The Washington Post withdrew a "Fire Elon Musk" ad, which would have demanded the firing of the Tesla CEO and SpaceX creator, who holds U.S. government authority as DOGE's head.
A spokeswoman for Musk critic Common Cause told reporters that the Post pulled the ad. The Washington, D.C.-based paper partnered with Common Cause and the Southern Poverty Law Center Action Fund to publish the ad in Tuesday's issue for $115,000, as The New York Post reported.
Submitting artwork to the Post, Common Cause President Virginia Kase Solomón was informed the ad might be placed inside the paper but not as a wrap: "We said 'thanks, no thanks' because we had a lot of questions."
The ad would have filled the front and back pages of the Tuesday Post and had a full-page segment with the same theme inside, Common Cause told The Hill.
The advocacy group's representative said Common Cause learned Friday that the Post would not print the Musk ad.
The Post's owner, Jeff Bezos, publicly backed Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential election, and the publication took a lot of heat for not endorsing a candidate. This led to the decision to pull the plug.
"It's deeply concerning that our ad was censored and rejected without a valid reason. We believe this is limiting our freedom of expression at a critical time in our nation's history," a joint statement emailed to USA TODAY from Solomón and Margaret Huang, Southern Poverty Law Center president & CEO, reads.
"This seems to show the Washington Post is feeling pressure to cover the news a certain way."
A representative from The Washington Post informed reporters via email that the publication would rather not discuss internal decisions on individual advertising campaigns, instead referring to its broad advertising guidelines.
Journalists were provided with the design of the advertisement by Common Cause.
The advertisement featured a giant photo of Elon Musk laughing with his head cocked back, as well as a cutout image of the White House and large white writing that says, "Who's running the country: Donald Trump or Elon Musk?"
On the lower area of the first page of the ad, a smaller text says, "Since day one, Elon has created chaos and confusion and put our livelihoods at risk. And he is accountable to no one but himself."
"The Constitution only allows for one president at a time. Call your senators and tell them it's time Donald Trump fire Elon Musk," the ad reads, followed by the URL FireMusk.org. The second page of the ad says, "No one elected Elon Musk to any office."
On August 5, 2013, Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon and the space corporation Blue Origin, acquired the Post for $250 million.
Since that time, the publication has been subjected to scrutiny for certain political decisions, such as choosing not to endorse a candidate during the 2024 presidential election.
"The Washington Post will not be making an endorsement of a presidential candidate in this election. Nor in any future presidential election," Post publisher Will Lewis said in a statement. "We are returning to our roots of not endorsing presidential candidates."
According to Solomón, the Post’s decision not to run the ad could be attributed to the relationship between Bezos and Trump.
"Is it because we're critical of what's happening with Elon Musk? Is it only OK to run things in the Post now that won't anger the president or won't have him calling Jeff Bezos asking why this was allowed?" Solomón told the Hill.
