Let’s state the obvious: Donald Trump and Amazon CEO, and Washington Post owner, Jeff Bezos do not see eye to eye. And that becomes a more concerning prospect for Bezos and Amazon now that Trump is president-elect.
Donald Trump said Amazon and Jeff Bezos have a ‘huge antitrust problem.’ Now they may.
The president-elect is certainly one to hold grudges.
Asa Mathat
Jason Del Rey has been a business journalist for 15 years and has covered Amazon, Walmart, and the e-commerce industry for the last decade. He was a senior correspondent at Vox.
In May, after learning of the large team of Washington Post reporters looking into his past, Trump told conservative TV commentator Sean Hannity that Bezos was using the paper to damage Trump’s chances because he feared what a President Trump would mean for Amazon.
“He thinks I’ll go after him for antitrust,” Trump said at the time. “Because he’s got a huge antitrust problem because he’s controlling so much, Amazon is controlling so much of what they are doing.
“He’s using the Washington Post, which is peanuts, he’s using that for political purposes to save Amazon in terms of taxes and in terms of antitrust.”
Trump’s campaign later reiterated this narrative in a statement claiming that the Post was being used as political leverage so Amazon doesn’t “get sued for monopolistic tendencies that have led to the destruction of department stores and the retail industry.”
In response, Bezos has appeared undaunted in public. Bezos told an audience at Recode’s Code Conference in June that “a presidential candidate should embrace” the media coverage that the country’s democracy allows for rather than fight it. More recently, Bezos called out Trump for his threats of retribution against media organizations he feels have wronged him.
In the wake of Trump’s win, I asked an Amazon spokesman if Bezos planned to comment. I was told he doesn’t.
Investors seem to be unsure about what a Trump presidency means for the online retailer. Amazon’s stock was down 2.68 percent as of 11:25 am ET on Wednesday morning. Other tech stocks like Apple, Facebook and Alphabet were also down, but all less than 2 percent.
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
By Kara Swisher
