Trump Told Mattis To ‘Screw Amazon’ In Its Bid For $10 Billion Pentagon Contract

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis listens as President Donald Trump answers questions during a meeting with military leaders in the Cabinet Room on October 23, 2018. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)
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In 2018, President Donald Trump directed then-Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis to “screw Amazon” in the company’s attempt to bid on a $10 billion tech contract with the Pentagon, according to an upcoming book about Mattis.

In an excerpt of “In Holding The Line: Inside Trump’s Pentagon with Secretary Mattis” provided to Task and Purpose, author Guy Snodgrass describes the shocking moment between Trump and Mattis.

“We’re not going to do that,” Mattis said, according to Snodgrass. “This will be done by the book, both legally and ethically.”

Trump has often invoked Amazon or Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos in his attacks against the Washington Post, which is owned by Bezos.

And ultimately the Pentagon did end up passing over Amazon to award the contract for cloud computing services to Microsoft on Friday.

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Notable Replies

  1. Anyone surprised? Nope I didn’t think so.

  2. Amazon is going to have a field day in court over this.

  3. … President Donald Trump directed then-Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis to “screw Amazon”…

    When you’re a star, they let you do anything.

  4. This could make the KC-X shitshow look like a friends-of-the-library society meeting by comparison.

  5. Avatar for tena tena says:

    So how many laws did this break, anybody know?

Continue the discussion at forums.talkingpointsmemo.com

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