Whether it’s on Twitter or in front of a crowd of raucous supporters, President Trump appears to be making his digs at Amazon a regular occurrence.
Tuesday night in Phoenix, Trump fired up his base at a campaign-style rally that included insults directed at everyone from the media to protesters outside to Arizona’s two Republican senators.
RELATED: A timeline of President Trump’s attacks against Amazon and CEO Jeff Bezos
Like always, his harshest criticisms seem to be reserved for mainstream news outlets such as CNN, The New York Times and The Washington Post. But because the Post is owned by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Trump likes to make that connection regularly.
The president was fired up Tuesday about criticism surrounding his reaction and statements after the violence and death in Charlottesville, Va., earlier this month. Here’s a partial transcript (around 42:00 mark in video above) in which Amazon was lumped in with “failing” newspapers and cable TV stations:
Trump: And then I went on, this is my first statement, and they said, remember they said, well, he wasn’t specific enough. Why wasn’t he more specific?
So in my second statement, I got really specific, and they said, why didn’t he do it faster? The — I’m telling you folks, look, look, I know these people probably better than anybody.
And a lot of people have a problem with it, because look, what happens with them, if they’re doing a story about me, I know if it’s honest or false.
If you’re reading a story about somebody, you don’t know. You assume it’s honest, because it’s like the failing New York Times, which is like so bad. It’s so bad.
(Booing)
Or the Washington Post, which I call a lobbying tool for Amazon, OK, that’s a lobbying tool for Amazon.
Or CNN, which is so bad and so pathetic, and their ratings are going down.
(Booing)
Right?
Crowd: CNN sucks! CNN sucks! CNN sucks!
The Amazon line isn’t getting the reaction from crowds that CNN obviously gets, but it doesn’t appear to be stopping Trump from throwing it out there. There are at least 10 tweets from Trump since he took office in which he attacks the Post and Amazon together, calling one a lobbying tool for the other to avoid taxes.
Bezos, who bought the paper in 2013 for $250 million, seems to let it all roll off his back. He hasn’t tweeted since Aug. 10, when he said it was a pleasure to host Trump’s defense secretary during a visit to Amazon headquarters in Seattle.
