In an apparent attempt to discredit The Washington Post the day after it published a report on fake Donald Trump Time magazine covers hanging up at his golf courses, the president posted one of his most confusing tweets since taking office.
Syntax issues aside, this sentence makes absolutely no sense. Of course, there is no such thing as an internet tax. Trump was likely referring to sales tax, but Amazon started collecting sales tax nationwide in April. Also, even though Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos bought the Post in 2013, Amazon is completely separate entity from the news outlet.
This is far from the first time Trump has made false claims about Amazon and the Post. In 2015, Trump wrote on Twitter that Bezos owns the paper to keep “taxes down” at “his no profit company” and, at a rally last fall, Trump claimed he would go after Amazon during his first 100 days:
Amazon, which though its ownership, controls the Washington Post should be paying massive taxes but it’s not paying, and it’s a very unfair playing field and you see what that’s happening and what that’s doing to department stores all over the country. Very, very unfair. And you’re talking about billions and billions of dollars. They should be paying those taxes.
Bezos responded to Trump’s attacks in 2015 by offering to send him into space.
Just last week, however, Trump met with Bezos during a gathering of the American Technology Council, which was tasked with helping the president figure out how to modernize federal technology. They must have avoided the topic of “internet taxes.”