You ever rent a car? I do, all the time. And every single time I’m furious when I get the bill because there’s always more charges—many, many more charges—than I’d anticipated. Concession fee recovery. Vehicle licensing cost recovery. Customer facility charge. State tax. And on and on. By the time you’re done, you might end up paying up almost double the stated rental cost.

You might have a problem with all the extra charges, but at least you know what they are. So why shouldn’t Amazon—or any other business—provide the same transparency when it comes to charges associated with Trump’s tariffs? Well, because the president will be butthurt about it, it seems. In response to a question about reports Amazon would be showing such costs beside the price of an item on its site, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt blasted the proposal as a “hostile and political act.”

All this after Amazon head Jeff Bezos paid Melania Trump a reported forty million dollars for a documentary film. This is after Bezos contributed a million dollars to Trump’s inauguration. This is after Bezos killed a presidential endorsement of Kamala Harris from his newspaper, The Washington Post, and then declared that its editorial page will now be focused on “personal liberties and free markets.”

Bezos, of course, immediately retreated. In a statement, Amazon said the tariff line item was considered only for its budget-conscious Amazon Haul division, and that, while the idea had been bandied about, “This was never approved and is not going to happen.”

Funny how the only way to bend the knee far enough for Trump is to snap one’s leg in two.

(Of Bezos, Trump later added: “He solved the problem very quickly. He did the right thing. Good guy.”)

To be clear: it was never going to happen because Bezos is a coward. One could, perhaps, more charitably describe his acquiescence as “corporate shrewdness,” but I prefer to call a thing by its name. If listing taxes on a car rental receipt aren’t a hostile and political act then listing them on a receipt for some crap you bought on Amazon isn’t, either. The only difference between the two is that Trump instituted these ludicrous taxes and doesn’t want to take the blame for them.

Seriously, look at the glass menagerie of sniveling, groveling billionaires decorating Trump‘s cabinet—and White House more broadly. All that money and not an ounce of pride. While Bezos hold no official role in the administration, his businesses are deeply entwined with the government. To incur the president’s ire is to risk billions in Deep Blue contracts or Amazon storage contracts or unfavorable rulings on regulatory matters. But fighting back against bullies always entails risk. When Americans see those with the greatest ability to fight back failing to do so, it sends an unmistakable message: “We’re only in this for ourselves.”

I know a line on a receipt is a small thing, but capitulation always starts small. With that small thing, Bezos has granted the President of the United States veto power over how he runs his business. Just like the Paramount CEO Shari Redstone, in accepting the resignation of longtime 60 Minutes producer Bill Owens last week, is agreeing to let Trump run hers. Just like Mark Zuckerberg is doing at Meta.

They probably think they’re just going along to get along. The oligarchs in Putin’s Russia surely thought the same thing, at least until they started falling out of windows.

Imagine what these rich guys could if they stood together on behalf of American democracy instead of accelerating its end. Imagine what devoting a tiny percentage of their wealth could do to preserve and repair our institutions rather than using that money to undermine and corrode them. Imagine what this nation could be if they even just agreed to pay their fair share of taxes. But they won’t. As a nation, I think we’ve come to expect nothing from our billionaires. I’m disappointed to report, yet again, we’ve gotten exactly what we expected.