Just before he laid off 300 journalists at the Washington Post, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos told President Donald Trump that the publication was his worst investment, according to a new book by New York Times journalists Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman.

The conversation happened over dinner in December 2024, the New York Post reported. Bezos told the president that "the people there are terrible," speaking of the business side of the publication's operation. 

He said that, unlike his other companies, the people at the Washington Post don't listen. At that point, the paper was losing $100 million per year. 

Approximately two months after the dinner, Bezos directed the Washington Post opinion pages to promote "personal liberties and free markets." Many readers at the time were canceling their subscriptions over the paper's decision to withhold an endorsement of Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris. 

Swan and Haberman describe the discussion as being part of a larger effort by Big Tech leaders to cozy up Trump after he won the 2024 presidential election. Trump had spent years criticizing what he said was an overwhelming left-wing bias among major media outlets and online platforms.