"Paying To Court The Mad King"

 

From Nobel laureate Paul Krugman, writing on his Substack platform today, commenting on Wednesday's CNBC interview of Amazon mega billionaire weenie Jeff Bezos, in which he lauded the Malignant Fascist and defended low taxes for his Epstein class cohort:

"Last year Bezos and other tech billionaires evidently believed that they could insulate themselves from criticism — and secure their wealth against both taxation and regulation — by allying themselves tightly with Donald Trump. Notably, Amazon, along with Apple, Google, Meta, and Microsoft is one of the companies paying for Trump’s grotesque ballroom.

But Trump is now exploring new frontiers in presidential unpopularity, and Republicans are facing a wave of public revulsion so strong that it will probably overwhelm even their strenuous efforts to rig the midterm elections.

So paying court to the mad king isn’t looking like the smart political move Bezos and his ilk thought it was. How, then, can they defend themselves against the threat of taxes and regulations that might make them slightly less rich?

Well, Bezos evidently thought that the threat to his billions was sufficiently important to justify going on CNBC to lecture the rest of us about the evils of taxation — but not sufficiently important for him to learn a few facts first.

Somehow, I don’t think this new political strategy will work."  (our emphasis)

The public revulsion that Republicans are facing is increasingly being applied to the mega billionaires / Epstein class as income inequality and rising inflation hit the middle and working class families, thanks to their cult leader's destructive policies.  Krugman cites chapter and verse where Bezos' self-serving "facts" are bogus and misleading.  Pushback like this on the false statements of tech bros and their enablers needs to happen regularly and forcefully.

BONUS:  It's no surprise that Bezos is cheap when it comes to charity. Moneywise reports that he's only given 2% of his wealth to charitable causes, and he hasn't signed the Giving Pledge to give his fortune to philanthropic causes. That's in contrast to his former wife, Mackenzie Scott, who's given far more of her wealth to charity.

He also paid zero taxes in 2007 and 2011.

(photo: CNBC)