Former Washington Post executive editor Marty Baron -- the guy with that transparently ridiculous claim about their anti-Trump animus, "We're not at war, we're at work" -- was the featured leftist lecturer on the Post's job cuts on the February 4 PBS News Hour.
Anchor Geoff Bennett asked where it went wrong with Post owner Jeff Bezos, and Baron began with "I think that he became sort of detached in about 2019, when his marriage broke up, when Amazon was struggling later in 2020, when the -- Amazon was struggling with the pandemic and all the aspects of that."
What? Bezos and Amazon made out like bandits in 2020 when everyone was staying in their homes and ordering everything in. The trend analysis continued:
ON PBS @NewsHour, former WashPost editor Marty Baron blamed the Post's job cuts on all their pro-Trump mistakes. They failed to endorse Kamala, they funded a Melania documentary. Bezos was on stage at Trump's inauguration. So their whole business model is keeping leftists happy. pic.twitter.com/6L9i1NC8bD
— Tim Graham (@TimJGraham) February 6, 2026
BARON: And then I think he really became -- took a real turn after it looked like Trump was going to be elected president yet again. And that was in 2024. And 11 days before the presidential election in 2024, they killed an editorial for -- that was endorsing Kamala Harris. He said the paper wouldn't endorse ever again for president.
And hundreds of thousands of subscribers canceled at that time, aggravating the financial problems that they had. Subsequent to that, he did all sorts of things that made things even worse, appearing at the inauguration on the stage with Donald Trump, buying the Melania so-called documentary for an exorbitant price, buying the right -- Amazon buying the rights to The Apprentice.
And Amazon had bought the rights to Melania's documentary as well. And then completely changing the opinion pages so that essentially they have no columnists who are really left of center. And they're very deferential to Trump. And I think they lack a moral core.
And so all of that has driven subscribers away. And so for every subscriber that they get coming in through the front door because of the high-quality news coverage, I think they're losing maybe two subscribers out the back door. Of course, I don't know the numbers exactly, but clearly they have been losing a lot of subscribers.
So the business model is apparently keeping your most fervently anti-Trump subscribers happy, the #Resistance subscribers.
Then Baron closed with more unintentional humor: "We are not stenographers and we should not be propagandists. And that is the role that The Washington Post has historically played, and that's the role that it should continue to play."
When people think of the Post, they think of the scandal crusading of Watergate and Iran-Contra and Russian collusion. They haven't "historically" proven that they aren't more like stenographers when Democrats are in power.
PS: Baron was also featured as the expert with Steve Inskeep on NPR's Morning Edition.
