General Discussion

Feels like you are connecting dots to further justify your actions.

Your really good friend (Your words) was gracious, generous, thoughtful, and now has absolutely unnecessarily hurt feelings for his efforts.

To be clear, you effectively told off a really good friend in a passive aggressive way because he didn’t give you the kind of gift that meets your high standards of economic moral superiority, or you have an unconscious bias that he isn’t an affirmed Democrat and you are suspicious of some closeted tendencies that you disagree with, so he too should be punished, like bezos.

Maybe you could have instead used it to buy him something when the time was right to reciprocate a gift. It was his money after all.

Even throwing it the trash unbeknownst to him and saying thank you for being so thoughtful would have been a better solution than throwing it in his face IMO.

But you do you.