Elon Musk applauds Bezos Washington Post op-ed as long standing feud between billionaires appears to thaw

Elon Musk has come out in support of fellow billionaire Jeff Bezos after the former Amazon CEO defended his papers decision to not back a candidate in the 2024 presidential election.

Writing in an op-ed on Monday night, Bezos said that political endorsements create a perception of bias and argued ending the long-running practice of endorsing a candidate for the White House was a principled decision, and its the right one.

Presidential endorsements do nothing to tip the scales of an election. No undecided voters in Pennsylvania are going to say, Im going with Newspaper As endorsement. None, he wrote.

In response, writing on X, Musk wrote, kudos to @JeffBezos while retweeting an earlier an earlier tweet that read, Kudos to @JeffBezos for telling the newsroom the hard, bitter truth: theres nothing wrong with the readers.

Elon Musk has come out in support of fellow billionaire Jeff Bezos after the former Amazon CEO defended his papers decision to not back a candidate in the 2024 presidential election

Musk wrote, kudos to @JeffBezos while retweeting an earlier an earlier tweet that read, Kudos to @JeffBezos for telling the newsroom the hard, bitter truth: theres nothing wrong with the readers

The recognition and applause by Musk appears to somewhat thaw their longstanding feud

That tweet also contained a selection of Bezos words from the op-ed: 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. 

The recognition and applause by Musk appears to somewhat thaw their longstanding feud.

The paid have been fighting for control of space tourism and for contracts with NASA for two decades.

The rivalry goes back to 2004 when Bezos accepted an invite from Musk to tour the SpaceX facility.

Afterwards he received a ‘somewhat curt email’ after from Musk ‘expressing annoyance’ why Bezos hadn’t invited Musk to Blue Origin in Seattle, so Bezos promptly did.

But on the tour Bezos was taken aback when Musk started telling him how to run the company.

Musk said: ‘Dude we tried that and that turned out to be really dumb so I’m telling you, don’t do the dumb thing we did’.

Bezos thought Musk was ‘a bit too sure of himself’ given he hadn’t actually launched a rocket yet, Isaacson writes.

Much of the feud between Musk and Bezos centers around their control of space tourism and for contracts with NASA over the last two decades

Bezos became the first to launch a rocket to the edge of space but it is Musks Space X that has soared launching 102 rockets so far this year. Bezos is pictured alongside Lauren Sanchez

Tensions flared again in 2011 when NASA approved SpaceX to use the famed Pad 39A at its Cape Canaveral launch site in Florida which was used by the Apollo missions.

Bezos sued and Musk was ‘furious’.

Musk thought it was ‘ridiculous’ for Blue Origin to complain ‘when they haven’t even gotten as much as a toothpick to orbit’.

Bezos further enraged Musk when he applied for a patent called ‘sea landing of space launch vehicles’.

Musk complained that landing ships at sea had been discussed for 50 years. SpaceX sued and Bezos appeared to cancel the patent.

In November of 2015, Bezos became the first to launch a rocket to the edge of space on an 11 minute, 62 mile high journey.

In his first ever Tweet, Bezos said that ‘full reuse (of a rocket) is a game changer’. He called his reusable rocket ‘the rarest of beasts’.

Musk mocked it in a Tweet saying: ‘Not quite ‘rarest’, SpaceX Grasshopper did 6 suborbital flights 3 years ago & is still around’.

Four weeks later Musk achieved the same feat with a Falcon 9 rocket, earning what appeared to be praise from Bezos who Tweeted: ‘Congrats @spacex on landline falcon’s suborbital booster stage. Welcome to the club!’

The heat between the two men really turned up in April 2021 when SpaceX was awarded contracts with NASA to take astronauts on the final leg of the journey to the moon.

The rivalry goes back to 2004 when Bezos accepted an invite from Musk to tour the SpaceX facility, Isaacson writes 

In a lengthy op-ed posted to the Posts own website on Monday night, Bezos attempted to justify his publications position

A celebratory Musk mocked Bezos when he Tweeted: ‘Can’t get it up (to orbit) lol’.

Musk further fueled the antagonism with Bezos with a 2021 interview in which he praised Bezos for having ‘reasonably good engineering aptitude’ but he said he didn’t spend enough time on the details.

Musk mocked Bezos’ wealthy lifestyle and compared it to him living in rented quarters in Texas.

Musk said: ‘In some ways I’m trying to goad him into spending more time at Blue Origin so they make more progress. He should spend more time at Blue Origin and less time in the hot tub’.

While Musk is a massive Trump supporter and has been out on the campaign trail giving away $1million a day to newly registered voters who will pledge their support for the former president, Bezos has been more of a thorn in Trumps side. 

Indeed, when Trump first ran for president, he began to threaten how Amazon and Jeff Bezos would pay the price. 

If I become president — oh, do they have problems. Theyre going to have such problems, he warned. 

Trump was particularly aggrieved at Bezoss ownership of the Washington Post.

Elon Musk spoke at a political rally for Donald Trump at Madison Square Garden in New York on Sunday

Trump was particularly aggrieved at Bezoss ownership of the Washington Post during his first presidency

He would rage at what he called the Amazon Washington Post, claiming spuriously that it had avoided internet taxes. 

During his time in office Trump became obsessed with retribution against Bezos for the Posts negative coverage of him.

Every hour, were getting calls from reporters from the Washington Post asking ridiculous questions, he ranted in once instance. And I will tell you: This is owned as a toy by Jeff Bezos, who controls Amazon. Amazon is getting away with murder, taxwise. Hes using the Washington Post for power.

During the Trump administration, Amazon sued the government after alleging it had blocked a $10 billion cloud-computing-services contract with the Pentagon over the then-presidents ire about coverage in the Post.

Yes throughout the Trump presidency, Bezos resolutely supported the staffs coverage and he has not interfered with reporting on his own business interests or personal life.

The Washington Post has decided not to endorse either candidate running for president 

The Washington Post has announced it will not endorse a presidential candidate, sparking fury among its liberal readers who are pledging to cancel their subscriptions to the paper

Columnist Robert Kagan, a conservative Trump critic, resigned from his position in the editorial board after the decision emerged

Its what makes the sudden decision not to endorse a candidate at such a late stage in the game so curious - and in particular, not to endorse the Democratic candidate. 

Once former columnist Robert Kagan, an editor-at-large, explained his decision on CNN Friday night to resign from the paper.

We are in fact bending the knee to Donald Trump because were afraid of what he will do, Kagan told The Daily Beast this weekend. 

Trump waited to make sure that Bezos did what he said he was going to do – and then met with the Bezos Blue Origin people, Kagad explained, which tells us that there was an actual deal made, meaning that Bezos communicated, or through his people, communicated directly with Trump, and they set up this quid pro quo.

On Monday night Bezos expressly denied any quid pro quo had taken place in relation to the scrapping of any candidate endorsement. 

I would also like to be clear that no quid pro quo of any kind is at work here. Neither campaign nor candidate was consulted or informed at any level or in any way about this decision. It was made entirely internally, Bezos wrote.