Jen Rubin Brutally Shreds The Washington Post While Announcing Her Exit: Bezos ‘Bent the Knee’ to Trump

AP Photo/Lauren Victoria Burke

According to Paul Simon there are 50 ways to leave your lover, and probably at least that many ways to leave your employer, but some are definitely more combative than others.

Such was the exit strategy chosen by Jennifer Rubin for her resignation from The Washington Post, where she has penned an opinion column since November 2010, initially making waves as a contrarian conservative voice among her other more left-leaning colleagues. Her viewpoint evolved along with President-elect Donald Trump’s political rise; she frequently found herself at loggerheads with pro-Trump conservative commentators and wrote a column advocating for “radical centrism” last summer.

And it’s Trump and Trumpism that formed the breaking point for Rubin’s tenure at the Post, specifically including the management decisions made by billionaire owner Jeff Bezos as he “bent the knee” to Trump.

CNN’s Brian Stelter reported Monday morning that Rubin had joined forces with CNN legal analyst Norm Eisen to launch a new outlet called The Contrarian, with a tagline “Not Owned By Anybody” that is aimed directly at Bezos and those Rubin describes as the “corporate and billionaire owners” of media outlets who have been revealed to have “compromised principles” in this Trumpian era. Eisen, who is resigning his CNN gig, will be the publisher and Rubin editor-in-chief.

Screenshot via The Contrarian

“Rather than anti-Trump, the founders describe their venture as pro-democracy,” wrote Stelter, but there are names well known for their criticism of the incoming 47th president among the contributors who have signed on thus far, including Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Andy Borowitz, George Conway, John Dean, Bob Kagan, Harry Litman, Barb McQuade, Katie Phang, Asha Rangappa, Stephen Richer, and Andrew Weissmann.

“Jeff Bezos and his fellow billionaires accommodate and enable the most acute threat to American democracy—Donald Trump—at a time when a vibrant free press is more essential than ever to our democracy’s survival and capacity to thrive,” wrote Rubin in an introductory column at The Contrarian to announce her resignation from the Post, lamenting how “[c]orporate and billionaire owners of major media outlets have betrayed their audiences’ loyalty and sabotaged journalism’s sacred mission — defending, protecting and advancing democracy.”

Rubin continued with a specific swipe at Bezos for not only blocking the paper’s editorial board from endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris but for sending a tribute payment to Trump’s inauguration fund, along with condemning other media moguls who were similarly jostling to demonstrate their obeisance to the incoming second Trump administration:

The contradiction between, on the one hand, the journalistic obligation to hold the powerful accountable and, on the other, the financial interests of billionaire moguls and corporate conglomerates could not be starker. The Post’s own headline last month warned: “Trump signals plans to use all levers of power against the media; Press freedom advocates say they fear that the second Trump administration will ramp up pressure on journalists, in keeping with the president-elect’s combative rhetoric.” And yet The Post’s owner quashed a presidential endorsement for Trump’s opponent, forked over $1M for Trump’s inauguration through Amazon, and publicly lauded Trump’s agenda.

None of us could imagine Katharine Graham sending LBJ or Nixon a $1M check. It would have been, as it is now, a fundamental betrayal of a great American newspaper. Defense of the First Amendment is incompatible with funding or cheerleading for the very person who seeks to “drastically undermine the institutions tasked with reporting on his coming administration.”

The Post’s downfall is hardly unique. ABC, Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta and corporate-owned cable TV networks (which have scrambled to enlist Trump-friendly voices) are catering to powerful interests, and have profound corporate conflicts. Instead of guarding their independence, they join financial leaders, politicians and other public figures currying favor with Trump and his orbit. Through classic anticipatory obedience—a dangerous but all too familiar pattern—they normalize the authoritarian menace. If Trump has taken “attacks on the press to an entirely new level, softening the ground for an erosion of robust press freedom,” as The Post reported, it is because he finds insufficient resistance. Instead, owners whose outlets he targets quite literally rewarded him.

Rubin’s resignation from the Post is “effective today,” she wrote. She concluded by praising her colleagues at the Post as “the finest writers and editors in journalism” and describing herself as having been “honored” and “blessed to work for The Post under the Graham Family ownership and Fred Hiatt’s leadership of the editorial section” — referring to the previous owners who sold the paper to Bezos’ holding company in 2013 and the previous editorial page editor who passed away in 2021.

“[W]hen new leaders sully the reputation of institutions entrusted to them and the fate of democracy is in the balance, we all must reevaluate our careers and our obligations to the world’s most essential nation,” wrote Rubin. “History calls us all.”