I do not believe the WashPost was ever a great newspaper. This current sordidness is not at all out of character for the sleazebags who run the paper. Back in their glory days in the '70's when they oversaw the lynching of Richard Nixon, they had no organized opposition. Then, as now, the republicans in congress were spineless losers who immediately turned on their own president over basically nothing. Clearly, they are trying to reclaim their past glory by staging a coup before Trump even takes office, but we have the means to fight back now and there are a lot of people who are ready to rumble big time. The Post has a sordid history of covering up wrongdoing by democrats. Ben Bradlee partied and chased interns with JFK in the White House and the result was fantasy reporting about "Camelot" and other nonsense. They tried their best to railroad Reagan, but he had the popular support that nixon lacked, so it went nowhere. They really hit their stride covering up for Bill Clinton, but the new media began to make that more difficult. In recent years, the Post has pretty much abandoned actual reporting in favor of having 23 year old reporters lecture readers over various social justice warrior issues, eg LGBT, AGW, Trump is Hitler, etc. Their election coverage was essentially an 18 month unintended parody of leftwing bias.