Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Donald Trump haven’t always gotten along, but after the former president survived an assassination attempt over the weekend, Bezos decided to bury the hatchet.
Hours after Trump was injured in a shooting at his rally in Pennsylvania Saturday, the Amazon founder praised him in a post on X.
“Our former President showed tremendous grace and courage under literal fire tonight. So thankful for his safety and so sad for the victims and their families,” Bezos wrote.
Bezos was one of several top business leaders that showed support for the former president in the aftermath of the shooting. Pershing Square founder and investor Bill Ackman formally endorsed Trump in a long post on X Saturday. Tesla CEO Elon Musk also endorsed Trump and wished him well, adding in a post on X that the “Last time America had a candidate this tough was Theodore Roosevelt.” Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon also offered Trump his condolences Monday.
But Donald Trump hasn’t always gotten along with his fellow one-percenters, and before Bezos called for peace over the weekend, he was one of the former president’s favorite targets.
Trump has often criticized Bezos on X, mostly for owning The Washington Post, which he bought in 2013 and has published articles and opinion pieces critical of the former president. In a stream of tweets from 2015, Trump took a shot at Bezos’ ownership of the Post, saying he only owned the newspaper to avoid taxes. He also called the newspaper the “Amazon Washington Post,” even though Bezos, not Amazon, owns the outlet.
The @washingtonpost loses money (a deduction) and gives owner @JeffBezos power to screw public on low taxation of @Amazon! Big tax shelter
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 7, 2015
In 2017 when Trump was president, Bezos, then the CEO of Amazon, wrote in a personal email to employees to make it clear that the company did not support Trump’s ban on immigration from Muslim-majority countries. Later that year Trump invited Bezos to the White House along with other CEOs for a four-hour meeting on tech in the government.
Fast forward to 2019 and Trump had a new name for Bezos, “Jeff Bozo,” which he employed to poke fun at the world’s second-richest man after the National Enquirer tabloid reported on Bezos’ alleged affair with now-girlfriend Lauren Sánchez, a former host of “So You Think You Can Dance.”
“So sorry to hear the news about Jeff Bozo being taken down by a competitor whose reporting, I understand, is far more accurate than the reporting in his lobbyist newspaper, the Amazon Washington Post.”
Following this weekend’s rally, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy also wished Trump well in a post on X.
"It's hard to digest what happened in Pennsylvania today. Just awful. My thoughts go out to the victims' families. Glad that President Trump is safe and hoping he recovers quickly," he wrote.
