President-elect Donald Trump didn’t pick up the phone when JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon called to congratulate him on his sweeping Election Day victory, according to a report.
Dimon, the 68-year-old banking executive who has described himself as “barely a Democrat,” was instead forced to leave a voicemail offering up his congratulations and offering to help, the New York Times reported.
Last month, The Post exclusively reported that Dimon has been communicating with Trump in recent months through secret back channels.
Dimon, who like Trump hails from Queens, had been secretly helping the president-elect flesh out a policy agenda before and since his decisive White House victory by acting as a “sounding board” for the Republican.
“They have been speaking regularly for months,” a GOP source briefed on the situation told The Post.
Nevertheless, in the days after the election, Trump announced on his Truth Social platform that Dimon, who has long been rumored to be interested in having a government post, won’t be joining his administration.
“I respect Jamie Dimon, of JPMorgan Chase, greatly, but he will not be invited to be a part of the Trump Administration. I thank Jamie for his outstanding service to our Country!” Trump’s Truth Social account said in a Nov. 14 post.
Despite the reported snub, Dimon told Bloomberg News last month that the finance industry was “dancing in the street” over the prospect of Trump assuming power and cutting regulations.
“A lot of bankers, they’re like dancing in the street because they’ve had successive years and years of regulations, a lot of which stymied credit,” Dimon said.
Dimon has also been critical of the Biden administration for its stringent regulatory agenda.
Trump, on the other hand, is reportedly looking for ways to either shrink or do away with banking regulators altogether.
Advisers to the president-elect have been openly raising the possibility of the incoming administration dissolving the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., according to a report in Friday’s Wall Street Journal.
Dimon, who heads the nation’s largest lender, is a registered Democrat who declined to publicly endorse a candidate this election cycle.
But associates who were in contact with Dimon before the election said that he has privately been telling people he hoped that Vice President Kamala Harris would win.
In September, The Post’s Charles Gasparino reported that Dimon was “more likely to accept” working in a Harris administration.
Dimon had previously all but ruled himself out about leaving the Wall Street giant for a government job, telling analysts that the chance of that happening is “almost nil.”
But he went on to add in his widely read annual letter in April: “I’ve always been an American patriot and my country is more important to me than my company.”
The Post has sought comment from JPMorgan Chase and the Trump transition team.
