Gary Cohn, the former top economic adviser to President Trump, said Monday that he believes JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, who recently criticized Trump, would make a “phenomenal president.”
“I think Jamie would be a spectacular president,” Cohn said, according to Bloomberg.
{mosads}Cohn, speaking a Reuters event in New York, described the presidency as “very similar to running a complex, multinational, global firm,” but didn’t say whether Dimon could beat Trump in a head-to-head.
Cohn resigned in March over a dispute with Trump over the president’s tariffs.
While he has largely stayed out of the public eye since leaving the administration, Cohn returned to headlines earlier this month as a featured player in Bob Woodward’s new book “Fear: Trump in the White House.”
Woodward reported that Cohn was among the high-level staffers who pushed back against Trump’s impulses. Cohn is said to have taken a document off of the president’s desk that would have withdrawn the U.S. from a trade deal with South Korea.
Cohn later issued a statement saying the book “does not accurately portray my experience at the White House,” but did not cite any specific inaccuracies.
Dimon found himself in Trump’s crosshairs last week when he said at a company event that he could defeat the president in an election because “I’m as tough as he is, I’m smarter than he is.”
Dimon quickly walked back his comments, saying they proved he “wouldn’t make a good politician.”
Nonetheless, Trump lashed out at Dimon on Twitter, calling him a “poor public speaker & nervous mess.”
Dimon, 62, has predicted in the past year that Trump would be a one-term president, warned that Democrats lack a quality candidate to win in 2020 and credited the GOP tax cuts with accelerating economic growth.
Despite speculation he may run for office, Dimon said earlier this year that he’s committed to remaining at JPMorgan Chase for another five years.