Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos reportedly took a swipe at White House Assistant to the President and Director of Trade and Manufacturing Policy Peter Navarro in a recent post to Instagram. Navarro called the swipe “A wonderfully banal passive aggressive post from the would-be author of ‘Zen and the Art of Counterfeit Trafficking.”
The Washington Post reports that Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos reportedly refused to meet with White House adviser Peter Navarro. The Post alleges that Navarro approached Bezos at a dinner at the Alfalfa Club in Washinton, DC last month hoping to set up a meeting with the CEO to discuss the issue of counterfeit items on Amazon.
After being approached by Navarro, Bezos reportedly responded: “‘Just call Jay Carney; tell him we’ll meet. We’ll get it done.” Carney is the former press secretary to President Barack Obama who works in communications at Amazon now. Amazon has reportedly offered Navarro meetings with other senior-level company executives but so far has refused to set up a meeting between Navarro and Bezos.
Navarro told the Post that he wanted to meet with Bezos because he could “in the blink of an eye, put a complete halt to the counterfeiting” taking place on Amazon’s platform. “It’s a rare occurrence where a single individual can have an enormous impact on the issue — but so far, it’s ‘see no evil.’”
Bezos took a swipe at Navarro via an Instagram post in which he polled his followers on how he should have dealt with an unnamed adviser who interrupted him at a party. Bezos wrote:
Let’s say you’re at a big cocktail party and someone you don’t know comes up to you while you’re talking to your dad and girlfriend and asks for a meeting. Let’s say this person is the kind of person who actually uses the word ‘minions’ to describe the people who work for you.”
The Instagram post can be seen below:
When asked how he felt about the post, Navarro told the Hill:
A wonderfully banal passive aggressive post from the would-be author of ‘Zen and the Art of Counterfeit Trafficking.’ Simply meeting with a White House representative to discuss a very serious issue would have be so much more constructive.
Following its publication of a story relating to this incident, The Verge received the following comment from an Amazon spokesperson:
Senior Amazon executives met with administration officials, including Mr. Navarro, on multiple occasions to discuss our shared goal of combatting counterfeit goods. We are eager to continue this collaboration and will make our executives available to meet as often as necessary to effectively address the issue.
Amazon is currently in the middle of a federal lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s decision to award a $10 billion contract to Microsoft. President Trump himself has also repeatedly called out the Washington Post for being owned by Bezos.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan or email him at lnolan@breitbart.com
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