Amazon’s Behavior Makes Walmart’s Earnings Call Look Like a Profile in Courage

By Ben Mathis-Lilley

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May 16, 20255:40 AM

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It has been, let’s say, illuminating to see which U.S. institutions have shown some backbone—even in a measured and self-interested way—when confronted with the corrupt requests of a president who was recently convicted of fraud, tried to overturn the last election, and seems to be openly soliciting favors, investments, and airplanes from foreign countries while running something resembling a “pump-and-dump” crypto scheme here at home. (Note: The president has not been charged with any crime related to cryptocurrency—what a phrase, to be including in this article—and the Trump family declined to comment on the New York Times’ story about its crypto activities.) It has also been … provocative to see which institutions have very much not stood up for themselves, much less for anyone else.

Among those sticking up for themselves, you have Harvard, whose president is cutting his own salary while the university fights the administration in court for the federal funds to which it is entitled. Among those who aren’t is the University of Michigan, whose own leader came flying out of left field in late March to announce that he had closed down the school’s diversity program, then quit to take a job at the University of Florida. There, his first official act was issuing a statement that praised Ron DeSantis. Woof!

This week, a version of that dynamic developed in the retail sector as Walmart’s CEO announced on a call with investors that the company will soon be raising prices on some of the items it sells because of the tariffs that Trump has imposed. “The higher tariffs will result in higher prices,” Doug McMillon said. This might seem like a straightforward fact, but counts as bold truth-telling given Trump’s constant asinine claims otherwise and the context of what another major distributor of Chinese-made things and stuff has been doing recently.

That would be Amazon, the e-commerce giant founded by Jeff Bezos, who attended Trump’s inauguration and reportedly brokered a $40 million payment from the company to Melania Trump that is ostensibly a licensing fee for a documentary she is making. Amazon, in contrast to Walmart, responded to a late-April report that it might list tariff costs on checkout pages by publicly and immediately promising the White House that this would not be the case.

This week, meanwhile, current Amazon CEO Andy Jassy is in Saudi Arabia with Trump, where he (Jassy) has announced a partnership between the company and an A.I. firm cofounded by close Trump family ally Mohammed bin Salman. Bin Salman is the de facto Saudi leader who is believed to have ordered the 2018 kidnapping, murder, and dismemberment of a columnist at the Bezos-owned Washington Post (at least, that’s what the CIA concluded; bin Salman denies it). Bin Salman was also accused by Bezos himself in 2019 of hacking Bezos’ phone and obtaining information about an extramarital affair that was later published by the National Enquirer. Time heals all wounds, apparently, except for those suffered by the people who were working for Jeff Bezos when Mohammed bin Salman had them murdered. Allegedly.

Years from now, one wonders if figures like Bezos will still expect to command respect and authority in the United States after having supported what is in essence an attempt to make someone king. Really, how hard can it be to do the right thing when Walmart and Harvard are pulling it off?