In Internal Email, LA Times Owner Cites Gaza Among Reasons He Decided Not to Endorse Harris or Trump

In an internal email sent on November 3, Patrick Soon-Shiong, medical technology billionaire and owner of the Times, outlined some of the reasons behind his decision that the paper would not endorse a candidate for president this year.

In the email, sent to the LA Times’s top editor and the president and COO and obtained by Drop Site News, Soon-Shiong says the policies supported by both candidates—in what is a clear reference to Israel’s brutal war on Gaza—played an important role in his decision.

“Has there ever been a time in our history,” he writes, “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? And policies enabling this are supported it seems by both candidates?”

“We can and must acknowledge concerns for democracy and the Jan 6 episode and the horific [sic] Oct Hamas attacks,” he continued. “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?”