The Washington Post has dropped its “Democracy Dies in Darkness” slogan to replace it with the hilariously milquetoast “Riveting Storytelling for All of America,” according to a new report in New York Times. And the timing couldn’t be better, as Donald Trump is set to be inaugurated on Monday. Jeff Bezos, the owner of the Post, will even attend, cheering on his billionaire friend as America enters a new phase of oligarchy accelerated beyond measure.

Suzi Watford, the Post’s chief strategy officer, showed the Post’s new slogan internally as part of a slide deck about the newspaper’s future, according to the Times. The slide deck reportedly emphasizes “narrative,” saying the goal is to “bring a relentless investigative spirit, backed by reliable sources, to deliver compelling stories in formats that the world wants.”

That’s all well and good, if a little cheap, until you remember that Donald fucking Trump is about to take power again. The Post adopted the slogan “Democracy Dies in Darkness” in 2017, just as Trump entered the White House for the first time. But the newspaper is clearly trying to align its goals with Trump’s worldview and the business interests of Bezos, who has lucrative contracts with the US government.

How can we be sure that this shift in focus will help Trump? It was revealed earlier this week that some of the biggest names in technology attended Trump’s inaugurationincluding Bezos, Elon Musk, Sam Altman, Tim Cook, Sundar Pichai, and Mark Zuckerberg, just to name a few. Far from being treated like a fascist threat, as Trump clearly is, all these men see Trump as someone who can help them seize more power and a bigger share of the market, completely manipulating the levers of government to serve their interests. Trump raised $200 million for his inauguration committee, according to Bloomberg, with big names like Bezos and Cook personally signing $1 million checks for Trump’s inauguration.

We also learned late Wednesday that TikTok’s CEO, Shou Zi Chew, go to the inauguration. That’s a surprising fact because the video app is about to be effectively banned in the US on Sunday depending on how the Supreme Court rules. SCOTUS heard oral arguments last week and it’s unclear what Trump will do once he takes office to end the ban, even a day late. Trump previously supported a ban on TikTok before taking a complete 180 in March 2024. And some reports suggest Trump is planning an executive order to delay the law from taking effect.

Bezos personally intervened to prevent the Washington Post from endorsing Kamala Harris before the electionsomething Bezos insists is based solely on the principle that his newspaper should not make endorsements. That was clearly stupid. The Washington Post made endorsements of Trump’s cabinet nominees this week.

The Post lost more than a quarter million subscribers after it became clear that Bezos had tampered with the paper to help Trump and now has fewer than 3 million digital subscribers, according to the New York Times. For comparison, the Times has about 11 million subscribers. Apparently, the Washington Post is aiming for 200 million subscriptions, a ridiculously ridiculous goal for a newspaper that has long been despised by Trump fans who may always think it’s liberal propaganda, no matter how nice they play on the MAGA set.

In the past, the oligarchic elements of American society were always behind the scenes. But in Trump’s second term, it seems that everything is more out in the open, with strange business decisions being made to curry Trump’s favor. Amazon, for example, is reportedly paying $40 million for the rights to broadcast a “documentary” about Melania Trump.

As we wrote shortly after the election in November, Big Tech is on a path to kiss Trump’s ass in ways never thought possible. Some people think it’s because men like Zuckerberg don’t want to go to jail, a threat Trump has made while he was out of office. And while there may be some element of fear involved, it’s more likely that these guys just saw an opportunity to make a huge amount of money. More money than these billionaires ever made.