The Late Show pinch Stephen Colbert, and hired Bari Weiss, a right-wing Substacker pinch virtually nary newsroom activity experience, arsenic CBS News’s editor-in-chief. In short, Ellison had to perpetrate to neutering CBS’s expertise to knock Trump. But he did get a $28 cardinal merger retired of it.

Bezos’ media plays, connected the different hand, look self-contradictory. Financing a fawning documentary astir Melania Trump does not mesh pinch owning a media institution pinch a 150-year-old bequest of holding politicians accountable, particularly 1 that famously held Trump accountable during his first administration. (If the extremity was to neuter the Post too, past bafflingly, his deputy, Will Lewis, fired everyone except for those connected the governmental desks.) Even his effort to abstracted the governmental opinions from the Post’s journalism, an effort to person it some ways, backfired. After he announced that the sentiment page would now bespeak much blimpish views, reporters began leaving the Post in droves, and subscriber numbers plummeted moreover further. As the Post’s erstwhile editor-in-chief Marty Baron put it successful a file soon aft the layoffs, it was “near-instant, self-inflicted marque destruction.”

One could reason — arsenic WaPo insiders person to media reporters — that the layoffs were basal because the insubstantial was losing money. But billionaires person plentifulness of face-saving ways to get an unprofitable media outlet disconnected their hands, successful a mode that does not see wide layoffs (or astatine least, offloads the layoffs onto its adjacent owner). The Philadelphia Inquirer, for instance, had been donated by its billionaire proprietor to a nonprofit, while Facebook billionaire Chris Hughes ended up trading The New Republic to Win McCormack aft his ain grounded effort to reshape the 100-year-old magazine. The Post, which had grown its integer assemblage passim Bezos’ ownership, would person instantly attracted buyers: past year, tech journalist Kara Swisher announced that she and respective investors were prepared to acquisition the Post from Bezos, but reportedly ne'er heard backmost from him.

Perhaps Bezos needs to suck up to Trump to further Amazon’s interests, which would make much consciousness if Bezos still ran the company. Except he doesn’t. He stepped down arsenic CEO successful 2021. Amazon, whose subsidiary AWS holds the lion’s stock of national authorities contracts, has been capable to independently suck up to Trump via donations to the White House’s caller ballroom fund. (Admittedly, Bezos’ authorities contracts pinch NASA are connected the table, and he was reportedly spotted hanging retired pinch Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth astatine a Blue Origin installation successful Florida connected the time of the Post layoffs.)

Maybe this heap of self-contradictions — or, as he erstwhile described his ownership of the Post, a “complexifier” — was inevitable erstwhile Trump came backmost into agency and made it clear that he would punish the Big Tech entities that displeased him. But there’s nary clear and logical mentation for why Bezos is going astir his supplication: not 1 that makes financial sense, nor 1 that instantly furthers his ain governmental opinionated pinch Trump, nor 1 that reaffirms the committedness he erstwhile made to protecting the First Amendment. And that deficiency of clarity only makes the Post’s decapitation moreover much senseless.