Why are Musk, Bezos, and Zuckerberg at Trumps inauguration?
Are you in hell or just billionaire row at Donald Trump's 2024 inauguration? Impossible to tell.
Amazon's Jeff Bezos, Meta's Mark Zuckerberg, and annoying fanboys' Elon Musk will all be attending Trump's Monday inauguration, an official told NBC News. They'll all be seated together on the platform alongside some of the president-elect's cabinet members.
Musk, who will lead the new "Department of Government Efficiency" alongside Vivek Ramaswamy, said on his platform, X, that he's "honored" to be attending. Bezos and Zuckerberg have yet to make any public statements.
This shouldn't come as a complete surprise. Tech execs have long relied on politicians to move their policies forward, and, while their relationship has been contentious with Trump, they pledged a significant amount of money in support of his administration. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman donated $1 million to Trump's inauguration fund, as did Meta and Amazon. Google CEO Sundar Pichai met with Trump and Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff said he was "turning the page" with the president elect. Famously, Musk has been simping over the president-elect for months.
Beyond monetary donations, Musk endorsed Trump for president in July. Zuckerberg aligned his content moderation policies to a more Republican take, along with lifting hate speech prohibitions, getting rid of DEI initiatives, removing tampons from men's bathrooms in Meta offices, and deleting trans and nonbinary themes on its Messenger app. Bezos, who also owns The Washington Post, decided the newspaper wouldn't endorse a presidential candidate, despite the opinion staff members who wanted to endorse Vice President Kamala Harris.
They're kissing the ring.
"It's just a recognition that there's not much to be gained in outspoken opposition, but perhaps there is something to be gained by being very clear about your support and hope that Trump does well," Margaret O'Mara, a Silicon Valley historian at the University of Washington, told NPR of the industry's take on Trump.
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We don't know exactly why Michelle Obama has decided to skip, but if she saw that guest list, I have a hunch.