adminAn excerpt from the new book Regime Change by New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan has set off another round of headlines. The passage reports that Amazon founder and Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos told President Donald Trump that “the people there are terrible” — and that he called the paper his worst investment. Those lines, if true, are more than gossip. They paint a picture of a moneyed owner who has lost patience with a newsroom he once flaunted as a trophy.
What the book excerpt actually reports
The book excerpt lays out a private December dinner between Bezos and President Trump, where Bezos allegedly complained about the Post’s leadership and its business losses. The authors write that Bezos told Trump the paper “was his worst investment” and that “the people there are terrible.” The same excerpt links that frustration to later moves: a push to reshape opinion pages around “personal liberties and free markets” and a wave of newsroom cuts that eliminated roughly a third of staff, including photographers and sports desks. These are serious charges, but they come from the book excerpt and are not an on-the-record admission from Bezos himself.
Why conservatives should pay attention
Conservatives have long accused the Washington Post of bias. If the owner himself is privately dumping on his own newsroom, it confirms a different, more basic problem: organizational rot. When a billionaire can’t control or even stomach his newsroom, that suggests the paper isn’t failing for lack of ideological zeal — it’s failing as a business and as an institution. That’s a win for anyone who says big media is broken, regardless of the paper’s politics.
Don’t treat the excerpt as the last word
Reporting based on a book excerpt needs cautious reading. The line about “the people there are terrible” is attributed to the book’s authors, not recorded audio or multiple witnesses quoted elsewhere. Journalists and readers should press for primary sourcing — the actual book text, comment from Bezos’s representatives, or a statement from the Post. Until then, call it a reported exchange from Regime Change, but don’t be surprised if the Post and Bezos try to walk it back or paper over it with corporate-speak.
What to watch next
Keep an eye on responses from The Washington Post and from Jeff Bezos’s camp. Will the paper defend its reporters or smooth things over with a PR statement? Will Bezos acknowledge frustration or deny the exact words? For conservatives worried about media accountability, this episode is like watching the circus tent collapse in slow motion — messy, revealing, and oddly satisfying. The bigger takeaway is simple: when ownership and newsroom are at war, readers lose and the paper’s clout dies. That matters for every American who still cares whether any outlet covers the news fairly — or at all.
