Marty Baron

And then, of course, his best buddy at the time during the transition and then subsequent to that until a bit of a breakup, although they seemed to have made up, was Elon Musk.

And Elon Musk was a Bezos rival in the area of private space.

And keep in mind, remember that when there was that breakup between Elon Musk and Trump, one of the first things Trump said is, a good way for us to save money in this government is to cancel all our contracts with SpaceX.

That's what he said.

And that's what he would have done, I assume, if there had been true enduring hostility between Trump and Musk.

Well, you know, I mean, I think there was a real threat to them.

I don't think that it's not that they couldn't survive because I don't know that they really.

So let me finish.

So it's not that they couldn't survive, but they may not have been successful.

And their objective is to make more money, to have higher profits, to watch their stock go up, to grow.

And that would have been much more difficult if Trump had been their opponent.

Definitely so.

I mean, a big growth area for Amazon was contracts with the government for cloud computing, period, particularly in the area of national security.

If Trump had said we're not giving them any contracts, could Amazon survive?

It could survive.

Would it be as successful as it was?

No.

Would its stock tank?

Probably so.

Would Bezos still be wealthy?