Amazon's top spokesman blasts politicians and 'elite newspapers' for falsely accusing Amazon of 'taking over grocery in America'

• Amazon spokesman Jay Carney said Wednesday that lawmakers and "elite newspapers" think Whole Foods is bigger than it is because it's "the grocery store that a lot of those folks shop at."
• "But as you know, Whole Foods is one of the smallest known grocery chains in America," Carney said on CNBC's "Squawk on the Street."
• Carney made the remarks after the Federal Trade Commission on Tuesday announced an antitrust probe into acquisitions made by Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, and Google parent company Alphabet.
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Amazon's top spokesman on Wednesday accused lawmakers and and "elite newspapers" of creating the illusion that Amazon would be "taking over grocery in America" when it acquired Whole Foods.

"When we announced that we were going to acquire Whole Foods, you would have thought based on television commentary and commentary in both Washington, DC among government officials as well as in the elite newspapers that we were taking over grocery in America - that we were going to be the largest grocer in America - because we were in fact buying the grocery store that a lot of those folks shop at," Jay Carney, Amazon's head of public relations and policy, said in an interview on CNBC. "But as you know, Whole Foods is one of the smallest known grocery chains in America."

Carney made the remarks after the Federal Trade Commission on Tuesday announced an antitrust probe into acquisitions made by Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, and Google parent company Alphabet.

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Carney said Wednesday that Amazon, including Whole Foods, accounts for about 3-4% of the grocery market.

"Many, many of the chains you know - the big names you know - are just significantly bigger than we are," he said. "So the competition matter is hard to argue because I don't see the argument that we are somehow anticompetitive in grocery at 3 or 4% of the market."

Whole Foods has 510 stores and 95,000 employees, according to the company.

Walmart and Kroger were the top leaders in the US grocery market in 2019, with a combined market share of roughly 30%, according to a recent UBS report.

Amazon and Whole Foods, by comparison, accounted for 2.2% of the US grocery market in 2019, which is up from a 1.6% market share in 2017.