About a month ago, Donald Trump encouraged employees of the Washington Post to go on strike. Specifically, the President said the following:
I think a really long strike would be a great idea. Employees would get more money and we would get rid of Fake News for an extended period of time!
That was a reference to an open letter penned by some 400 unionized employees who asked Jeff Bezos for a raise.
The idea that a sitting President would call on employees of a media outlet he doesn’t care for to go on strike so that he can be free of negative coverage “for an extended period of time” is clearly egregious, but it came as no surprise.
Trump’s attacks on Amazon have become commonplace over the course of the past year as the President grows increasingly paranoid about the deleterious effect of negative media coverage on his presidency.
In late March, Trump repeatedly attacked Amazon in a series of tweets that suggested he was prepared to take action against the company in retaliation for what he says is an effort on the part of Jeff Bezos to turn the U.S. Postal Service into his personal “delivery boy“. On March 31, Trump explicitly accused Bezos of running a “scam” on the Post Office and demanded that the Washington Post register as a lobbyist.
Subsequent reports would reveal that Trump at one point attempted to compel the U.S. Postmaster General to double the rate the Postal Service charges Amazon.com.
This ongoing effort to use the organs of the U.S. government to punish one of the country’s most successful businesses in connection with his displeasure at the free press is beyond the pale and on Monday morning, as part of an ongoing tweet-a-thon, the President alluded to last month’s Supreme Court ruling on the way to suggesting that “next up” will be another attempt to weaponize the Post Office and possible antitrust action against Amazon:
The Amazon Washington Post has gone crazy against me ever since they lost the Internet Tax Case in the U.S. Supreme Court two months ago. Next up is the U.S. Post Office which they use, at a fraction of real cost, as their “delivery boy” for a BIG percentage of their packages….
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 23, 2018
….In my opinion the Washington Post is nothing more than an expensive (the paper loses a fortune) lobbyist for Amazon. Is it used as protection against antitrust claims which many feel should be brought?
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 23, 2018
It’s difficult to know what to say at this point other than to note that in early April, both Steve Mnuchin and Sarah Huckabee Sanders were trotted out to play down the idea that the White House was actively considering taking action against Bezos who (and maybe this is the real source of Trump’s consternation), is now the richest man in modern history.
Never forget, the most hilarious thing about this is that if you look back at 5+ years of Trump’s Amazon tweets, you’ll discover that he’s actually a big Bezos fan — as long as Bezos is selling Trump’s book, which is “a great gift idea that’s easy to order on Amazon”:
So basically, if you’re looking for a used copy of “Time To Get Tough,” then by all means go and buy one on Amazon.
Other than that, Trump thinks it’s time to bring the company down.
One of the great instructive things about the past few years has been the grim realization of just how few of my countrymen or just Westerners in general actually support such evidently absurd and antiquated concepts as freedom of expression, the rule of law, or limits on government.
Perhaps error404 or one of the other Trumpist readership could further educate us on the need to do away with such fanciful things.
I can’t see how Bezos lost a case it wasn’t a party to. Besides, Amazon already collects and pays taxes in the 45 states that require it. The “losers” are surely Trump and Ivanka who don’t collect and pay sales tax on their online sales.