Jeff Bezos, the billionaire tech mogul and owner of The Washington Post, says he views it as a responsibility of the mainstream media to convince President-elect Trump the press is not his enemy.
“I’m going to try and talk him out of that idea,” Bezos said at the New York Times DealBook Summit on Wednesday. “I don’t think the press is the enemy.”
“You’ve probably grown in the last two years, he has too,” he told journalist Andrew Ross Sorkin during an interview. “Let’s go persuade him of this. I don’t think he’s going to see it the same way, but maybe I’ll be wrong.”
Bezos said Trump today strikes him as “calmer” than he was during his first campaign for the White House, and “more confident and settle.”
The billionaire’s comments come just weeks after he sparked widespread outrage with a decision to kill an editorial endorsing Vice President Harris that was set to be published by the Post.
Bezos at the time defended the decision by saying presidential endorsements erode trust in media and dismissed suggestions he was capitulating to Trump to advance his business interests.
On Wednesday, he said he was “optimistic” about a second Trump term, citing the incoming president’s “energy” around deregulation.
