JPMorgan Chase boss Jamie Dimon has urged Democrats to help Nikki Haley in her campaign for the Republican nomination, saying doing so might land them a better choice in the general election next November.
“Even if you’re a very liberal Democrat, I urge you, help Nikki Haley too,” Dimon said at an event hosted by the New York Times on Wednesday. “Get a choice on the Republican side that might be better than Trump,” he urged.
The comments follow reports in US business media indicating that major donors representing America’s business elite including Dimon were lining up to support Haley, convinced that she could somehow unseat Trump in the GOP primary race.
The banker qualified his remarks by saying he would would be ready to work with Trump again if the former president came back for a second term. “I would never say that,” Dimon said, when asked whether he was opposed to Trump’s 2024 candidacy, “‘cause he might be the president.”
Dimon got into a short-lived feud with Trump in 2018 after suggesting he could beat the president in an election and saying he was just as tough as Trump and “smarter” than him. Trump responded by bashing Dimon as a “nervous mess.”
“The problem with banker Jamie Dimon running for president is that he doesn’t have the aptitude or ‘smarts’ and is a poor public speaker and nervous mess – otherwise he wonderful. I’ve made a lot of bankers, and others, look much smarter than they are with my great economic policy,” Trump tweeted at the time.
Dimon said earlier this year that he was “worried” about the prospects of another Trump presidency, suggesting “there are a lot of very smart people in both parties that I know want to get things right, and I try to focus on that.” When asked whether he might make a go of it himself, Dimon said he “never really believed” he was “suited for it.”
Dimon reportedly called Haley earlier this month to talk about the national debt, with Haley later telling reporters afterward that businessmen like Dimon “see what’s happening” to America and realize “that in a couple years, our interest expenses are going to be higher than our national defense budget.” Consequently, Haley said that as president, she would consider slashing spending on things like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
A year on from the election, Trump continues to run circles around all of his opponents in the race for the Republican nomination, with the latest polls showing him polling between 62-64 percent support, with Haley in third behind Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (who has 11-14 percent support), with between 9-10 percent support, respectively.
Trump was reluctant to brand Haley with one of his signature nicknames – which he has used to great effect during the 2016 election and during his presidency to attack political opponents and world leaders alike. Trump finally relented in September, calling his former UN ambassador “Birdbrain Nikki Haley,” accusing her of lacking the “TALENT or TEMPERAMENT to do the job” of president, and charging her of being a disloyal, deceitful and fake person.
Haley took the insults in stride, telling supporters that it was an indication that she is now in Trump’s rear view mirror as a contender for the nomination. Earlier this month, the politician emphasized that she disagrees with Trump’s characterization of his political opponents as “vermin.”
“The reality is I don’t agree with that statement any more than I agree when he said Hezbollah was smart, or any more than I agree when he hit [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu was his country was on its knees after all that brutality,” Haley said, referring to the October 7 Hamas attack.
Haley has also recently sparred with her former boss over the latter’s “friendliness” with North Korea during his tenure, and has distanced herself from Trump’s claims that he could broker a Russia-Ukraine peace deal in 24 hours flat. “This is bigger than Ukraine. This is a war about freedom, and it’s one we have to win…A win for Ukraine is a win for all of us because tyrants tell us exactly what they’re going to do,” Haley said in a debate back in June, going into a tirade against China, Russia, Iran and North Korea and the need for America to “send a message” to its adversaries around the world.