Bezos To Trump: The Press Is Not The Enemy

Speaking at The New York Times’ DealBook Summit on Wednesday, the billionaire Amazon founder and Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos said he hopes that a second Trump administration will look more favorably on the press, saying he will “try to talk [Trump] out of” the idea that journalists are an enemy, according to CNN.

“I don’t think the press is the enemy,” Bezos told Andrew Ross Sorkin. “The press is not the enemy, let’s go persuade him of this.”

While Trump famously targeted Bezos and his companies during his first term, Bezos said he was “very optimistic” about a second Trump administration and suggested he even wants to help the incoming president.

“I am very optimistic this time around, I am very hopeful, he seems to have a lot of energy around reducing regulation, and if I can help him do that, I am going to help him,” he said of Trump.

During Trump’s first administration, he railed against Bezos and Amazon, called the Post “The Fake News Washington Post” and derided the paper as Amazon’s “chief lobbyist.” Trump accused the e-commerce giant of failing to pay its share of taxes and his administration blocked Amazon’s $10 billion cloud computing contract with the Pentagon, which was widely seen at the time as Trump seeking retribution against Bezos over the Post’s reporting.

“You’ve probably grown in the last eight years,” Bezos said Wednesday. “He has, too.”

Bezos, speaking publicly for the first time since he vetoed The Post’s endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris, defended the controversial move, saying, “I’m proud of the decision we made, and it was far from cowardly.”