- Trump told an interviewer that he dined with Jeff Bezos on Wednesday night.
- That’s the same day Bezos announced a major shake-up at the Washington Post’s opinion section.
- Trump said little about the dinner, but marveled that so many billionaires are cozying up to him.
President Donald Trump says he had dinner with Jeff Bezos, the executive chairman of Amazon and the owner of the Washington Post, on Wednesday night.
That’s the same day that Bezos announced a major shake-up of the Post’s opinion section, including a new focus on defending “personal liberties and free markets.”
Trump told The Spectator in an interview conducted on Thursday that he “had dinner with Jeff Bezos last night.”
The president offered few details of the encounter, and it’s unclear who else was at the dinner, or what was discussed. A White House spokesman declined to comment further, while representatives for Bezos did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Trump demurred when asked whether he trusts Bezos: “Who do I trust? I mean, who do you trust? Do you trust anybody? These are very smart guys.”
But he also marveled at how Bezos and other billionaires, including Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, have cozied up to him since his 2024 election victory.
"We have dinners together, usually started by them. I'm so busy with all of this. Between China, Russia, Ukraine, I've got more things happening," Trump told the outlet. "I said, 'would you have been here if I lost,' you know? 'Would you have been here if I lost it?' They never answer that question. Actually, they just sort of shy away from it."
Bezos, Zuckerberg, and other major tech billionaires and CEOs attended the inauguration in January, with prime seating in front of Trump's Cabinet. It was a stark reversal from Trump's first term in office, when he had a more antagonistic relationship with many of those tech leaders.
In October, Bezos blocked the Post from endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election.