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In a January post, I suggested that the billionaires who support the white-house idiot be the ones that are removed. I had no idea then who those idiots were…although how can I refer to them as idiots when they have billions…actually were. Today, Robert Reich wrote an article about the movie, “Melania,” wherein he listed all those individuals. The point of his article was these individuals should all be consigned to the innermost fires of hell…I heartily agree.
Leading the
charge or list of billionaires who have accepted bribes or in some way
benefited from the largess of the idiot in charge is Jeff Bezos…what a shock. I
don’t know the man, but I do know he’s the richest among men and does
absolutely nothing to improve the lot of any one person, let alone civilization.
In case you missed the article, here it is:
Melania: The
Movie. The Bribe. The Shame.
Bezos's illegal
payoff
By Robert Reich,
published February 2, 2026
|
Friends, I haven’t seen it. I hope you don’t, either. This, from one of the kinder reviews: “Across some 104 minutes, the first lady delivers these
blatantly scripted and meaningless narrations with all the conviction of
someone who just woke up from a two-hour nap and can’t remember what day it
is.” Manohla Dargis of The
New York Times sees a “glossy, curiously impersonal” portrait of a
woman who “rarely drops her Sphinxlike deadpan.” Nick Hilton of The
Independent calls the first lady a “scowling void of pure nothingness
in this ghastly bit of propaganda.” Guardian
critic Xan Brooks says it “doesn’t have a single redeeming quality” and
compares it to a “medieval tribute to placate the greedy king on his throne.”
Not since The Washington Post music critic Paul Hume
observed that Margaret Truman’s singing voice in Constitution Hall in 1950
was “flat a good deal of the time” has a performance by a member of a sitting
president’s family generated such averse reviews. Yet because the The Washington Post is now
owned by the man who spent $75 million on the movie ($40 million to make it,
$35 million to promote it), I somehow doubt The Post will crap on it.
(At least Monica Hesse, in her review for The Post, had the honesty to
confess
that “if you suspect I have come here today to trash a movie about the
wife of a notoriously thin-skinned, anti-journalist president, which was
bankrolled by the company owned by the man who also pays my salary — NOT
TODAY, SATAN. Do you think I’m a moron?”) My purpose today is less to highlight this inane excuse for
a film than to talk about its real excuse — allowing Jeff Bezos to
give a big fat bribe to the president of the United States. Why would Bezos bribe him? Please. Bezos, one of the richest men in the world, owns Amazon and
many other businesses that depend on the whims of the sociopath in the Oval
Office. (Trump sold the idea of the documentary to Bezos when he dined at
Mar-a-Lago in December 2024, just after the election, according to the The
Wall Street Journal.) Bezos’s Amazon Web Services has a $1 billion agreement with
the General Services Administration for cloud services, which presumably
Bezos would like renewed. His rocket company, Blue Origin, has over $2.3
billion in contracts from the U.S. Space Force. Several of Bezos’s companies are subject to potential
tariffs on goods from China. Amazon is under the cloud of a major antitrust
lawsuit brought by the Federal Trade Commission (when the FTC was still
independent — before it came under the putative control of the Oval Office).
The trial is expected in 2027. And so on. Friends, when the history of this sordid period of America
is written — assuming it’s not written by historians trying to curry favor
with a future fascist regime — I hope the leaders of American business are
condemned to the hellfire they deserve for helping destroy American
democracy. The outer ring of hell will be reserved for CEOs who stayed
silent so as not to rile the narcissist-in-chief. Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase will reside here because,
notwithstanding his assumed role as spokesman for American business, Dimon
has uttered no criticism of Trump other than to suggest, in the vaguest
possible terms, that Trump’s attack on the Federal Reserve’s independence “is
probably not a great idea.” The middle ring will be reserved for business leaders who
surrendered to Trump’s extortionist demands for personal payoffs. The Ellisons, père Larry (the world’s third-richest
person) et fils David, will be there, along with Shari Redstone and
the board of Paramount, for paying Trump $16 million to settle his utterly
baseless lawsuit against CBS. Also in this middle ring will be Bob Iger, CEO of Disney
(which owns ABC) and Debra OConnell, the president of ABC News Group and
Disney Entertainment Networks, for giving Trump $15 million to settle his
equally spurious lawsuit against ABC News. In the inner ring, where hell fires burn especially hot,
will be business leaders who went beyond acquiescing to Trump’s extortion and
decided to pay him big fat bribes. Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, will have pride of place
here, after spending a quarter of a billion dollars getting Trump elected. Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, will get a spot here for lavishing
on Trump a custom-designed glass plaque mounted on a 24-karat gold base. We’ll also find here the CEOs who coughed up $300,000 each
for Trump’s ballroom — including crypto magnates Cameron and Tyler
Winklevoss, oil tycoon Harold Hamm, Blackstone’s Stephen Schwarzman, and
every Big Tech mogul. But Jeff Bezos, with his $75 million bribe of Trump, will
deserve a special place in the innermost ring of hell. The $40 million he paid Melania Trump’s production company
is at least $35 million more
than the cost of typical high-end documentaries. (By way of comparison,
Magnolia Pictures and CNN Films produced “RBG,” a documentary about the late
Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, for around $1 million.) Melania Trump pocketed more than 70 percent of that $40
million — or more than $28 million — the Journal
reported. The additional $35 million Bezos shelled out for marketing
“Melania” is 10
times what other high-profile documentaries spend on marketing. The
promotional budget for “RBG” was about $3 million. (To be sure, Melania Trump
is no Ruth Bader Ginsburg, so I suppose you might argue that Melania needed a
larger promo budget. But this much larger?) All this, at a time when Bezos is slashing the newsroom at
the Post — it’s heart and soul — in order to “economize.” Forget the
inner ring. Bezos deserves to be at the center of the inferno. The promo money apparently worked, at least in the U.S.,
where opening-weekend ticket sales for “Melania” totaled $7
million. But let’s be realistic. A $35 million promotional budget
will get people into theaters to see paint drying. If all goes well — given that opening weekend is usually
about 25 percent of total box office and that movie houses pocket half —
Amazon could end up with about $14 million on its $75 million investment. A
pittance. Yet this was never a financial investment. It was an
investment in kissing Trump’s derriere. As Ted Hope, who was instrumental in
starting Amazon’s film division, wondered aloud to the New
York Times: “How can it not be equated with currying favor or an outright
bribe? How can that not be the case?” Of course it’s an outright bribe. If America still had a Department of Justice, Bezos would be
indicted for bribery of a public official pursuant to 18
U.S. Code § 201, which criminalizes offering or giving anything of value
to a public official with the intent to influence their official actions.
Penalty: imprisonment for up to 15 years. (Also note: The U.S. Constitution lists taking a bribe as an
impeachable offense for a president.) There’s a statute of limitations for criminal prosecution of
such bribes: Prosecution must begin within five years of the deed. So, my friends, if America gets a true Justice Department
starting in January of 2029, Bezos’s inferno may become a reality. |
I like to read what Mr. Reich writes because almost all the time, I agree with what he’s written. Here, before us in this article, is a listing of all the people that we should make an effort to not further enrich. I don’t know if we can actually make much of a dent in a company like Amazon, but we could try…I’m going to try. In fact, I didn’t order one single thing from Amazon in the month of January and my bill is zero. Just imagine what harm…or improvement…we could do if we all stopped ordering stuff online.
Anyway, I know
this post ran long because I chose to include something I found important. I
hope you found it important as well.
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