US Politics

Some billionaires, CEOs hedge bets as Trump vows retribution

Author: Editors Desk, Jeff Stein, Jacqueline Alemany and Josh Dawsey Source: The Washington Post

October 28, 2024 at 08:59

With the race tight, some business elites are toning down past criticism of the former president.

Then-President Donald Trump speaks during a roundtable with tech executives at the White House on June 19, 2017. From left, Apple CEO Tim Cook; Trump; Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella; and then-Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, who owns The Washington Post. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

At a five-star resort in California last week, Wall Street executives, fast-food CEOs, a few dozen other industry titans and two former presidents gathered for off-the-record conversations. One subject that inevitably came up, according to two people familiar with the matter: The possibility that former president Donald Trump could return to the White House.

The gathering of the Business Council — an invitation-only association of chief executives — at the Waldorf Astoria Monarch Beach in Dana Point was not supposed to be about the election, but some attendees wound up discussing how to protect themselves and their companies if Trump wins the presidency next week and tries to use the power of the Oval Office against his perceived enemies, said the people, speaking on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations.

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

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.

During his first term as president, Trump exploited the power of the federal government to try to punish a wide range of perceived enemies in the business community who he thought were defying him in various ways. He has also told some corporate figures that he would help them if he returns to the Oval Office — while urging them to donate to his campaign, as he did with oil executives during a private April meeting at Mar-a-Lago. And he has frequently talked about retribution during the campaign, telling TV host Dr. Phil in June that “sometimes revenge can be justified.”

“Trump has had no issue calling out political enemies by name and threatening to use the force of government for retribution, and apparently that is intimidating a lot of wealthy targets,” said Brian Riedl, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a center-right think tank. “It is a very scary sign that government intimidation works.”

Two Trump campaign advisers, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity to reflect private conversations, 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.

The Post has said the discussion to cease endorsing in presidential elections was made internally and was a return to a prior policy. Soon-Shiong told the Los Angeles Times that he thought picking one candidate over another would be divisive.

Trump allies have cheered these developments as evidence that these elites agree with them that the former president will soon be returning to the White House.

“The elites and the money — they sense Trump is going to win. You don’t think Jeff Bezos looks at Polymarket?” said Bill White, a Trump fundraiser, referring to the political gambling site that tracks the odds of the race and has seen more betting on Trump to win lately. (Experts have questioned whether Trump’s rise in the betting markets has been manipulated by a few large accounts.) “Bezos not endorsing Kamala Harris — I think that’s a $50 million endorsement for Trump. Not picking a horse is picking a horse.”

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

At the Al Smith dinner in New York earlier this month, a number of top business officials had a special VIP reception for Trump so they could talk to him before he took the stage, according to people who attended.

“In the last two weeks, there has been a greater recognition of the possibility of a Trump presidency, and I’ve spoken to several very wealthy people who are interested in hedging their bets and figuring out how to protect themselves,” said Alan Dershowitz, a Harvard lawyer who served on Trump’s first impeachment defense team. “It’s a natural phenomenon of people who depend on government support for their wealth.”

As the polls have tightened, several ultrawealthy Americans have decided not to weigh in on the presidential election.

Warren Buffett, the billionaire chair of Berkshire Hathaway, endorsed Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012 and Hillary Clinton over Trump in 2016, but he announced last week that he would be staying out of the 2024 presidential race. Buffett also sat out the 2020 race.

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

Pichai, of Google, in 2021 condemned the Jan. 6 insurrection as “the antithesis of democracy.” On Friday, Trump said on Joe Rogan’s podcast that Pichai had called him to revel in Trump’s campaign stop at a Pennsylvania McDonald’s, where Trump handed fries to supporters at the drive-through window. Trump told Rogan that Pichai said, “This is one of the hottest things. We have never seen anything like this.” Trump’s account could not be immediately confirmed, and a Google spokesman declined to comment.

Jassy, of Amazon, has also reached out to Trump in recent months, according to two people familiar with the matter, speaking on the condition of anonymity to describe a private conversation, which was reported earlier by CNN.

Zuckerberg, who has feuded with Trump in the past and given to liberal causes, has struck a decidedly more conciliatory tone during this election. The Meta founder described Trump’s response to an attempted assassination as “bad---” and said it’s “hard to not get kind of emotional about that spirit and that fight.”

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

Trump said in a coffee-table book published in September that 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.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg testifies before a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Jan. 31. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post)

Some Republican business elites who balked at the Jan. 6 insurrection have come back into the fold, as well. For instance, Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman called the attack on the Capitol “appalling” and “an affront to the democratic values we hold dear,” after Trump rallied supporters on the Ellipse and then refused to call for an end to the insurrection. Schwarzman backed GOP rivals for the nomination this year but endorsed Trump this summer. And Gary Cohn, who had expressed skepticism of Trump after leaving his White House role, was spotted at the Republican National Convention this summer, mingling with Trump advisers.

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

In 2019, Amazon protested a $10 billion Pentagon contract with Microsoft, alleging that Trump had influenced the outcome of the bidding process to retaliate against Bezos. After years of legal wrangling, the government wound up canceling the contract and starting a whole new bidding process. Trump called on his supporters to boycott AT&T over news coverage of his administration by CNN, which the telecom company owns, and told people to cancel Comcast cable service, noting that the company owns MSNBC.

Further compounding the incentive for some executives to stay out of the race is Democrats’ policy agenda. Harris has backed a plan to raise taxes on many of the country’s highest earners. President Joe Biden appointed numerous federal regulators viewed critically by corporate America, although Harris has suggested a more business-friendly approach.

“If you’re a rich person who says ‘Trump sucks’ in public, the effect on the national election would be extremely small, if it existed at all. But it could be extremely impactful for your organization,” said Noah Smith, an economist. “So the incentive is just not to say anything at all.”

But businesses also face risks from a Trump presidency. In addition to Trump’s tariff plans, which could upend the global trade order and hurt the stock market, some economists have characterized Trump’s impulsive attacks on businesses he does not like as a threat to the rule of law that underpins the U.S. economy. High-profile executives have started expressing real concerns about the potential Trump administration and whether they will be punished for publicly coming out in favor of Harris, according to two people who have been contacted by some business leaders seeking advice on the matter.

Others emphasize there are no guarantees of Trump’s loyalty — even for those who have extended olive branches to his campaign.

“Public company CEOs want to have it both ways: They want to be viewed as the thought leaders of the country but when it comes to this highly contentious election, they want to hide behind their titles,” said Robert Wolf, a former chairman and CEO of UBS, who also served as an economic adviser to President Barack Obama. “Many are nervous that if Trump wins, he’s going to respond or even retaliate.”

Naomi Nix and Trisha Thadani contributed to this report.