{"id":86929,"date":"2026-05-26T02:26:56","date_gmt":"2026-05-26T02:26:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/86929\/"},"modified":"2026-05-26T02:26:56","modified_gmt":"2026-05-26T02:26:56","slug":"jeff-bezos-the-reasonable-sounding-liar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/86929\/","title":{"rendered":"Jeff Bezos: The reasonable sounding liar"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jeff Bezos<\/a>\u2018s greatest PR strength is that he sounds like a reasonable man. In a Wednesday interview with Andrew Ross Sorkin on CNBC\u2019s Squawk Box, he sided with progressives by saying<\/a> that federal income taxes on the bottom 50% of earners should be eliminated. To personalize his point, he used a theoretical nurse in Queens earning $75,000 a year, whom he claims pays more than $12,000 in taxes annually. <\/p>\n

He said her $1,000-a-month tax bill should be eliminated. One, because it was fair to do so. Two, because the bottom half of wage earners only pay 3% of income tax, and the government could easily find the 3% elsewhere.<\/p>\n

Bezos is generalizing \u2013 the nurse\u2019s actual taxes depend on filing status, deductions, and dependents. In addition, a $75,000 salary puts them in the top half<\/a> of wage earners. However, let\u2019s rate his example as \u201cclose enough.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bezos also supports Mamdani\u2019s pied-\u00e0-terre tax<\/a> in New York City, which he will pay as a non-resident on his NYC property. In addition, he says that, although he already pays billions in taxes, he would be willing to \u2018have a conversation\u2019 about paying more. And he adds that the government should not be in the business of subsidizing private businesses. He used Hollywood films as an example. <\/p>\n

Should he mean what he says, this would tend to make the left-wing happy. Yet Bezos is not favored by liberal politicians. So either the left doesn\u2019t know that America\u2019s second-richest man is an ally. Or Bezos is not being entirely honest in his positions. <\/p>\n

This lack of clarity raises the question: Is there a way to tell which assessment is accurate?<\/p>\n

To answer, the reader should consider this. In the same interview, Bezos threw his support behind Trump, a man who does not entertain the idea of even a conversation about the wealthy paying more taxes. Quite the opposite. He has authored two rounds of tax cuts for the wealthiest \u2013 the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act<\/a>. And the 2025 One Big Beautiful Bill Act<\/a>\u00a0(OBBBA).<\/p>\n

In addition, he characterized<\/a> Trump as being \u201cmore disciplined\u201d in his second term. In full, he said, \u201cI\u2019m comparing him to his first term, and I think he is a more mature, more disciplined version of himself than he was in his first term.\u201d It is a subjective judgment. Bezos offers no statistics to support his take. And there are few others, even among his supporters, who have called Trump more disciplined.<\/p>\n

Bezos added to his Trump encomiums: \u201cTrump has lots of good ideas, and he has done a lot. He\u2019s been right about a lot of things, and you have to give him credit where credit is due.\u201d Again, he gives no specifics. And he conflates ideas with results. Even if you agree with Bezos that Trump has had good ideas, that means little if there was no execution of those ideas. <\/p>\n

We can also agree that Trump has done a lot. But when you consider that a lot of what he has done is the negation of other things he had done before \u2013 think his on-again, off-again tariffs, or his vacillation between aggression and passivity on Iran \u2013 has Trump actually achieved anything? Credit may be due where credit is due. However, that does not mean that credit is always due. <\/p>\n

Besides his lack of specificity, Bezos also suggests he may have a bias toward Trump with his comments on the Amazon documentary, Melania. He beggars belief by saying he had no role in green-lighting the project. Executive Chairs of Fortune 500 companies are political animals. <\/p>\n

Amazon shells out<\/a> $20 million annually to lobby DC politicians. And in 2024, the company spent three times as much on political contributions to Republican PACs as Democratic ones. Interestingly, the company\u2019s employees\u2019 individual contributions were overwhelmingly Democratic. <\/p>\n

Bezos may not run the company day-to-day. But as the big boss and major shareholder, it is unlikely he was not asked for his opinion on the company investing $75 million in a hagiographic documentary about a First Lady married to a man widely known to be inordinately sensitive to public attention.<\/p>\n

Bezos further damaged his reputation for honesty by claiming that \u201cMelania\u201d was a sound business decision. In his CNBC interview, Sorkin asked Bezos whether the documentary was part of an effort to placate Trump. He responded<\/a>, \u201cThe Melania\u00a0thing is a falsehood that will not die. I had nothing to do with that. By the way, it appears it was a good business decision. You know, it did very well in theaters. It\u2019s done very well on streaming. People are very curious about Melania.\u201d <\/p>\n

To claim that Melania \u201cdid very well in theaters\u201d is a provable lie. The movie industry generally breaks even if a movie doubles its production and marketing costs. The numbers are simple. Movie houses get half the ticket revenue. Melania made $16,661,439<\/a> in global box office. The costs were $75 million. It doesn\u2019t take a mathematician to do the arithmetic. <\/p>\n

In fairness, Melania also generated a return to Amazon as a streaming property. But after initial curiosity, it quickly faded from the scene. And how much it benefited Amazon is unknowable. But it wasn\u2019t around long enough to be a boon.<\/p>\n

A lot of what Bezos says is unquantifiable puffery. But anytime he said something that was checkable, he lied. Which suggests that his unverifiable claims aren\u2019t unimpeachable either. <\/p>\n

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