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What Next | Daily News and Analysis

Did Democracy Die in Darkness?

What Next | Daily News and Analysis

Slate

News, Daily News, News Commentary, Politics

4.6 • 2.3K Ratings

🗓️ 21 January 2025

⏱️ 29 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Last October, Amazon CEO and billionaire owner of the Washington Post Jeff Bezos swooped in to halt the publication of a Kamala Harris endorsement from the editorial board. Yesterday, he appeared in the front row at Trump’s second inauguration. The paper’s hemorrhaging subscribers—and laying off dozens of staff members—but it seems like the internal unrest has just begun. Guest: Maxwell Tani, journalist covering media for Semafor. Want more What Next? Subscribe to Slate Plus to access ad-free listening to the whole What Next family and across all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe today on Apple Podcasts by clicking “Try Free” at the top of our show page. Sign up now at slate.com/whatnextplus to get access wherever you listen. Podcast production by Elena Schwartz, Paige Osburn, Anna Phillips, Madeline Ducharme and Rob Gunther.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

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0:33.5

The striking visual that I think a lot of people are going to take away from Donald Trump's inauguration yesterday is going to be the seating chart.

0:43.6

With the ceremony moved inside and spaced at a premium, not everyone got a prime seat.

0:49.8

Governors were relegated to an overflow room.

0:53.1

Tech CEOs, on the other hand, many of them were

0:57.0

right up on stage, even in front of the cabinet. All these guys had been in and out of Mar-a-Lago

1:05.8

over the last couple of months, the head of Google, the CEO of Apple. Some had displayed their deference to Trump

1:13.0

in elaborate ways, the way Mark Zuckerberg announced Facebook is now safe for hate speech.

1:19.2

And in the middle of this pack was the founder of Amazon, Jeff Bezos. These days, he might be

1:25.9

just as well known as the guy in charge of the Washington Post.

1:30.0

Right before the election, Bezos reportedly spiked the Post's endorsement of Donald Trump's

1:35.8

opponent, Kamala Harris. It's worth winding the clock back to understand how big of a change this is for the Post.

1:46.7

Max Tani, who covers the media for Semaphore, he still remembers how Trump's first term

1:51.6

seemed to galvanize the writers and editors there.

1:54.9

The Washington Post was one of the news outlets that immediately jumped in on the story of Donald Trump's first

2:02.6

term in office. The Post covered all of the ins and outs of the transition and many of the

2:09.5

first big moves that the Trump administration made. It boosted subscriptions. It boosted traffic.

...

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