WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump on Thursday hailed AT&T chief executive Randall Stephenson for doing really a top job, only months after…
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump on Thursday hailed AT&T chief executive Randall Stephenson for doing “really a top job, ” only months after he dinged the company’s proposed mega-merger with Time Warner as an “example of the power structure I’m fighting.”
Trump lavished the Dallas-based telecom giant with praise at a White House confab on emerging technologies like drones and 5G wireless .
With Stephenson seated to his right, Trump said AT&T was “like two companies” — “you started, then it was made different by government and now here you are again.” The president added that such a reinvention over the years was “not easy to do.”
“Most companies would’ve just disappeared, ” Trump said. “And you didn’t disappear.”
The exchange could offer the latest marker of where AT&T stands these days in Washington.
Trump’s tough comments last year about AT&T’s proposed $108 billion merger raised the prospect of a rough ride. But AT&T, whose merger is now being reviewed, has found common ground with the White House on issues ranging from net neutrality to tax policy to deregulation.
And Stephenson, who’s had multiple interactions with Trump, didn’t hesitate to praise the administration’s business-friendly approach.
“It’s been dizzying the pace that the regulatory playing field has been cleared and been made more clear for companies that invest like ours, ” Stephenson said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” before the White House meeting .
The White House meeting was Trump’s latest effort to highlight the business community — and the tech industry, in particular .
The president on Thursday commiserated with the executives over “too many years of excessive government regulation.” And he said he wanted to learn how government can “help unleash the next generation of technological breakthroughs that will transform our lives.”
“We want to remain No. 1, ” Trump said.
Ideas came in a few different forms.
Stephenson, speaking on CNBC, said lower corporate tax rates were the best way to “stimulate investment in new technologies and innovation.” AT&T, which gave big to Trump’s inauguration, has made much the same case on Capitol Hill in urging an overhaul of the nation’s tax code .
But in the White House’s East Room, the AT&T boss focused his pitch on a high-speed 5G network .
“We are at a place where if we get this right, we probably lead the world for another era, ” said Stephenson, who used a scale model of a city to show Trump how 5G would be deployed.
And Stephenson wasn’t the only Texan giving Trump feedback.
Dyan Gibbens, a Fort Worth native, is the chief executive of a Houston-based drone company called Trumbull Unmanned. The operation flies drones in “challenging environments” to collect and analyze data for the energy sector.
She said a big topic of discussion, as it relates to drones, was pursuing safety and innovation in tandem. That could mean working with NASA and the Federal Aviation Administration to “open up the skies in a conservative, risk-based approach.”
And Gibbens said the feedback was positive.
“I don’t think they would be holding this if they didn’t want to hear from industry leaders and make informed decisions, ” she said.
