President Donald Trump, an unindicted co-conspirator and suspected Manchurian candidate, sent a lot of unhinged tweets over the weekend. But one of the most bizarre rants targeted Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. President Trump referred to the billionaire tech founder and owner of the Washington Post as “Jeff Bozo.”
“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,” President Trump tweeted at 8:45pm ET last night. “Hopefully the paper will soon be placed in better & more responsible hands!”
What the hell is the president talking about? Trump, who’s currently holding the government hostage over his proposed wall at the U.S.-Mexico border, has repeatedly insulted the Washington Post during his time as president. But the president is probably upset about the paper’s latest report from Saturday that Trump has gone to extraordinary lengths to hide his conversations with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
According to the Post, President Trump has previously seized the notes of his interpreter and told his linguist not to discuss with other American government officials the meetings he’s had with Putin. The Post’s revelations came on the heels of a damning report from the New York Times that the FBI had opened an investigation in 2017 about the possibility that Trump was acting as an agent of the Russian government. It’s unclear if that investigation is ongoing.
The “competitor” news outlet that Trump refers to is most likely the National Enquirer, which has been following Bezos very closely and has published private text messages between the Amazon founder and his mistress, Lauren Sanchez. Bezos announced last week that he and his wife of 25 years, MacKenzie Bezos, are getting divorced. The president is essentially saying that the National Enquirer is “more accurate” than the Washington Post, which would be a reasonably funny burn if it wasn’t coming from a man who has sole discretion to launch dozens of nuclear weapons anytime he likes, either starting World War III or simply ending life on Earth as we know it.
President Trump has a history of being obsessed with the divorces of his wealthy male “friends,” and has commiserated with them over the financial terms of their divorces. When asked about the Bezos divorce on January 10, President Trump said strangely, “I wish him luck, it’s going to be a beauty,” probably referring to the enormous amount of money that will be divided between Jeff Bezos and MacKenzie Bezos.
Trump’s other tweets over the weekend included everything from claims that there’s no chaos in the White House (contradicting both news reports and simple common sense) to attacks on the FBI. The president also sent an incredibly racist tweet last night about Senator Elizabeth Warren’s recent Instagram livestream where she drank a beer and talked to her husband in her kitchen.
“If Elizabeth Warren, often referred to by me as Pocahontas, did this commercial from Bighorn or Wounded Knee instead of her kitchen, with her husband dressed in full Indian garb, it would have been a smash!” Trump tweeted.
Nothing should surprise us anymore, but it’s still shocking to see such nakedly racist things being said by the president.
Meanwhile the government is still shut down, TSA lines at airports are being closed as workers can’t afford the gas to drive in, and a quarter of State Department staff overseas aren’t getting a paycheck. That last part is obviously an espionage goldmine for America’s New Cold War adversaries who are now able to exploit people who are struggling financially and potentially pay for information.
Welcome to day 24 of Trump’s government shutdown with no end in sight. The president may or may not be beholden to the Russian government, and he’s just sitting in the White House tweeting the most racist, vile, and petty things you can imagine.
It’s both stunning and terrifying that this is where we’re at, but there’s very little that the average American can do to fix it. Everything is in hands of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, and he’s been AWOL for weeks.
It’s hard to imagine a time before things were always in chaos throughout the U.S. government, but this entire experience is also a testament to how quickly we can become acclimated to bizarre situations. America’s most basic institutions are falling apart and yet life goes on. Life might be demonstrably worse for millions of Americans, but life goes on.