Trump takes it to Big Tech because he sees them as political opponents

CNBC's Jim Cramer said Tuesday that he thought President Donald Trump was seeking to crack down on Silicon Valley's biggest tech companies because he considered them political opponents.

Cramer believes that "there could be an antitrust argument to oppose the dominance of Big Tech. But he thinks the Trump administration is taking on these companies for political reasons.

On "Squawk Box", Cramer said Trump considered Google, Facebook, Amazon and Apple's Alphabet as "democratic societies."

"I know it sounds strange," said Cramer. "But these are companies that the president sees as particularly democratic, so they're a game, they're fodder."

The White House was not immediately available to comment on Cramer's remarks.

Meanwhile, most companies have been silent about government reports, but Apple's chief executive, Tim Cook, told CBS that Apple's non-dominant stance in the global smartphone market proves that it is not a monopoly.

Reports indicate that the Department of Justice is preparing an antitrust investigation on Google and that the Department of Justice has jurisdiction over Apple's practices as part of a broader review of the behavior of technology companies. In the meantime, the Federal Trade Commission reportedly oversaw Amazon and Facebook to explain how these companies could harm the competition.

Cramer said he understands that Trump is taking it to Amazon because the president, since the 2016 campaign, has repeatedly criticized the online trading giant and its founder, Jeff Bezos. Trump called Amazon for not paying enough taxes. He criticized the Washington Post, owned by Bezos, for his bias against his administration.

But Cramer said Monday night in "Mad Money" that he had "no idea what Apple had done wrong in the eyes of the White House," citing the seemingly good relationship between Trump and Cook. "It looks like the president had it with Apple for making so many products in China," speculated Cramer.

"These companies seemed to be the jewels of the American economy and are now treated as enemies of the state," said Cramer. "If that's the case, people will pay a lot less for their stocks, that's exactly what we saw."

The federal government's concern about imposing more regulations on large technology companies weighed on technology stocks on Monday, pushing the Nasdaq into a correction, more than 10% lower than its record high last month. However, Tuesday morning, tech stocks rebounded and the Nasdaq recorded the type of gains that would get the index out of a correction if they held up until the close.