The Patriot Post® · A Leftmedia Non-Endorsement Endorsement

The Washington Post is the second major Leftmedia outlet to refrain from endorsing a presidential candidate, announcing the non-endorsement on Friday following The Los Angeles Times’s decision earlier in the week. For both papers, it was a break from recent history. And for both papers, the decision came from the top, each paper’s owner.

Similarly, on Monday, USA Today announced it would not make an endorsement, though the paper had ventured into presidential endorsements for the first and only time with Joe Biden in 2020.

At least in the cases of the Post and Times, the editorial staff objected. In fact, at WaPo, editor-at-large Robert Kagan, a vocal critic of Donald Trump, tendered his resignation in protest. On Monday, two more editorial board members — Molly Roberts and David Hoffman — followed him to the exit.

Roughly 200,000 subscribers also ditched the paper. That’s an eye-popping number when the Post gained just 4,000 subscriptions so far this year.

WaPo’s excuse for refusing to endorse yet another Democrat presidential nominee was “returning to our roots of not endorsing presidential candidates.” The only time the Post hasn’t endorsed a Democrat since Jimmy Carter in 1976 was in 1988, when the paper endorsed neither Democrat Michael Dukakis nor Republican George H.W. Bush. Now, Kamala Harris is so bad that the paper says it will never endorse a presidential candidate again.

The Leftmedia outlet laughably claimed, “Our job at The Washington Post is to provide through the newsroom nonpartisan news for all Americans, and thought-provoking, reported views from our opinion team to help our readers make up their own minds.” The paper added, “Most of all, our job as the newspaper of the capital city of the most important country in the world is to be independent.”

Really? Independent? A record over the last half-century of endorsing only Democrats says otherwise.

On top of this, the Post’s former executive editor, Martin Baron, called the move “cowardice, a moment of darkness that will leave democracy as a casualty.”

However, it’s not as if WaPo’s feelings about Trump were unclear. It has repeatedly blasted Trump, running with the “Russia/Trump collusion” hoax during his first term, as well as pushing the Democrats’ bogus January 6 “insurrection” narrative.

In fact, it was the election of Trump that motivated the outfit to adopt its ridiculous motto, “Democracy Dies in Darkness.” Despite the Post’s non-endorsement of Harris, does anyone really wonder who WaPo supports for president?

In the LA Times’s case, the daughter of the owner, Patrick Soon-Shiong, a billionaire entrepreneur and doctor who acquired the paper in 2018, claimed the decision to forego an endorsement was a family one. Nika Soon-Shiong explained, “This was the first and only time I have been involved in the process. As a citizen of a country openly financing genocide, and as a family that experienced South African Apartheid, the endorsement was an opportunity to repudiate justifications for the widespread targeting of journalists and ongoing war on children.”

A spokesman for the Times denied her account, saying, “Her words do not represent the family of the L.A. Times.” However, like the Post, it’s no secret who the leftist Times prefers for president.

Why would the ownership of the two papers forbid these endorsements? Well, Jeff Bezos wrote an op-ed to explain his own rationale. Here’s a key excerpt:

We must be accurate, and we must be believed to be accurate. It’s a bitter pill to swallow, but we are failing on the second requirement. Most people believe the media is biased. Anyone who doesn’t see this is paying scant attention to reality, and those who fight reality lose. Reality is an undefeated champion. It would be easy to blame others for our long and continuing fall in credibility (and, therefore, decline in impact), but a victim mentality will not help. Complaining is not a strategy. We must work harder to control what we can control to increase our credibility.

“Presidential endorsements do nothing to tip the scales of an election,” he added. “What presidential endorsements actually do is create a perception of bias.”

Bezos is an unabashed left-winger, but he sees the mainstream media torching its own credibility. He still thinks the Post is “accurate,” which is still wrong, but he’s getting closer to the truth in acknowledging public perception.

His realization is only part of the true reason. The biggest is all about business. Both the Post and the Times — and numerous other Leftmedia outlets — have had to cut staff not only due to the bad economy but also due to a drop in subscriptions after Trump left office.

As much as the Leftmedia loathe Trump, he’s good for business. His first term wasn’t just a boon for the American economy; it was also a boon for the media. So, from a strictly business perspective, a second Trump term will be good for these papers’ bottom lines.

Furthermore, ownership may see a potential Harris administration as a continuation of the last three and a half years, which also doesn’t bode well for business or free speech. And then there’s this irony, especially for the Post: The candidate that most threatens it is not the speech-supporting Trump but the speech-infringing Harris. Maybe both Bezos and Soon-Shiong see this and want nothing of it.