Why President Trump went after Bezos: Two billionaires across a cultural divide

President Donald Trump’s decision in recent days to zero in on Jeff Bezos and Amazon.com as his latest Twitter targets has highlighted a severe fracture in American society, a divide between concrete and steel and zeros and ones, a split that is as much philosophical as it is economic, as much about the fraying of communities as it is about the shape of commerce.

The Washington Post has been a steady target of President Trump’s attacks on the news media. But although the president has repeatedly linked Amazon and Bezos to The Post’s coverage of his administration, Frederick J. Ryan Jr., The Post’s chief executive and publisher, said he is not concerned about damage to The Post’s reputation. “Most everybody recognizes it’s Trump fiction,” Ryan said. "He has this obsession despite knowing what the facts are.” The newspaper’s executive editor, Martin Baron, said Bezos plays no role in decisions about what stories get covered or how they are written. Bezos’s own politics remain a mystery to many at The Post; Ryan and Baron said they have no idea what the owner’s views are.