But reviving the Post is evidently not Bezos’s objective. His goal seems to be to convert what Donald Trump used to call the “Amazon Washington Post” into a harmless shell of its former self as a display of knee-bending. Selling it to a viable new owner would not help Trump. Having done seminal investigative reporting on Trump during his first term, the paper is now at least partially disabled from sustaining that vital public service in his second. The title proudly adopted the motto “democracy dies in darkness” after Trump was first elected. Now the paper is an exhibit of his attempts to smother democracy in broad daylight.