As Biden goes off on Big Tech oligarchy, here are the CEOs who will get cozy with Trump at his inauguration
Technology barons are flocking to Washington for Donald Trump’s swearing-in next week
When President Joe Biden used his farewell address on Wednesday to warn of a growing “tech industrial complex that could pose real dangers for our country,” he didn’t expressly say who he was talking about.
But with days to go until President-elect Donald Trump is sworn in for a second term, Biden’s ominous remarks about what he called a new “oligarchy” of “extreme wealth, power and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy” appeared to be a pointed swipe at centibillionaire Trump backer Elon Musk, Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg, and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, among others.
Musk, who spent roughly half a billion of his own funds to help secure Trump’s 2024 election win over Vice President Kamala Harris, is set to play an outsized role in the 47th president’s incoming administration to the point of being reportedly given a coveted office inside the Eisenhower Executive Office Building just steps from the White House.
Come Monday, he’ll also be seated on the inaugural dais at the Capitol, just steps from where Trump will place his hand on a bible and swear the presidential oath of office at noon.
Here are some of the other technology industry figures who are set to join him.
Jeff Bezos
Bezos, the founder and chairman of Amazon — the world’s largest retailer — is understood to be headed to Washington to celebrate Trump’s swearing-in. He’s also the owner and CEO of Blue Origin, a private space exploration company that just launched its massive New Glenn rocket for the first time.
The bookstore magnate turned suborbital space traveler clashed repeatedly with Trump during his first term thanks to Bezos’s ownership of The Washington Post, a point of contention that he reportedly sought to soften by ordering the Post editorial board to nix a planned endorsement of Harris last year.
Mark Zuckerberg
Zuckerberg was once firmly on Trump’s enemies list thanks to his control of Facebook and Instagram, both of which banned Trump in the wake of the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol by a riotous mob of the then-president’s supporters.
He was also a target of attacks from Trumpworld on account of his nonprofit foundation’s work to make it easier for Americans to vote during the 2020 election amid the Covid-19 pandemic.
The combination of both factors was enough to get Trump to include a threat to imprison Zuckerberg in his most recent coffee table book. And the Meta founder appears to have gotten the message.
He’s repeatedly travelled to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence to dine with the incoming president, and he recently ordered his platforms to stop fact checking user posts and nixed rules against hate speech. Both decisions were a sop to right-wing critics who have long characterized both repealed policies as censorship.
He also ordered Meta to nix internal diversity initiatives and has gone on a media tour on Trump-friendly podcasts such as the one hosted by Joe Rogan.
Satya Nadella
Nadella, the CEO of Microsoft, is another leader who has made overtures to Trump since last year’s election.
According to Semafor, he joined the president-elect, Vice president-elect JD Vance, and Elon Musk for lunch at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club this week.
Sundar Pichai
Pichai, the chief executive of Alphabet and its subsidiary Google, has also travelled to Mar-a-Lago in the weeks since the election to meet with Trump.
According to Reuters, he’ll be at the inauguration on Monday.
Tim Cook
Cook, who Trump once mistakenly referred to as “Tim Apple” during a White House event, was never an antagonist of the former turned future president. But in the months since the election, he’s reached out to the incoming leader and has donated to Trump’s inaugural fund.
Shou Chew
Perhaps none of the leaders on this list has as much at stake as Chew, whose Chinese-owned company’s video sharing app is set to be banned from American app stores on the day before Trump takes office.
According to The New York Times, Chew is set to be seated on the inaugural dais when Trump takes the oath of office next week.
The Singaporean tech executive has reportedly mounted a charm offensive to court Trump, who once called for TikTok to be banned from the U.S., by pointing out the prevalence of pro-Trump content on the soon-to-be-verboten application.
The incoming president has expressed a desire to save the app if he can, though legal experts aren’t sure if he can do so unilaterally under the law passed by Congress to effectively ban it last year.
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