Trump takes to Twitter to fire salvo at Amazon and Washington Post
29 Jun 2017
President Donald Trump in his latest salvo on Twitter has taken aim at Amazon, and not for the first time.
Trump tweeted yesterday that Amazon wasn't "paying internet taxes (which they should)." Trump also referenced The Washington Post, owned by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, in his tweet.
On Tuesday, The Washington Post published a story saying a fake issue of Time magazine with Trump on the cover was hanging in some of the president's golf clubs.
"[T]he cover on display at Trump's clubs, observed recently by a reporter visiting one of the properties, contained a number of small but ''telling mistakes," the Post wrote.
A Time spokeswoman later confirmed with the Post that the cover was not real.
In addition to the direct attack on the Washington-based publication, Trump also criticised Amazon during his campaign, saying the e-commerce giant operated a monopoly with an unfair tax shelter that was somehow propped up by Bezos' ownership of the Post.
In one rally during his campaign in February 2016, Trump told the crowd: "If I become president, oh [does Amazon] have problems. They're going to have such problems." He added that Bezos only bought the Post to have "political influence."
Trump was now calling out Amazon for avoiding so-called internet taxes, which at one time was a much larger and controversial issue for the e-retailer.
Meanwhile, according to commentators, there were a number of stories currently featuring prominently in Washington Post that Trump may not like, the newspaper reported that GOP senators were not afraid of him and that his lawyer's family had been paid millions from charities it controlled.
They add, while it was hard to parse Trump's tweet for specific meaning, it was likely he was resurfacing a criticism he had made about Amazon's tax practices in the past.
