Jeff Bezos and President Donald Trump took turns complaining about how bad The Washington Post is during a mutual venting session right before the president’s second term started, according to star New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan.

The duo wrote about the Bezos-Trump conversation in their new book Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump; and they were both on MS NOW’s Morning Joe on Friday to talk about it.

Swan said Bezos complained to Trump that the WaPo staff was “terrible” during a dinner at Mar-a-Lago in December 2024. He added both men were “commiserating” over how much the paper had fallen off, in their view.

Haberman said it was “wild” to find out about the two complaining together over dinner. She said both men probably had “different reasons” for hating on the paper, but that they were united in their disdain.

“I didn’t realize how Bezos actually felt about the Washington Post as an investment,” Haberman said a moment earlier. “This is a storied newspaper that, you know, helped bring down Richard Nixon, and Bezos is describing it to Trump over an intimate dinner during the transition as his ‘worst financial investment ever.'” 

Bezos has been a bit more public about his desire to push the paper he owns in a different direction over the last few years.

He revamped the opinion page in early 2025, saying it would focus on “two pillars: personal liberties and free markets.” And Bezos reportedly fumed about former CEO Will Lewis partying it up in San Francisco during Super Bowl Week earlier this year, right as he was laying off hundreds of employees at the paper. Lewis left the paper soon after.

Haberman and Swan’s appearance on Morning Joe comes as they are making the media rounds to promote their new book.

They told the show that despite the dinner where they both bashed the Washington Post, there were other times were Trump mocked Bezos and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg for “sucking up” to him. Swan said Tesla boss Elon Musk especially got a kick out of the “first class groveling” from his tech rivals.

Watch above via MS NOW.

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