A parade of tech billionaires and key members of his orbit joined President-elect Donald Trump as he kicked off his pre-inaugural celebrations with a church service on Monday morning.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg, Apple leader Tim Cook, and Google chief Sundar Pichai were seen taking their prime seats at St John’s Church.
Media tycoon Rupert Murdoch, FIFA president Gianni Infantino and former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson were also spotted at the church.
Many of these executives were among the first business world critics of Trump during his first term, speaking out on issues such as climate change and immigration.
TikTok chief executive Shou Zi Chou too is expected to attend the inauguration, as his company grapples with the fallout from a US ban, as well as Sam Altman of OpenAI and Dara Khosrowshahi of Uber.
Then of course there is SpaceX and Tesla boss Elon Musk, who spent nearly $300m helping the president campaign and has stuck closely to his side ever since.
It is a striking spectacle. The last public event in Washington to bring so many tech bosses together in the same room was a 2020 congressional hearing aimed at their companies.
Today, most of the firms still have serious outstanding matters before the US government, including anti-monopoly lawsuits, investigations, regulatory fights and tariffs.
Last week, Senator Elizabeth Warren and Michael Bennett, both Democrats, shared a letter addressed to the executives, which accused them of trying to “cozy up to the incoming Trump administration in an effort to avoid scrutiny, limit regulation and buy favor”.
“Funny they never sent me one of these for contributing to Democrats,” Mr Altman posted on social media in reply.
How enduring the tech bromance proves and how far Trump will push on many of these issues remain open questions.
But the president, who left office the first time as a kind of pariah in the business world, appears to be revelling in his new position.
As he wrote on social media last month: “Everybody wants to be my friend!!!”
Trump’s budding friendships with tech executives have not gone over well with everyone in his circle.
Former Trump White House chief strategist Steve Bannon on Sunday called Musk a “truly evil guy”, claiming he would have him “run out of here by Inauguration Day”.
“I look at this and I think most people in our movement look at this as President Trump broke the oligarchs, he broke them and they surrendered,” Bannon told ABC News.
Tech billionaires Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg were seen accompanying President-elect Donald Trump at a pre-inauguration service yesterday, sparking speculation and surprise among onlookers.
The unexpected appearance of Bezos, the CEO of Amazon, and Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, at the service raised eyebrows, as both men have been known to have had strained relationships with Trump in the past.
It is unclear what the nature of their meeting was, but some speculate that the tech moguls may be looking to mend fences with the incoming administration in order to protect their business interests.
Bezos and Zuckerberg have both been vocal critics of some of Trump’s policies and rhetoric, with Bezos even offering to send Trump to space on one of his own rockets at one point.
Whether this meeting signals a shift in their relationship with Trump remains to be seen, but it certainly adds an interesting twist to the already eventful lead-up to the inauguration.
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