Jamie Dimon didn’t call Donald Trump after the former president became the president-elect last month.
He also didn’t leave a voicemail directly with The Donald – despite some reporting that attempted to depict the JPMorgan chief with other CEOs as a world-class suck-ups to the man who, if you believe the spin, is ready to unleash holy hell on anyone he sees as a foe.
Who told me this? Well, I spoke to someone with direct knowledge of the matter who knows what goes down at the mega-bank Dimon runs.
Nope, no call to Trump from Dimon, the JPM insider said.
However, someone from the bank’s government relation’s team did call someone on the Trump transition team to congratulate the president-elect on behalf of Dimon and assure his people that the world’s top banker is ready to provide advice and counsel if it’s needed, the insider said.
OK, sounds like a little bit of inside baseball, until you understand the backstory.
A few weeks back, I co-bylined a story with The Post’s James Franey that touched a nerve with people who like to diss our friendly newspaper, corporate executives and Trump himself.
We exclusively reported that Dimon and Trump have a decent relationship, fostered through “backchannel” communications. The JPM boss speaks with Trump through his transition aides, we reported.
This backchannel allows Dimon to advise the Trump campaign and transition team of regulatory matters involving banks since Dimon is kind of an expert on the subject. Both Trump and his people respect Dimon.
Why don’t they talk directly? Speculation is that the ego of both men gets in the way since they’ve traded niceties and some barbs over the years, including as I first reported in The Post, Dimon letting it be known he favored Kamala Harris in the election and would rather work for her if she were elected even after Trump floated his name as a possible Treasury Secretary.
Harris didn’t win, and Dimon was smart enough to hedge his bets. That’s the reason for the backchannel stuff, which doesn’t fit into the mainstream media narrative that the world’s best banker, a Democrat no less, would lend a helping hand to the man they love to hate, the Orange Menace known as Donald Trump.
First, Fortune came out with a weird non-takedown of our story suggesting that we reported that Dimon and Trump spoke directly, and we got it all wrong. As we pointed out, they didn’t, hence the descriptive “backchannel” discussions.
Then the New York Times came out with a story headlined “Finance Moguls Revel in Trump’s Return and Ignore the Peril.” This piece said Dimon actually called Trump a day after the election, left a voicemail, and never heard back. A so-called “snub” by the president-elect of someone who supported Harris during the election.
Fortune, for its part, said it stands by its “sourcing.”
Emails to the Times reporter on the story were not returned.
Suffice to say, reporters make mistakes all the time (yes, I’m not immune). I’ve also been doing this reporting thing for long enough to know how easily you can get your wires crossed about who Dimon left his VM with, particularly under deadline pressure.
I can also see how the drama about our Dimon and Trump coverage reveals an interesting bias in business coverage these days. Suggesting anything close to a decent relationship between a corporate executive and a dude controlling corporate America’s federal regulatory apparatus fits neatly into the narrative that something shady is going on when Trump is approached by people like Apple’s Tim Cook, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook and Dimon.
They’re all sucking up to Trump, the nattering nabobs claim, because he is known to play rough with enemies, real and perceived. Yes, The Donald does have a mean streak, and corporate America does love its perks from big government.
But I suspect the corporate kissing of the ring exposes something else. From what I hear, the usually left-leaning heads of America’s top companies are pretty happy that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are out the door.
Despite Trump’s rough edges, they remember fondly the economy during Trump’s first term (strong growth and low inflation amid a regulatory respite).
They couldn’t stand the policies enforced by Biden-Harris’s leftist administrators at the SEC, FTC and FCC who stopped nearly every merger and imposed massive regulatory costs.
On top of that, Trump — as opposed to Sleepy Joe — is willing to engage with business leaders and listen to their concerns as all those meetings at Mar-a-Lago demonstrate. “After the first year, no one even saw Biden,” one bank CEO told On The Money. “He was cloistered by the people really running the show.”
So let’s get back to the Dimon-Trump bromance, which I find fascinating.
Both are streetwise New Yorkers; Dimon is 68, Trump 78. Dimon certainly spoke to Trump during his first term; they got along swimmingly during one tête-à-tête where Trump is said to have given Dimon a personal tour of his new helicopter while senior White House aides sat idly by, fidgeting their thumbs as the two discussed the perks of being billionaires.
Dimon has heaped praise on Trump and how he handled the economy, immigration and cautioned Biden about attacking MAGA Republicans. Dimon is a Democrat, but he said Biden should be more respectful to Trump voters.
They have also traded barbs. Dimon once said he could beat Trump if he ran for president because he is “as tough as he is,” and he added “I’m smarter than he is.” Trump reacted as you might expect. Dimon later apologized.
Their weird relationship continued during the campaign, doing an odd public kabuki dance with Trump offering then rescinding an offer to make Dimon his Treasury Secretary and Dimon doing his best Hamlet imitation before turning it down.
My bet, Dimon will soon call Trump, and this time, The Donald will pick up to discuss the paint jobs on their helicopters and, hopefully, the economy.
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