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FAIR
View article on FAIR's website ([link removed])
The World’s Richest People Look Out for Each Other: Pete Tucker ([link removed])
Who's Running This Country: Donald Trump or Elon Musk?
The wrap WaPo rejected.
The Washington Post won’t say why it cancelled a six-figure ad buy calling for Elon Musk to be fired, but it’s likely the same reason the Post insisted Musk wasn’t Nazi-saluting ([link removed]) on Inauguration Day, and why the paper killed its endorsement ([link removed]) of Kamala Harris: because that’s what Jeff Bezos wants.
In addition to owning the Post, Bezos is the founder of Amazon and currently the world’s third-richest human. At best, the Post is a side-hustle for Bezos, while Amazon and his other business pursuits are what truly animate him. “With Jeff, it’s always only about business,” a former employee of Bezos’s space company, Blue Origin, told the Post ([link removed]) (10/30/24). “That’s how he built Amazon. That’s how he runs all of his enterprises.”
To sustain his sprawling empire, Bezos relies on government contracts ([link removed]) worth billions of dollars ([link removed]) , even as he stiff-arms regulators ([link removed]) and irksome antitrust enforcers ([link removed]) . This nifty maneuver is only possible if those in power play ball, but Trump didn’t during his first term (CNN, 12/9/19 ([link removed]) ).
To ensure Trump II will be more amenable, Bezos has gone to lengths to grease the wheels, lavishing praise and millions of dollars ([link removed]) on Trump and his family. He joined Musk and other tech billionaires in flanking Trump at his inauguration. (Bezos’s presence signaled “anything but independence for the Washington Post,” said ([link removed]) Marty Baron, the paper’s former executive editor.)
Meanwhile, with Musk’s hand now on the public money spigot—thanks to Trump ceding much of the US government to him—Bezos is also busy doing favors for Musk (FAIR.org, 2/14/25 ([link removed]) ), the richest person alive.
From a business perspective—the only perspective that really matters to Bezos—pissing the temperamental Musk off at a moment when he commands unprecedented power in the public and private spheres is a bad idea. So Bezos is being careful not to—as is his paper. Which brings us back to that rejected ad.
** 'You can't do the wrap'
------------------------------------------------------------
No One Elected Elon Musk to Any Office
The flipside of the Common Cause/SPLCAF ad.
The bright red ad ([link removed]) was to wrap around the front and back pages of some print editions of the Post, including those going to subscribers on Capitol Hill, the Pentagon and the White House, ensuring top officials would lay eyes on it. Featuring a laughing Musk hovering over the White House, the ad asks, “Who’s running this country: Donald Trump or Elon Musk?”
The civic groups Common Cause ([link removed]) and the Southern Poverty Law Center Action Fund ([link removed]) were behind the ad wrap, which was to be accompanied by a full-page ad inside the paper.
But even though the groups had signed a $115,000 contract ([link removed]) with the Post, the paper canceled the wrap at the 11th hour, even as it said it could run the inside ad, which hit on the same themes.
“They said, ‘You can have something inside the paper, but you can’t do the wrap,’” Common Cause president Virginia Kase Solomón told The Hill (2/16/25 ([link removed]) ). "We said ‘Thanks, no thanks,’ because we had a lot of questions.”
Among them: Was the ad killed
because we’re critical of what’s happening with Elon Musk? Is it only OK to run things in the Post now that won’t anger the president, or won’t have him calling Jeff Bezos asking why this was allowed?
Kase Solomón asked the Post to explain its willingness to run the inside ad, but not the wrap. “They said they were not at liberty to give us a reason,” she told the New York Times (2/17/25 ([link removed]) ).
Tellingly, in providing guidance to Common Cause on how to comply with the Post’s ad standards, Kase Solomón said the paper sent a sample ad paid for by a Big Oil group. “It was a 'thank you Donald Trump' piece of art,” Kase Solomón told The Hill.
The pulled ad directed readers to FireMusk.org ([link removed]) , which states:
Musk, an unaccountable and unelected billionaire, is pushing to control public spending, dismantle the safety net and reshape our way of life to suit his interests. It’s clear what’s happening here: Musk and Trump aim to replace qualified civil servants with political allies whose loyalty lies solely with them.
** 'Unacceptable business practices'
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A single individual now controls sensitive US data, risking our national security.
An ad from Ekō rejected by Facebook for "unacceptable business practices."
The Post’s ad cancellation comes on the heels of Meta pulling an ad critical of Musk earlier this month. The yanked Facebook ad was purchased by the watchdog group Ekō ([link removed]) , which had two other anti-Musk ads taken down by Meta—at least until the outlet Musk Watch made inquiries. The two other ads “were removed in error and have now been restored,” Meta told Musk Watch (2/18/25 ([link removed]) ).
Meanwhile, Musk Watch noted, “Ads that were supportive of Musk and Trump were not impacted by similar errors.”
Still, one Ekō ad remains banished, with Meta citing “unacceptable business practices” as the reason.
That explanation makes a certain kind of sense. After all, alongside Bezos and Musk at Trump’s inauguration, was the world’s second richest person, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg. And as Bezos’s Post has made clear, pissing off your fellow billionaires is indeed an unacceptable business practice.
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