Democracy Dies in Darkness

Joe Zeigler

10 Feb 2026 — 9 min read

A destroyed legacy

Joe Zeigler

Summary: Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post in 2013 and spent a decade wearing it like a civic medal. Then Donald Trump showed him what defiance costs — a $10 billion Pentagon contract — and Bezos started kneeling. He killed the Harris endorsement, reshaped the opinion pages into a libertarian pamphlet, paid $75 million for a Melania documentary, and on February 4, 2026, gutted a third of the newsroom while posing with the Defense Secretary at his rocket factory. Eugene Meyer's seven principles for running a newspaper are still mounted in brass on the newsroom wall. Bezos walks past them. This essay mints a word for what he's doing: Bezosism.

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