Jeff Bezos on Peter Thiel supporting Donald Trump: 'Contrarians are usually wrong'

Jeff Bezos
Jeff Bezos

(Jeff Bezos.Michael Seto/Business Insider)

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos on Thursday weighed in on billionaire tech investor Peter Thiel's support of Donald Trump.

Thiel's embrace of the Republican presidential nominee has made him an anomaly in the tech community.

"Peter Thiel is a contrarian," Bezos said during an interview at Vanity Fair's New Establishment Summit. "And you have to remember that contrarians are usually wrong."

Bezos has been vocal about his opposition to the idea of a Trump presidency — including suggesting that he can send the candidate to space with his rocket company Blue Origin — and his comment about Thiel was in response to a question about the PayPal cofounder's recent $1.25 million donation to Trump and position on Facebook's board.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently wrote an internal memo to employees explaining that Thiel would not be kicked off the company's board because "we care about diversity."

While both Bezos and Zuckerberg have been clear about their differences with Thiel's political leanings, Bezos said he would do the same thing if he were put in Facebook's position.

"It's way too divisive to say if you have an opinion, you can't sit on my board," Bezos said on Thursday. "That makes no sense."

Bezos did express contrition, though, over not taking Trump's early threats to the Bezos-owned Washington Post seriously enough. When Trump attacked The Post's reporting on his taxes, Bezos jokingly tweeted that he would reserve Trump a seat on the next Blue Origin rocket, including the hashtag "#sendDonaldtospace."

Now, he said, he wishes he had taken Trump's opposition more seriously from the beginning.

"One of the things that makes this country as amazing as it is, we are allowed to criticize and scrutinize our elected leaders," he said. "There are other countries where if you criticize the elected leader, you may go to jail, or worse, disappear."

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