EXCLUSIVE– Billionaire Los Angeles Times owner Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong has made headlines with his efforts to revamp his newspaper and make it a more trusted source for a broader swath of Californians and the country.
He’s also got a goal that’s more ambitious and important than anything involving the news media: curing cancer. And he’s ready to work with President Donald Trump to do it.
“Very much so,” he told Fox News Digital, when asked if he was prepared to partner with the Trump administration. “We have an opportunity as a nation.”
In addition to owning the Times, Soon-Shiong is a transplant surgeon, medical researcher and biotech entrepreneur who serves as head of NantWorks, a holding company “devoted to the transformation of healthcare and utilizing artificial intelligence to win the war against cancer and Alzheimer’s disease.”
One of his main interests now is addressing the higher incidence of cancer rates in younger people, as well as continuing his decades of work on developing a cancer vaccine. Last year, a foundational element of the vaccine called ANKTIVA was approved by the Food and Drug Administration for use on some cancer patients. Soon-Shiong said it works to enhance and “educate” the body’s natural killer cells that help fight infections.
“We have the underpinnings of a cancer vaccine and are getting as close to the cure as you can possibly be, because we for the first time understand the science,” he said.
Soon-Shiong’s career-long bid to fight cancer came up repeatedly during an interview with Fox News Digital about his newspaper ownership, which has become the subject of intense scrutiny in recent months as he made a series of moves celebrated by some as long overdue and derided by critics as meddling and harmful.
Quashing what he called an ill-considered endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris last year, bringing on conservative CNN commentator Scott Jennings to the editorial board, and calling out his own publication’s liberal lean has caused internal and external tumult. The Harris decision in particular sparked staff resignations and a reported 20,000 canceled subscriptions.
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Soon-Shiong told Fox News Digital he expected blowback to stopping the Harris endorsement and defended the move as being about valuing competence, pointing to the much-criticized local response to the devastating fires in Los Angeles as a consequence of incompetence.
His decision on the Harris endorsement prompted acidic articles about billionaire newspaper owners like him and Washington Post chief Jeff Bezos, and L.A. Times staffers have grumbled to reporters about his leadership.
He also had a contentious interview last year with ex-CNN reporter Oliver Darcy for his Status newsletter about bringing Jennings aboard, with Darcy taking exception to Soon-Shiong pushing back against the notion that then-President-elect Trump lied at an abnormal rate, and ex-L.A. Times writer Jim Newton called Soon-Shiong a poor owner and “babbling bloviator” in a piece for Columbia Journalism Review.
Past reports by Politico and STAT News have painted Soon-Shiong as smart and ambitious, but also as a self-dealer with a penchant for bluster.
Responding to the notion that he’s sought to gain favor with Trump, he said his ultimate goal came before anything else.
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“I had a good relationship with President Trump in 2016 when he was first elected,” he told Fox News Digital. “I have an ongoing good relationship. There’s no fear or whatever. I’m trying to cure cancer, and I don’t think you worry whether you’re a Republican or a Democrat when you have cancer. My goal is to cure cancer. And, you know, I launched a cancer moonshot during the Biden administration and very little happened there, sadly.”
Politically, he’s hard to pin down. He donated to Hillary Clinton’s campaign in 2016 as well as several state Democratic parties that cycle, according to federal filings, but after Trump won that year he dined with the new president-elect. He’s recently donated to Republicans, including Mike Pence’s presidential campaign in 2023.
On Tuesday, he publicly praised Robert Kennedy Jr., Trump’s lightning-rod nominee to head up the Department of Health and Human Services, saying he hoped he was confirmed. Soon-Shiong told Fox News Digital that Kennedy’s questions about what Americans eat are legitimate issues to raise.
He’s hopeful his newspaper and the media industry at large will focus more on facts and less on speculation as the second Trump administration gets underway.
“The opportunity for us to look at the factual actions rather than the rhetoric is so important and in the next four years will [be telling],” he said, later adding, “When I told our editorial board, just take a breath, don’t just jump into a conclusion based on speculation, that’s really what I mean. I think we have to stop speculating and just wait and see what really happens.”
Asked if he considered himself an ideologue or apolitical, he replied with a laugh, “I consider myself an American who’s really practical, as a surgeon with common sense … Who wants to cure cancer and to help all people.”
“An independent thinker, a critical thinker that wants to help the nation,” he added. “And look, President Trump has been elected. We should all work together to help him succeed.”