'Democracy Dies in Oligarchy,' Says Sanders of Mass Layoffs at Washington Post

Sen. Bernie Sanders on Wednesday added his voice to those who categorically rejected the notion that "financial challenges" were behind the Washington Post's decision to slash more than 300 jobs, considering the venerated newspaper is owned by the world's fourth-richest person, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.

The tech mogul, Sanders (I-Vt.) noted, spent tens of millions of dollars last year on his wedding in Italy, and owns a $500 million yacht. Bezos has a net worth of at least $235 billion.

Most notably, the senator pointed to the $75 million Bezos just spent purchasing the rights to and promoting a documentary film about First Lady Melania Trump—one that critics have condemned as a clear "bribe," and whose premiere was followed by a visit to Bezos' space tech company Blue Origin by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who said the firm is likely to do “plenty of winning” as the Pentagon hands out new defense contracts.

In a grim play on the tagline Bezos emblazoned on the Post's masthead after he bought the paper in 2013 for $250 million, Sanders wrote, "Democracy dies in oligarchy."

Sanders spoke out as numerous Post journalists announced that they had been affected by the mass layoffs, which will hit all sections of the newspaper and entirely shut down its sports and book review pages.

The international news section was also heavily impacted by the layoffs, and Ukraine correspondent Lizzie Johnson announced on social media that she had been "laid off by the Washington Post in the middle of a war zone."

Martin Weil, a longtime local reporter who joined the Post in 1965 and contributed to the paper's historic Watergate coverage, was also among those who were laid off.

Sanders has long criticized Bezos' decision to take over the Post and suggested that the mogul would not ensure fair coverage of issues impacting working Americans. In 2019, he said that the newspaper appeared biased against his progressive politics as he sought the Democratic nomination to run for president.

At the time, then-executive editor Martin Baron countered that "Jeff Bezos allows our newsroom to operate with full independence, as our reporters and editors can attest."

Last year, months after Bezos pulled an endorsement for then-Vice President Kamala Harris' presidential campaign and following an announcement that the opinion page would focus on “personal liberties and free markets," opinion editor David Shipley announced his resignation. Columnist Ruth Marcus also stepped down weeks later after CEO Will Lewis allegedly refused to run a column critiquing Bezos' changes to the opinion section.

On Wednesday, Baron said the gutting of the Post's newsroom marked one of "the darkest days in the history of one of the world's greatest news organizations" and took aim at Bezos, whom he accused of "betraying the values he was supposed to uphold."

"The Post's challenges... were made infinitely worse by ill-conceived decisions that came from the very top," said Baron. "Bezos' sickening efforts to curry favor with President [Donald] Trump have left an especially ugly stain of their own."