JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon says Donald Trump should not be vilified for putting business people in his White House and that the choices provide a "good reset" for how businesses are viewed
After a campaign filled with attacks on the wealthy and powerful, the president-elect has picked three alumni of the powerful financial firm Goldman Sachs, several billionaires and two chief executives of major American companies for his administration. Trump has defended his picks, saying they know how to create jobs.
Dimon, who will head Trump's Business Roundtable, said in a Bloomberg interview published Thursday that he was "dead wrong" before the election by thinking Wall Street would have a hard time getting into the next administration. He had expected the next president to be Hillary Clinton. Now, he says he is optimistic about Trump's business-heavy administration.
"I think it's a mistake for the American public to constantly be told that if you work for an oil company or you work for a bank, that automatically makes you bad," Dimon told Bloomberg. "I think a lot of these people are very qualified people who are patriots. They're going to want to help the country. They're not going to try to help their former company. These are people with deep knowledge that will hopefully do a great job."
Dimon may have been referring to Trump's picks to lead his Treasury and State departments, Goldman veteran Steven Mnuchin and former Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson, respectively. Democrats have attacked those picks and other choices for Trump's administration for representing big-money interests rather than the working class and middle class voters who propelled Trump to the presidency.