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.

在对技术进行重大押注并获得巨大且戏剧性的回报后， 企业家会成为传奇人物。埃隆·马斯克现在将这种孤注一掷的哲学应用于总统选举，将自己的声誉——或许还有未来与特朗普的胜利绑定在一起。

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.

杰夫·贝佐斯玩的是一种更为冷静的游戏，在马斯克出现之前，他是互联网时代的叱咤风云人物。他乐见马斯克成为热点，让他去做那些有风险的事。但上周，贝佐斯自己却意外地闯入了新闻的暴风眼。

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.

他的众多资产中包括《华盛顿邮报》，他在2013年收购了这家报纸。该报的编委会正要为民主党总统候选人贺锦丽背书时，贝佐斯在最后一刻取消了这一决定。

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.

这本来不该是什么大事，不过是一个无聊的声明而已，宣布某事不会发生了。然而，这个时代最伟大的推销员、凭借对客户至上的理念将亚马逊打造成现代零售的巨头，却遭遇了一生中来自客户的最大拒绝。

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.”

25万《华盛顿邮报》读者取消了订阅，这一数字最先由NPR报道，然后邮报自己也做了报道。这大约占到总发行量的10%。《如何抵制亚马逊及其原因》一书的作者丹尼·凯恩说，取消订阅的速度和决心令人震惊，但也有着诡异的合理性。

“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.”

“亚马逊发明了一键式文化的整个概念，你点击一个按钮，你的门廊上就会有一堆卫生纸，”他说。“你不能一键就让车道上的特斯拉消失。但你可以让杰夫·贝佐斯拥有的报纸消失。”

Those canceling said they felt Mr. Bezos was trying to curry favor with Mr. Trump, a charge he denied. The furor immediately exceeded any damage incurred by Mr. Musk since he endorsed Mr. Trump in July and became the former president’s most visible fan, cheerleader and acolyte.

取消订阅的人表示，他们觉得贝佐斯试图讨好特朗普，他否认了这一指控。相比之下，马斯克自去年7月宣布支持特朗普，成为这位前总统最引人注目的粉丝、拉拉队长和党羽所导致的损失立刻就显得没那么严重了。

If customers are rejecting the electric vehicles made by Mr. Musk’s car company, Tesla, for political reasons, it hasn’t clearly shown up in the sales numbers. Mr. Musk implicitly dismissed the notion on X on Tuesday, reposting an admirer’s note that said it wasn’t happening.

从目前的销售数据还看不出消费者在出于政治原因抵制马斯克的特斯拉电动车。周二，马斯克在X上隐晦地驳斥了这种说法，他转发了一位支持者的留言，称这种情况并不存在。

Mr. Musk, Mr. Bezos and other extremely rich people are confronted with unusual opportunities and invisible perils in the tightest, most dramatic, chaotic and highest stakes political battle in modern times. Everyone has a stake in this election, of course, but the very wealthy have so much at stake — or at least think they do — that they are perhaps inevitably trying to shape it, too.

在这场现代历史上最紧张、最富戏剧性、最混乱、风险最大的政治斗争中，马斯克、贝佐斯和其他超级富豪面临着非同寻常的机遇和无形的危险。这场选举当然与每个人都休戚相关，但对非常富有的人影响会格外大——或者至少他们自认为如此——以至于他们可能不可避免地也在试图影响这次选举。

Michael Jordan established the standard for many celebrities in 1990. The basketball superstar, who went to college in North Carolina, was asked about whether he would endorse Harvey Gantt, the Black candidate running to dethrone Jesse Helms, the Republican senator with a long opposition to civil rights.

迈克尔·乔丹在1990年为许多名人树立了标准。当时这位在北卡罗来纳州上大学的篮球巨星被问及是否会支持哈维·甘特——一名黑人候选人，试图挑战长期反对民权的共和党参议员杰西·赫尔姆斯。

“Republicans buy sneakers, too,” Mr. Jordan said. Mr. Helms narrowly beat Mr. Gantt.

“共和党人也买球鞋，”乔丹说。赫尔姆斯以微弱优势击败了甘特。

Mr. Jordan later said it was an off-the cuff remark, a joke even, but he did not really back away from it. “I never thought of myself as an activist,” he said. “I thought of myself as a basketball player.”

乔丹后来说，那是即兴的评论，甚至就是开个玩笑，不过他并不想趟浑水。“我从来没当自己是一名活动人士，”他说。“我认为自己就是一名篮球运动员。”

Many billionaires now are activists. One reason is there are more of them — the ranks of U.S. billionaires are up 38 percent by one estimate since Mr. Trump first took office in 2016 — and they have even more money. For all the specter of antitrust and regulation, life has been very good for the rich and their companies. The stock market is perpetually at a record high.

许多亿万富翁现在都成了活动人士。其中一个原因是，他们的人数增加了——据一项估计，自2016年特朗普上任以来，美国亿万富翁的人数增加了38%——而且他们拥有的财富更多了。尽管存在反垄断和监管措施，但富人和他们的公司一直过得很好。股市一直处于创纪录的高位。

Even this ocean of money has a limit, however. Larry Ellison, the founder of Oracle who ranks just behind Mr. Musk and Mr. Bezos as one of the richest men in the world, last year backed the presidential aspirations of Senator Tim Scott, a South Carolina Republican. Mr. Ellison spent at least $30 million but could not make Mr. Scott a viable candidate.

然而，钱也不是万能的。甲骨文的创始人拉里·埃里森是世界上仅次于马斯克和贝佐斯的有钱人，他去年支持南卡罗来纳州的共和党参议员蒂姆·斯科特竞选总统。埃里森至少花了3000万美元，但无法让斯科特成为有竞争力的候选人。

Mr. Ellison came up with the funding for his candidate but was otherwise quiet. Mr. Musk is anything but reticent and has become a full-scale surrogate for Mr. Trump, as well as one of his biggest donors. Speaking at the Trump rally at Madison Square Garden on Sunday, Mr. Musk told the crowd, “We’re going to get the government off your back and out of your pocketbook.”

埃里森为他的候选人出钱，但在其他方面保持沉默。马斯克则完全不同，他完全成为了特朗普的代理人，也是他最大的捐助者之一。周日，马斯克在麦迪逊广场花园举行的特朗普造势集会上对人群说，“我们要让政府不再对你们指手画脚，从你们的口袋里掏钱。”

Mr. Musk would no doubt like to get the government off his own back. His companies, including Tesla and SpaceX, are the subject of over 20 investigations or reviews, a New York Times examination found. Tesla’s push for autonomous driving is a particular focus for regulators. Just last week, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said it was investigating several self-driving crashes involving fog and dust.

毫无疑问，马斯克希望政府不要再对他指手画脚。《纽约时报》的一项调查发现，包括特斯拉和SpaceX在内，他的公司面临20多项调查或审查。特斯拉对无人驾驶的推动是监管机构尤为关注的事项。就在上周，美国国家公路交通安全管理局表示，它正在调查几起雾气和扬尘导致的无人驾驶撞车事故。

Mr. Musk, who has offered himself to Mr. Trump as a sort of inspector general for government waste, has regularly tussled with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The commission has probed the entrepreneur’s 2022 purchase of X, then called Twitter. Mr. Musk did not show up for a deposition in September, leading to an S.E.C. request that sanctions be imposed on him.

马斯克曾向特朗普提出，希望成为某种治理政府浪费的监察长，他还经常与美国证券交易委员会发生争执。该委员会对他在2022年收购当时名为Twitter的X展开了调查。在9月的听证会上，马斯克没有出现，证监会因此要求对他进行惩罚。

Beyond the regulatory scrutiny, Mr. Musk is tied to the government through funding. NASA announced in June that SpaceX got an $843 million contract to “de-orbit” the space station when it is ready for retirement in a few years. SpaceX has contracts to launch military and spy satellites. It also received contracts in 2021 and 2022 worth a total of $4 billion to take humans to the moon twice. It is working on many other projects involving the government.

除了监管审查，马斯克在融资上也跟政府有关联。美国国家航空航天局在6月宣布，SpaceX获得了一份价值8.43亿美元的合同，负责几年后空间站准备退役时进行脱离轨道的操作。SpaceX还拿到了发射军用和间谍卫星的合同。它在2021年和2022年获得了总价值40亿美元的合同，用于将人类两次送往月球。它还有许多其他与政府相关的项目。

Mr. Bezos, too, has business with the government. Most notably, the U.S. Department of Justice is bringing Amazon to court, accusing it of antitrust violations.

贝佐斯也与政府有业务往来。最值得注意的是，美国司法部正在将亚马逊告上法庭，指控它违反了反垄断法。

When Mr. Trump was president, Amazon and its chief executive were sometimes the subject of his barbs. The company bid on a $10 billion cloud computing contract that the Pentagon awarded Microsoft. Amazon sued, saying Mr. Trump had undermined its bid. The contract was canceled. Ultimately four tech companies, including Amazon and Microsoft, got a part of the cloud deal.

特朗普担任总统时，亚马逊及其首席执行官有时会成为他挖苦的对象。该公司竞标了一份价值100亿美元的云计算合同，五角大楼最后授予了微软。亚马逊提起诉讼称特朗普破坏了它的竞标。合同被取消。最终，包括亚马逊和微软在内的四家科技公司从这个云交易中各分得一杯羹。

The most vulnerable Bezos property in a new and vindictive Trump administration is probably the one he cares about most: his space company, Blue Origin. The company will compete with SpaceX and a third firm to provide launch services for national security rockets over the next five years.

报复心强的特朗普若是再次上台，贝佐斯最脆弱的财产可能也是他最关心的——他的太空公司蓝色起源。该公司将与SpaceX和另外一家公司竞争，在未来五年内为国家安全火箭提供发射服务。

On Friday, when The Post announced it would not endorse a presidential candidate, Blue Origin’s chief executive, Dave Limp, had a brief meeting with Mr. Trump in Texas. Mr. Bezos did not respond to a request for comment but said in a piece he wrote in The Post on Monday that he knew this “would provide ammunition to those who would like to frame this as anything other than a principled decision” and that the whole thing was a coincidence. That article drew over 24,000 comments, few of them favorable to Mr. Bezos.

上周五，当《华盛顿邮报》宣布不会为总统候选人背书时，蓝色起源的首席执行官戴夫·林普在得州与特朗普进行了简短的会面。贝佐斯没有回应置评请求，但周一他在邮报上发表的一篇文章中表示，他知道“很多人会说这是个不符合操守的决定，会面这件事会被他们抓住把柄”，但整件事都是巧合。那篇文章吸引了超过2.4万评论，其中支持贝佐斯的不多。

A few hours later, Musk posted on X: “Kudos to @JeffBezos.” It’s possible he was tweaking Bezos, like the time an interviewer asked about him and Musk responded “Jeff who?” Musk did not respond to a message for comment.

几个小时后，马斯克在X上发文：“向杰夫·贝佐斯致敬。”他有可能是在调侃贝佐斯，就像有一次面对采访者的提问，马斯克回答：“哪个杰夫？”马斯克没有回应本文的置评请求。