Robert Kagan, Washington Post editor-at-large and husband of former senior State Department official Victoria Nuland, has resigned in protest after the newspaper’s decision to break with tradition and skip a presidential endorsement in the 2024 race. Owned by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, the Post has endorsed a candidate in every election since 1988 but opted this year not to back Vice President Kamala Harris in her campaign against former president Donald Trump.
Kagan, a prominent neoconservative and outspoken Trump critic, confirmed to NPR and Fox News that he left the Post following its decision to pull an editorial endorsement of Harris, reportedly at the direction of Bezos. The choice has been met with strong criticism from Post alumni and political figures alike, including former Obama adviser Susan Rice, who condemned the decision as “the most hypocritical, cowardly move” from a publication that “should hold people in power to account.”
Marty Baron, who led the Post during its high-profile investigations into Trump, also voiced disappointment, calling it “a disturbing chapter of spinelessness” for the paper. Kagan, an influential voice on U.S. foreign policy, is known for his 1996 manifesto, “Toward a Neo-Reaganite Foreign Policy,” advocating for American global leadership. Alongside fellow neoconservative Bill Kristol, Kagan joined Democrats in 2016 as a vocal opponent of Trump.
This controversy follows a similar move by The Los Angeles Times, which also declined to endorse Harris, leading its head of editorials, Mariel Garza, to resign in protest. Garza criticized the decision as hypocritical, alleging it made the paper look “a bit sexist and racist” after years of opposition to Trump.
