Amazon boss: “I’m really very optimistic this time” – How Jeff Bezos looks at Trump’s second term

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos said on Wednesday that he was optimistic about the second term of US President-elect Donald Trump. “I’m really very optimistic this time,” Bezos said during an interview at a New York Times event in New York. For Bezos, the main focus is on reducing bureaucracy: “We have too many regulations in this country,” he said. Trump seems to be putting a lot of energy into dismantling regulations: “If I can help with that, then I will help him,” Bezos continued.

In October, Bezos banned the Washington Post – which he owns – from supporting a presidential candidate. Hundreds of thousands of readers canceled their subscriptions and long-time employees protested. At the time, Bezos wrote in an article in the newspaper that he wanted to avoid creating the impression of bias at a time when many Americans did not believe the media. On Wednesday, he said he would try to disabuse Trump of the idea that the press is the enemy. “They have probably grown over the last eight years,” he told journalist Andrew Ross Sorkin. And Trump is too, believes Bezos.

Trump frequently railed against Bezos and his companies, including Amazon and The Washington Post, during his first term. In 2019, Amazon argued in a lawsuit that Trump’s bias against the company had hurt its chances of winning a $10 billion Pentagon contract. The Biden administration later sought a deal with Amazon and Microsoft.