While some right-wing personalities praised Jeff Bezos’s decision to have The Washington Post‘s opinion section focus on conservative topics like personal liberties and free markets, Megyn Kelly offered a different perspective.
“He’s bending the knee,” Kelly told Semafor’s Ben Smith during the outlet’s “Innovating to Restore Trust in News” event in Washington, D.C., on Thursday.
Kelly called Bezos’s sudden decision “weak” and compared it to MSNBC hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski’s November trip to Mar-a-Lago to meet with President Donald Trump, which prompted anger among media types over their perceived deference to the president. Bezos announced on Wednesday that the Post‘s opinion section would prioritize “free markets and personal liberties,” angering many Post staffers and prompting outrage from former Executive Editor Marty Baron.
ADVERTISEMENT
“He’s doing what Joe and Mika did,” she said. “He hasn’t had a change of heart. Give me a break.”
Kelly, a former Fox News host who has since launched an eponymous podcast, said the move still may garner Trump’s respect. But she said Bezos’s approach likely won’t go far among Trump supporters like herself who doubt his intentions.
“I think Trump and he will be fine, but that doesn’t make any difference at all to somebody like me who’s actually looking for sincerity,” she said. “I’m like, ‘I’m really pleased you’ve come around to the value of individual liberties because they were written right into the Bill of Rights a couple of hundred years ago!‘”
Bezos’s steady work rebuilding his once-tenuous relationship with Trump stretches back to last summer’s assassination attempt in Pennsylvania, when Bezos called to praise the way Trump handled himself in the moment, according to reporter Alex Isenstadt’s book, Revenge: The Inside Story of Trump’s Return to Power.
Bezos later urged Trump to pick North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum as vice president—an idea Trump rejected—and eventually ordered the Post to spike its planned endorsement of Kamala Harris. Multiple Post staffers left the paper after the decision, and an opinion cartoonist exited last month after the section editor killed a cartoon depicting Bezos genuflecting to Trump.
