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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   9031 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 28, 2024

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I do not find Bezos' denial that this was politically motivated very credible. Just earlier this month the Post editorial board endorsed both a Senator and a House rep. Apparently Bezos came around to these principles in the last two weeks. Or maybe endorsing Senators/Reps moves the needle for voters in a way it doesn't for President? Does endorsing these candidates not create an appearance of bias the way endorsing a candidate for President does?

Also this:

I would also like to be clear that no quid pro quo of any kind is at work here. Neither campaign nor candidate was consulted or informed at any level or in any way about this decision. It was made entirely internally. Dave Limp, the chief executive of one of my companies, Blue Origin, met with former president Donald Trump on the day of our announcement. I sighed when I found out, because I knew it would provide ammunition to those who would like to frame this as anything other than a principled decision. But the fact is, I didn’t know about the meeting beforehand. Even Limp didn’t know about it in advance; the meeting was scheduled quickly that morning. There is no connection between it and our decision on presidential endorsements, and any suggestion otherwise is false.

Does Bezos understand this makes it look more like a quid pro quo? If the meeting is something that had been scheduled months ago and just happened to fall on the same day then it could excused as a coincidence. "The meeting (quo) wasn't set up until we killed the endorsement (quid)" looks worse! Not better!

What is best theory for a trade? Trump gets a not-that-bad signal from a known media enemy and Bezos gets tax cuts?

How did it come to be that the LA Times did something similar? That part is strange. As mentioned, the lack of endorsement is more significant than an endorsement itself. I assume a place like the LA Times is far more doomed than WaPo.

A lot of what he writes suggests it is political. Just not in a quid pro quo way. WaPo benefited from one Trump presidency. It could continue to downsize and remain a bastion of resistance for some years, or maybe it can't and that is why this signal has to be sent. Bezos doesn't want to own the bastion of resistance anymore.

Maybe he is tired.

re: LA Times, though the owner is a Clinton donor, he met with Trump in 2017 and asked for a cabinet position, then was appointed by Paul Ryan to a health policy advisory committee. He's a pharma billionaire who presumably has strong opinions on relevant issues and would like a seat at the table, the LA Times is definitely secondary to that.

Amusingly, he was also an early investor in Zoom. I wonder whether that or his pharma investments paid off better during Covid.

How did it come to be that the LA Times did something similar?

If the owner's daughter is to be believed, he just genuinely believes that Israel is committing a genocide in Gaza and doesn't want to help a candidate who won't take action against it.

The meeting was with Blue Origin executives which is Bezos' space flight company. Presumably WaPo doesn't endorse Harris and maybe Trump steers some NASA contracts Blue Origin's way if he wins. This hearkens back to the JEDI military contract during the Trump administration, which allegedly went to Microsoft over Amazon for political reasons (including alleged interference by Trump).

What is best theory for a trade?

"We'd like to work with you in our coming administration, but we can't do that whist you're openly endorsing our opposition. Make that go away and we can talk."

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