President Donald Trump welcomes members of his American Technology Council, including (L-R) Apple CEO Tim Cook, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos at the White House on June 19, 2017. | Getty Trump attacks Washington Post as ‘guardian’ of Amazon’s tax practices

President Donald Trump wrapped up an attack on a favorite media target, The Washington Post, and the tax practices of Amazon into one online post Wednesday, complaining that the “fake news” newspaper was protecting the online retailer from tax liabilities with its coverage.

“The #AmazonWashingtonPost, sometimes referred to as the guardian of Amazon not paying internet taxes (which they should) is FAKE NEWS!” Trump wrote online Wednesday.


It is not the first time that Trump has suggested that Amazon should be paying more than it currently does in taxes. In a speech outlining his 100-day action plan last October in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, Trump remarked that “Amazon, which through its ownership controls the Washington Post, should be paying massive taxes but it’s not paying. It’s a very unfair playing field and you see what that’s doing to department stores all over the country.”

Amazon doesn't own the Post. It's owned by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos as a personal investment.

Trump’s criticism of the Post comes amid a multi-day tirade against what he believes to be unfair media coverage of his administration, spurred by a since-retracted CNN report that congressional investigators were looking into a meeting between Trump transition team member Anthony Scaramucci and the head of a Russian investment fund. Three CNN journalists involved in the story’s publication, including a Pulitzer Prize-winner, resigned in the wake of the retraction.

And the president’s Wednesday labeling of the Post as “fake news” comes one day after the newspaper reported that at least four of the president’s golf properties have on display a fake cover of Time magazine featuring Trump on the cover and fawning headlines about his former reality TV show, “The Apprentice.”

The timing of Trump's criticism of Amazon is awkward given that Bezos was at the White House just last week for a meeting of tech CEOs to discuss modernizing the federal government's IT systems. At a roundtable with Trump capping the policy talks, Bezos sat to the president's close left, separated only by Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, and encouraged the president to focus the administration on using commercial technology products rather than building its own. Amazon operates a cloud-computing platform that is seeking more business with the federal government.

That event was part of a push by the Trump administration to build bridges with the tech industry, a drive led by Jared Kushner, the president's senior adviser and son-in-law, as well as Kushner's team at the White House Office of American Innovation created by the president by executive order in March.

While it’s unclear exactly what tax issue Trump was referring to in his criticism of Amazon, the e-commerce giant has been collecting sales taxes in all states that have a sales tax since April 1. States are generally barred from requiring remote sellers to collect sales taxes unless they have a physical presence in the state under a 1992 Supreme Court ruling.

The issue has split Republicans in Congress, with some supporting legislation that would give states more collection authority and others pushing to codify the Supreme Court ruling.

Trump frequently slammed Bezos during the campaign over his ownership of the Post, though Bezos was not the only tech industry target: Then-candidate Trump, while on the campaign trail, harangued other tech CEOs, including Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg over immigration and the leadership at Apple on overseas manufacturing.

Earlier this month, Amazon announced that it plans to purchase the grocery chain Whole Foods, a deal that could require approval from federal regulators within the Trump administration.