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    • Some billionaires and CEOs are risk-averse as Trump vows revenge
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    Some billionaires and CEOs are risk-averse as Trump vows revenge

    Harry Posted on

    Jeff Stein, Jacqueline Alemany, Josh Dawsey
    | Washington Post

    Last week at a five-star resort in California, Wall Street executives, fast food CEOs, several dozen industry giants and two former presidents gathered for off-the-record conversations. One topic that inevitably comes up, according to two people familiar with the matter: the possibility of former president Donald Trump returning to the White House.

    A meeting of the Business Council, an invitation-only association of top executives, at the Waldorf Astoria Monarch Beach in Dana Point was not supposed to be election-related, but ended up with some attendees discussing how they would protect themselves and their companies if Trump wins, said the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe private conversations. He said he would take the presidency next week and seek to use the power of the Oval Office against his perceived enemies.

    At one event, former president Bill Clinton warned of the dangers Trump poses to democracy and the country’s rule of law, while former president George W. Bush expressed concerns about high tariff rates, which some attendees heard as a rebuke of Trump’s tariff plans. he said.

    With the White House looking increasingly up for grabs, especially as polls tighten, several billionaires and other prominent executives have taken steps to stay out of the race in recent months, even as they criticized Trump after the Jan. 6 Capitol riot . 2021 said his incitement of insurrection was a threat to American democracy. Those who previously supported the Democrats remained silent in this election; some critics and Trump supporters interpreted this as a peace offering to the GOP presidential candidate.

    In his first term as president, Trump has leveraged the power of the federal government to try to punish a wide range of adversaries in the business world who he sees as challenging him in various ways. He also told some corporate figures he would help them if he returned to the Oval Office and urged them to donate to his campaign, as he did to oil executives at a private meeting at Mar-a-Lago in April. And he talked frequently about revenge during the campaign, and in June, TV host Dr. He told Phil that “sometimes revenge can be justified.”

    “Trump has had no problem calling his political enemies by name and threatening to use government power for revenge, and that appears to be scaring many wealthy targets,” said Brian Riedl, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. right think tank. “It’s a very frightening sign that government intimidation is working.”

    Two Trump campaign advisers, who spoke on condition of anonymity to reflect private conversations, said multiple executives tried to reach the former president’s team late in the race.

    “I told CEOs to intervene as quickly as possible because the clock is ticking… . If you’re a Harris supporter and we never hear from you until after the election, you’ve got an uphill battle,” Trump’s adviser said. “People are back-channeling, looking into their networks; “They’re talking to lobbyists and seeing what they can do to connect with the president and his team.”

    Trump’s allies have welcomed what they say are signs of neutrality from other billionaires. Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, which owns The Washington Post, has decided that The Post will no longer endorse presidential candidates, in a change announced last week. The Post supported Harris in her work. This comes just days after Los Angeles Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong blocked the paper from endorsing Harris.

    Both moves sparked uproar, with critics saying they reflected concerns about their owners’ financial interests — Amazon has multibillion-dollar cloud computing contracts with the federal government and Bezos’ rocket company Blue Origin has contracts with the Space Force and NASA. Soon-Shiong, a biotech investor, may have a business before federal regulators in the future.

    The Post said the discussion of stopping support for the presidential election was held internally and was a return to previous policy. Soon-Shiong told the Los Angeles Times that she thought it would be divisive to choose one candidate over another.

    Trump’s allies applauded these developments as proof that these elites agree with them that the former president will return to the White House soon.

    “The elite and the money feel that Trump will win. Don’t you think Jeff Bezos is looking at Polymarket?” Trump fundraiser Bill White said, referring to the political gambling site that tracks the odds of the race and has recently seen more bets placed on Trump to win. They questioned whether ‘s rise in the betting markets was manipulated by a few big accounts.) “Bezo does not support Kamala Harris; I think this is a $50 million endorsement for Trump. Not choosing a horse is choosing a horse.”

    Trump’s campaign spokesman Brian Hughes said in a statement that the industry’s support for the former president reflects the strength of Trump’s economic agenda.

    At the Al Smith dinner in New York earlier this month, some top business officials held a private VIP reception for Trump so they could talk to him before he took the stage, according to those who attended.

    “Over the last two weeks, the possibility of a Trump presidency has become more accepted, and I’ve talked to a number of very wealthy people who are looking to hedge their bets and figure out how to protect themselves,” Alan Dershowitz said. A Harvard lawyer who served on Trump’s first impeachment defense team. “This is a natural phenomenon of people who depend on government support for their wealth.”

    As polls tighten, many ultra-rich Americans have decided not to weigh in on the presidential election.

    Warren Buffett, the billionaire chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, supported Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012, and Hillary Clinton instead of Trump in 2016, but announced last week that he would stay out of the 2024 presidential race. Buffett also did not enter the 2020 race.

    The July rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, where Trump was wounded by a would-be assassin, appears to be a turning point. According to a Trump adviser, several CEOs reached out after the shooting, including Tesla and X’s Elon Musk, Apple’s Tim Cook, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon’s Andy Jassy and Google’s Sundar Pichai. Trump said Bezos also called him. Many of the Silicon Valley giants have significant business interests with the federal government, from taxes to regulation of social media companies to trade with China. Musk has become one of Trump’s most vocal supporters.

    In 2021, Google’s Pichai condemned the January 6 uprising as “the antithesis of democracy.” On Friday, Trump said on Joe Rogan’s podcast that Pichai invited him to have fun at Trump’s campaign stop at a McDonald’s in Pennsylvania, where Trump was handing out fries to supporters at the car window. Trump told Rogan that Pichai said: “This is one of the hottest things. We’ve never seen anything like it.” Trump’s account could not immediately be verified and a Google spokeswoman declined to comment.

    Amazon’s Jassy also contacted Trump in recent months, according to two people familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe a private conversation previously reported by CNN.

    Zuckerberg, who has been at loggerheads with Trump in the past and is committed to liberal causes, has struck a decidedly more conciliatory tone this election. Meta’s founder called Trump’s response to the assassination attempt “bad—” and said “it’s hard not to get emotional about that spirit and the fight.”

    “My goal is to be neutral and not play a role one way or another, or even appear to play a role,” Zuckerberg wrote in a letter to Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) last month.

    In his coffee table book published in September, Trump said he was watching Zuckerberg closely and that the executive would “spend the rest of his life in prison” if he did anything illegal in this year’s election.

    Meta did not respond to a request for comment.

    Some Republican business elites who opposed the January 6 insurrection have also returned to the fold. Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman, for example, called the attack on the Capitol after Trump gathered his supporters at the Ellipse and rejected his call for an end to the insurrection as “appalling” and “an affront to the democratic values ​​we hold dear.” Schwarzman supported his GOP rivals for the nomination this year but backed Trump this summer. Gary Cohn, who became a Trump skeptic after leaving his post at the White House, was also seen with Trump advisers at the Republican National Convention this summer.

    As president, Trump used the government to target companies and executives.

    In 2019, Amazon protested the Pentagon’s $10 billion contract with Microsoft, claiming that Trump influenced the outcome of the tender process to retaliate against Bezos. After years of legal wrangling, the government canceled the contract and started a completely new tender process. Trump called on his supporters to boycott AT&T over CNN, which owns the telecommunications company, covering his administration and told people to cancel their Comcast cable service, noting that the company owns MSNBC.

    Further increasing the incentive for some executives to stay out of the race is the Democrats’ policy agenda. Harris has backed a plan to raise taxes on many of the nation’s top earners. President Joe Biden has appointed numerous federal regulators who have been critically evaluated by corporate America, but Harris has suggested a more business-friendly approach.

    “If you were a rich person publicly saying ‘Trump sucks,’ the impact on the national election would be extremely small, if that were to happen. But this can be extremely impactful for your organization,” said economist Noah Smith. “So the incentive is to say nothing.”

    But businesses also face risks from Trump’s presidency. In addition to Trump’s tariff plans that could upend the global trade order and hurt the stock market, some economists have called Trump’s impulsive attacks on businesses he dislikes a threat to U.S. sovereignty. Law that supports the US economy. High-profile executives have begun expressing genuine concerns about the potential Trump administration and whether they could be punished for speaking publicly in favor of Harris, according to two people contacted by some business leaders seeking advice on the matter.

    Others emphasize that there is no guarantee of Trump’s loyalty – Even to those who extended an olive branch to his campaign.

    “CEOs of public companies want to have it both ways: They want to be seen as the nation’s thought leaders, but when it comes to this highly contentious election, they want to hide behind their titles,” said former chairman Robert Wolf. He is the CEO of UBS, who is also an economic advisor to President Barack Obama. “Many people are worried that if Trump wins, he will respond or even retaliate.”

    Naomi Nix and Trisha Thadani contributed to this report.

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