Patrick Soon-Shiong denies that a “billionaires club” with Jeff Bezos and others led to a squandering of Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign.
While on Thursday’s episode of “The Megyn Kelly Show,” the LA Times owner explained to the host that Harris’ assertion he was part of a billionaires club that was answering to Trump was false.
“I’m sad that she’s disappointed, but I said in response that really one should take responsibility, and that’s really the issue,” Soon-Shiong said. “We made the decision. Well I made the decision, yes, we shouldn’t endorse her because I didn’t believe, frankly, that she would be competent as the President of the United States. And that was a decision we made, and I think I’m very comfortable still with that decision.”
In regards to the blowback over his decision to scrap a planned LA Times endorsement for Harris, he noted: “Pretty bad. We lost a lot of viewers and the editorial board, most of them, in fact, I don’t think anybody is still there, they all resigned. And I said, ‘In order to lead, you need to lead. And you truly need to have courage of your convictions.’ And that was our conviction.”
Harris called out Soon-Shiong and Bezos – who owns The Washington Post – last fall for choosing not to endorse a president in the 2024 election. She told Charlamagne tha God on “The Breakfast Club” that it was a “billionaires club” hoping for more from another Trump presidency.
“You know, Charlamagne, it’s disappointing, no doubt,” she said at the time. “But the other piece of it is it gets back to my point about who is Donald Trump. Because he is the one, right, who is up for election with me and I think that some of your listeners may know and others may not, which is that, look, it’s the billionaires and Donald Trump club. That’s who’s in his club. That’s who he hangs out with, that’s who he cares about.”
Harris continued: “That’s why when he was last president, he put in place a massive tax cut for billionaires and the biggest corporations, and that is exactly what he will do again.”
Watch the full Megyn Kelly clip above.
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