Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ:AMZN) founder Jeff Bezos wants to bury the hatchet with two of his long-running foes Donald Trump and Elon Musk.
In an interview with New York Times journalist Andrew Sorkin at the 2024 DealBook summit, Bezos said he is “very optimistic” about Trump’s upcoming second term as US president.
“He seems to have a lot of energy around reducing regulation. If I can help do that, I’m going to help him,” said Bezos. “What I’ve seen so far is he is calmer than he was the first time — more confident, more settled.”
Trump has been vocally antagonistic against Bezos in the past.
He Tweeted in 2018: “I have stated my concerns with Amazon long before the Election. Unlike others, they pay little or no taxes to state & local governments, use our Postal System as their Delivery Boy (causing tremendous loss to the U.S.), and are putting many thousands of retailers out of business!”
Amazon-owned Washington Post has been Trump’s whipping boy in his campaign against “fake news”, accusing the masthead of “phony headlines” and being Amazon’s “chief lobbyist”.
When pressed by Sorkin on Trump’s animosity against the media, Bezos said: “I’m going to try to talk him out of that idea… I don’t think the press is the enemy.”
Bezos admitted to having a clear influence over the Washington Post’s coverage. He told Sorkin that he put the kibosh on an editorial endorsing Democratic nominee Kamala Harris over Trump.
“We knew there would be blowback and we did the right thing anyway,” Bezos said, calling the decision “far from cowardly”.
The decision to not endorse a candidate, breaking with tradition, preempted hundreds of thousands of readers to cancel their subscriptions.
On Musk’s close relationship with Trump and potential influence over space flight contract rewards, Bezos said: “I take at face value what has been said, which is that he is not going to use his political power to advantage his own companies or to disadvantage his competitors… I could be wrong about that, but I think it could be true.”
Bezos’ Blue Origin space flight business is a direct competitor to Musk’s SpaceX business.
Although Blue Origin has yet to put a rocket into orbit, Bezos, was espoused optimism.
“From a business point of view, from a financial returns point of view, I think it’s going to be the best business I’ve ever been involved in, but it’s going to take a while,” he said.