Amazon founder Jeff Bezos spoke optimistically of President-elect Donald Trump on Wednesday at The New York Times’ DealBook Summit, saying he expects a more friendly regulatory environment in the upcoming administration.
“I’m actually very optimistic this time around,” Bezos said on stage. “He seems to have a lot of energy around reducing regulation. If I can help do that, I’m going to help him.”
Bezos’ comments struck a cheerful tone despite Trump publicly lambasting the billionaire during his first term in office. Trump repeatedly attacked Bezos and his companies, Amazon and The Washington Post, accusing them of dodging taxes or publishing “fake news,” among other things. Trump also repeatedly pointed the finger at Amazon for its use of the U.S. Postal Service to deliver packages to customers, claiming the company contributed to the post office’s budget problems.
In 2019, Amazon blamed Trump’s “behind-the-scenes attacks” against the company for its loss of a multibillion-dollar Department of Defense contract, then called JEDI.
The animosity between the two preceded Trump’s time in the White House.
Prior to the 2016 election, Bezos criticized Trump’s behavior, saying it “erodes our democracy.” After the then-Republican candidate accused Bezos of using the Post as a “tax shelter,” Bezos, who also owns the Blue Origin space company, in a tweet offered to send Trump into space on one of his rockets.
Bezos said Wednesday that Trump appears calmer, more confident and more settled than his first term in the White House.
“You’ve probably grown in the last eight years,” Bezos said. “He has too.”
Bezos also publicly declared shortly before the election that The Washington Post would not be endorsing a candidate, breaking with decades of tradition. Editorial page staffers had drafted an endorsement of Democratic nominee Kamala Harris over Trump in the election, before Bezos killed the plan in late October.
“We knew there would be blowback and we did the right thing anyway,” Bezos said on Wednesday, acknowledging the criticism that followed. He called the move “far from cowardly.”
