On July 30, the Washington Post reported that the “Pentagon has issued an unusually strong rebuke of Oracle” for its efforts to sabotage the military’s process for awarding a $10 billion dollar Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) contract.

On August 1, the Post reported that the sabotage was successful:

The White House has instructed newly installed Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper to reexamine the awarding of the military’s massive cloud-computing contract because of concerns that the deal would go to Amazon, officials close to the decision-making process said.

What led to this change of heart? First, Donald Trump’s animus toward Jeff Bezos (who owns both the Washington Post and Amazon):

Trump on several occasions has spoken out against Amazon and its chief executive, Jeff Bezos. And he has attacked the Bezos-owned Washington Post for its coverage of him by conflating it with Amazon’s interests. The president has called the news organization the “Amazon Washington Post,” while accusing it of publishing “fake news” and being a “lobbyist newspaper” for the company.

Second, “a colorful flow chart” (image above), created by an Oracle executive, that landed on the President’s desk and precipitated a discussion with his aids. Last April, an Oracle co-CEO had raised the issue with Trump at dinner in the White House:

Oracle has lobbied Trump aggressively on the matter, hoping to appeal to his animosity toward Amazon as well as former defense secretary Jim Mattis, who angered the president when he resigned last year over the administration’s foreign policy decisions. Oracle Executive Vice President Ken Glueck, who runs the company’s policy shop in Washington, said he created a colorful flow chart labeled “A Conspiracy To Create A Ten Year DoD Cloud Monopoly” that portrayed connections among Amazon executives, Mattis and officials from the Obama administration.

In other news of the day, President Trump continued to dismiss Mueller’s warnings of ongoing Russian interference in U.S. elections. [Video at link:]

Asked by @KarenTravers about Mueller's warning that Russia is continuing to interfere with U.S. elections, Pres. Trump says, "You don't really believe this. Do you believe this?"

Trump says he did not raise the issue during call with Vladimir Putin. https://t.co/aE2u6s3Azb pic.twitter.com/i07WC0PtNG

— Evan McMurry (@evanmcmurry) August 1, 2019

Addendum: “To the careful observer, the Trump administration’s foreign policy provokes two strong reactions. The first is despair. The Trump White House has succeeded in doing a lot of damage to U.S. national interest. …

The other strong reaction, however, is laughter. The Trump White House has beclowned itself so frequently, across such a wide variety of foreign policy issues, that it is difficult not to chuckle at the buffoonery on display.” — Daniel Drezner

(Image: Jonathan Swan on Twitter.)