Los Angeles Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong revealed Vice President Kamala Harris’ stance on the war in Gaza was “one of the reasons” he blocked his paper from endorsing her for president. He made the comment during an interview with CNN on Tuesday.
“Somebody had asked me, ‘Was that the reason?’ I said, ‘Well, that wasn’t the only reason.’ Clearly, that was one of the reasons and there are many other reasons,” Soon-Shiong said.
The billionaire didn’t go into further detail on why it was a key driver behind his decision. His daughter Nika Soon-Shiong had previously tied the decision back to the war in Gaza as well, though her father denied it at the time.
The elder Soon-Shiong’s answer comes after he referred to the war between Israel and Palestine as a “genocide” in an email to an L.A. Times editor on Nov. 3. The email was obtained by Drop Site News and published last week.
“Has there ever been a time in our history when our nation is knowingly providing arms to another nation using those weapons to kill children, women, innocent people and target the press, doctors and medical workers?” Soon-Shiong reportedly wrote. “And policies enabling this are supported it seems by both candidates?”
He allegedly added: “We can and must acknowledge concerns for democracy and the Jan. 6 episode and the horific [sic] [Oct. 7] Hamas attacks. But how do we ignore the counter issues of the innocents being killed now? Do we accept that indeed genocide is happening and that we stand as a country of willing arms suppliers and yet remain silent?”
The current war in Gaza started after Hamas terrorists slaughtered 1,200 people in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. There were 46 Americans killed during the attack. The terrorists brought back 254 hostages to Gaza, including 12 Americans; four of those Americans — Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Itay Chen, Judy Weinstein, and Gad Haggai — were murdered while being held hostage, the U.S. State Department said last month.
Before the 2024 presidential election, the L.A. Times was rocked after the editorial board’s plan to endorse Harris was scrapped by Soon-Shiong. His decision led to several employees resigning. Editorial writer Karin Klein, in an email explaining her decision to leave the paper, called him a “chickens—t” who threw the editorial team “under the bus.”
When asked by CNN if he felt the non-endorsement was a disaster, Soon-Shiong replied: “I don’t think of it as a disaster at all, I think of it as [an] inflection point in which the trust in the newspapers has to be restored.”
