A parade of tech billionaires and key members of his orbit joined President-elect Donald Trump as he kicked off pre-inaugural celebrations with a church service Monday morning.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg, Apple chief Tim Cook and Google boss Sundar Pichai had been seen taking their foremost seats in St. John’s Church.
Media mogul Rupert Murdoch, FIFA president Gianni Infantino and former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson had been additionally noticed on the church.
Many of those executives had been among the many first to criticize Trump within the enterprise world throughout his first time period, talking out on points corresponding to local weather change and immigration.
TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chou can also be anticipated to attend the inauguration as his firm grapples with the fallout from a US ban, as are OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Uber’s Dara Khosrowshahi.
Then in fact there may be the top of SpaceX and Tesla, Elon Musk, who spent nearly $300 million to assist the presidential marketing campaign and has remained by his aspect ever since.
It’s an incredible sight. The final public occasion in Washington that introduced so many tech chiefs collectively in the identical room was a 2020 congressional listening to aimed toward their corporations.
Today, most corporations nonetheless have severe issues pending earlier than the U.S. authorities, together with anti-monopoly lawsuits, investigations, regulatory fights, and tariffs.
Last week, Senators Elizabeth Warren and Michael Bennett, each Democrats, shared a letter to the executives accusing them of making an attempt to “coy with the brand new Trump administration in an effort to keep away from scrutiny, restrict regulation, and purchase favors.” .
“Strange they by no means despatched me one for contributing to Democrats,” Altman wrote in response on social media.
How long-lasting the tech bromance will show to be and the way far Trump will go on many of those points stay open questions.
But the president, who first left workplace as one thing of a pariah within the enterprise world, seems to be having fun with his new place.
As he wrote on social media final month: “Everyone needs to be my pal!!!”
Trump’s budding friendships with tech executives have not gone down properly with everybody in his circle.
Trump’s former chief White House strategist Steve Bannon on Sunday known as Musk a “really evil man,” claiming he would have him “run out of right here by Inauguration Day.”
“I have a look at it and I feel most individuals in our motion have a look at it as President Trump broke the oligarchs, he broke them they usually gave up,” Bannon instructed ABC News.
