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I recently beat up on the Washington Post for all but welcoming President Trump’s takeover and militarization of Washington, DC. And I’m going to do more of that below. But I also need to say, even as the Post Opinion Page continues to debase itself, the paper’s reporting on the takeover has been invaluable.

There’s a long held journalistic notion of an iron wall between the opinion and news sections. I’ve always found this to be mostly nonsense (the same dude owns both), with a few exceptions. For example, unless threatened with waterboarding, I can’t bring myself to read a Wall Street Journal opinion column. Yet I find the reporting in the Rupert Murdoch-owned paper to be high quality.

Right now, a similar bifurcation can be seen in the Post’s coverage of Trump’s DC takeover. But I fear this may be more of a momentary glitch, as billionaire Post owner Jeff Bezos has been shockingly clear about aligning his paper’s interests with Trump.

Bezos’ remake of the Post — which began in earnest just before the election, when Bezos personally killed the paper’s endorsement of Kamala Harris — has focused most intently on the Opinion side, which now exclusively advances the twin pillars of “personal liberties and free markets,” according to Bezos’ February decree.

Enforcing this rightward edict is a mostly unknown 33-year-old named Adam O’Neal, who was previously a correspondent for The Economist and an editorial page writer for the Wall Street Journal, where he penned some of those waterboard-worthy editorials.

In June, O’Neal introduced himself to Post colleagues via a “mildly cringe-inducing” video, in which he responded to the rhetorical question “Who am I?” with: “That’s actually kind of a deep and philosophical question, and I’m not sure I went to school long enough to understand it.” Getting down to brass tacks, O’Neal declared Post Opinions would now be “unapologetically patriotic.” (Had it been insufficiently patriotic before?)

Post Opinions editor Adam O’Neal introduced himself to colleagues in this June video.

O’Neal replaced Post Opinions editor David Shipley, who had done everything Bezos could have asked for, spiking the Harris endorsement, and even a cartoon depicting Bezos and other tech moguls as Trump supplicants. But Shipley didn’t do this with sufficient zeal, which Bezos found intolerable. “I suggested to him that if the answer wasn’t ‘hell yes,’ then it had to be ‘no,’” Bezos wrote. So exit Shipley, enter O’Neal.

For Post columnists, it’s been tricky navigating the hazy guidepost of unvarnished patriotism, personal liberties and free markets. They must “champion timeless American values,” added Will Lewis, the Post’s British and hopefully sober CEO.

“We were like dogs that had been fitted with shock collars but had no clue where the invisible fence was situated,” former Post columnist Ruth Marcus wrote in a New Yorkerstory headlined, “Why I Left the Washington Post.” Marcus is part of an unprecedented wave of Post departures, which has hit the Opinion section particularly hard.

“Liberal columnists generated huge traffic… and now they’ve all quit,” Glenn Kessler, the Post’s recently departed Fact Checker, wrote on Substack. “Lewis seemed to want to push out as much of the old guard as possible — i.e., anyone who worked at The Postbefore the Bezos era.”

Even if the old-timers could get on board with the Post’s Trumpian about-face, would they have a smile on their face? “Simply being reconciled to these changes is not enough,” O’Neal wrote in his first email to Post staff, echoing Bezos. “We want those who stick with us to be genuinely enthusiastic about the new direction and focus.”

What remains of Post Opinions is now so tattered and rightward it can’t even bring itself to object to tanks rolling into the city the Post calls home. At this point, the paper might as well drop Washington from its name. (To experience Bezos’ utter indifference to DC in physical form, pick up a copy of the Post and try to find the Metro section, now buried in the back of Sports or Style.)

As depressing as all this is, Post reporters covering Trump’s takeover have been doing outstanding work, even as their Opinion colleagues are busy selling the city out. Stay tuned for more to come on this jarring juxtaposition.

The post In DC’s Hour of Need, the Post Opinion Page Veers Right and Crumbles appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

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