That President Trump is unhappy with Amazon and its CEO, Jeff Bezos, has become a well-established fact at this point. A previous report claiming that he was “obsessed” with targeting the company, whose owner also happens to possess the Washington Post, succeeded in triggering a series of tweets from Trump that essentially confirmed his bias against Bezos. These public attacks continued over the Easter weekend and into the first week of April, at which point Vanity Fair published a new report suggesting that the president wants to go to war with the company, and he wants to use the postal service to do it.
According to sources who spoke with Vanity Fair, Trump is beyond “obsessed” with taking down Amazon. “He’s off the hook on this. It’s war,” said one. “He gets obsessed with something, and now he’s obsessed with Bezos,” said another, who added: “Trump is like, how can I fuck with him?” To do this, reporter Gabriel Sherman’s sources claim that the president wants to use the United States Postal Service (as opposed to the “US Post Office,” which he keeps mistakenly calling it) to “increase Amazon’s shipping costs” and thereby destroy their business.
Trump’s former economic adviser, Gary Cohn, previously “explained that Amazon is a benefit to the Postal Service, which has seen mail volume plummet in the age of e-mail,” but the president won’t have it. “Trump doesn’t have Gary Cohn breathing down his neck saying you can’t do the Post Office shit,” a Republican with close White House ties told Sherman. “He really wants the Post Office deal renegotiated. He thinks Amazon’s getting a huge fucking deal on shipping.” As if on cue, the president later echoed these claims in another tweet on Tuesday morning, insisting he was “right about Amazon.”
I am right about Amazon costing the United States Post Office massive amounts of money for being their Delivery Boy. Amazon should pay these costs (plus) and not have them bourne by the American Taxpayer. Many billions of dollars. P.O. leaders don’t have a clue (or do they?)!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 3, 2018
Additional sources close to the matter are also indicating that Trump’s remaining advisers are “encouraging [him] to cancel Amazon’s pending multi-billion contract with the Pentagon to provide cloud computing services.” They’re also suggesting that he tell “attorneys general in red states to open investigations into Amazon’s business practices.” Whether or not the president follows through with all of these alleged proposals, however, remains to be seen. After all, judging by the negative effects his boasts about punishing Amazon and launching a trade war with China are supposedly having on the stock market, he might back off. Maybe.
(Via Vanity Fair)