BUSINESS/PENTAGON/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “President Trump said on Thursday [7-18-19] that he was looking ‘very seriously’ at intervening in the hard-fought commercial battle for a $10 billion Pentagon cloud computing contract for which Amazon, a company he has frequently attacked, is seen as the leading contender. For the president to weigh in on the award of a major government contract would be highly unusual, raising questions of improper political influence, but the stakes are high and Amazon’s competitors have been lobbying aggressively. Mr. Trump has long carried on a one-sided feud with Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s founder, over some of the company’s business activities and also over what the president refers to as ‘The Amazon Washington Post,’ though Mr. Bezos owns the newspaper personally, not as a corporate asset…In fact, the contract has not yet been awarded and has been the subject of a monthslong competition involving Amazon, Microsoft, Oracle and IBM.”
–Scott Shane and Karen Weise, “Trump Says He May Intervene in Huge Pentagon Contract Sought by Amazon,” The New York Times online, July 18, 2019