JPMorgan CEO Who Once Said He Could Beat Trump in an Election Now Admits He's Worried About Former President
The CEO of JPMorgan Chase & Co. was dismissive of former President Donald Trump five years ago, but he’s singing a different tune as he looks at the 2024 presidential race.
Jamie Dimon was asked about Trump during a recent video interview with Zanny Minton Beddoes, the editor-in-chief of The Economist, published Tuesday.
“Now if you look, certainly, at the Republican Party, there’s a growing isolationist wing in that party, and it’s not at all clear what a future President Donald Trump might do in terms of American leadership,” Minton Beddoes said. “If you’re outside America, if you’re — you know, I live in London — we’re worried about this.”
“I would worry about another Trump presidency too, by the way,” Dimon said in response.
The CEO of the nation’s largest bank said a lot of policies of both U.S. political parties are “highly misguided.”
“There are a lot of very smart people in both parties who I know and respect that really want to get things right, and I try to focus on that,” he said.
In 2018, Dimon had talked tough about the then-president.
“I think I could beat Trump,” he said at the time, according to CNBC.
“Because I’m as tough as he is, I’m smarter than he is. I would be fine. He could punch me all he wants, it wouldn’t work with me. I’d fight right back,” Dimon said.
He later said he was not running and chalked his remarks up to frustration “because I want all sides to come together to help solve big problems.”
At that time, Dimon also offered an observation about how a billionaire could be a populist.
“I don’t think the American public looks at Trump as part of the elite. They look at him as the upstart who punched the elite in the nose every day,” he said.
Keep worrying.
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In April, Dimon ducked a question about the former president.
“Do you think a second Trump term would be good for the U.S. economy?” CNN’s Poppy Harlow asked him.
“I’m not going to answer that question,” Dimon said. Asked why, he said, “I don’t want to.”
However, he did give Trump credit for tax reform that helped the economy and for efforts to lower the unemployment rate among black Americans.
“And so I think, you know, there are growth strategies that matter. He had some of those,” Dimon said. “But that’s not supporting him.”
In his interview with The Economist, he said Trump was the exception to his rule that anyone running for president should have experience in an elected office.
“If you’re going to do that, you should practice. You don’t just say, ‘Oh I’m going to run for office,'” the JPMorgan CEO said.
“There may be common skills between a CEO in terms of administration, management, leadership, but there’s also non-common ones. You’re dealing with a whole bunch of different issues,” Dimon said.
“Just look at history,” he said. “It’s almost impossible.”
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