Yesterday was Dick Cheney’s funeral in Washington, D.C., which attracted a motley crew of political figures. In attendance was Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, George W. Bush, and Mike Pence, while the Obamas, the Clintons, Donald Trump, and JD Vance were absent. The latter was busy on a livestream with Breitbart, the far-right political website, which was broadcast on the White House feed, reports The Daily Beast. And while on that feed, Vance claimed that he tried to use his position of power to push The Washington Post even further right.
“There was this big conversation at The Washington Post about, what do we do to actually get in touch with the other half of America? How do we actually make our journalism more appealing to the half of the country that doesn’t agree with far-left politics?” Vance said, per the Beast. “And I actually, I think I texted Jeff Bezos and I said, ‘If you’re really serious about this, you should just hire Matt Boyle and make him run your entire political reporting shop… Unfortunately for The Washington Post, they did not take my advice.”
It should be noted that Matt Boyle, who’s Breitbart‘s White House Bureau Chief, is also the person who was conducting the stream with Vance, so this is also just a pretty flattering thing to say to the person in front of him. But there have been notable changes to The Washington Post, which Bezos bought in 2013, since Trump’s second inauguration. In February, for example, the Post narrowed the focus of its opinion section to focus on “personal liberty” and “free markets.” The paper also came under fire in September after columnist Karen Attiah said she was fired for posting about Charlie Kirk.
Spokespeople for The Washington Post did not immediately respond to The A.V. Club‘s request for comment on this story.
