Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and the Billions of Ways to Influence an Election

The world’s richest men have their own rocket fleets, their own media and their own schemes to succeed with Donald J. Trump.

Entrepreneurs become legends when they make big bets on technology that pay off in a huge and dramatic way. Elon Musk is now applying that all-or-nothing philosophy to a presidential election, tying his reputation and perhaps his future to a win by Donald J. Trump.

Jeff Bezos, the reigning swashbuckler of the internet age until Mr. Musk came along, was playing a cooler game, content to let Mr. Musk take the headlines and the risk. Then last week Mr. Bezos ventured — well, stumbled — into the heart of the news.

Among his many properties is The Washington Post, which he bought in 2013. The paper’s editorial board was preparing to recommend the Democratic nominee for president, Kamala Harris, when Mr. Bezos canceled the endorsement at the last minute.

It wasn’t supposed to be a big deal, just a ho-hum announcement of something not happening. Instead the greatest salesperson of the era, whose customer obsession had made Amazon into a colossus of modern retail, got the greatest customer rejection of a lifetime.

A quarter-million Post readers canceled their subscriptions, a figure first reported by NPR and then by The Post itself. That is about 10 percent of the total circulation. The speed and decisive force of the cancellations was a bit of a shock but also weirdly appropriate, said Danny Caine, author of “How to Resist Amazon and Why.”

“Amazon invented the whole notion of one-click culture, where you click a button and there’s a bunch of toilet paper on your porch,” he said. “You can’t get rid of a Tesla in your driveway with one click. But you can with the newspaper that Jeff Bezos owns.”