Update your 2025 bingo cards to include a potential Jeff Bezos collab with archrival Elon Musk at the DOGE.
The Amazon founder said on Wednesday that he’s ready to support President-elect Donald Trump’s deregulation agenda—a top priority for the newly formed Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Bezos spoke during the New York Times DealBook Summit 2024 with Andrew Ross Sorkin.
“I’m actually very optimistic this time around,” Bezos said of Trump winning a second term, emphasizing that he was, in fact, “super optimistic.”
“He seems to have a lot of energy around reducing regulation. And my point of view, if I can help him do that, I’m going to help him.”
Jeff Bezos Live at DealBook Summit 2024 https://t.co/PcXa2yMZx6
— Andrew Ross Sorkin (@andrewrsorkin) December 4, 2024
He added that Trump appears “calmer this time” and “more settled.”
“You’ve probably grown in the last eight years,” he told Sorkin. “He has, too.”
Deregulation has been a major focus for Trump and his newly formed DOGE, which is helmed by Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk and biotech founder Vivek Ramaswamy. So far, Musk and Ramaswamy have said they’ll crack down on regulations, floating ideas to end daylight saving, get rid of entire government agencies, and even start an official DOGE podcast.
By offering to collaborate with the new administration, Bezos might be taking a page from Musk’s playbook. Musk’s SpaceX, a fierce competitor of Bezos’s Blue Origin, has been positioning itself as a key partner to the government. Bezos’s gesture could be a strategic move to mend fences and protect his companies’ interests, from Amazon’s antitrust battle to Blue Origin’s quest for federal support. However, Bezos said, he took Musk’s pledge that he wouldn’t leverage his position in government to advantage his own companies or disadvantage his competitors at face value.
“Again, I could be wrong about that,” said Bezos. “But I think it could be true.”
Bezos said he‘s had a lot of success in life by not being cynical. “I’ve very rarely been taken advantage of as a result,” he said. “It’s happened a couple of times, but not very often … Why be cynical about that? Let’s go into it hoping the statements that have been made are correct, that this is going to be done aboveboard in the public interest.” If that turns out to be naive, then, “we’ll see,” Bezos said.
Whether Musk would be open to working with Bezos, whom he’s derided in the past as a “copycat,” is an open question. Plus, whether Trump would take up Bezos’s offer remains to be seen, as the two have a rocky past relationship, rooted in both personal and professional clashes.
Trump frequently criticized Bezos during his presidency, often targeting the Washington Post, which Bezos owns, accusing it of unfair and biased coverage. Trump has also taken aim at Amazon in the past, alleging the company exploited tax loopholes and underpaid the U.S. Postal Service, claims Bezos and Amazon have denied.