Amazon founder Jeff Bezos said Wednesday that he is “optimistic” about President-elect Donald Trump’s second term and expressed enthusiasm for potential regulatory cuts in the coming years.
“I’m actually very optimistic this time,” Bezos said on stage during a wide-ranging interview at The New York Times’ DealBook Summit in New York. “He seems to have a lot of energy about reducing regulation. If I can help to do that, I will help him
“We have a lot of regulations in this country,” Bezos added.
The comments follow an October decision by Bezos to bar the Washington Post, which he owns, from endorsing a presidential candidate, a move that led to tens of thousands of people canceling their subscriptions and protests from reporters with a deep history at the paper.
At the time, Bezos wrote in a newspaper op-ed that editorial endorsements create a perception of bias at a time when many Americans distrust the media and do nothing to tip the election scales.
On Wednesday, he said he would try to talk Trump out of “the idea” that the press is the enemy.
“You’ve probably grown up in the last eight years,” he told reporter Andrew Ross Sorkin. “He has too. This is not the case. The press is not the enemy.â€
Trump had criticized Bezos and his companies, including Amazon and The Washington Post, during his first term. In 2019, Amazon argued in a court case that Trump’s bias against the company hurt its chances of winning a $10 billion contract with the Pentagon. The Biden administration later pursued a contract with Amazon and Microsoft.
Elsewhere in the interview, Bezos said he doesn’t expect Elon Musk, who is tasked with cutting regulations in Trump’s next term, to use his power to hurt his business competitors. Bezos owns Blue Origin, a rival of Musk’s SpaceX.
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