Billionaire Newspaper Owners Seemingly Afraid Harris Endorsements Would Upset Trump

Barf Bag: This doesn't even appear to be about fears over press freedom, it seems like it's two rich guys who want Trump to win so they can stay rich.

By Susan Rinkunas  |  October 25, 2024 | 6:57pm
Photos: Getty Images Politics 2024 Election
Billionaire Newspaper Owners Seemingly Afraid Harris Endorsements Would Upset Trump

Welcome back to Barf Bag. This Friday feature, highlighting the most vomit-inducing news of the week, is typically a subscriber-only benefit. But in these final weeks before Election Day, we’re making Barf Bag available to all readers. (Feel free to still subscribe!)

We’re about 10 days out from the election and the owners of two of the country’s largest newspapers are sucking up to former president Donald Trump. Both the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post said this week that they would break tradition and not endorse a presidential candidate—conveniently after both their editorial boards said they started working on endorsements of Vice President Kamala Harris. These outlets are both owned by billionaires: biotech entrepreneur Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong bought the Times in 2018, and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos bought the Post in 2013. 

First, last week, the Times quietly declined to endorse a candidate in the presidential race for the first time since 2008, instead publishing a list of other endorsements while still noting that it is “no exaggeration to say this may be the most consequential election in a generation.” On Tuesday, Semafor reported that Soon-Shiong had actually blocked the Times’ endorsement. (He donated to Hillary Clinton in 2016 but later sought an appointment in the Trump administration.) Then, on Wednesday, Times editorials editor Mariel Garza resigned and told the Columbia Journalism Review that the editorial board was planning to endorse Harris.

Soon-Shiong, who is worth an estimated $11 billion, wrote on Twitter after the story came out that, instead of making an additional endorsement, he asked the editorial board to basically create a pros and cons list for each candidate so readers could decide for themselves. He concluded, “Instead of adopting this path as suggested, the Editorial Board chose to remain silent and I accepted their decision.” Doesn’t sound like much of a suggestion or a choice, my guy. CJR also noted that “Elon Musk, who is friendly with Soon-Shiong—they are both South African-born billionaire entrepreneurs—replied to that post: ‘Makes sense.'” Super reassuring.

People have been canceling their Times subscriptions in droves, and when an outlet asked Soon-Shiong about that on Thursday, he blamed the readers—not himself—for possible damage to the newsroom. “You can voice your opinion, but I hope they understand by not subscribing that it just adds to the demise of democracy and the fourth estate.”

The Post announced its decision not to endorse on Friday in a strange opinion piece penned by Will Lewis, the outlet’s controversial publisher and CEO. He wrote that the paper would return to its non-endorsement “roots” from before the Watergate scandal. As NPR describes, Lewis “has significant conservative bonafides,” and previously worked at Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal and was a consultant to Conservative Boris Johnson when Johnson was U.K. prime minister. They added, “Colleagues have told NPR that Bezos selected Lewis in part for his ability to get along with powerful conservative figures, including Murdoch.”

But apparently, it was Post owner Bezos who made the call after the editorial board drafted its pro-Harris piece, per the paper’s own reporting. (Get their asses.) While Bezos is no longer CEO of Amazon, he is still on the board, and his other companies, like cloud computing firm AWS and space company Blue Origin, have multi-billion-dollar government contracts. Why does this matter? In 2019, the Pentagon awarded a huge cloud computing contract to Microsoft over AWS after Trump told people that he wanted to “screw Amazon” because the Bezos-owned Post was out to get him.

Former Post Executive Editor Martin Baron told NPR: “Donald Trump will celebrate this as an invitation to further intimidate the Post’s owner, Jeff Bezos (and other media owners). History will mark a disturbing chapter of spinelessness at an institution famed for courage.” Baron wrote in his memoir that after a former publisher didn’t want the paper to make an endorsement in the 2016 race, Bezos replied “Why wouldn’t we make an endorsement?”

In summary, rich guys don’t want Harris to win and they’re fucking over some of the country’s best and most-established newspapers in the process.

Trump-related barf:

  • Trump said that, if elected, he would fire special counsel Jack Smith “within two seconds.” Not beating the dictator allegations! [ABC News]
  • Unofficial Trump campaign employee Elon Musk has been in regular contact with Russian President Vladimir Putin for two years. [Wall Street Journal]
  • Very notable headline: “Tucker Carlson is fantasizing about Daddy Donald Trump spanking teenage girls.” [The Guardian]
  • Trump campaign manager Chris LaCivita shared posts in 2021 saying Trump was responsible for the January 6 violence. [CNN]
  • Trump overcharged Secret Service agents to stay at his D.C. hotel by as much as 300% while he was president. [NBC News]
  • Trump’s running mate, the purportedly pro-worker JD Vance, crossed a two-year-old picket line to write a dumb op-ed in a Pittsburgh newspaper. [HuffPost]

Non-Trump barf:

  • An Oregon school district called on Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) to take down transphobic ads because they implied that two cis girls were trans. Cruz did not get their parents’ permission to use the photos. [The Hill]
  • Justice Samuel Alito has struck up a friendship with a right-wing German princess who really hates abortion. [New York Times]
  • Disgraced lawyer Rudy Giuliani was ordered to surrender his apartment, sports memorabilia, and a bunch of other shit to election workers he defamed. [Associated Press]
  • A high-level Ron DeSantis staffer is displaying signs opposing the Florida abortion amendment outside his home in violation of HOA rules, removing them before every meeting where he’s set to get fined, then putting them back up the next day. [Tallahassee Democrat]
  • Former RFK Jr. running mate Nicole Shananan offered reporters writing about her $500,000 to reveal their sources as if they were “whistleblowers.” [The Washington Post]
  • A Texas county put a book about colonization in the library’s fiction section. [The Guardian]

This has been your weekly Barf Bag, thanks for reading! 

 
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