No one can figure out what Donald Trump is babbling about in his “Guardian of Amazon” tweet
Donald Trump’s tweets are often such a semi-coherent word salad that it’s difficult to figure out what he’s even talking about. His failed understanding of the English language has created laugh out loud moments like “hear by” and “covfefe” – but some of the truly strange moments have come when Trump has tried to use Twitter to discuss policy. In particular his most recent policy tweet is such a jumble that people are still trying to unscramble it.
Trump tweeted “The #AmazonWashingtonPost, sometimes referred to as the guardian of Amazon not paying internet taxes (which they should) is FAKE NEWS!” (link). For starters, the sentence structure is so poor that you’d need an English professor to diagram it. If you stare at it long enough, you realize that “AmazonWashingtonPost” is the subject of the sentence, and then all the way near the end, “is” is the accompanying verb. But the trouble comes with everything in between.
Although the Washington Post is owned by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, it is not true that Amazon owns the Washington Post. Furthermore, there are no “internet taxes” on the federal level. Trump seems to be unaware that Amazon does collect sales tax for transactions that take place in specific states that have state-level retail sales tax. So not only does the person occupying the office of President of the United States have no idea how taxes work, he’s also falsely accusing one of the nation’s largest retailers of not paying taxes that it does in fact pay. But it gets worse.
Trump’s use of the words “Guardian of Amazon” has led to the largest number of jokes and punchlines from Twitter users. He appeared to be accusing the Washington Post of trying to protect Amazon from having to pay taxes, but our Google search didn’t reveal any instances of the Post having ever made such an argument on Amazon’s behalf. In any case, Trump’s poor phrasing has led to “Guardian of Amazon” becoming part of the lexicon because – as usual – no one can figure out what he’s talking about.
