‘He’s obsessed with Amazon’: Trump wants to punish Jeff Bezos for wrecking value of wealthy pals’ shopping malls

President Donald Trump infamously gets most of his information from TV news or during phone calls with friends, and that pipeline is reportedly behind his push to punish Amazon and its newspaper-owning chief executive.

The president has privately threatened to use his executive authority to target the online retailer after his real estate developer friends complained Amazon was devaluing their retail properties, reported Axios.

"He’s obsessed with Amazon -- obsessed,” one source told the website.

Trump has discussed changing internet tax laws to target Amazon, whose founder also owns the Washington Post, and five sources said the president would like to "clip CEO Jeff Bezos' wings," according to the Axios report.

“He’s wondered aloud if there may be any way to go after Amazon with antitrust or competition law," said one source who's spoken with the president.

Trump is annoyed that Amazon receives preferential treatment from the U.S. Post Office, which has added Sunday service in some markets to meet the company's demand.

“The whole post office thing, that's very much a perception he has,” another source said. “It's been explained to him in multiple meetings that his perception is inaccurate and that the post office actually makes a ton of money from Amazon."

Trump agrees with his friends in the real estate world that Amazon is killing shopping malls and brick-and-mortar retailers, but he's less concerned about Facebook -- another online behemoth that has fallen under scrutiny by the U.S. Congress.

"Trump told Axios last year he doesn’t mind Facebook because it helps him reach his audience," reported the website. "He's an old-school businessman who sees the world in terms of tangible assets: real estate, physical mail delivery, Main Street, grocery stores. It reminds me of the story Jim (VandeHei) wrote a while back about Trump’s fixation with 1950s life. Amazon takes direct aim at some of the core components of midcentury business.”