“The people there are terrible”: Jeff Bezos vented to Trump about his own newspaper two months before gutting the newsroom

Jeff Bezos reportedly shared a brutal assessment of the staff at The Washington Post, allegedly telling President Donald Trump that employees at his own newspaper were terrible. The claim comes from an upcoming book titled Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump, written by journalists Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman, as detailed by UNILAD Tech. The book is set for release on June 23 and aims to provide an intimate look at the first year of Trump’s second term.

According to the accounts in the book, the conversation took place during a private dinner in December 2024, weeks before major job cuts were implemented at the publication. Bezos, who has owned The Washington Post since 2013, did not hold back his frustrations while speaking with the president. He allegedly said, “The people there are terrible. They don’t listen. My other companies, they listen.”

The Washington Post has been struggling with financial challenges in recent years, with reports indicating the news organization lost roughly $100 million during 2024. While Bezos has pointed to those losses as the primary driver behind restructuring efforts and workforce reductions, the book suggests more personal motivations may have influenced his decision making. The tension between the owner and the newsroom appears to run deeper than the bottom line alone.

The fallout reaches beyond the newsroom

Swan and Haberman also explore a social cost Bezos reportedly felt from his investment in the newspaper. The authors claim Bezos told Trump he had lost half of his friends because of his ownership of the publication.

Bezos has disputed that version of events, and when discussing the claims with the authors, they clarified the nuance. They stated, “In Trump’s telling, Bezos told him he had lost half his friends over the investment. 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.”

Bezos is also facing pushback within his own tech empire amid a separate dispute over the White House blocking Anthropic’s models. Amazon employees have reportedly been venting frustrations in the company’s internal Slack channels, according to 404 Media, using a channel dubbed #actual-aws-memes to mock the company’s aggressive push into artificial intelligence.

The memes reportedly began circulating around the end of 2024, aligning with the period when leadership started pushing the adoption of AI tools across the organization. One anonymous employee said, “I think people meme about anything they’re around a lot, and obviously AI is a common topic. Of course it does not help that leadership is definitely pushing AI so there’s probably some element of backlash.”

The friction comes as Amazon continues expanding its AI investments elsewhere, including the studio’s decision tied to Amazon dropping the Sam Altman movie. Regime Change is set to hit shelves on June 23.