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'Bond Villain' Jeff Bezos Claims 'You Could Double the Taxes I Pay' and It Won't Help Anyone
"Too much money contorts any human being," said one critic of the Amazon founder.
May 20, 2026
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos drew ridicule on Wednesday after he claimed that doubling the amount of taxes he pays wouldn't be beneficial to society.
During an interview on CNBC, journalist Andrew Ross Sorkin asked Bezos about arguments made by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) that the super-rich have lower effective tax rates than average Americans given how much of their wealth comes from unrealized capital gains and not traditional income earned through actual labor.
"I pay billions of dollars in taxes," replied Bezos, whom Forbes estimates is worth $267 billion. "If people want me to pay billions more, then let's have that debate. But don't pretend, you know, that that's going to solve the problem. You could double the taxes I pay, and it's not gonna help that teacher in Queens, I promise you."
Bezos on CNBC: "You could double the taxes I pay, and it's not gonna help that teacher in Queens. I promise you." pic.twitter.com/ocbf34XZhA
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) May 20, 2026
A 2021 investigation by Pro Publica found that Bezos' effective tax rate of less than 1% between 2014 and 2018, as he paid a total of $973 million in taxes over a period in which his net worth grew by $99 billion.
As explained by the Institute of Taxation and Policy (ITEP), this effective tax rate was "significantly lower" than the tax rate paid by middle-class Americans over that period.
"There were multiple years where Bezos paid nothing at all in income taxes," ITEP noted. "While having billions of dollars of wealth, Bezos consistently avoided income tax by offsetting earned income with other investment losses and various deductions, all while Amazon stock was rapidly rising."
Democratic congressional candidate Melat Kiros in Colorado suggested Bezos had a point about taxation—"because we tax income, not wealth.
"Bezos takes out a tiny salary, pays the income tax, and lives off loans borrowed against his stocks, basically tax-free," said Kiros. "They all do this and now 935 billionaires hold more wealth than 170 million Americans. It’s time to tax wealth."
Melanie D'Arrigo, executive director of the Campaign for New York Health, took issue with Bezos' claim that doubling his taxes would produce no benefits.
"Jeff Bezos paid $500 million for his super-yacht and $75 million for his super-yacht’s mini-yacht—both of which he’s allowed to write off on his taxes," she wrote in a social media post. "That alone would cover $180 in classroom supplies for every public school teacher in the US."
Craig Harrington, research director at Media Matters for America, marveled at how out of touch Bezos seemed to be.
"There’s a funny thing about being uber wealthy," he observed. "They get so rich that they lose all sense of place, they essentially manifest as stateless people with no connection to or understanding of the world outside their private airports and resplendent villas."
Journalist and screenwriter David Simon expressed a similar view of the impact of immense wealth on Bezos' psyche.
"Too much money contorts any human being," Simon wrote. "And what was once a man is now, for the rest of the world, a fully metastasized cancer."
Author Hemant Mehta, meanwhile, simply wondered if Bezos "auditioning to be the next Bond villain."
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'Stuttering Speechlessness' by Jim Cramer Seen as Telling Reaction to Suspicious Trump Stock Trading
"Cramer here is having what should be the normal reaction to Trump actively insider trading on his own decisions," said journalist Ryan Grim.
May 18, 2026
One of Wall Street's most recognizable gurus, Jim Cramer, became notably tongue-tied on Monday after President Donald Trump’s recent stock-trading spree entered into a televised conversation with his colleagues on CNBC.
Disclosures published by the US Office of Government Ethics last week revealed that Trump in the first quarter of 2026 carried out over 3,700 stock transactions, including over 30 stock purchases worth $1 million or more.
As noted by The Financial Times, Trump's investments included transactions involving Tesla, Nvidia, Apple, Meta, Visa, Citi, Boeing, Qualcomm, and GE Aerospace, whose executives all accompanied the president on his trip to China last week.
When CNBC co-host Carl Quintanilla brought up these trades during Monday's edition of "Squawk on the Street," Cramer spent ten straight seconds mumbling incoherently.
This promoted co-host David Faber to reassure viewers that "we're not having technical difficulties here," even as Cramer appeared to short circuit.
OMFG the CNBC anchors were puffing up the value of chipmaker Intel, they brought up Trump doing personal trades in the stock, and Jim Cramer stuttered for 15 seconds straight and then was quiet.
Was Cramer shocked by the corruption or mad Trump was picking better stocks? pic.twitter.com/oCl3ypNids
— Matt Stoller (@matthewstoller) May 18, 2026
Journalist Ryan Grim said that Cramer's reaction to mention of Trump's trades was understandable given that some of the companies whose stocks he traded have been direct beneficiaries of the president's illegal war with Iran and other policies.
"Cramer here is having what should be the normal reaction to Trump actively insider trading on his own decisions," remarked Grim. "Just sputtering speechlessness."
Journalist Judd Legum on Monday published an analysis of the Trump stock trades in which he identified multiple instances where the president purchased stocks of companies shortly before—or in some cases, on the exact same day—that he publicly singled them out for praise.
Specifically, Legum found that Trump bought tens of thousands of dollars' worth of shares in biotech firm Thermo Fisher Scientific on the same day he took a tour of one of its manufacturing facilities, and hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of shares in Apple on the same day he delivered a speech calling it "a great company," while saying then-CEO Tim Cook has "done a good job."
Trump also bought up shares in Micron Technology and then described it as "one of the hottest companies" during an interview with Fox News just one day later.
And nine days after buying millions of dollars' worth of shares in Dell, Trump delivered a speech in Georgia where he told his audience to "go out and buy a Dell computer."
In analyzing the trades, Legum explained how Trump has destroyed any remaining guardrails preventing US presidents from using their office to personally enrich themsleves.
"If Trump wanted to legally remove himself from investment decisions he could do so by creating a qualified blind trust," Legum wrote. "Instead, before returning to the White House, Trump transferred his assets in a trust that is managed by his son, Donald Trump Jr. There are no legal or practical barriers preventing Trump from being involved in the management of his assets."
Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY) warned Trump that details of his assorted stock trades would eventually come to light.
"This smells like blatant and criminal insider trading," Goldman wrote in a social media post. "Even worse, Trump is personally profiting off of his illegal deportation dragnet. Since we know congressional Republicans will pretend like they never saw this and won’t do a thing, anyone involved in these trades should preserve their records for my investigation in January 2027."
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In Lie-Filled Interview, Top GOP Lawmaker Falsely Claims Gas Was $6 a Gallon Under Biden—It Wasn't
Even Trump-friendly CNBC anchor Joe Kernen jumped in to fact-check false claims by House Majority Leader Steve Scalise.
Apr 30, 2026
A top Republican in the US House of Representatives on Thursday lied so blatantly that even a Trump-friendly CNBC host felt compelled to fact check him.
During an appearance on CNBC's "Squawk Box," House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La) defended Republicans' management of the US economy, which is currently experiencing an oil price shock thanks to President Donald Trump's illegal war of choice with Iran.
Scalise predicted that Republicans would hold onto their narrow House majority in the November midterms, and then falsely claimed that gas prices today are lower than they were two years ago when former President Joe Biden was still in office.
"People will remember, two years ago, we were paying almost $6 per gallon of gasoline, right now it's in the [$3 range]," Scalise falsely claimed. "Obviously, we've seen a jump with the Iran conflict..."
At this point, host Joe Kernen, a longtime Trump golfing buddy, interjected.
"When were we paying $6 [per gallon]?" Kernen asked.
"Two-and-a-half years ago," Scalise replied.
"That wasn't the average price," Kernen said.
SCALISE: We've delivered. People will remember that two years ago, we were paying almost $6 a gallon for gas. Right now it's in the $3s
KERNEN: When were we paying $6?
SCALISE: Two and a half years ago
KERNEN: That wasn't the average price
SCALISE: We are lowering inflation… pic.twitter.com/xPD172NdYq
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 30, 2026
According to data collected by AAA, the average price for a gallon of gas in late October 2023 was $3.53 per gallon, or nearly $0.80 lower than the current average price of $4.30 per gallon.
Scalise also said that gas prices would drop at the end of Trump's illegal war with Iran, which he falsely claimed was close to developing a nuclear weapon.
"Did anybody want a nuclear-armed Iran?" Scalise said. "I think if you ask most normal people, they would say absolutely not... they were about to get a nuclear weapon, and President Trump stopped that."
US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard testified under oath before the Senate Select Intelligence Committee last month that Iran’s nuclear weapons program had been “obliterated” by US-led airstrikes that were launched last year, and that there “has been no effort since then to try to rebuild their enrichment capability."
After lying about Iran's nuclear weapons program, Scalise pivoted to making more false claims about the economy.
"So if you look across the board, we are lowering inflation, interest rates are starting to come down," he said. "They're not where we want them to be, by the way, we have a lot of work to do, but do you want to go back to the days when interest rates were in double digits?"
Inflation has been going up in recent months, not declining. The US Bureau of Economic Analysis on Thursday released data showing that the core personal consumption expenditures (PCE) price index rose to 3.2% in March, the highest level since November 2023.
In 2024, Trump campaigned on immediately ending inflation in the US economy, going so far as to promise grocery prices would fall beginning on his first day in office.
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