During Donald Trump’s campaign Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos joked that he’d like to jettison the Republican frontrunner into space on one of his rockets. Now that Trump is president-elect, Bezos is taking a more sober and down-to-earth tone.
“I found today’s meeting with the President-elect, his transition team, and tech leaders to be very productive,” Bezos said in a statement. “I shared the view that the administration should make innovation one of its key pillars, which would create a huge number of jobs across the whole country, in all sectors, not just tech — agriculture, infrastructure, manufacturing — everywhere.”
Bezos and other tech leaders, including the CEOs of Google parent Alphabet, Microsoft, and Apple, met with Trump today in New York City to discuss the future president’s technology policy and strategy.
There’s more to Trump and Bezos’ contentious history than the #sendDonaldtospace ordeal. Trump has repeatedly claimed Jeff Bezos uses The Washington Post, which he owns, to influence the political dialogue and the president-elect has also accused Amazon of “getting away with murder tax-wise.”
Bezos responded to Trump, saying “It’s not an appropriate way for a presidential candidate to behave.”
Comments from both business leaders suggest they are softening their rhetoric and looking to collaborate in the future.
“There’s nobody like you in the world,” Trump said during the meeting. “There’s nobody like the people in this room. Anything we can do to help this go along … we’re going to be there for you, and you’ll call my people, you’ll call me … it doesn’t make any difference. We have no formal chain of command around here.”
