Multibillionaire investor and prominent Hillary Clinton booster Warren Buffett backed President-elect Donald Trump on Saturday, telling CNN in an interview that it was important that a deeply divided electorate "coalesce" around the newly elected leader of the free world.

Calling the 2016 general election "like no other I've ever seen" in more than 50 years as a voter, the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway acknowledged that both the Democratic and Republican nominees had a large number of "negative voters"—or people casting ballots for one candidate in opposition to the other.

That said, he called on the fractured public to come together behind Trump.

"It's important people coalesce behind the next president of the United States," Buffett told CNN, even as he raised doubts about his economic plans and business acumen.

"That doesn't mean they can't criticize him or disagree with what he's doing maybe, but we need a country unified [behind] the legitimacy of the president," Buffett said.

Even as anti-Trump protests roil cities across the country and participants reject Trump's legitimacy, Buffett added that the real estate mogul "deserves everybody's respect."



Trump rose to power on a wave of working-class resentment against free trade and the market economy—tenets Buffett backed in his interview with CNN.

This system will produce more and more stuff" regardless of who's in the White House, Buffett said, even as he acknowledged the economy as being "softer than people think."

Buffett added: "The market system works, but it doesn't work for everybody. it works in the aggregate."