Donald Trump threatens to go after Amazon boss Jeff Bezos if he wins US presidential election

Donald Trump has got Amazon in his sights. He has promised to take action on Amazon and its founder and CEO Jeff Bezos in an appearance in Texas on 26 January.

Trump seems to be blazing through Silicon Valley's giants. After calling for a boycott on Apple earlier this month, in a rare agreement with the Obama Administration, he now seems to be going in, guns blazing, after Amazon. Trump charged Bezos with buying the Washington Post to help his company get a tax break through the "political influence" of the newspaper.

"I have respect for Jeff Bezos, but he bought The Washington Post to have political influence, and I gotta tell you, we have a different country than we used to have," Trump said during a speech. "He wants political influence so that Amazon will benefit from it. That's not right. And believe me, if I become president, oh, do they have problems. They're going to have such problems."

Trump's beef is not just with the Washington Post, he also included the New York Times, indicating that both media publication houses have unfairly covered his campaign. Criticising the media houses Trump said, "We are going up libel laws, folks, and we are going to have people sue you like you have never been sued before. He also told his supporters, "When they write purposely negative and horrible and false articles, we can sue them and win lots of money."

Trump's squabble with Amazon began in December 2015 when he began tweeting scathing remarks on both Bezos and the Washington Post. He hinted that The Amazon founder's purchase of the Post was a sly move at lowering his company's tax bill. Ironically, Bezos' investment in the Post has little to do with Amazon, since he made the purchase through his personal investment firm, which is a separate entity from Amazon.

Bezos had also fired back at Trump's December tweet with a witty offer to book the presidential hopeful a seat on his rocket and send him to space. Ironically, Trump's tiff with Amazon has not yet warranted to a removal of his various books from the e-commerce website, that are sold under his name.

Amazon has not commented on the latest turn of events. However, President and CEO of Newspaper Association of America David Chavern did weigh in on the matter. He said, ""If Mr. Trump wants to try to bully news organizations into providing reporting that he likes, then he will have to do a whole lot better than making weak, misguided promises about changes to a law that aren't needed in the first place," the Variety reported.

"But we all know that Mr. Trump isn't interested in legalities in this case. He is clearly just trying to intimidate news organizations and bully them in providing more positive coverage of him and his candidacy for President. He should pick a different target. Newspapers have dealt with more intimidating figures than Mr. Trump," Chavern added.