Silicon Valley’s biggest power players traded in their hoodies for suits and ties this week as they sat front and center to watch Donald Trump take the oath of office again.
Seated in front of the incoming cabinet were Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, Google’s Sundar Pichai, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, and Trump confidant and leader of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, Elon Musk.
Apple CEO Tim Cook, Sam Altman from OpenAI, and TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew also looked on.
Meet the Rich and Awful Men Who Now Own America
Most tech guys may have previously voted for Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Joe Biden, but now Donald Trump didn’t seem so bad after all—at least, not for their pocketbooks.This disaffected executive class, including many of Thiel’s fellow VCs and “PayPal Mafia” alumni, began to influence Trump’s campaign. They fundraised for the candidate and persuaded him to do things like change his mind on crypto, pick Thiel mentee J.D. Vance as his running mate, and give their own weirdo-libertarian political theories around government shrinkage and tech accelerationism a bit more consideration. The effort began paying off right after Trump won, with Crypto.com’s Kris Marszalek and Ripple’s Brad Garlinghouse—whose company is represented by a lobbying firm that once employed two incoming Trump administration appointees—meeting with the president-elect to pitch him on their ideas. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, one of this election cycle’s most potent fundraisers, will be joining a presidential dinner during the inauguration. As Trump recently put it: “EVERYBODY WANTS TO BE MY FRIEND!!!”
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