Maybe this is just how billionaires do business. One threatens “such problems” and the other offers to shoot him into space. But now that one of the greatest upsets in presidential history has run its course, Jeff Bezos is apparently looking to play nice.
This morning, the Amazon founder offered benign congratulations to Trump on his win the other evening via Twitter, a format the president-elect knows all to well. “I for one give him my most open mind and wish him great success in his service to the country,” Bezos wrote, his first update since the election.
It’s not exactly a full-throated endorsement of Trump who personally called out Bezos, Amazon and The Washington Post on multiple occasions from the campaign trail, but it’s far from the condemnation we’ve seen from other tech executives. You can almost hear his teeth gritting as you read the thing.
Back in February, Trump called out Bezos by name, owing largely no doubt to the executive’s purchase of the Clinton-endorsing Washington Post. “If I become president, do they have problems,” Trump told a crowd, referring to Jeff Bezos and Amazon. “They’re going to have such problems.”
Trump has also gone out of his way to accuse Bezos of buying the paper to provide tax shelter and score political influence for both himself and Amazon. Late last year, the future president fired off a series of characteristically Trump tweets, calling Bezos’s purchase of The Post a “scam” designed to “screw [the] public.”
To which Bezos offered the candidate a (one assumes one-way) ticket on a Blue Origin rocket, even going so far as creating a hashtag for the occasion. Apparently that offer no longer stands.