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.
