In a significant shake-up, over 300 journalists have been laid off from The Washington Post, and more than 300,000 subscribers have canceled their subscriptions. The newspaper, under the ownership of Jeff Bezos since 2013, is facing criticism for content decisions seemingly aimed at pleasing former President Donald Trump. Recently, Amazon MGM Studios invested $40 million in producing a documentary about Melania Trump, which was released just before the announcement of the layoffs. Despite these efforts, Bezos appears to have gained little, if anything, from these strategic moves.

This situation raises the question: What is Bezos’s true motive for owning The Washington Post?

The Trump era has been characterized by a transactional approach, where aligning with Trump often resulted in tangible benefits, such as pardons or regulatory favors. For instance, the Paramount-Skydance merger demonstrated the extent some were willing to go, including settling a defamation lawsuit and altering their media output. Skydance CEO David Ellison secured a $28 billion merger by making concessions that limited CBS’s ability to critique Trump.

In contrast, Bezos’s strategy seems inconsistent. While funding a documentary favorable to Melania Trump, he simultaneously owns a newspaper known for its critical coverage of Trump’s administration. His approach to introduce more conservative opinions at the Post backfired, as it led to staff departures and a further decline in subscriptions. Former editor-in-chief Marty Baron described the fallout as “near-instant, self-inflicted brand destruction.”

Some insiders suggest that the layoffs were financially necessary due to the paper’s monetary losses. However, there are alternative strategies billionaires have employed to divest from unprofitable media outlets without mass layoffs. For example, the Philadelphia Inquirer was donated to a nonprofit, and The New Republic was sold to a new owner after Chris Hughes’s restructuring attempt. Notably, tech journalist Kara Swisher and investors had expressed interest in buying the Post, though they reportedly received no response from Bezos.

It might seem plausible that Bezos’s actions are intended to benefit Amazon’s interests if he were still in charge of the company. However, he stepped down as CEO in 2021. While Amazon, particularly its AWS division, maintains significant federal contracts and has independently courted favor with the government, Bezos’s personal business interests, such as NASA contracts, may still play a role. Reports of him mingling with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth at a Blue Origin event on the day of the layoffs add another layer of intrigue to his motivations.

Maybe this pile of self-contradictions — or, as he once described his ownership of the Post, a “complexifier” — was inevitable when Trump came back into office and made it clear that he would punish the Big Tech entities that displeased him. But there’s no clear and logical explanation for why Bezos is going about his supplication: not one that makes financial sense, nor one that immediately furthers his own political standing with Trump, nor one that reaffirms the commitment he once made to protecting the First Amendment. And that lack of clarity only makes the Post’s decapitation even more senseless.