The New Yorker this week tries to delve into what Jeff Bezos is doing with the Washington Post, after he and his fiancee Lauren Sanchez enjoyed a prominent place at Donald Trump’s inauguration, and after the Amazon founder made several other high-profile moves that are seen as him moving the long-revered journalistic institution into a direction that’s friendly to the president’s MAGA agenda.
Actually, no one in this lengthy New Yorker article could say for sure what Bezos’ vision for the Washington Post might be — including Bezos, who declined to speak to writer Clare Malone. But a former senior Post editor suggested to Malone that the world’s second wealthiest man is probably not making any big moves without consulting his socialite girlfriend.
“I think Lauren is very influential,” the former senior editor said. “Maybe not in the hands-on decisions throughout the Post, but certainly in the orientation of it.”
It’s not clear what Sanchez’s politics are, but the former Los Angeles-based entertainment reporter seems to like being at the nexus of attention and power — usually while wearing tops and gowns that showcase her famous décolletage. For this and other reasons, including her much-maligned Blue Origin space ride in April with Katy Perry and Gayle King, the Daily Beast has dubbed her America’s “Marie Antoinette.”
Sanchez began an affair with Bezos while she was still married to Patrick Whitesell, a top Hollywood talent agent, and Bezos was still married to Mackenzie Scott, a Princeton-educated novelist and the mother of his four children. The National Enquirer learned about the affair and forced Sanchez and Bezos to go public with their relationship in 2019.
Sanchez clearly likes to surround herself with rich and famous friends. Besides such A-List friends as Kim Kardashian, Kris Jenner, Katy Perry and Eva Longoria. She also has been known to socialize with such prominent MAGA world figures as Ivanka Trump and Bettina Anderson, Donald Trump Jr.’s new socialite girlfriend, according to the New Yorker.
Her connection to Ivanka Trump possibly deepened after she and Bezos purchased their third property on Indian Creek Island, the coveted South Florida gated community that’s known as Billionaire Bunker, where Ivanka lives with her husband Jared Kushner. Sanchez was also with Bezos at the Mar-a-Lago dinner before Christmas when Melania Trump spoke about a documentary she was developing about her own life; two weeks later, Bezos’s Amazon licensed the first lady’s documentary for $40 million, with as much as $28 million going directly to her.
Sanchez clearly liked standing with Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg and other tech billionaires — the so-called “oligarchs” — at Trump’s inauguration, near Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner and other Trump family members. Sanchez also notoriously wore what appeared to be a lacy, white peek-a-boo bra or bustier top — and nothing else — beneath her designer jacket.
The New Yorker article quotes people who interpret Bezos’s attempts to curry favor with the Trump administration as those of a businessman looking to protect his financial interests during uncertain political times. It also notes that the Post has been struggling financially for the past few years, while top staffers have been “leaving in droves” over frustration about the paper’s seeming lack of direction and the leadership Bezos has put in charge.
Meanwhile, the article also described Bezos as choosing to accompany Sanchez to glitzy events or on luxury European vacations rather than to be present for the chaos that some of his decisions have unleashed at the Washington Post. During the tumultuous summer before the 2024 election, he and Sanchez island- hopped around the Mediterranean aboard his $500 million superyacht, whose prow is graced with a sculpture of a winged goddess thought to resemble Sanchez.
It’s well known that Bezos and Sanchez flew off to Europe to celebrate Katy Perry’s 40th birthday on the same weekend that the Post was plunged into an existential crisis and had to deal with employee anger and subscriber backlash over his decision to censor the newspaper’s endorsement of Kamala Harris.
In March, Bezos and Sanchez attended the Vanity Fair Oscars party instead of a gala at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., to celebrate the screening of a new documentary that celebrates Katherine Graham, Bezos’s predecessor at the Post, according to the New Yorker. During Graham’s legendary career as publisher, she oversaw the Post’s coverage of Richard Nixon’s Watergate scandal, which helped define the newspaper’s golden era of holding the nation’s most powerful officials to account.
Meanwhile, days before the Kennedy Center screening, Bezos announced another major shift at the paper that was seen as capitulating to Trump and as pursuing a “relationship with a new and potentially dangerous administration,” as Bezos’s media mogul friend Barry Diller acknowledged to the New Yorker.
The Post’s Opinions section would henceforth feature pieces “in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets,” and “viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others,” Bezos said.
The evening that Bezos announced this new direction, he had dinner with Trump, according to the New Yorker. It’s not known if Sanchez also attended the dinner, as she has in the past. But Trump offered praise for what Bezos is doing at the Post, saying, “Jeff Bezos is trying to do a real job with the Washington Post, and that wasn’t happening before.”
Bezos, of course, made himself an enemy of Trump during his first administration because of his ownership of the Post. Among other things, the Post broke the story of Trump’s lewd comment to “Access Hollywood’s” host Billy Bush about grabbing women’s genitals weeks before the 2016 election. Soon after Trump’s first inauguration, the Post débuted its new motto, “Democracy Dies in Darkness,” while Trump subsequently became “obsessed” with Amazon and considered using his presidential power to bring an antitrust lawsuit against the company, the New Yorker said, citing a report in Axios.
During the early years of Trump’s first administration, Bezos was still married to Scott. He also purchased the largest private home in Washington, D.C., for $23 million with the idea that he and Scott would revive “the legacy of Kay Graham and her great socializing — bringing smart, smart, interesting people together in a social context,” the Washingtonian magazine reported.
But by the time the house “made its debut” in January 2020, Bezos had a new muscle-bound physique and a new life partner, as the New Yorker reported. His co-host for the black-tie party that night wasn’t Scott but Sanchez, and the guests included Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner and other notable figures from Trump’s first administration, such as White House adviser Kellyanne Conway and Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell.
With the start of Trump’s second administration, it remains to be seen whether Bezos and Sanchez will start up a new tradition of hosting gatherings at their D.C. mansion, with guests including a new cohort of Trump administration officials. Of course, Bezos and Sanchez are probably busy right now gearing up for their lavish Italian wedding in June. If you believe British tabloids like the Daily Mail and The Sun, Donald Trump, Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner are on the guest list.