This MAGA lackey is drowning in cash — and Trump haters are to blame

My name is Ray, and I’m still an Amazon user.

Whenever I need anything, I automatically order it on Amazon Prime and it’s magically at my doorstep the next day. Or within a few hours. Sometimes, it arrives so quickly I swear they’re reading my mind and that I only thought about ordering it.

I’m so lazy that if I need a roll of aluminum foil or a couple of AA batteries, I just go on Amazon and order it because – click-click – it’s done in less than 60 seconds. No driving to the store or even walking to the corner. Amazon has turned me into an immobile sloth.

And I don’t feel all that good about it.

This naturally wasn’t the case when Amazon chief Jeff Bezos was still regularly facing down Donald Trump. During Trump’s first administration, he was one of the scant few open billionaire resistors we had fighting for the good guys.

The two frequently butted heads. Trump often called him “Bozo,” one of those school-yard nicknames he reserves for those of which he’s most jealous. He accused Amazon of avoiding taxes — usually a sign of intellect in Trump’s eyes — and exploiting the U.S. Postal Service. Trump also mercilessly attacked The Washington Post, which Bezos purchased in 2013, claiming it was unfairly hostile to his administration.

Of course he did.

Bezos also believed it was political pressure that contributed to his loss of a major Pentagon cloud-computing contract, though the government naturally denied any interference.

Of course it did.

During that first administration, Bezos and Trump rarely appeared together and publicly represented opposing poles of American political and business culture. There was even a moment in 2017 when the president reportedly asked Anthony Scaramucci, a.k.a. The Mooch, then an aide, “Can we break up Amazon?”

But as the 2024 presidential campaign wound down, Bezos suddenly and without warning hedged his bets. He blocked the Post from endorsing a presidential candidate so as not to anger Trump, wreaking havoc among the paper’s staff and driving hundreds of thousands of subscribers to cancel.

Then, following Trump’s 2024 victory, the change in approach really shifted into overdrive. Bezos radically swung from quiet defiance to enthusiastic — even joyous — compliance and support for everything the administration stood for. It began with his giving Trump very public congratulations on the victory, contributing $1 million to his 2025 Inauguration and sitting with all his fellow tech oligarchs in the front row.

From there, the Bezos outreach to regularly kiss Trump’s derriere has continued to ramp up. Bezos contributed substantially to the ballroom/bunker fund. The two men have reportedly had multiple private dinners together, and Bezos and his socialite wife Lauren Sanchez Bezos have broken bread with the Trumps on multiple occasions, even dining together privately in the former Rose Garden.

Fast forward to the present. The Wall Street Journal reports that when Trump spoke to the elite Alfalfa Club earlier this year in a rambling 45-minute outburst of meanness and rage, Bezos sat right up front, laughing uproariously. Trump has told advisors he is going to do everything in his power to make sure Bezos’ Blue Origin space company reaches the moon and is fast-tracking its contracts.

Indeed, those contracts are swiftly in motion, as reported in The Journal. Blue Origin has won major NASA and Defense Department deals worth billions. And the mission of The Post is no longer to hold Trump and his corrupt cronies to account but to take an approach of laying off and allowing the shadiness to move forth unimpeded.

You think when the owner of The Post is seen guffawing in the front row of a Trump speech and raking in billions in contracts, that newspaper is going to push to uncover the abundant dirt that makes this the most crooked administration in American history? Not bloody likely, boys and girls.

Oh yeah, and how could I almost forget about the Melania documentary that was funded by Amazon MGM Studios (owned by Bezos) to the tune of $75 million for the licensing rights, production and marketing-promotion for a 2025 doc on the First Lady’s gilded existence? Bezos claimed he wasn’t personally involved in the acquisition decision. Right. And no doubt the fact that she happens to be the president’s wife was completely coincidental.

Bezos has naturally denied that anything he is doing smacks of quid pro quo when it comes to his newest buddy. But it’s crystal clear the man is courting Trump’s adoration, even though he’s actually worth enough (at more than $250 billion) to buy Trump at least 50 times over. He’s seen where his bread is buttered, and he’s very busily buttering it, the grave hit to his morals and ethics notwithstanding.

In a word, Bezos is a sellout, and a contemptuous one at that. There is not a single question about it. Consequently, he should peddle The Post to someone who would return it to something resembling editorial relevance.

The fact that the preeminent paper in the nation’s capital remains constrained by its boss’ coddling of a tyrant is yet another nasty side effect of the country’s Trumpified fever dream. It’s resulted in significant changes to its opinion section and its greater emphasis on viewpoints centered on free markets and individual liberties — just as Trump demands.

Bezos has gone so far as to praise Trump as presently “more disciplined and mature” than during his first administration — an observation that is flat-out unfathomable.

This brings me back to my own battle with Amazonian guilt. No one is holding a gun to my head to buy my boxer briefs and iced tea from Amazon, and yet I do. It’s all about the convenience. That’s what keeps a company that’s no more than a glorified middleman at the top of consumer commerce.

How do I reconcile this? I struggle to convince myself that using a service isn’t an endorsement of its business practices or political opportunism, but I’m not sure even I believe it.

I also try to square it in my head that perfection is unattainable and that nearly every large corporation has executives, investors, lobbyists and business relationships that I’d find objectionable, though I easily find a way to avoid frequenting places like Chick-fil-A that I know fund the Republican cause.

Would shunning Amazon, as my wife does, make me feel like I’m living more consistently with my values? Or would it just make my life harder without accomplishing much?

These are the billion-dollar questions I am yet to definitively answer.

In the meantime, I feel a bit like a fraud.

(Ray Richmond is a longtime journalist/author and an adjunct professor at Chapman University in Orange, CA.)