In late October, Jeff Bezos and Will Lewis (Murdoch crony and Washington Post CEO) ordered WaPo’s editors to dump the newspaper’s planned endorsement of Kamala Harris. The backlash to the decision was immediate, with thousands of people unsubscribing from WaPo and several journalists and editors stepping down. The day after the election, Bezos dropped his endorsement of Donald Trump though – Bezos congratulated Trump and openly kissed Trump’s dinosaur ass. Now this: Bezos will donate $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund.
Amazon.com is planning a $1 million donation to president-elect Donald Trump’s inaugural fund, as founder Jeff Bezos and other tech leaders shore up ties with the incoming administration. The donation is being prepared as Bezos, Amazon’s executive chairman, is slated to visit Trump next week at his private Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Fla., according to people familiar with the matter.
Tech companies have been the target of intense criticism by Trump and his allies, and other tech leaders have hastened to smooth ties with him. Mark Zuckerberg directed Meta Platforms to also make a $1 million contribution to Trump’s inaugural fund, The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday.
Bezos and the company decided on the contribution earlier this week, and communicated it to Trump’s team, according to some of the people. “Bezos is donating through Amazon,” according to a person close to Bezos. Amazon also will stream the inauguration through its Prime Video business, a separate, in-kind donation valued at $1 million, another of the people said.
Amazon gave about $58,000 in cash and in-kind donations to Trump’s inauguration in 2017, when other tech companies donated larger amounts. Amazon was told by the Biden administration that it wasn’t accepting tech donations for the 2021 inauguration, according to a person familiar with the matter, although Amazon streamed the inauguration for President Biden.
During the first Trump administration, Bezos and Amazon actually lost a big government contract. Instead of holding a grudge and making it his life’s mission to send Trump straight to hell, Bezos has spent recent years “making nice” with Trump, supplicating and capitulating to whatever Trump does or says. It’s a pretty awful look in general, and a catastrophic look for the owner of the Washington Post. This is why millions of people have abandoned their newspaper subscriptions, by the way. People are also tuning out cable news in droves. The post-election media landscape is dire, but hey, those are the same media outlets who sanewashed Donald Trump for years and helped get him elected. (Also, it f–king sucks that Mark Zuckerberg is donating too.)
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.
