Number Of Cowardly Billionaires, Newspapers Afraid To Endorse Harris Reaches Crisis Proportions

Dr. Soon-Shiong, who bought The Los Angeles Times in 2018 for $500 million, pushed back on Ms. Garza’s version of events. In a social media post on Wednesday, he said that the editorial board had not followed through on a directive to “draft a factual analysis of all the POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE policies by EACH candidate during their tenures at the White House, and how these policies affected the nation.”

“With this clear and non-partisan information side-by-side, our readers could decide who would be worthy of being President for the next four years,” he said. “Instead of adopting this path as suggested, the Editorial Board chose to remain silent and I accepted their decision.”

Ms. Garza responded to Dr. Soon-Shiong in a text to The New York Times, saying: “What he outlines in that tweet is not an endorsement, or even an editorial.”

You see the lay of the land here. Dr. Soon-Shiong is an oligarch, a fat cat, and that status is compelling him to not antagonize Trump, should Trump actually manage to wind up back in the White House. The fact that our way of life is on the line is of no concern. And he’s far and away not the only one with this attitude. We see Jamie Dimon, Jeff Bezos, even Mitt Romney following suit. This is a terrifying and unmistakable trend.

In his 1963 “Letter From the Birmingham Jail,” Martin Luther King wrote that his generation would “have to repent … not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people.” A similar sentiment is often attributed to Edmund Burke: “The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.”

Since Burke never actually said these words, allow me to rephrase them: The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for powerful people to lack courage. That’s where we are, 11 days before an election that Donald Trump may win. Most of America’s leadership class understands that Trump’s reelection would be catastrophic in the manifold ways with which readers of this publication are well familiar. But a surprisingly large number of them are afraid to endorse Kamala Harris.

When I say “America’s leadership class” I don’t mean those Republican Party quislings, starting with Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, who initially identified Trump as evil (“reprehensible,” “cultural heroin,” “America’s Hitler,” etc.), then later capitulated. For an appropriately pitiless roundup of key Republicans who surrendered their party to Trump, I refer you to Mark Leibovich in the September issue of The Atlantic.

I have in mind a different group of leaders who in most cases bear no particular allegiance to the Republican Party. It may be a stretch to call them “good men” (they’re all men), but they’re astute enough to recognize the danger Trump poses, even as they decline to give Harris their public support. If Trump wins, it will be an exaggeration to say they caused it. But history will record that at a moment in their lives—in most cases, the only moment in their lives—when circumstances required them to show courage, they failed the test. Indeed, that silence may be the only thing succeeding generations will know about them. Let’s call them the Fraidy-Cats.

Jamie Dimon is a Democrat and a billionaire. His primary identification, obviously, is with the billionaire descriptor. I cannot imagine the man not endorseing Harris if he is indeed a Democrat. The least Democrats amongst us, the yous and mes that don’t have big incomes, have made donations and we’re voting for Harris, participating in polls, doing what we can do. One would think that the fat cats in our party would do so. Let’s just say it hasn’t happened yet and I wouldn’t hold my breath if I were you.

Then, this week, The New York Times’ Rob Copeland reported that “in private” Dimon has “made clear” that he supports Harris. Dimon won’t say so out loud because, Copeland reports, “he’s fearful that if Mr. Trump is victorious, he could retaliate against the people and companies who publicly opposed his run.”

There you have it. Fear. The fat cats want to hang on to being fat cats, above saving America’s way of life. You are seeing this with your own eyes, friends. Then there’s Warren Buffett, who at 94, an age when most people don’t care what anybody thinks, won’t publicly endorse Harris either. Then there’s Mitt Romney.

Romney told The Atlantic that when Trump says, “I am your retribution,” he fears that Trump will use a second term to go after him. If this last is true, why wouldn’t Romney do everything in his power to prevent Trump from regaining office?

Good question. Then of course there’s Jeff Bezos and it’s fairly surmised that the reason the Washington Post won’t endorse Harris is because the word came down to the editorial board from Bezos. And that’s when this train really started moving down the tracks.

Bezos is the third-richest person in the world (net worth $207 billion, per Forbes), the chairman of Amazon, and, as of October 25, 2024, the wealthiest coward in America. Bezos owns The Washington Post, the second most important newspaper in America, which will not endorse any candidate for president. William Lewis, the Post’s publisher, posted a risibly solemn and quite obviously false explanation why not, which harkens back to times past (1960 to 1972, apparently) when the Post felt took the position that endorsing a president would compromise what it called, in 1960, its “principles of independence.” Which raises the question of why the paper publishes editorials at all.

The word “principles” has no place in this statement, because the reason the Post won’t endorse anyone is that it fears a President Trump will cancel Amazon’s government contracts.

The rich and the powerful are not going to save us. They’re covering their own asses, not surprisingly. We, the people, are all that can save us. Let’s keep working. Because either we do it or it will not get done.