Conservative anti-Donald Trump columnist Jen Rubin has left The Washington Post, she announced on Monday, while also taking a parting shot at WaPo owner Jeff Bezos.
Rubin, who joins a growing list of writers who have exited WaPo in the past few months, said she is partnering with former White House ethics czar Norm Eisen to launch her blog, “The Contrarian.” The new publication will be on Substack and cost subscribers $7 per month for full access to its content.
“BIG NEWS. I have left the Post. Corporate and billionaire media are failing to meet the moment,” she wrote on BlueSky. “With Norm Eisen, I’m launching The Contrarian. We’ll have politics but also cooking, humor, film and even pets. Please subscribe and join the fight.”
Rubin has been one of the more outspoken anti-Trump voices in the media since 2016.
Last year, she called him a “somewhat pathetic” figure and blasted him in June 2024 as an “adjudicated rapist and liar.” Following Trump’s election victory, Rubin also took a swipe at his voters, saying he was “the president of the ignorant, the president of the disengaged.”
On her way out, Rubin ripped Amazon founder and WaPo owner Bezos in her resignation letter, which was obtained by The New York Times: “His cronies accommodate and enable the most acute threat to American democracy — Donald Trump — at a time when a vibrant free press is more essential than ever to our democracy’s survival and capacity to thrive.”
Her comments came after Bezos nixed the WaPo editorial board’s plan to endorse Vice President Kamala Harris for president before the 2024 election. It was the first time the paper had not endorsed a Democrat for president since 1988.
Bezos, speaking about the decision in December, said he was “very proud” he stopped the editorial board’s endorsement because endorsements lead to a “perception of bias.”
In another not-so-subtle dig at Bezos, as CNN pointed out, “The Contrarian” will come with the tag line, “Not owned by anybody.”
Rubin is the latest high-profile name to recently depart WaPo. Investigative reporter Josh Dawsey left the outlet last week for the Wall Street Journal, while The Atlantic got political correspondents Ashley Parker and Michael Scherer right at the end of December. WaPo White House reporter Tyler Pager is also heading to The New York Times, starting in February.