Jeff Bezos defends the Washington Post’s decision to stop supporting presidents just days before the election

Jeff Bezos, the billionaire founder of Amazon and owner of The Washington Post, defended the newspaper’s decision stop supporting presidential candidatespartly arguing that the move is a way to boost credibility and combat perceptions of political bias.

“The president’s support does nothing to tip the scales of the election. No undecided voter in Pennsylvania will say, “I support the endorsement of Newspaper A.” None. In fact, the president’s endorsement creates the appearance of bias. Ending it is a principled and right decision,” Bezos wrote in “A an article consisting of nine paragraphs published on The Post’s website Monday evening.

Bezos published his comments three days after Will Lewis, publisher and CEO of The Post, announced that the popular publication will not receive the president’s endorsement this year or “in any future presidential election,” breaking with decades of tradition. The announcement sparked immediate reaction from readers, current and former employees, workers’ guilds and liberal social media influencers.

NPR reported earlier Monday that the newspaper did lost over 200,000 digital subscribers since Lewis’ announcement. At least three members of the newspaper’s editorial board resigned as a sign of protest.

The newspaper’s own reports indicate that The Post’s editorial board planned to support the Democratic candidate, Vice President Kamala Harris. Post, in the article citing four people briefed on the matter, he said that Bezos had decided to stop supporting the president. The newspaper, through its spokesmen, denied these claims.

Bezos admitted that the move could have been handled better.

“I wish we had made a change sooner than we did, a moment further away from the election and the emotions surrounding it,” Bezos wrote. “This was inappropriate planning, not intended strategy.”

Bezos also vehemently denied that there was a “rematch of any kind” with former President Donald Trump or Harris, adding that neither the campaign nor the candidate were consulted or informed at any level or in any way about this decision.

“Dave Limp, CEO of one of my companies, Blue Origin, met with former President Donald Trump on the day of our announcement,” Bezos wrote. “I sighed when I found out about it because I knew it would be ammunition for those who would portray this decision as anything other than a principled decision. But the fact is that I didn’t know about the meeting beforehand. Even Limp didn’t know, we didn’t know about it in advance; the meeting was quickly scheduled for this morning and there is no connection between it and our decision to support the president, and any suggestions are otherwise.

Bezos, who bought The Post for $250 million in 2013, insisted he would not use the publication as a vehicle to advance his “personal interests” and argued the 146-year-old publication would have to “train new muscles” to remain commercially competitive and culturally relevant.

“Even though I don’t do it and will not dictate my personal interests, nor will I allow this newspaper to run on autopilot and fall into irrelevance – overtaken by unresearched podcasts and social media shouting – not without a fight,” he wrote. “It’s too important. The stakes are too high. Now more than ever, the world needs a credible, trustworthy and independent voice, and where better for that voice to be heard than in the capital of the most important country in the world?”

Editorial board members who announced their resignations Monday said they felt it was necessary for the paper to formally endorse Harris over Trump, whom they described as a threat to American democracy and a free press.

“I believe we face a very real threat of autocracy in the event of Donald Trump’s candidacy,” editor-in-chief David Hoffman wrote in a resignation letter to editorial page editor David Shipley. “I find it unsustainable and unacceptable that we have lost our voice at this dangerous moment.” (Hoffman shared a copy of the letter with NBC News.)

The Post’s lack of endorsement came days after news broke that the Los Angeles Times would not endorse Trump or Harris ahead of the Nov. 5 general election. Information service – informed Semaphore that the newspaper was preparing to support Harris, but owner Patrick Soon-Shiong blocked the editorial page from endorsing either candidate. (NBC News has not independently verified this report.)