August 17, 2020

A Brief History of Why Donald Trump Hates the Postal Service

Andrej Sokolow/DPA via ZUMA

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

Some of you may be wondering why President Trump seems to have it in for the Postal Service. It’s a short story:

  • Trump hates the Washington Post, which is owned by Jeff Bezos.
  • Trump tweeted about this once and Bezos responded with a joke. Trump can’t stand jokes at his expense, so he hates Bezos.
  • Bezos is CEO of Amazon, therefore Trump hates Amazon.
  • The Postal Service delivers some of Amazon’s packages. As a matter of revenge, Trump wants them to raise the rates they charge Amazon.
  • They have refused to do so, therefore Trump hates the Postal Service.

Believe it or not, that’s all there is to it. Trump has been waiting five years for an opportunity to take revenge on the Postal Service, and the current ruckus over vote-by-mail has given him his chance. He’s pretending that it’s all about ballot fraud and inefficient management and so forth, but it’s really about the fact that Bezos—who is considerably richer than Trump—once made a modest joke about Trump and the Postal Service got caught in the crossfire.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, that’s how the United States of America is governed these days.

GREAT JOURNALISM, SLOW FUNDRAISING

Our team has been on fire lately—publishing sweeping, one-of-a-kind investigations, ambitious, groundbreaking projects, and even releasing “the holy shit documentary of the year.” And that’s on top of protecting free and fair elections and standing up to bullies and BS when others in the media don’t.

Yet, we just came up pretty short on our first big fundraising campaign since Mother Jones and the Center for Investigative Reporting joined forces.

So, two things:

1) If you value the journalism we do but haven’t pitched in over the last few months, please consider doing so now—we urgently need a lot of help to make up for lost ground.

2) If you’re not ready to donate but you’re interested enough in our work to be reading this, please consider signing up for our free Mother Jones Daily newsletter to get to know us and our reporting better. Maybe once you do, you’ll see it’s something worth supporting.

payment methods

GREAT JOURNALISM, SLOW FUNDRAISING

Our team has been on fire lately—publishing sweeping, one-of-a-kind investigations, ambitious, groundbreaking projects, and even releasing “the holy shit documentary of the year.” And that’s on top of protecting free and fair elections and standing up to bullies and BS when others in the media don’t.

Yet, we just came up pretty short on our first big fundraising campaign since Mother Jones and the Center for Investigative Reporting joined forces.

So, two things:

1) If you value the journalism we do but haven’t pitched in over the last few months, please consider doing so now—we urgently need a lot of help to make up for lost ground.

2) If you’re not ready to donate but you’re interested enough in our work to be reading this, please consider signing up for our free Mother Jones Daily newsletter to get to know us and our reporting better. Maybe once you do, you’ll see it’s something worth supporting.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate