Donald Trump’s weird attack on Amazon gives away something about Trump-Russia scandal
Donald Trump woke up this morning and decided to launch a seemingly random attack on Amazon, blaming it for everything from the post office’s troubles to the demise of competing retailers. But a few hours later, one of Trump’s remaining loyalists chimed in and provided clarity for why Trump was attacking Amazon, unwittingly giving away something about the Trump-Russia scandal in the process.
Trump has attacked Amazon and its founder Jeff Bezos before, but it was usually after the Washington Post, also owned by Bezos, published a bombshell about his Trump-Russia scandal. This was different; it was simply an assault on Amazon and its business model. But then Trump’s newly minted 2020 campaign manager, Brad Parscale, tweeted this: “Do not forget to mention that Amazon has probably 10x the data on every American that Facebook does.” Ah, so that’s what this is all about.
Trump’s handlers appear to have steered him toward attacking Amazon as a way of distracting from the fact that the Trump campaign’s voter data analysis firm, Cambridge Analytica, stole the private user data of fifty million Facebook users while cheating its way to illegitimate victory. With Trump and team, it’s always about distractions, misdirects, scapegoats, and muddying the water. But Parscale just tipped off something big: he’s nervous as hell about the Trump-Russia scandal in general, and about Cambridge Analytica in particular.
Donald Trump hired Brad Parscale and John Bolton this month, who both have ties to Cambridge Analytica, in the exact same timeframe in which the Cambridge Analytica scandal was exploding. There is no known evidence that Parscale or Bolton was involved in Cambridge Analytica’s cheating, but Trump made them both look guilty in the court of public opinion with their suspiciously timed hiring. Now Parscale is making himself look guilty in the court of public opinion, by trying so hard to distract from Cambridge Analytica’s Facebook cheating.
