Executives at companies founded by the billionaire Post owner have sought contact with Trump. He argues he didn’t end presidential endorsements out of self-interest.
By Isaac Stanley-Becker, Aaron C. Davis, Josh Dawsey, Christian Davenport, The Washington PostPresident Donald Trump in June 2017 speaks with Satya Nadella, chief executive of Microsoft, and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos at the White House.
Jassy did not agree to make the contribution. But the call itself reflected signs of new engagement between Trump and key figures in the business empire overseen by Bezos, who remains executive chairman of Amazon. CNN first disclosed the existence of the call, but the request for a contribution has not been previously reported.
The premium that Amazon places on its relationships in Washington is evident in the more than $15 million the e-commerce giant and its subsidiary, AWS, have spent on federal lobbying so far this year, disclosures show. Lobbying expenditures have risen steadily over the last decade. “You can see my wealth and business interests as a bulwark against intimidation, or you can see them as a web of conflicting interests,” he wrote. “Only my own principles can tip the balance from one to the other. I assure you that my views here are, in fact, principled, and I believe my track record as owner of The Post since 2013 backs this up.”
Jeff Bezos introduces a newly developed lunar lander"Blue Moon" in May at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center. Bezos, with an estimated net worth of more than $200 billion, got his start in business three decades ago when he founded Amazon as an online bookstore in his Seattle garage. Today, his wealth still derives in large part from the shares he owns in the company, which is valued at about $2 trillion.
After Trump’s election in 2016, Bezos was thrust into the political spotlight as his businesses came under pressure from a president fixated on Post coverage. In October, the Pentagon awarded the contract to Microsoft, prompting a protest from Amazon, which filed a complaint in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims. Amazon argued that the award process could not be separated from Trump’s “repeatedly expressed determination to, in the words of the President himself, ‘screw Amazon.’”
“You have a Washington Post problem,” Short said, according to the people. Short declined to comment. The advertisement responded directly to The Post’s most recent editorial, saying the commentary reflected “uninformed critiques.” It was signed by Smith, the CEO, and emblazoned with the Blue Origin logo.
The rocket company is competing against industry leader SpaceX, whose founder, Musk, has poured about $120 million into efforts to elect Trump, according to campaign finance records, while publicly enthusing over a potential high-level role in his next administration, running what the billionaire libertarian has called “The Department of Government Efficiency.”
In 2021, SpaceX beat out competitors including Blue Origin for a $2.9 billion contract to build a spacecraft capable of landing astronauts on the moon. Bezos’s company unsuccessfully protested the contract with the Government Accountability Office and filed litigation claiming that the selection process had been flawed. Last year, Blue Origin separately secured a $3.4 billion contract to build a second lander for NASA’s Artemis campaign.
Those two companies, in addition to Google and Oracle, are now competing to win components of $9 billion in contracts for the JEDI successor, known as the Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability. Competition for the bulk of that pie is now in full swing, with roughly $1 billion awarded mostly this year, and Amazon named to some early Navy and Marine Corps work.
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