Elon Musk (Tesla, SpaceX, of American television NBC. “They will take pride of place during the ceremony, sitting together on the dais with other distinguished guests, including members of the cabinet.”
The three emblematic personalities of American tech have courted the president-elect in recent months, with varying degrees of fervor. Elon Musk became essential during the Republican’s electoral campaign, to which he contributed significantly with massive financial donations and political meetings. He obtained an extra-governmental mission of deregulation and reduction of public spending.
Spectacular turnaround for Bezos and Zuckerberg
The turnaround is more recent for Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg. The founder and chairman of the board of Amazon, fought against the first Trump administration over large defense contracts awarded to Microsoft, its rival in the cloud. This time, Jeff Bezos – who also has a space company, Blue Origin, lagging behind SpaceX – adopted a different posture. He prevented the Washington Postwhich he owns, to support Democratic candidate Kamala Harris. And Amazon paid a million dollars for the president-elect’s inauguration ceremony.
Mark Zuckerberg seemed the lowest in Donald Trump’s estimation. This summer again, the former president of the United States threatened to jail the boss of Meta (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp) if he won the election. He criticized him for Facebook’s decision to ban him at the beginning of 2021, after the storming of the capitol by his fans.
But since his victory, Mark Zuckerberg has multiplied his advances: he has had dinner with him, appointed several of his allies to key positions, put an end to programs (anti-disinformation, pro-diversity) highly criticized by conservatives and relaxed the rules of content moderation on Facebook and Instagram, following the example of X.
Our file on Donald Trump
Musk, Bezos and Zuckerberg – in that order – are also the three richest men in the world, according to Bloomberg and Forbes. While their combined fortunes are worth “nearly a trillion dollars, […] 60% of Americans have no savings at all,” Senator Bernie Sanders protested on Tuesday. “Income and wealth inequality have never been greater in American history,” he said.
