Legendary Washington Post Reporter Bob Woodward Turns on Jeff Bezos in Explosive New Memoir — as He Accuses Amazon Founder of 'Capitulating to Trump'

Legendary Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward has unleashed a blistering attack on his boss, Jeff Bezos, accusing the Amazon mogul of abandoning his own reporters and refusing to stand up to President Donald Trump's war on the media, RadarOnline.com can reveal.

In his upcoming memoir, the 83-year-old journalism icon reveals how his initial "relief" when Bezos swooped in to buy the struggling paper in 2013 has turned into disillusionment, accusing the billionaire of remaining "silent" as Trump relentlessly targets the press.

Woodward isn't just revisiting his decades of journalistic triumphs in the 592-page tell-all Secrets, hitting shelves November 24. He's also pulling back the curtain on his growing distrust of Bezos.

The journalistic giant behind breaking the Watergate scandal recalled how, when he called Bezos in 2018 to warn him he was writing a scathing takedown book about Trump and his first administration, the tycoon allegedly assured him, "Don’t worry, I have your back, Bob. I’ll always have your back."

In his memoir, Woodward accuses Bezos of bowing to Trump at the expense of the newspaper's credibility, charging that the e-commerce titan is “compromising public trust in The Washington Post’s aggressive and independent journalism” by seemingly putting himself on the president's good side.

"I remember feeling relief when Jeff decided to buy The Post in 2013. I believed at the time that Bezos would provide the finances for The Post to continue to operate courageously," Woodward claimed in an excerpt published in a publication on Tuesday, October 27.

The Pulitzer Prize winner became alarmed when Bezos stepped in to quash the paper's endorsement of Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential race days before the election, even though the editorial board had drafted the document.

“At the time, I thought, is he not reading his own newspaper or my books about Trump?” Woodward writes, claiming it made it appear that "Bezos and the newspaper were capitulating to Trump."

The Blue Origin founder defended his decision at the time, saying "Presidential endorsements do nothing to tip the scales of an election," and that "Ending them is a principled decision, and it’s the right one." Bezos also claimed there was "no quid pro quo" in not backing Harris over Trump.

Bezos was nowhere to be seen at Trump's first inauguration in 2017, but made a very public show of attending his January 2025 return to the White House, rubbing elbows with fellow tech power players Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk who lined up for the president's second swearing-in.

While Woodward conceded that The Post hasn't backed down from publishing hard-hitting exposés critical of Trump, he blasted Bezos for failing to publicly defend his embattled journalists against the president's relentless attacks, quite unlike New York Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger, who has been far more outspoken.

"It pains me that Jeff Bezos has remained silent," Woodward writes in a rebuke of Bezos. "It is not too late for media owners to prioritize moral courage over financial gain."

Woodward is also critical of how Bezos shook up the Post's opinion pages, declaring they would champion only "personal liberties and free markets" while shutting out opposing viewpoints.

"I could only imagine the agony this kind of decision would have caused Kay or Ben," he noted while referring to the newspaper's legendary Watergate-era leaders, publisher Katharine Graham and executive editor Ben Bradlee, who helped bring down President Richard Nixon.