JPMorgan Chase’s Jamie Dimon is picking a street fight with a fellow New Yorker — President Donald Trump, according to CNBC.
“I think I could beat Trump” in an election, the broadcaster quoted the bank’s chief executive officer and chairman as saying at an event Wednesday to tout the firm’s philanthropy. “I’m as tough as he is, I’m smarter than he is.”
Dimon has previously said he has no intention of running for the U.S. presidency, saying he’s not sure being a corporate leader translates well into the political arena. But he flaunted his business success in an additional dig at Trump.
"And by the way, this wealthy New Yorker actually earned his money,” Dimon said, according to CNBC. “It wasn’t a gift from daddy.”
By noon, the bank sent out a statement from Dimon, backtracking completely: “I should not have said it. I’m not running for president. Proves I wouldn’t make a good politician. I get frustrated because I want all sides to come together to help solve big problems.”
Dimon is renowned for speaking bluntly, but he vacillates on Trump.
After the inauguration, he said Trump had reawakened “animal spirits” in the U.S. Dimon has also praised the president’s softer regulation and a tax policy that’s generous to rich companies and people.
Dimon was a member of the president’s strategy and policy forum — a council of U.S. business leaders — but it disbanded last year in the backlash to Trump’s response to a white-supremacist rally in Charlottesville. And this year, Dimon said the administration’s policy of separating children from parents at the U.S. border with Mexico was cruel.
Dimon has taken shots at others in Washington without swiftly reversing himself. In 2015, he said he doubts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a critic of large banks, “fully understands” the global financial system.
Trump has had his own ups and downs with the financial world, even though he’s surrounded himself with some of its leaders. He campaigned as someone who would stand up to the industry, and his closing ad flashed a Wall Street sign, Federal Reserve logos, and the New York Stock Exchange over eerie music and a speech.
“It’s a global power structure that is responsible for the economic decisions that have robbed our working class,” he said, “stripped our country of its wealth, and put that money into the pockets of a handful of large corporations.”
