Bezos tries to improve WaPo credibility. Outrage ensues. (10-29-2024--Hour3)

[00:00:04] What's going on? Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. It is heard live every day from noon to 3 on WBT Radio in Charlotte. And if you want exclusive content like invitations to events, the weekly live stream, my daily show prep with all the links, become a patron, go to thepetekalendershow.com. Make sure you hit the subscribe button, get every episode for free, right to your smartphone or tablet. And again, thank you so much for your support.

[00:00:28] I've spent the last two hours kind of going over early voting. No, I do not know the results of the Attorney General's race. We had a request for that. I'm assuming you're asking for polling. The Bishop campaign doesn't do polling. The polling that I've seen is like 2% towards Jackson, I think, is like 1%, 2%, 3%. I don't make any predictions on election day because the polling is all out of whack. They haven't figured it out. They have not figured it out yet.

[00:00:57] And the best polls that we see in, you know, the public square here are not the best polls. Because the people who do the best polls get hired by the campaigns and the parties. And you never see that stuff. But they need to know what the actual numbers are so they can change strategy.

[00:01:17] So I try to look for strategic changes. Like, say, Kamala Harris pulling $1.7 million in ad buys out of the TV markets in North Carolina all at once, which just happened.

[00:01:31] So that's, to me, when you see big strategy changes, that indicates what they're seeing internally in their polling. But Dan Bishop told us last week, he was at the Mallard Creek Barbecue, and he's like, we don't do internal polling. They just don't do it.

[00:01:49] So I don't know. I don't know what the status of that race is. But much like voting machines, Jeff Bezos cited voting machines in an analogy, in an op-ed that he published at his newspaper.

[00:02:12] He owns the Washington Post. Bezos, the founder of Amazon, right? Richest guy, one of the richest guys in the world. He's got a blue Orion, right? He wants to go to space too.

[00:02:26] So it's like, he's like the, he's the anti-Elon Musk, right? So you got these two billionaires. It's very Ayn Randian, you know? Anyway, he had an op-ed that he published.

[00:02:40] He published after all of the hullabaloo over the Washington Post not endorsing a candidate for president.

[00:02:51] And then, of course, you know, the meltdown occurs. You got people that are like, oh my God, the democracy is dying.

[00:02:57] And then they're like, you know, throwing themselves off of buildings and stuff. And that's just the employees.

[00:03:03] So people are quitting. It's just, it's, it's been something to see.

[00:03:08] And then, of course, you got the LA Times. They said the same thing. They're not going to do an endorsement.

[00:03:12] And then, hang on, today, let me go to the stack of stuff here. There it is.

[00:03:18] USA Today, the nation's fourth largest newspaper, says it is joining the Washington Post and Los Angeles Times

[00:03:24] in not endorsing a presidential candidate this election.

[00:03:29] Josh Fialo, writing at the Daily Beast, says a spokesperson for the paper told the Daily Beast that it will instead focus on providing readers with the facts that matter

[00:03:39] and the trusted information they need to make informed decisions, all within as few words as possible.

[00:03:45] That's a stark difference from, by the way, if you think you're getting all the information in a USA Today article,

[00:03:51] like, do you not realize USA Today's history?

[00:03:53] Like, they, they're all about the blurbs, right? Short little, anyway.

[00:03:58] They were called the fast food of news.

[00:04:02] Remember that? Anyway.

[00:04:05] Anyway, this is a stark difference from four years ago when USA Today broke with decades-old tradition to endorse Joe Biden for president.

[00:04:15] Oh, wait a minute.

[00:04:17] So, for decades, they did not do endorsements.

[00:04:21] But then last time, they broke with that decades-long tradition in order to endorse Joe Biden.

[00:04:28] And now, they're going back.

[00:04:30] They're going back to their tradition.

[00:04:34] And that's the outrageous thing.

[00:04:36] Now, it is kind of weird that you endorsed Joe Biden while claiming Trump was not a capable leader

[00:04:43] and that the U.S. was, quote, dangerously off course.

[00:04:48] And so, now you're not going to do an endorsement when Trump is on the ballot again?

[00:04:52] That's kind of weird.

[00:04:53] Or else maybe it's an indication that they think the country's dangerously more off course.

[00:05:00] I don't know.

[00:05:01] USA Today's editorial board wrote that it decided to endorse back then for the first time since 1982

[00:05:07] because the 2020 election was an extraordinary moment in history, unlike today.

[00:05:12] Apparently not an extraordinary moment.

[00:05:14] That required an extraordinary response from the paper.

[00:05:17] Biden is a worthy antidote to Trump's unbounded narcissism and chronic chaos, the paper told its readers.

[00:05:23] So what changed?

[00:05:24] I don't know.

[00:05:27] USA Today's spokesperson said,

[00:05:29] We believe America's future is decided locally one race at a time.

[00:05:33] And with more than 200 publications across the nation,

[00:05:36] our public service is to provide readers with the facts that matter

[00:05:40] and the trusted information they need to make informed decisions.

[00:05:43] Hmm.

[00:05:44] Hmm.

[00:05:44] So might it be that USA Today's network of local papers

[00:05:51] might be suffering from low circulation rates

[00:05:57] because of decisions, editorial decisions,

[00:06:01] that are being made at a national level?

[00:06:05] You know, maybe some areas that are served by your newspaper don't appreciate your newspaper

[00:06:11] regurgitating Democrat Party talking points all the time.

[00:06:15] Right?

[00:06:16] And if you don't have readership in these areas,

[00:06:23] I know like the Asheville Citizen Times is part of the Gannett network

[00:06:30] and they've been hemorrhaging staff, readers, clicks, right?

[00:06:38] Website visitors.

[00:06:39] It's just been, I mean, that,

[00:06:41] they don't even print the paper up in Asheville anymore.

[00:06:44] They print it out of Greenville.

[00:06:47] That's the decline that paper has seen.

[00:06:50] And if I recall correctly, it was a merger of two different papers.

[00:06:54] Like Asheville used to have more than one newspaper.

[00:06:58] There have been no reports that any single person in the leadership of Gannett,

[00:07:01] which is a publicly traded company,

[00:07:03] intervened to personally shut down an endorsement at USA Today.

[00:07:06] Other Gannett newspapers are free to endorse in local elections,

[00:07:10] but none are endorsing at the presidential level.

[00:07:16] The Poynter Institute,

[00:07:17] a nonprofit journalism research organization,

[00:07:20] reported this week that presidential endorsements are becoming less common

[00:07:23] at both regional and national newspapers.

[00:07:26] That's partially due to shrinking staffs.

[00:07:31] We don't have enough people to make a decision about who we want as president.

[00:07:35] But also because online readers are not able to or choose not to discern the difference

[00:07:42] between a newspaper's editorial board and its straight news coverage.

[00:07:46] That can lead to incensed readers and less subscribers.

[00:07:52] All right, so people view the editorial content of the newspaper as part and parcel of a sort of ethos,

[00:08:00] of a mission of the entire publication.

[00:08:03] And that then sticks to the news department,

[00:08:08] which is totally separate from the editorial management.

[00:08:13] The Wall Street Journal, as it has since 1928,

[00:08:19] declined to endorse a candidate this election,

[00:08:22] leaving only the New York Times and its endorsement of Harris

[00:08:25] as the only presidential endorsement from a national newspaper.

[00:08:30] Only the New York Times.

[00:08:32] All right, so what happened at the Washington Post?

[00:08:35] Right, first was the L.A. Times.

[00:08:37] And by the way, you know why that happened?

[00:08:40] This is...

[00:08:42] Hang on a second.

[00:08:43] I've got it here someplace.

[00:08:44] The L.A. Times did not endorse because it was their...

[00:08:50] Was it the daughter of their president or something?

[00:08:54] That...

[00:08:56] She denies it, though.

[00:08:57] Here it is.

[00:08:58] L.A. Times.

[00:08:59] Three editorial staffers resigned in protest of owner Dr. Patrick Soon-Shang's decision

[00:09:04] to block an endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris.

[00:09:07] Sun-Shang's daughter said that the refusal to endorse Harris

[00:09:11] stemmed from dissatisfaction over the Biden administration's Israel policies,

[00:09:17] meaning they were too pro-Israel.

[00:09:21] Though the billionaire denied that's the case.

[00:09:27] And look, Democrats keep canceling all their subscriptions to these newspapers.

[00:09:31] They're not going to have any paper gandists to read anymore.

[00:09:34] I mean, that's...

[00:09:35] I don't know what they're going to do.

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[00:10:40] Jeff Bezos, owner of the Washington Post and Amazon, which is funding all of the losses at

[00:10:47] Washington Post.

[00:10:48] Right?

[00:10:49] They're hemorrhaging money over there.

[00:10:51] Readership.

[00:10:51] They've just lost like 200,000 subscribers, which, yeah, I didn't even think they had that

[00:10:57] many.

[00:10:59] But because they won't endorse a presidential candidate, the lefties have lost their mind.

[00:11:05] Like, guys, friends on the left, I'm getting kind of worried about you.

[00:11:12] All right?

[00:11:12] And this is, I'm not doing a whataboutism on this.

[00:11:15] I know you're, but the Donald Trump supporters, like, that's a separate issue.

[00:11:19] This is about you, which I know you tend to make everything about anyway, but this is

[00:11:22] about you.

[00:11:23] Right?

[00:11:24] Right?

[00:11:25] I'm worried that you guys are being driven insane.

[00:11:30] You're being driven insane by this constant drumbeat of catastrophism.

[00:11:38] Okay?

[00:11:41] It's going to be okay.

[00:11:44] It's all going to be okay.

[00:11:47] All right.

[00:11:47] So here's what Jeff Bezos wrote.

[00:11:50] Headline.

[00:11:52] The hard truth.

[00:11:53] Americans don't trust the news media.

[00:11:57] In the annual public surveys about trust and reputation, journalists and the media have

[00:12:03] regularly fallen near the very bottom, often just above Congress.

[00:12:07] But in this year's Gallup poll, we have managed to fall below Congress.

[00:12:11] Our profession is now the least trusted of all.

[00:12:16] Something we are doing is clearly not working.

[00:12:22] See, this is what happens when you get guys like Musk and Bezos, right?

[00:12:29] They come in there and they're like, I'm not interested.

[00:12:33] I didn't become a billionaire by losing money, right?

[00:12:38] We're going to make money.

[00:12:39] We're going to fix this.

[00:12:40] Whatever's wrong, we need to identify the problem and fix that thing.

[00:12:43] And then he offers an analogy about voting machines.

[00:12:47] Voting machines have to meet two requirements.

[00:12:50] First, they got to count the vote accurately, right?

[00:12:53] That's number one.

[00:12:55] Number two, people must believe that they count the vote accurately.

[00:13:03] You got to do both of those things.

[00:13:05] The second requirement is distinct from and just as important as the first.

[00:13:12] He says, likewise with newspapers.

[00:13:15] We must be accurate and we must be believed to be accurate.

[00:13:19] It's a bitter pill to swallow, but we are failing on that second requirement.

[00:13:24] Most people believe the media is biased.

[00:13:27] Anyone who doesn't see this is paying scant attention to reality and those who fight reality lose.

[00:13:37] Correct, sir.

[00:13:38] Reality is an undefeated champion, he says.

[00:13:41] It would be easy to blame others for our long and continuing fall in credibility, but a victim mentality will not help.

[00:13:50] Complaining is not a strategy.

[00:13:52] We must work harder to control what we can control to increase our credibility.

[00:13:59] Presidential endorsements do nothing to tip the scales of an election.

[00:14:04] No undecided voters in Pennsylvania are going to say, well, I'm going with newspaper A's endorsement.

[00:14:39] None.

[00:14:40] It's a meaningful step in the right direction.

[00:14:42] I wish we had made the change earlier than we did in a moment further away from the election and the emotions around it.

[00:14:50] That was an added that it was an inadequate planning, he said.

[00:14:55] But it was not some intentional strategy.

[00:14:59] He says, I want to be clear.

[00:15:00] There's no quid pro quo at work here.

[00:15:04] Neither campaign nor candidate was consulted or informed at any level or in any way about this decision.

[00:15:12] It was made entirely internally.

[00:15:15] Finally, David Limp, the chief executive of one of my companies, Blue Origin, that's the space company, met with former President Donald Trump on the day of our announcement.

[00:15:30] I sighed when I found out because I knew it would provide ammunition to those who would like to frame this as anything other than a principled decision.

[00:15:41] But the fact is, I didn't know about the meeting beforehand.

[00:15:45] David Limp didn't know about it in advance either.

[00:15:49] The meeting was scheduled quickly that morning.

[00:15:51] There's no connection between it and our decision on presidential endorsement and any suggestion otherwise is false.

[00:15:58] Because, by the way, this is what the Washington Post and Democrats and media, but I repeat myself, this is what they are saying is the reason why they decided not to endorse, why Bezos pulled the plug on the endorsement.

[00:16:11] They're saying it was because Trump met with this guy, David Limp.

[00:16:16] And that there was some sort of an arrangement made that will help you with your company if you don't make an endorsement.

[00:16:23] Like, think of just, I mean, just step back for a second and think about that.

[00:16:26] Do you think that Donald Trump makes that deal?

[00:16:29] Really?

[00:16:30] Even if you hate the guy, that's a terrible deal.

[00:16:35] Like, if anything, he should say, if I win, then I'm going to do this stuff for you.

[00:16:40] Yeah.

[00:16:40] And so in exchange for that, I want you to endorse me.

[00:16:43] Right?

[00:16:44] Like, that would be the deal.

[00:16:46] But just don't say anything and take all of this kind of heat.

[00:16:51] He says, when it comes to the appearance of conflict, I am not an ideal owner of the Washington Post.

[00:17:00] Every day, someplace, some Amazon executive or Blue Origin executive or somebody else from the other philanthropies and companies I own or invest in is meeting with government officials.

[00:17:10] He said that owning the Washington Post is a complexifier for him.

[00:17:17] Makes things more complex for him.

[00:17:19] But it turns out I am also a complexifier for the Post.

[00:17:23] And then he talks about how the lack of credibility is not unique to the Washington Post and what to do about it.

[00:17:35] Jeff Bezos, the owner of the Washington Post.

[00:17:38] Oh, I spelled this name.

[00:17:39] No, I got it.

[00:17:40] Bezos.

[00:17:41] Bezos.

[00:17:42] Bezos.

[00:17:43] Bezos.

[00:17:43] Jeff Bezos is the owner of the Washington Post.

[00:17:46] Also, the Amazon guy.

[00:17:47] Remember when Amazon just used to sell books?

[00:17:49] Remember that?

[00:17:50] That's crazy.

[00:17:54] Anyway, the other day they announced they were not going to be endorsing any presidential candidate.

[00:17:59] And people in the Washington Post lost their minds.

[00:18:04] Well, what was left of them?

[00:18:06] And they they are a couple of them were like, I'm quitting.

[00:18:08] Not Jen Rubin.

[00:18:09] Jennifer Rubin's not quitting, even though she celebrated and told all the people at the L.A.

[00:18:13] Times like you all need to quit.

[00:18:15] Everybody needs to resign in protest.

[00:18:17] And then her paper made the same decision.

[00:18:19] The L.A.

[00:18:20] Times did.

[00:18:20] And she has not quit.

[00:18:22] A real profile and courage there.

[00:18:24] But Bezos took to his own newspaper, which is one of the things when you own the newspaper,

[00:18:31] you get to write what you want and it gets published.

[00:18:34] OK.

[00:18:36] And he talks about the credibility of the media.

[00:18:41] And he talks about how the lack of credibility is not unique to The Washington Post.

[00:18:48] He says, you can see my wealth and my business interests as a bulwark against intimidation.

[00:18:54] Right.

[00:18:55] The fact that he's got, you know, screw you money is like I can I could do whatever I want.

[00:19:01] So he would be like an ideal owner of a newspaper.

[00:19:04] Right.

[00:19:04] He can lose a bunch of money and he's immune to this kind of pressure, whatever, like you would think.

[00:19:09] Or he says, you can see my wealth and my business interests as a web of conflicting interests.

[00:19:17] Only my own principles can tip the balance from one to the other.

[00:19:21] I assure you that my views here are, in fact, principled.

[00:19:26] I believe my track record as owner of The Washington Post since 2013 backs this up.

[00:19:32] You are, of course, free to make your own determination.

[00:19:35] But I challenge you to find one instance in those 11 years where I have prevailed upon anyone at The Post in favor of my own interests.

[00:19:46] It hasn't happened.

[00:19:48] Now, that being said, I don't know if they've done many critical pieces on The Boss, but I don't read The Washington Post.

[00:19:55] So he says.

[00:19:58] Newspapers, including ours, have this same credibility issue.

[00:20:03] It's a problem not only for media, but also for the nation.

[00:20:07] Many people are turning to off-the-cuff podcasts, inaccurate social media posts, and other unverified news sources, Elon Musk, which can quickly spread misinformation and deepen divisions.

[00:20:22] I take that as a couple of shots against Elon and Trump, but whatever.

[00:20:26] The Washington Post and The New York Times win prizes, but increasingly, we talk only to a certain elite.

[00:20:35] And more and more, we talk to ourselves.

[00:20:39] It wasn't always this way.

[00:20:40] In the 90s, we achieved 80% household penetration in the D.C. metro area.

[00:20:46] Isn't that amazing?

[00:20:47] 80% market penetration in D.C.

[00:20:53] He doesn't tell us what that number is now, but I would guess it's a lot lower.

[00:20:58] He says, I do not and I will not push my personal interest.

[00:21:03] I will also not allow this paper to stay on autopilot and fade into irrelevance overtaken by unresearched podcasts and social media barbs, at least not without a fight.

[00:21:17] It's too important.

[00:21:19] The stakes are too high.

[00:21:20] Now, more than ever, the world needs a credible, trusted, independent voice.

[00:21:24] And where better for that voice to originate than the capital city of the most important country in the world?

[00:21:31] To win this fight, we will have to exercise new muscles.

[00:21:35] Some changes will be a return to the past.

[00:21:38] And some will be new inventions.

[00:21:42] Criticism will be part and parcel of anything new.

[00:21:46] Of course, this is the way of the world.

[00:21:49] None of this will be easy, but it will be worth it.

[00:21:53] Cry closets have been established in the break room.

[00:21:55] No, I'm kidding.

[00:21:56] He didn't say that part.

[00:21:58] He says, I am so grateful to be part of the endeavor.

[00:22:00] Many of the finest journalists you'll ever work with are here.

[00:22:03] They work painstakingly every day to get to the truth.

[00:22:06] They deserve to be believed.

[00:22:08] Right?

[00:22:09] That's the op-ed he wrote.

[00:22:13] And good for him.

[00:22:15] Good for him.

[00:22:17] This is what I have been saying for like 20 years.

[00:22:22] First as a reporter.

[00:22:25] Then as a talk show host.

[00:22:27] This has been the thing that has frustrated me the most about the profession that I chose to get into.

[00:22:35] Know those many years ago.

[00:22:36] This is over at redstate.com.

[00:22:40] Strife or strife.

[00:22:41] S-T-R-E-I-F-F.

[00:22:44] I don't know what his real name is.

[00:22:47] He reports that according to reports, Jeff Bezos has directed that more conservative voices be heard on its editorial pages.

[00:22:56] You remember what happened at the, was it the New York Times when they published the editorial by Tom Cotton, a sitting U.S. senator, Republican.

[00:23:04] They publish an op-ed by him and it causes this utter meltdown in the newsroom and in the paper.

[00:23:13] Remember, you had all these, these whining crybabies.

[00:23:17] I can't believe you published this.

[00:23:20] I feel unsafe and all this crap.

[00:23:22] Meanwhile, defending like literally unsafe behavior.

[00:23:28] You know, people bashing in skulls and windows for social justice.

[00:23:34] Right.

[00:23:36] But strafe has a, has a suggestion because he doesn't have a lot of faith in, you know, we're going to hire more conservatives.

[00:23:43] He's like, we've seen how that movie ends.

[00:23:45] The people that are hired, they either switch sides and become obedient, servile House conservatives or they quit.

[00:23:54] Unless Bezos appoints an ombudsman to monitor the internal Slack channel conversations with the authority to discipline those conniving to force out colleagues who don't toe the Marxist line, nothing changes here.

[00:24:08] Quite honestly, unless Bezos changes the corporate culture at the Washington Post from the hyper partisan snake pit it is, there is no hope.

[00:24:16] But you know me, I'm all about solutions.

[00:24:20] Strife offers up or strief offers up a solution.

[00:24:25] So what could Bezos do to restore some faith in his newspaper?

[00:24:33] Strife writing at redstate.com offers up this suggestion and I think it is brilliant.

[00:24:41] Give back the Pulitzer Prize that it shared with the New York Times for pushing the fake stories about Trump's ties to Russia.

[00:24:51] Russia.

[00:24:52] Give back the Pulitzer.

[00:24:55] They were they were not true stories.

[00:24:58] Right.

[00:24:59] You relied on anonymous sources that lied to you.

[00:25:02] You promoted all of this stuff is true.

[00:25:05] It wasn't.

[00:25:06] So.

[00:25:07] Give back the award.

[00:25:13] He says, see, Walter Durante is alive and well and working at the Washington Post and New York Times.

[00:25:18] He could he could.

[00:25:19] Bezos.

[00:25:20] Walter Durante was the guy that went over to the Soviet Union.

[00:25:25] New York Times guy.

[00:25:27] Came back and did all these glowing stories about how awesome Stalin was and how fantastic life is in the Soviet Union.

[00:25:34] Meanwhile, you know, tens of millions of people are dying under communism.

[00:25:39] Bezos could demand the resignations of everybody involved in the story, particularly those of the editors who guided the coverage.

[00:25:46] That would be a good faith offering that he is serious about restoring credibility.

[00:25:51] It would be a sign that there are consequences for peddling lies and that the truth has a greater value than the accolades of the Democrat Party.

[00:26:03] I like it.

[00:26:05] But I don't think he's going to do it.

[00:26:08] I don't think he's going to fire people.

[00:26:10] I don't think he will do that.

[00:26:11] But he could demand that the Pulitzer be returned.

[00:26:15] He could do that.

[00:26:19] We'll see what he does.

[00:26:21] I don't think he will, but we'll see what he does.

[00:26:23] Over at National Review, Mark Antonio Wright, who's the, I think, executive editor at National Review.

[00:26:33] He called the op-ed a remarkable document.

[00:26:36] He says, I happen to think that this decision makes a lot of sense for the Washington Post.

[00:26:44] If an endorsement at the top of the ticket isn't changing any minds, and if it's only serving to solidify a view that the paper is biased against one party, then it seems worth dropping.

[00:26:55] Especially if the goal is to reach a broader audience, as Bezos says it should be.

[00:27:02] Right?

[00:27:03] It makes sense.

[00:27:05] Right?

[00:27:06] If you want to get more reach, especially in D.C., you can't have half of the town not subscribing to your paper because they think that you're a propaganda arm for the Democrat Party.

[00:27:21] He says, but I also think that virtually all Americans are starting to realize that while social media can sometimes break news or highlight undercovered, not uncovered, but undercovered stories that are being ignored by the mainstream press.

[00:27:39] He says, I think Americans are starting to realize that at its worst, social media is genuinely toxic to the body politic.

[00:27:47] Say what you will about the Washington Post or the New York Times, but even those sometimes very silly organizations are usually much, much better sources of accurate news than your Uncle Jerry's Facebook feed or whatever trash the Twitter algorithm serves up on its for you feed.

[00:28:09] Yeah, I've noticed that too.

[00:28:10] My for you feed doesn't seem like it's for me at all.

[00:28:16] In all cases, of course, what is needed here is a layer of discernment on the part of the reader.

[00:28:24] What do I say?

[00:28:25] I say it all the time.

[00:28:28] Not only that I'm a giver.

[00:28:29] That's true.

[00:28:30] I say that a lot.

[00:28:30] Okay.

[00:28:31] But yeah.

[00:28:31] And is the juice worth the squeeze?

[00:28:32] I say that too.

[00:28:33] That's fair.

[00:28:34] And I'm all about solutions.

[00:28:36] Okay.

[00:28:36] I say a lot of things a lot.

[00:28:37] Okay.

[00:28:38] That's fine.

[00:28:39] But I also say get your news from multiple sources.

[00:28:43] Why do I say that?

[00:28:45] Why do I say that?

[00:28:46] Because the way a story gets covered encompasses the bias that's built into that news operation.

[00:28:54] The people that are on a staff, because they are all humans.

[00:28:58] They have different ideas about what's newsworthy and what's not.

[00:29:01] They use different adjectives to describe things.

[00:29:05] They focus on different elements or angles of a story.

[00:29:09] So you want to see how a story is being reported in different ways.

[00:29:15] Or you could just listen to me, because I do all of that for you.

[00:29:19] Because I'm a giver.

[00:29:21] See, I did it again.

[00:29:22] See?

[00:29:24] He says,

[00:29:25] One of the two or three richest men on earth can't afford to subsidize an organization dedicated to the pursuit of truth.

[00:29:32] And it seems that if Bezos is going to continue paying the bills, he's going to insist that the post start to change the way it does its work.

[00:29:43] Now, I will also point out here.

[00:29:48] It's pretty convenient timing.

[00:29:50] Because if Trump wins, right?

[00:29:53] Then Bezos' employees will, I suspect, rediscover their role as watchdogs of the White House.

[00:30:05] Right?

[00:30:06] They will have awoken from their four-year slumber, realizing why they got into journalism in the first place, and they will hold Donald Trump accountable.

[00:30:14] And this is why I wrote the piece a month ago, saying, I am voting for Trump as a protest against the media.

[00:30:23] That's it.

[00:30:24] That is the only reason for that vote.

[00:30:26] That is it.

[00:30:28] Because I know that they're going to go after Trump.

[00:30:30] I know they're going to hold him accountable.

[00:30:31] They're going to erect guardrails and try to keep them in between them.

[00:30:35] And I have no faith that they will do that for Kamala Harris, as is evidenced by the last, you know, 100 days or so.

[00:30:42] All right, that'll do it for this episode.

[00:30:44] Thank you so much for listening.

[00:30:45] I could not do the show without your support and the support of the businesses that advertise on the podcast.

[00:30:50] So if you'd like, please support them, too, and tell them you heard it here.

[00:30:54] You can also become a patron at my Patreon page or go to thepetecalinnershow.com.

[00:30:59] Again, thank you so much for listening, and don't break anything while I'm gone.