Jeff Bezos complained to Trump about WaPo staff 2 months before mass layoffs - 'They don’t listen'

Jeff Bezos rued his investment in The Washington Post, reportedly calling it the worst one he made, according to a book that is yet to be released. Written by New York Times writers Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman, Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump reveals that Bezos expressed his unhappiness with the WaPo staff, according to the California Post. The outlet reviewed an excerpt from the book that will be released on June 23. "The people there are terrible. They don’t listen. My other companies, they listen," Bezos was heard complaining to Donald Trump at a dinner in December 2024.

Two months later, Bezos laid off 300 people from the Washington Post, citing losses worth $100 million in 2024. However, Swan and Haberman recorded an altogether different reason for his gripe with the staff. “In Trump’s telling, Bezos told him he had lost half his friends over the investment,” the authors told the California Post. However, they said that Bezos “would tell others that wasn’t quite right: He hadn’t lost friends, but people close to him had urged him to sell the newspaper.”

Jeff Bezos clashed with WaPo staff over Kamala Harris endorsement

Bezos had a face-off with his staff over the matter of endorsing Kamala Harris for president. The newspaper's editorial board drafted a copy, but the paper's billionaire owner, Jeff Bezos, blocked it from being published just days before the election. The paper later announced that it was ending its tradition of endorsing presidential candidates entirely to remain neutral.

The incident triggered major internal and public backlash. Several prominent names resigned from the paper, and nearly 300 staff was laid off. Bezos posted on X in February that the paper’s new opinion page would be "writing every day in support and defence of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets." The very public washing of dirty linen caused major damage and more than 300,000 readers cancelled their subscription.