Trump Had Dinner With Jeff Bezos Hours After He Announced Controversial Changes to Washington Post Opinion Section
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President Donald Trump enjoyed dinner with Jeff Bezos on the same day Bezos announced changes to the Opinion Section of The Washington Post.
On Wednesday, Bezos took to social media to announce the changes. In his statement, he said the outlet’s opinion pieces would be “in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets.” With that mandate, viewpoints “opposing those pillars” would be “left to be published by others.”
The change was met with a great deal of backlash among current and former Washington Post staffers. Former reporter David Remnick even outright accused the Amazon founder of “kissing the ring of the president of the United States.”
In an interview with The Spectator’s Ben Domenech published Friday, Trump was talking about his relationships with tech billionaires when he mentioned having dinner with Bezos on Wednesday — hours after Bezos announced the new Washington Post mandate.
The interview continued:
DOMENECH: A lot of the people who played a significant role in that election, and particularly on the tech side of things, have come around to support you.
TRUMP: Unbelievable. I had dinner with Jeff Bezos last night.
DOMENECH: How much do you trust someone like Jeff Bezos? One of these billionaires to be truly, in that—
TRUMP: Who do I trust? I mean, who do you trust? Do you trust anybody? These are very smart guys. And I always say to them, we have dinners together, usually started by them. I’m so busy with all of this. Between China, Russia, Ukraine, I’ve got more things happening. But I always love to just sort of look at them and said, “hi, where do you come from?” “I came from Hawaii to have dinner.” That was good. I said, “would you have been here if I lost,” you know? “Would you have been here if I lost it?” They never answer that question. Actually, they just sort of shy away from it.
