The Trump-Bezos Feud:
One Man’s (Side of The) Saga
Think the Trump-O’Donnell spat was Squared-Circle worthy enough for it’s incessant smack-talk and “I’m gonnas” flying in from both sides was something?
Over the past few years another big-money brawl has been brewing largely beneath the surface of the media’s eye.
We’re talking about the Trump-Bezos Feud that’s been quietly snowballing and shows all the signs of eventually going full avalanche.
We’ve even got a classic heel vs. babyface dynamic going on:
Trump’s attacks on Bezos are loud and public.
Bezos, on the other hand, is remaining Brock Lesnar-like mum and allowing his Paul Heyman-in-Print, The Washington Post, to voice his opinion for him.
The Backstory:
December 7th, 2015 – Trump takes a dig at Amazon’s small profitability then accuses Bezos of deliberately keeping profits low to evade taxes.
Important note: some people on Twitter pointed out that Bezos made the #1 position on the Bloomberg list.
Trump’s name was nowhere to be found among the 500 members of the three-comma club.
January 11, 2016 – Producers of the Amazon TV series, Mad Dogs, reveal that they’d been considering having the show’s murderer wear a Donald Trump mask.
February 26, 2016 – Trump makes his first public threats to cause Amazon “problems” should he become president.
June 13th, 2016 – Trump bans Washington Post reporters from any of his campaign press conferences.
October 20, 2016 – Bezos calls Trump’s words, actions and plans for office while campaigning to be anti-democratic
November 10th, 2016: Bezos publicly offers Trump an olive branch on Twitter by congratulating him on his victory.
June 27th, 2017 – WaPo reveals that the Time Magazine cover featuring Trump, which is hung prominently in many of Trump’s properties is a fake, bringing mucho humiliation to the president.
December 29, 2017 – Trump claims that USPS is losing money because Amazon isn’t paying fair prices for shipping and has threatened to use his presidential powers to remedy the situation.
The Making of a Heel:
If you’re unfamiliar with wrestling-money, this is how things must go for frogskins to transfer themselves from the pockets of fans into the vaults of the WWE:
Every wrestling feud must have a heel (bad guy) and a babyface (good guy).
So far in the Trump-Bezos Feud, Donnie’s demonstrated all the qualities that make for the bad guy…
…he’s loud, takes cheap shots, threatens to leverage unfair advantages to quash his opponent.
So how did Dangerous Donnie pick up his Ric Flair-ish ways?
He was shown the ways of the heel by a Sith lord named Roy Cohn.
Cohn mentored Trump with lessons on how to exploit power and instill fear through a simple formula: attack, counterattack and never apologize.
From One Feud To The Next:
Powered by Cohn’s tutelage, Trump has gone on a spree of attacks throughout the years, always keeping Cohn’s playbook close to his chest.
He certainly is quite the workhorse, too..
The average WWE wrestler goes through about 8 feuds per year (most consider this very taxing as it is).
The length of the feud (or program in backstage speak) will be determined by how popular it is with fans and how long the feud can continue selling tickets.
Some past high-profile feuds have gone on as long as three months before finally running out of steam.
In 2017 alone, Trump outdid any grapplers in the locker room by engaging in high-profile spats with the likes of:
- Elizabeth Warren
- Mark Cuban
- Kim Jong-un
- James Comey
- The war widow, Frederica Wilson
- Snoop Dogg
- Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski
- Colin Kaepernick
- San Juan mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz
- Roger Goodell…
…and, in true heel fashion, attacked his own teammates in Jeff Sessions, Rex Tillerson and Bob Corker.
This list doesn’t even include Trump’s plethora of short-lived lower-profile feuds.
The Trump-Bezos Feud: Tale of the Tape
Despite being the CIC, Trump can’t just brazenly enact laws to hobble Bezos overnight.
As far as media reach, but men are pretty much equal, with Trump being privy to instant access to the press on request.
For his part, Bezos owns the Washington Post, which is not only doted upon by readers, but by other media outlets.
Should it ever come down to a court battle, Bezos might come out the odds-on favorite on paper with his superior net worth.
At the end of the day, it’ll boil down to a battle of each man’s network.
(Think back to how Hulk Hogan body-slammed Gawker into oblivion when Peter Thiel threw a proverbial steel chair into the ring).
“Our environment, the world in which we live and work, is a mirror of our attitudes and expectations.“
– Earl Nightingale