Jeff Bezos commends Trump's 'grace and courage under literal fire' after shooting at rally
Taylor Hill and Joe Raedle/Getty Images
- Jeff Bezos offered words of support to Donald Trump after the Saturday rally shooting.
- The Amazon founder broke a 9-month silence on X to send the message.
- Trump has previously mocked Bezos and The Washington Post, which the Amazon founder owns.
Jeff Bezos commended Donald Trump after a rally shooting in Butler, Pennsylvania, on Saturday, breaking a nearly nine-month hiatus on X.
"Our former President showed tremendous grace and courage under literal fire tonight. So thankful for his safety and so sad for the victims and their families," the Bezos wrote on X. The last post he shared on the site was from October 2023.
Big Tech figures were quick to condemn the Saturday shooting, which left at least two people, including the shooter, dead.
But Bezos's words of support are particularly notable considering the former president has had a long-standing public feud with the Amazon founder.
In 2019, Trump mocked Bezos, calling him "Jeff Bozo," appearing to revel in his impending divorce with MacKenzie Scott. The former president also bashed The Washington Post, which Bezos owns.
"So sorry to hear the news about Jeff Bozo being taken down by a competitor whose reporting, I understand, is far more accurate than the reporting in his lobbyist newspaper, the Amazon Washington Post," Trump wrote on January 13, 2019. "Hopefully the paper will soon be placed in better & more responsible hands!"
Amazon recognized this public feud in a federal complaint after the company lost a $10-billion contract with the Department of Defense to Microsoft. At the time, the company alleged that Trump's "repeated public and behind-the-scenes attacks" against Amazon and Bezos were the reason why Amazon Web Services lost a valuable contract to its competitor.
The Department of Defense canceled the contract in 2021 and sought a multi-cloud deal with Amazon and Microsoft.
Andy Jassy, the CEO of Amazon since 2021, also condemned the Saturday shooting.
"It's hard to digest what happened in Pennsylvania today. Just awful. My thoughts go out to the victims' families. Glad that President Trump is safe and hoping he recovers quickly," Jassy wrote on X.
A Trump spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.