Bezos dines with Trump after dicing up Opinion page

“We are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets,” wrote billionaire Jeff Bezos in a Wednesday note to the staff of his newspaper, the Washington Post. “We’ll cover other topics too of course, but viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others.”

The missive from on high sent shockwaves around the capital. David Shipley, the Post’s Opinion editor, stepped away from his role over the new directive. Libertarian magazine Reason had a field day: “If this sounds like something you might want to read, may I suggest @reason where we’ve been doing this since 1968?” wrote editor-in-chief Katherine Mangu-Ward.

Four blocks away from Post HQ, the change-up was well-received at the White House. “I had dinner with Jeff Bezos last night,” President Trump told The Spectator’s US editor-at-large Ben Domenech yesterday, in his first magazine interview since taking office. Flipping your paper’s opinion offering upside down in the morning, dinner with POTUS in the evening: all in a day’s work for an American oligarch.

Domenech asked if the president trusted Bezos and the other billionaires who have recently kissed the ring:

Who do I trust? I mean, who do you trust? Do you trust anybody? These are very smart guys. And I always say to them, we have dinners together, usually started by them. I’m so busy with all of this. Between China, Russia, Ukraine, I’ve got more things happening. But I always love to just sort of look at them and said, “hi, where do you come from?” “I came from Hawaii to have dinner.” That was good. I said, “would you have been here if I lost,” you know? “Would you have been here if I lost it?” They never answer that question. Actually, they just sort of shy away from it.

I tell you what, I like these guys, but I have to. So when you ask about the difference. So the first time, these guys were bitter enemies. I never even understood it. I didn’t know him. I didn’t know Zuckerberg. I didn’t know Jeff, I didn’t. When you look at the inauguration, it was a “who’s-who” of every single one of them. Every single guy was there.

You say, will they be loyal? Who knows? But when I was a winner at the beginning, you know, then that was a big win. They didn’t come with me when I was winning. Now they’re at levels… nobody’s ever seen a dais like that. You know the inauguration. Zuckerberg. This one, this one, that one. Microsoft. Everybody. Which is pretty cool.

DC’s hottest club is…

Also visiting the White House yesterday, along with Domenech: Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker, British PM Sir Keir Starmer, LibsofTikTok’s Chaya Raichik and Mike Cernovich. It’s an eclectic hangout.

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Jeffrey Epstein claimed his latest victims from beyond his (alleged) grave: conservative influencers.

The White House invited a slew of MAGA-sympathetic social-media behemoths for an exclusive briefing Thursday, and handed them massive binders that read “The Epstein Files: Phase 1, By order of Attorney General Pamela Bondi & FBI Director Kash Patel.”

“Tune in to Human Events Daily in 45 minutes,” Jack Posobiec posted, holding a selfie with the binder. Chaya Raichik, aka @libsoftiktok, Mike Cernovich and @dc_draino were among the hand-picked crew that received the binders, which notably contained no new information whatsoever. Prior to their now-infamous photo shoot, the group met with President Donald Trump and other senior leaders.

But everything about the rollout was a disaster. Other influencers such as Laura Loomer, who were not invited, flamed those who got the call. Several of the attending influencers posted virtually the same message about the meeting.

“Their ideology is monetization,” journalist Jordan Schachtel wrote; one guest told the National Pulse that the event was a “clusterfuck.”

The release was also panned by Republicans in Congress who are purportedly working to secure the release of these files. “THIS IS NOT WHAT WE OR THE AMERICAN PEOPLE ASKED FOR and a complete disappointment,” Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna tweeted. The Florida congresswoman who has a task force on declassification via the House’s Oversight Committee, was recently under fire herself for her desire to interview members of the Warren Commission to get to the bottom of the JFK assassination. Unfortunately for Luna, the Warren Commission members are all dead. But she is getting some help from upstairs… from Tulsi Gabbard. “I and the taskforce will be working DIRECTLY with @DNIGabbard on our declassification efforts,” Luna tweeted last night. “I am happy that my veteran sister will be running point on this with us.” So is Cockburn, naturally.

Those invited claimed that more is yet to come. “We’re all waiting for juicy stuff,” Liz Wheeler wrote. “And that’s not what’s in this binder. That’s not what’s in this binder at all. And that’s exactly how the attorney general presented it to us.” The House GOP’s Judiciary Committee breathlessly tweeted out, “BREAKING: EPSTEIN FILES RELEASED,” with a link — to a Rick Roll video. The post has since been deleted.

The British are… here

Cockburn helped to reinforce a very Special Relationship on Wednesday night, as he headed to the Ambassador’s Residence at the British Embassy for a welcome reception for Lord Peter Mandelson, the new UK ambassador to America, and his husband Reinaldo Avila da Silva. After shaking hands with the pair on the way in, your correspondent meandered through the halls and courtyards of the residence, supping Champagne and snacking on fish and chips hors d’oeuvres — what else?

In remarks to the room, Mandelson said Britain would work “hand in glove” with the US as they are a pair of “science-rich” nations, referring to Trump as a “consequential president.” The new ambassador also introduced a pair of “gatecrashers”: British prime minister Sir Keir Starmer and foreign secretary David Lammy, who had just arrived from London ahead of their Thursday talks with Trump.

Starmer began with, for him, an excellent joke: “I’ve only just arrived but already I can feel there’s real buzz around Washington right now. You can sense that there’s a new leader. He’s a true one-off, a pioneer in business, in politics. Many people love him. Others love to hate him. But to us, he’s just… Peter.” He hailed Trump as a “close friend of the United Kingdom” and talked up the Special Relationship, noting that Britain and America had $1.5 trillion invested in each other’s economies and how “we share fundamental values” including “freedom of speech.” The PM also alluded to his recent cut to UK foreign aid — while admitting that “taking out a chainsaw isn’t quite my style,” a nod to Javier Milei and Elon Musk.

PM tells a genuinely funny joke… pic.twitter.com/AgVkhU2NAF
— Harry Cole (@MrHarryCole) February 27, 2025

In attendance: Starmer, Lammy, Mandelson and Avila, commerce secretary Howard Lutnick, FBI director Kash Patel, Mark Burnett, Senator Roger Wicker, Senator Chris Coons, CNN’s Dana Bash, Fox News’s Shannon Bream, Andrea Mitchell, Sean Spicer, Hogan Gidley, the New York Times’s Jonathan Swan, Politico’s Jonathan Martin, Semafor’s Ben Smith, the Wall Street Journal’s Josh Dawsey, the New Yorker’s Antonia Hitchens, USA Today’s Francesca Chambers, the Hill’s Sarakshi Rai, GB News’s Christopher Hope, ITV’s Robert Peston, the Sun’s Harry Cole, the Mail’s Rob Crilly, the Times of London’s Alistair Dawber, Channel Four’s Gary Gibbon, the New Statesman’s Freddie Hayward and Alice Inman, the BBC’s Chloe Ross, Twitter’s Audrey Horne, JL Partners’ James Johnson and the British Embassy’s Ed Roman and Sam Clark.