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| Image Source: theguardian.com Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella sits between Donald Trump and Jeff Bezos at a White House meeting last year. Photograph: Alex Brandon/AP |
Nestled between the embassy of Myanmar and the historic home of President Woodrow Wilson, the biggest house in Washington DC is taking shape. A yellow digger is parked outside, construction workers throw sandbags over their backs, and thick black tubes stretch from high windows to the ground like the legs of a giant octopus. Inside, a foreman in a baseball cap sits behind a desk at a laptop. “Going good,” he says.
This will be the luxury home of Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, owner of the Washington Post and would-be first man on Mars. A sign on the corner of S Street in the swish Kalorama neighbourhood still points to the textile museum that occupied the 27,000 sq ft property before Bezos bought it for $23m. Along the row there are flags and signs supporting immigrants and gay rights; there are diplomatic outposts including the Irish ambassador’s residence. On one doorstep, the inevitable: a package from Amazon.
Renovation of the Bezos mega-mansion is due for completion in September 2019, granting the multibillionare ready access to the Post’s state-of-the-art headquarters on K Street and, potentially, Amazon’s second HQ, for which Washington and surrounding areas are pushing hard. In a city where Donald Trump occupies the White House and owns a huge five-star hotel, it appears the stage is set for an epic battle: the world’s richest man versus its most powerful.
For two and a half years Trump has launched Twitter attacks against Bezos, spuriously claiming Amazon benefits from billions of dollars in subsidies from the US Postal Service while dodging the taxman. Few doubt the president’s animus is truly motivated by Bezos’s ownership of the Post – a bastion of what he calls the “fake news” media – along with, perhaps, envy of his wealth.
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