Washington Post columnist calls Bezos a 'Donald Trump supplicant' in final parting shot

Longtime Washington Post columnist Joe Davidson recently resigned after the paper — which is owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos — killed his latest column for being "too opinionated." In a now-viral post, Davidson accused Bezos of being overly accommodating to President Donald Trump.

According to the Daily Beast, Davidson — who has written the "Federal Insider" column for the post since 2008 – said the nixing of his latest column amounted to a "death blow" to his job as a weekly columnist. Davidson authored a Facebook post criticizing the paper's decision to axe his column, which he said called out Trump's "widespread, ominous attack on thought, belief and speech" since his second term began.

In the post, Davidson acknowledged that while he has no reason to believe the billionaire owner of the Post was personally involved in the decision to kill the column, "it would be naïve to ignore the context."

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"Starting before the November election, Bezos’s policies and activities have projected the image of a Donald Trump supplicant," he wrote. "The result: fleeing journalists, plummeting morale and disappearing subscriptions."

The outgoing Post columnist lamented that the paper's reputation has continued to slide ever since losing more than 250,000 subscribers in the fallout of Bezos personally intervening to kill the Post editorial board's endorsement of 2024 Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris. Davidson said the exodus of multiple high-level editors in the wake of Bezos' intervention was "shocking."

"Post coverage of Trump remains strong," he wrote. "Yet the policy against opinion in News section columns means less critical scrutiny of Trump -- a result coinciding with Bezos’s unseemly and well-document[ed] coziness with the president."

"When Bezos bought The Post, he provided needed money, energy and direction," he added. "The Post continues to produce first rate journalism now, despite his morale-busting actions."

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Click here to read the Daily Beast's full article (subscription required), and click here to read Davidson's Facebook post.