With the White House appearing increasingly up for grabs, and especially as polls have tightened, numerous billionaires and other leading executives have taken steps in recent months to stay out of the race — even if they had criticized Trump after the Capitol insurrection of Jan. 6, 2021, calling his encouragement of the riot a threat to American democracy. Others who previously backed Democrats have stayed silent this election, which some critics and Trump supporters alike have interpreted as a peace offering to the GOP presidential nominee.
Two Trump campaign advisers said numerous executives have been trying to reach out to the former president’s team late in the race.
“I’ve told CEOs to engage as fast as possible because the clock is ticking … . If you’re somebody who has endorsed Harris, and we’ve never heard from you at any point until after the election, you’ve got an uphill battle,” the Trump adviser said. “People are back-channeling, looking at their networks — they’re talking to lobbyists to see what they can do to connect with the president and his team.”
Trump allies hailed what they say are signs of neutrality from other billionaires. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who owns The Washington Post, decided that The Post would no longer endorse presidential candidates, a change announced last week. The Post had an endorsement of Harris in the works. That came just days after Patrick Soon-Shiong, who owns the Los Angeles Times, blocked that paper’s endorsement of Harris.
Both moves sparked an uproar, with critics saying they reflected concerns about the owners’ financial interests — Amazon has billions of dollars in cloud computing contracts with the federal government, and Blue Origin, Bezos’s rocket company, has contracts with the Space Force and NASA. Soon-Shiong, a biotech investor, could have future business before federal regulators.
Caption from original article by Jeff Stein, Jacqueline Alemany and Josh Dawsey.
