Media mogul who called for prayers backing Trump holds White House meeting

The billionaire head of a Berlin-based global mass media behemoth that owns influential outlets including Politico, reportedly met with White House chief of staff Susie Wiles on Wednesday.

Mathias Döpfner serves as chairman and CEO of Axel Springer SE, a publishing group that operates in dozens of countries and counts U.S. private equity firm KKR — co‑founded by Republican donor Henry Kravis — among its principal owners. According to Forbes, Kravis gave one million dollars to Donald Trump's 2017 inauguration committee.

In the U.S., Axel Springer also publishes Business Insider and Morning Brew.

New York Times media reporter Ben Mullin reported that Wiles met with Döpfner in, according to a source, "an introductory, get-to-know-you meeting."

The meeting comes just one day after President Donald Trump delivered his controversial State of the Union address and less than nine months before the midterm elections.

Döpfner sent an email to his top executives before the 2020 election, asking if they would like to join him to pray for the re-election of Donald Trump, according to reports. The email came one year before Axel Springer sealed the deal to purchase Politico.

“Do we all want to get together for an hour in the morning on November 3 and pray that Donald Trump will again become President of the United States of America?” Döpfner wrote in the email, The Daily Beast reported, citing an article in The Washington Post.

“No American administration in the last 50 years has done more,” Döpfner added.

“When asked about the message,” The Daily Beast reported, “Döpfner initially denied it existed, going so far as to say: ‘It has never been sent and has never been even imagined.’ When confronted with a printout of the email, he explained that he may have sent it ‘as an ironic, provocative statement in the circle of people that hate Donald Trump.’ ‘That is me,’ he added. ‘That could be.'”

In a 2022 analysis titled "The Scandalous History of America’s Newest Media Baron," Foreign Policy reported: “The new owner of Politico, Axel Springer, has a decades-long record of bending journalistic ethics for right-wing causes.”