Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance attributed the issues with The Washington Post to its overall “journalism,” rather than solely its editorial page.
“The Washington Post might as well be a propaganda outlet of the Democratic Party,” Vance said during an interview on Joe Rogan’s podcast published Thursday. “If you look from the Hunter Biden laptop to any number of stories where they just toe the left-wing line almost instinctively, the problem was with the journalism at the Washington Post. It’s not with the editorials.”
JD Vance: “The Washington Post might as well be a propaganda outlet of the Democratic Party.
— ALEX (@ajtourville) October 31, 2024
If you look from the Hunter Biden laptop to any number of stories where they just tow the Left-wing line almost instinctively. The problem was with the journalism at the Washington Post.… pic.twitter.com/pjHhiZz9Ed
Vance spoke following a media uproar sparked by The Washington Post’s senior leadership last week, after they declined to officially endorse a presidential candidate for this election cycle. Vice President Kamala Harris became the first Democrat not to receive an endorsement from the Post’s editorial board since 1992. Over a dozen opinion columnists at the paper criticized the decision in a joint statement released soon after the announcement.
“This is a moment for the institution to be making clear its commitment to democratic values, the rule of law and international alliances, and the threat that Donald Trump poses to them — the precise points The Post made in endorsing Trump’s opponents in 2016 and 2020,” wrote 17 writers for the Post. “An independent newspaper might someday choose to back away from making presidential endorsements. But this isn’t the right moment.”
The paper lost over 250,000 subscribers as a result, according to National Public Radio (NPR). On Monday, Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos published an op-ed detailing the decision to forgo a formal endorsement this year.
“No undecided voters in Pennsylvania are going to say, ‘I’m going with Newspaper A’s endorsement.’ None,” Bezos wrote. “What presidential endorsements actually do is create a perception of bias. A perception of non-independence. Ending them is a principled decision, and it’s the right one.”
Vance told Rogan “I don’t care, frankly, whether the editorial page endorses Donald Trump or Kamala Harris.”
“I care about whether the journalists are lying about Donald Trump or lying about Kamala Harris,” Vance said. “And frankly, they’re lying a lot in the negative direction about my running mate, and they’re lying a lot in the positive direction about Kamala Harris.”
“So what I would like to see from Jeff Bezos is a commitment to The Washington Post, not just being a Democrat Super PAC,” Vance added. “I don’t give a s**t if he hires a few more conservative columnists. It doesn’t matter. What matters is do they hold their journalism to anything like a high standard?”
On Thursday, the Center for American Rights, a Chicago-based nonprofit, filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) against The Washington Post regarding the paper’s ad practices in the final days leading up to the election. The complaint alleges that The Washington Post is unlawfully advertising in support of Harris over Trump, despite the lack of an official endorsement from the editorial board.
“We’re days from an election, and the Washington Post is pouring cash into social media advertising that exclusively helps one candidate for president and denigrates another,” the group’s president said in a press release. “That sort of last-minute spending is not protected by the FEC’s press exemption; the Post needs to come clean and comply with the law.”
