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A parade of tech billionaires and key members of his orbit joined President-elect Donald Trump as he began his pre-inauguration festivities with a church service Monday morning.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg, Apple leader Tim Cook and Google boss Sundar Pichai were seen taking their prime seats at St John’s Church.
Media mogul 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 Trump’s first critics in the business world during his first term, speaking out on issues such as climate change and immigration.
TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chou is also expected to attend the launch as his company grapples with the fallout from the US ban, as well as OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Uber’s Dara Khosrowshahi.
Then, of course, there’s SpaceX and Tesla boss Elon Musk, who spent nearly $300 million helping the presidential campaign and has been close to him ever since.
It is an astonishing spectacle. The last public event in Washington that brought so many tech bosses in the same room was a 2020 congressional hearing targeting their companies.
Today, most of the firms still have serious outstanding issues with the US government, including antitrust cases, investigations, regulatory battles and tariffs.
Last week, Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Michael Bennet, both Democrats, shared a letter addressed to executives accusing them of trying to “coddle with the incoming Trump administration in an effort to avoid scrutiny, limit regulation and buy favour’.
“Ridiculous they never sent me one for Democratic contributions,” Mr. Altman wrote on social media in response.
How durable the tech bromance proves to be, and how far Trump will go on many of these issues, remain open questions.
But the president, who first left office as something of a pariah in the business world, seems to be relishing his new position.
As he wrote on social media last month: “Everybody wants to be my friend!!!”
Trump’s budding friendships with tech executives didn’t sit well with everyone in his circle.
Trump’s former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon on Sunday called Musk a “really evil guy,” claiming he would have him “run out of here by Inauguration Day.”
“I look at it and I think most people in our movement look at it as President Trump broke the oligarchs, he broke them and they surrendered,” Bannon told ABC News.
