Tuesday’s edition of the Washington Post was supposed to feature a very straightforward message: Fire Elon Musk. Two advocacy groups teamed up to buy an ad placement that would have wrapped the paper in the call for Musk’s outing. But, according to one of the groups involved in the ad buy that spoke with The Hill, the Post backed out of the agreement and said it would not run the message on the outside of the paper.
Common Cause, a nonprofit watchdog organization, teamed with the Southern Poverty Law Center Action Fund on the advertisement. They claimed to The Hill to have signed a $115,000 agreement with the Post to full cover messages on the front and the back of the Washington Post’s Tuesday issue, along with a full-page ad inside the paper. The ads would have appeared on the papers of people working at Congress, the Pentagon and the White House.
The @washingtonpost refused to run this @elonmusk wrap around from @CommonCause and @splcenter action fund, on papers delivered to Congress, the White House, and the Pentagon.
WaPo — a once great paper — is now a billionaire’s kiss-fascist-ass project. pic.twitter.com/9Sk4nPVed0
— Matthew Cortland, they (@mattbc) February 17, 2025
But once the groups submitted the messaging that they wanted, the Post said it wouldn’t run it. The paper’s ad department said the ad inside the paper could stay, but the outer wraps were a no-go, according to Common Cause, which said it was not given a clear explanation as to why the front and back page spots couldn’t move forward.
Had the spot moved forward as planned, it would have featured a cover image of Elon Musk cackling as he overshadows the White House with the message “Who’s running this country: Donald Trump or Elon Musk?” The back of the paper would have shown another image of Musk with a simple statement: “No one elected Elon Musk to any office.”
The whole thing was meant to be an expansion of the ongoing “Fire Elon Musk” campaign being carried out by Common Cause, the Southern Poverty Law Center Action Fund and End Citizens United, which set up the website FireMusk.org to encourage citizens to take action and try to push Musk out of the Trump administration. Common Cause said it already has amassed 60,000 signatures on a petition objecting to Musk’s unelected role in government.
Surely unrelatedly, Post owner Jeff Bezos and Musk have been getting along swimmingly lately. The two appeared together at Donald Trump’s inauguration, and they exchanged pleasantries publicly on Twitter following the successful launch of a reusable rocket by Bezos’ Blue Origin.
Bezos has been very focused on building relationships lately. Not only have he and Musk apparently mended fences, but he’s also made nice with Donald Trump. Bezos offered congratulations to Trump after he won the 2024 election and the two had dinner together at Mar-a-Lago shortly after. The $1 million donation from Amazon (which Bezos founded and still serves as executive chairman) probably doesn’t hurt, either—nor does the nearly $30 million being paid to Melania Trump for the rights to a documentary about her on Amazon Prime Video.
Meanwhile, Bezos’ paper axed a political cartoon that would have depicted Bezos and other billionaires offering up cash at the altar of Trump. Again, these things are likely unrelated and probably not worth looking into. Yes, it was Bezos’ Washington Post that insisted “Democracy dies in darkness,” but he never said if that was a good or bad thing!
