dc." up next msnbc's "headliners." a special hour on amazon ceo jeff bezos. but for now good night from washington. \s \s jeff bezos is the wealthiest man on the planet. and the undisputed king of e-commerce. >> jeff is thomas edison. jeff is henry ford, only i think better. >> but for a change the headlines aren't about his public company. they are about his private life. >> stunner from the richest man of the world. >> a brilliant businessman blinds by a tabloid bomb shell. >> the tech giant says the national inquirer and its owner david peckerer trying to

blackmail him. now he's turning the tables on the tabloids. >> a tech guy. even though seems like a laughing fool. smiley. he's a tough customer. >> and he's no stranger to controversy. >> president trump often attacks bezos publicly. going after amazon and the washington post which the ceo also owns. >> so he uses the "washington post" for power. and he thinks that he's going to get the politicians to do what we wants. >> they chose the wrong person the bully in jeff bezos. he has wealth, courage and self confidence. and he's angry. ♪ >> commanding alexa to turn on our light, bing watching on amazon prime. shopping at whole foods or

reading the "washington post." millions of americans whether they know it or not are interacting on a daily basis with amazon founder and ceo jeff bezos. >> jeff bezos has said the way you live, eat and work he wants to make it cheaper and he wants to make it more convenient. and thus far his track record is pretty extraordinary. >> bezos is an affable self described super geek. but behind the trademark booming laugh is a relentless and some would say ruthless drive. >> everyone's impacted by the strength of amazon. they have enormous power over the retail eco system. even consumer products companies are worried about that. >> that ambition has catapulted bezos to staggering heights but has also made him the target of scathing criticism. and bezos' most high profile critic has been donald trump. >> he owns amazon. he wants political influence so that amazon will benefit from

it. that's not right. and believe me, if i become president, oh do they have problems. >> two years after trump was elected president, big problems have come. this time to jeff bezos' closely guarded personal life. >> it started with this article in t inquirer exposing his relationship with lauren sanchez complete with private texts and photos. the tabloid claimed it ended his 25 year marriage. >> three day of the 12-page expose president trump mocked bezos in a tweet writing sorry to hear the news about jeff bozo being taken down. bezos wanted to know how they got hold of his personal texts. >> the amazon boss says he opened his own private investigation. that is when the inquirer and its parent company ami

threatened to publish more intimate photos unless that investigation was dropped. >> the recent crop of photos the national inquirer threatened him with, there is 10 of them and 7 of them appear to be fairly innocuous but then there are three which he apparently took selfies of his own genitals and those are the ones that probably the national inquirer thought he'll never want those to see the light of day. >> bezos despite the threat of embarrassment was ready to fight back. >> a stunner from the richest man in the world dropping a bomb shell against the national inquirer tonight accusing its parent company trying to blackmail him with alleged nude photos. >> they have a long history of doing this and they are used to people just buckling and folding right away and not battling back. >> in a surprise move bezos o posting the e-mails he said were from the inquirer's parent company ami for the world to see in a blog post. >> bezos trying to deweaponize

the photos a he hunts down the source. >> the ceo writing "of course i don't want personal photos published, but i also won't participant in their well known policy of political blackmail and corruption. i prepare to stand up, roll this log over and see what crawls out. >> the relationship between ami ceo and david pecker and trump goes back decades, which raises the question, did the white house influence the attack on bezos? >> david pecker was a friend of trump because he caught and killed stories. because he kept stories that reflected negatively on trump out of the public view. >> bezos says ami wanted him to publicly state that the inquirer's article about his personal life was not politically motivate. his blog suggests that it was. >> trump's anger with bezos seemed to stem from his belief that bezos has been wielding the

"washington post," which he bought in 2013, as a political weapon against him. >> the "washington post," which i call a lobbying tool for amazon. >> the president has called the media the enemy of the people, and it is not. but it is not the friend of any politician. if the media is doing its job it is asking tough questions. >> donald trump believes that media exists to serve the interests of its owners. he doesn't believe that an owner could just believe that it is important to have a well-funded free press. and so after a particularly damaging article that was published about him in the "washington post" he took to twitter and called out jeff bezos by name. >> bezos basically laughed off trump's tirade with a tweet of his own. but what bezos didn't know at the time was that this was only

the beginning of a sustained attack. >> the president has not let up. and every time you see the "washington post" write a story that's critical of the administration, the president blames jeff bezos. >> president trump has escalated what many see as a personal crusade to bring the tech titan down. bezos who has always played things close to the vest has for the most part refused to engage with president trump or his other critics. until now. >> jeff doesn't spend a lot of time telling you what he might be doing at some point in the future. he spends his time on doing it. >> he's made a career of beating the odds and his rivals by keeping everyone guessing what he'll do next. coming up. >> at about the same time as amazon's ipo, barnes and nobel is starting its own web-based book business. >> there were people calling it

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we live in a world more accepting than the one that our grandparents lived in. and our grandchildren will live in an even more accepting world than the one we do now. >> jeff is an optimist. he's always been an optimist. and i'll tell you that comes from mike and jackie bezos. >> bezos was born jeffrey preston jorgensen, january 12, 1964 in albuquerque, new mexico. his parents were young newlyweds. jackl jacklyn gise, and 19-year-old ted jorgensen. a former struggling circus

performer. 17 movant months after he was born the young couple divorced. he would never know his biological father. later married to a cuban immigrant who adopted 4-year-old jeff. >> mike and jackie were really engaged parents. they knew what was going on in school. they knew who jeff's friends were. >> even as a young boy, bezos showed a fascination with tinkering and technology. when he discovered an early desk top computer at his elementary school he studied the mainframe manuals and learned to write his own computer programs. >> to this day when people think of jeff they do think of curiosity and intellect and ambition and tenacity. and it has always been there. >> and like many children of the '60s, he became obsessed with the idea of space travel. >> to fully understand jeff bezos, you really have to see

him through the lens of space. he will talk about being 5 years old and watching neil armstrong and buzz ald ran walk on the moon and how that was such huge moment for him. >> jeff attended miami palm otto high school and finished as valedictorian of his class. the whole time he continued to immerse himself in computers and looked towards the cosmos. >> even back in high school jeff was extremely visionary. in his valedictorian speech he talked about sending people to space. >> he gave sort of an unusual speech. it was all about space and human beings going off the earth in order to protect the earth. but what's remarkable is that as jeff bezos goes out and talks about space today. >> as a kid, i was inspired by

the giant surgemissions. >> he gives something similar. >> bezos would go on to princeton university graduating in 1986 with a degree in computer science and electrical engines. >> nothing like today. but forward thinking firms were tau starting to use high speed computers and writing algorithms to analyze the market and make investment decisions. >> bezos was recruited by d.e. shaw and company. a innovative hedge fund firm headed by former columbia computer science professor david shaw. shaw was looking for new ways to

apply the power of computers to finance and capitalize on the still brand new internet. >> jeff understood the internet before the rest of the world did. and he saw that internet use was increasing exponentially. and he figured there has to be some sort of commercial application for it. >> bezos started fantasizing about an online everything store. supplying customers with any product they could think of all under one virtual roof. but knowing that starting with a venture that huge was impractical he chose a single product category to focus on, books. >> he concluded that books was the best category, partly because there was a huge database of all the books that were available. and he could get shipment easily from the wholesalers of the books. >> bezos was at a cross roads. he was 30 years old, recently

married to a young coworker named mckenzie tuttle and had a bright future at d.e. shaw. but he couldn't ignore the massive potential of what he saw as an impending e commerce revolution. >> when jeff got the idea of amazon he went to david shaw who's an extraordinarily successful and smart guy and he said david, here is the thing i want to do. and david listened and he said that's a great idea. for somebody who doesn't already have a really good job. >> in the end the opportunity to help invent the future outweighed the security of a really good job. and bezos told shaw he was leaving to break out on his own. >> when he left d.e. shaw to start amazon he had said when i'm 80 i'm not going regret leaving wall street. this is a chance to be involved in the early internet. >> lured by a burgeoning pool of

young tech talent and "access" to one of the nation's largest book distributors. bezos and mckenzie packed up their car and headed to washington state over the 4th of july weekday 1994. as mckenzie drove. jeff wrote up a preliminary business plan on a laptop. bezos' parents agreed to invest a hundred thousand in his knew venture. a significant chunk of their savings. they would later say they weren't betting on the idea which, they didn't even fully understand. they were betting on jeff. >> coming up: >> the american consumer said i don't want to go a mall anymore. i want stuff cheap. i want it fast and i want it delivered to my door. and jeff bezos said i'm going the guy to figure it out. said the guy to figure it out thing t. i should try nicorette. nicorette mini relieves sudden cravings fast. anytime. anywhere. nicorette mini. you know why. we know how.

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you've got to get in i know what a bath is smile honey this thing is like... first kid ready here we go by their second kid, every parent is an expert and... ...more likely to choose luvs, than first time parents. live, learn and get luvs in 1995 when i first met jeff, honestly, even though i wanted to invest i had no idea that amazon was going to become what it became today. and i don't think jeff did either. >> jeff and mackenzie bezos settled into a modest house in

the seattle suburb of bellevue, washington. and like many tech start-ups set up shop in the garage. at first bezos called the company cadabra as in the magician's command abracadabra. but when bezos' lawyer heard it over the phone as cadaver, bezos looked for other options. even the slightly ominous relentless.com. >> too this day if you type it in it forwards to amazon.com and some would argue relentless is more a more fitting name for the organization. >> in 1994 while rifling through the a section of the dictionary, bezos got to "amazon" and stopped. the earth's longest river seemed the perfect symbol for what bezos envisioned as the world's biggest bookstore. bezos launched amazon.com online

july 16, 1995. >> a lot of people were thinking at the time that e commerce was a very small channel in the adoption of it from a customer standpoint would be, you know, slow and fairly minimal. >> i had my questions about the business model and, you know, how viable was it. >> within 30 days and with no advertising other than word of mouth amazon.com had sold books in all 50 states and 45 countries catching jeff and mackenzie completely off guard. >> amazon at the beginning had no inventory. once he got an order he would contact the book distributor and have them ship the book to seattle and then jeff would reship it. >> bezos was quickly outgrowing his garage setup and moved into a bigger office space with a large warehouse a few blocks away. he drove his growing team at a

furious pace to improve service. introducing new features, like customer reviews and e-mail order verification. >> i think that with a few things that have always defined the amazon dna. the first one is customer obsession. and that is really the ethos that jeff wanted to make for amazon, which is "we are willing to do really hard things to help serve our customer." >> offering vast selection, deep discounts and fast delivery, amazon was approaching $16 million in sales by the end of 1996. but focused on the future bezos kept pouring every dollar back into growing amazon. so company profit resident maiden at zero. profess remained at zero. >> jeff bezos from the beginning said if investors with going to

believe in the story and him they had to be along if for ride. >> he ramped up, renting more warehouses in seattle, de and but as sales soared and bezos prepared to take amazon public he was about to face his first major threat. >> at about the same time as amazon's ipo, barnes and nobel is starting its own web-based book business. >> book-selling giant barnes and nobel launched barnesandnoble.com looking to crush amazon and many thought it was a good bet. >> anyone sbrenchd in the offline space people thought they would have online expertise. >> people were calling it amazon dot toast. it was never going to last. >> amazon stock started trading an the nasdaq may 15, 1997. by day's end he beat all

expectations growing amazon's balance sheet by $54 million. >> the american consumer said i don't want to go a mall anymore. i want it cheap, fast and delivered to my door and jeff bezos side i'm going figure out. >> within a year and a half, amazon was selling discount cds and dvds wells as well as books undercutting the competition and leaving barnes & noble in the dust. >> i think amazon could make decisions quicker. it could move faster. and so in barnes a& noble's day case if they lowered priced on the internet they would lower prices in stores and customers complained. >> amazon just had one point of contact with customers. as long as they got it there on time for a great price they kind of won. >> hey you guys. >> bezos' stunning success got

him named time magazine's person of the year for 1999. but many industry analysts and investors were still skeptical. >> i own about a hundred shares of amazon.com. and i was wondering if you could tell me exactly what it is i own? >> if you they that e commerce is going to be a big deal in the long-term, then what you own should be very valuable. >> amazon came out of gate as a very hot stock. it was stratospherically high. being shorted by a lot of old fashioned business people who didn't think it was worth the price. >> and when an industrywide disaster started to unfold in may 2000 it looked like the nay sayers were right. >> what they are already counting black friday they are counting the damage on wall street tonight after investors

unloaded stocks today and send the dow and the nasdaq plummeting. >> everyone had this internet euphoria. said i've just got to invest. i want to ride this wave and suddenly the bubble started to burst and we said hold on a second. the internet is the new frontier. there are extraordinary things happening on it but it doesn't mean all things are extraordinary. >> overspeculation on tech start-ups set wall street into free fall. the nasdaq crashed costing investors an estimated 5 trillion trrs. >> during the dotcom crash amazon like everyone else was affected and the bankruptcy was widely predicted. barons wrote an article and the implications clearly were that it was not going survive. >> after hitting a high nearly 400 dollars a share in september 2001 amazon stock plummeted to just $5.97. and with internet-based

companies imploding all around them. amazon's investors, employees, and the general public were suddenly left wondering if betting on jeff bezos was a huge mistake. >> coming up. >> so they are predicting that we're going to run out of cash by december which is just complete absolute pure unadulterated hogwash. .8 absolute pure unadulterated hogwash. .8 staying at hampton for a work trip. when your flight gets in late, it's never too early for coffee. oh no no no. your new boss seems cool, but she might not be sweatpants cool.

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richard lui with the hour's stop stories. the prosecute is prepared to issue the first veto of his presidency. it is not clear though. democrats can get a veto -- majority resolution. and andrew mccabe says in a new interview he launched a counterterrorism investigation of president trump because of concerns about an inappropriate relationship between trump and russia. for now back to "headliners," jeff bezos. ♪

today amazon founder jeff bezos is by far the richest person on earth. in 2018 his net worth soared past $150 billion. amazon's value hit $1 trillion. but few realize how close the almighty amazon once game to going under. >> so they are predicting that we're going to run out of cash by december which is just complete absolute pure unadulterated hogwash. >> the 2000 dotcom crash sent shares of amazon into a nose dive. luckily it had gotten an infusion of cash only weeks before the crash. >> amazon borrowed a lot of money in 1999 and even as late as 2000. we needed that money obviously. >> bezos went on a crusade to make amazon leaner.

1300 workers were laid off. most important bezos convinced wall street to be patient, selling investors on the long-term vision of amazon over short-term profits. >> despite all of your success, profit remains a dim light at the end of the tunnel. >> well first of all you're right. of course we are a famously unprofitable company. but that is a deliberate strategy. we are investing. >> bezos took his profits and used them to fill the site with ab ever expanding list of new products. toy, electronics, hardware, even clothes. product launches became media events with bezos front and center. >> this is the world's first cordless miter saw. >> we are actually today launching a pokemon store. >> it is the segway human

transporter. and you can do amazing things with it. i spins in place. >> in 2001 amazon led all e retailers with $3.1 billion in sales. a huge shift in consumer habit was beginning. online shopping rocketed past department stores and by 2017 was raking in three times as much in sales. >> faster, better, cheaper. consumers like all three of those things. and jeff was able to do it in scale. >> pick what i want. it comes in two days and don't have to worry about parking and crowds. >> i do all my shopping online. i do amazon. >> but bezos had much bigger dreams than conquering retail. thanks to his characteristicic secrecy almost known knew thno bezos was getting serious about space. >> when blue origin was first founded in 2000 it was really

more as a think tank and their primary goal was to think of, is there a better way to get to space than the way that we've traditionally been doing it? >> it was a baby step towards realizing the dreams of his youth. but in 2003, scouting rocket testing sites over the west texas desert, those dreams almost cost bezos his life. >> his guide was a real west texas cowboy that initially proposed they go on horse backs but jeff wanted to go by helicopter just to save time. the air was thin because they were at some altitude. they were fully loaded and as the helicopter pilot tried to take off he couldn't really gain purchase. and the helicopter crashed. >> it was a bigger deal than jeff makes it out to be. it was a bad crash. >> somehow everyone escaped with minor injuries. >> when he emerged from the

aircraft and realized that everyone was safe he turned to the cowboy and he said yeah, maybe horseback was the way go and let out one of those bellowing laughs that he's so famous for. >> back on firm ground bezos was looking far into the future in other ways. bezos realized the potential of letting others use amazon as a platform to sell their products. >> we designed from the get go that we were going to have tens of thousands of sellers at amazon. >> you click on that tab and you find a collection of basically all of the selection from 400 major brands. >> they got into the customer's psyche that amazon was everything store. >> there was another side to this arrangement. amazon monitored its partners sales to identify hot products. then swooped in and began selling similar items, often for lower prices. the partnership became a cut throat competition with jeff bezos. >> he's a tough guy.

even though he seems sort of like the laughing fool. like ha ha ha, he's really smiley. he's a tough customer. >> in the 2,000s, amazon got into is it device market with the the kindle e reader. and also launched the subscription amazon prime. now with over 100 million members. but with this came programs the biggest game changer of all. amazon web services. >> in the early 2000s. amazon started to have this notion of taking computing infrastructure, making it available for external users to use. >> amazon would rent its vast computing resources like servers and storage to outside companies, government agencies, even individuals. when amazon web services launched the tech world barely noticed. >> they are an e commerce retailer. what do they know about

technology infrastructure. >> there was a miss by google and by microsoft. >> aws would go on to completely dominate this market. powering the computer systems of everything from netflix to ge to the cia. >> right now amazon web service is more than half the total profits of the entire company. >> but bezos wasn't done expanding his reach beyond retail. he set his sights on hollywood with amazon studios. then in 2013, bezos made another move no one saw coming. >> now the "washington post" has a new owner. the new owner, jeff bezos. >> when bezos paid a bargain price of $250 million for the financially troubled post, many wondered why. >> it is the newspaper in the capital city of the most important country in the world. the "washington post" has an incredibly important role to play in this democracy. >> no small factor was bezos'

long-standing friendship with the man selling the post, don graham, whose family had owned it since 1933. >> newspapers are a business and they are something more. aim the sound of someone named katherine graham who ran the paper with famous distinction for many years by standing back from politics. and i think jeff was worth between 25 and $30 billion. and i didn't know what his politics were. >> bezos recognized some of his amazon strategies could be applied to the post. >> one of the things under jeff's leadership we went to work on is making the site faster and easier to navigate and also providing the opportunity to personalize it and provide people with the type of content they were interested? >> bezos believed that like amazon the post had to operate on a bigger scale. >> we've added more journalists. more than 200 to our newsroom. the "washington post" is profitable and growing.

>> but for bezos, was buying the post just one part of a stealth invasion of d.c.? in 2016 he quietly paid $23 million for what was build as the largest home in town, the 27,000 square feet former textile museum. with neighbors such as the obamas and jared kushner, and ivanka trump. >> really the white hot center of the new washington power set. >> around the same time, bezos built a massive d.c. lobbying operation to handle amazon's many interests from drone delivery to taxes. >> their spending on registered lobbying has gone up 400%. >> all these moves did not go unnoticed. especially by the man vying to become the leader of the free world. >> coming up. >> so the "washington post" has 22 people on me right now. 22 reporters. e on me right now. 22 reporters uitting. i thought, i should try something that works.

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by late 2016 jeff bezos had built his empire far beyond the borders of his online retail giant amazon.com. among his vast array of venturers was amazon studios, space travel, computer services and the "washington post." he was also squarely on the radar of a certain republican candidate for president. >> so he uses the "washington post" for power and he thinks that he's going to get the politicians to co-what he wants. and he probably will. but me i couldn't care less. >> bezos hit back on trump's swipes at the post and the press in general. >> we live in this amazing democracy with amazing freedom of speech. and a presidential candidate should embrace that. >> when trump won the election,

bezos offered an apparent olive branch. a congratulatory tweet. and he attended the president's tech round table at the white house. >> good. thank you, jeff. very good. >> but the good will didn't last long. trump's twitter offensive continued. >> jeff bezos really represents so many things that offend donald trump. number 1 he's way richer than donald trump. and donald trump sees behind the "washington post" aggressive coverage of his administration the secret hand of jeff bezos. now there is zero evidence for that. >> i said to him at one point if you are even 5% thinking of buying this because of the set of ideas you have and you think the newspaper might help you promote those ideas, forget it. >> every news decision is made in our newsroom. every editorial decision is made at our editorial table. the decisions are made here at the "washington post" and jeff does not get involved in those. >> bezos may be non partisan but

e has plenty of business to do in d.c. >> the idea is the defense department has been for the past few years looking to outsources its cloud computing to one company. and if amazon wins it they will be overnight one of the biggest government contractors in the federal government. >> but amazon may face a d.c. battle with much higher stakes. its own survival. the bigger a.m. gemazon gets th better the chance federal regulators move to break it up. >> they are going face real political head winds. >> we don't break them up because we are able. we break them up because they are capitalists and it is time. >> calls have grown louder, especially as bezos continues to swallow up company. he bid for control of disney's 22 regional sports networks, brought the video game streaming site "twitch" and the online

precipitation company "pill pack" for about a billion dollars each and he paid more than 13 billion dollars to get into super markets. >> amazon is buying whole foods. >> i can say that almost every industry out there has the in the back of their mind, they are worried that jeff bezos will come knocking. >> his philosophy is relentless cost cutting and lowering prices. amazon is playing by the rules and they are playing to win. and so stop complaining about it and get on and figure how you are going to compete. >> nowhere was amazon's raw power more evident than during the race to land hq2. >> cities including right here in los angeles are falling over themselves to show amazon why they should become home to the second amazon headquarters. >> i think it is a ridiculous circus that cities are participating? >> critics called the process nothing more than a bidding war staged by amazon to extract huge

economic incentives and something more. >> dozens of cities had to put together these massive packages for amazon as they said here is all the information about my city. they gave amazon massive amounts of data. that is valuable data that amazon paid nothing for. >> amazon said it will use the data for future infrastructure investment and job creation. after a 14 month search involving more than 200 cities the company announced that hq2 and its 50,000 jobs would be divided between two locations. arlington county in northern virginia and long island city, new york. the local opposition to the new york location has caused amazon to cancel those plans. >> amazon has got to go. >> this is going to be the equivalent of an olympics, where a few years later after the rush and the sugar high and the

ribbon cutting and the high five of winning, a few years later we're going decide was this good for us? and i'm not sure it is going to be good for the host city. >> coming up. >> from january 1, through may 1st of this year, jeff bezos the founder of amazon saw his wealth increase by $275 million, every single day. day (grandma) nooooooo... (dad) nooooooo... (dog) yessssss.... (vo) quick, the quicker picker upper! bounty picks up messes quicker and is two times more absorbent than the leading ordinary brand. (boy) hey look, i got it. bounty, the quicker picker upper. bike, wheels, saddle. i customize everything -

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the man behind amazon has transformed himself from nerd jeff. to buff bezos. with hip clothes and a shaved head. the kind of billionaire super-hero who is tweeted video of himself christening his massive wind farm. the image fit the title in 2018. not only the richest person in the world. but in modern history.

>> i have never sought that title. and it was fine being the second wealthiest person in the world. that actually worked sglin if the stock price is the richest person of the world stock goes down by something he's not. i would doubt jeff cares. >> others certainly do. >> i think i understand it his wealth wept up $2 billion yesterday. amazon had a good day. >> sanders accused amazon of not playing blue collar workers a living wage. in 2018 a report on the new site the intercept cited data suggesting over 30% of amazon employees in arizona were on government food assistance. >> people start to say does it make sense for employees of the richest man in the world to be on public assistance? >> jeff bezos was not available to be interviewed for this hour.

but others close to him including amazon board member tom did speak with us. >> i think people to advance their particular political agenda will make allegations which are not fact or based on complete fact. they include the number of people on food stamps, temporary and part-time. amazon employees a lot of the people. >> there's also been criticism of the company for allegedly unsafe working conditions. >> this year amazon which has over 175 fulfillment centers around the world and more than half a million employees was ranked one of the 12 worst companies to work for by the national counsel for osha. >> you could look and say this extraordinary entrepreneur who has done extraordinary well is he doing enough for his employees? that's a question many people are asking sgr amazon has insisted workers safety is a high priority. and that they are proud of their record. there's no getting around it.

a company produced a amount of extraordinary wealth probably should be holding itself to a higher standard. >> in october 2018. amazon made a major move in that direction. announcing it was instituting a men mum wage of $15 an hour. for all u.s. workers. >> i want to congratulate mr. bezos for doing exactly the right thing. >> we're a gold standard for innovation. we should lead. >> after being criticized he wasn't giving enough of the fortune to krarty. he announced the day one fund. a $2 billion commitment to programs to help the homeless and preschools in low income areas. making him 2018 topfy l-- >> amazon reached out to mary's place in december of 2015. they called us up and said we

have an empty building and wondering if you would want to use that. to bring families inside. >> the company didn't stop there. >> amazon has offered to build us a forever home. in their downtown headquarters. >> having a shelter in a corporate headquarters is unprecedented. >> bezos is also building on a mission he's been pursuing for almost two decades at blue origin. space exploration. >> this is the most important work i'm doing. i have great conviction about that. >> blue origin work follows the vision bezos out lined way back in high school. preserving the earth by moving industry to space. >> i don't want a plan b for earth. i want plan b to make sure plan a works. you go fo space to save earth. >> blue origin landed its first rocket in 2015.

blue origin next step expected in the next year, is man space flights. eventually with paying passengers. >> i think the next step in his mind is going to be moon. setting up a permanent presence. when it comes to jeff bezos it is hard to bet against him. >> while his extraordinary achievements have made him the wealthiest man in the world, they made him a target of critics including the most powerful man in the world. and his allies. >> jeff bezos is not going down without a fight. the tech giant says the national enquirer and its owner are trying to blackmail him. >> in attempt to stop the investigation into how the tabloid got hold of the private texts, bezos said ami the enquirer parent company e-mailed him. threatening to release what they say are seriously compromising photographs. >> the measure of the national enquirer arrogance.

is they put this in writing. they didn't everyone bother to do what every sort of thug in the planet learns. which is don't put it in writing if you can say it and don't say it. if you cannot. >> by threatening jeff bezos, they under estimated the target. >> they chose the wrong person to bully. in jeff bezos. he has wealth, courage and self-confidence and he's angry. that's a wicked recipe. >> bezos the worltds richest person. writes. if in my position i can't stand up to this kind of extortion. how many people can? >> he has nothing to lose. he has everything to gain. in public sentiment on his side. possibly federal law enforcement. >> ami says it quote believes that it acted lawfully in the reporting of the story. and denies all accusations of black hail. so how did the enquirer get the

photographs and texts? >> we have multiple sources within ami itself. the parent company. telling us the source of the leaks was the brother of the bezos mistress. michael sanchez. >> he denied leaking the photographs and texts. his alleged ties to allies of president trump make this entire scandal a high stakes match of political drama. >> betting against jeff bezos has almost always been a losing proposition. >> what's really incredible is this is a day one. this is the very beginning. this is the kitty hawk stage. >> it was him. on his knees in a garage starting the company. and now he's a legend. >> as his wealth and power continue to grow. >> what else would you like from whole foods? >> what's surprises does he have in store for us? >> he's thinking about the ten year, 20 year, 30 year future of the amazon.

>> can he keep his sprawling empire together? or will political forces intervene to stop the ultimate disrupters two decade winning streak? >> he deserves scrutiny. the wealthiest man in the world he's the most powerful in the world. and sets the tone for society. like a scene out of a movie. there was tape. there were cops with dogs searching all around the crime scene. i just ran towards the cops and started yelling shelley, shelley. >> a young hart school student, murdered. >> she said, "your daughter's been found in blood." and then the phone went dead. >> this was brutal and this was savage.