President Trump on Wednesday attacked The Washington Post and Amazon over “internet taxes,” alleging that the latter doesn’t pay them and the former protects them with its media coverage, in addition to calling the Washington, D.C.-based publication “fake news,” something he often did in the past. The President’s tweet that can be seen beneath this writing also implied that the e-commerce giant owns The Washington Post, though the company was actually acquired and is owned by Amazon’s founder and Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bezos. The attack came shortly after President Trump met with Bezos and top executives of a number of other U.S. tech giants to talk about modernization of the government’s networking infrastructure that’s currently in the process of being planned by the recently established American Technology Council (ATC).
Bezos purchased The Washington Post for a reported sum of $250 million in 2013, with the media outlet now being formally owned by his Nash Holdings LLC. It’s currently unclear what kind of “internet taxes” was the President referring to, as no such tax exists on a federal level of the United States. The Seattle, Washington-based e-commerce company does collect sales taxes on its online purchase and has been doing so for some time now in an agreement with individual state governments. The President’s criticism of Amazon and The Washington Post comes shortly after the latter published a story saying that four of his golf properties display fake covers of the Time magazine that feature Trump. The Time has since confirmed that the covers displayed in The Washington Post’s report were fake and asked the management of the aforementioned properties to remove them.
The President has previously criticized Amazon on numerous occasions, often alleging that the company is violating antitrust laws and controls The Washington Post through Bezos in an effort to maintain its supposed tax avoidance practices. Tense relations between the two still haven’t prevented them from meeting in regards to the ATC’s modernization-related ambitions and it’s unclear whether this latest set of allegations made by the President will affect that possible cooperation.
The #AmazonWashingtonPost, sometimes referred to as the guardian of Amazon not paying internet taxes (which they should) is FAKE NEWS!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 28, 2017