Washington Post columnist Jonathan Capehart is the latest prominent writer to leave the paper after owner Jeff Bezos revamped the opinion section, with the Pulitzer-winning commentator and frequent Trump critic accepting a buyout on Monday.
Capehart’s buyout was reported by Axios. He will remain the co-host of MSNBC’s “The Weekend” and still be a panelist on PBS “NewsHour” after leaving WaPo, where he has been since 2007.
Terms of the buyout deal were not disclosed, and Washington Post rep declined to comment to TheWrap on the matter.
President Trump has been a go-to target for Capehart for several years, and his final story for WaPo, published in late May, includes a conversation with Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison on “countering” the president.
Capehart has also called Trump a “cancer on the presidency and American society, and compared a rally he had at Madison Square Garden last year to a Nazi rally at MSG in 1939.
His exit from WaPo adds to a growing list of staffers who have left the paper this year. Earlier this month, WaPo reporter Joe Davidson said he exited the paper after it killed one of his columns for being “too opinionated”; Davidson also said “Bezos’s policies and activities have projected the image of a Donald Trump supplicant.”
Bezos in February announced he had ordered his opinion section to focus on “two pillars”: personal liberties and free markets. Several staffers quit soon after, including former opinion editor David Shipley and longtime columnist Ruth Marcus.
Capehart’s buyout also comes just a few weeks after WaPo CEO Will Lewis called on writers who do not “feel aligned” with the paper’s “reinvention” to resign.A person familiar with the buyouts said WaPo staffers have until the end of July to make their decision, so more writers could be exiting the outlet soon.
