Numerous tech billionaires were given premium seating spots at Donald Trump’s second inauguration on Monday, including Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
In many cases, the tech honchos sat in front of Trump’s cabinet nominees and Republican lawmakers, possibly signaling a partnership that could define his second administration.
Along with Bezos, Zuckerberg and close Trump ally Elon Musk, Apple CEO Tim Cook, Google CEO Sundar Pichai and OpenAI boss Sam Altman were in attendance.
Their open public support of Trump has differed from his previous administration, when many tech leaders treated him as a pariah, at least in public.
However, their donations — with the exception of Musk, who spent hundreds of millions to back Trump the second time — have maintained a consistent trend of playing both sides ahead of presidential elections.
A PAC supported by Meta donated almost equally to Democrats and Republicans in 2016, 2020 and 2024, according to public records cataloged at Open Secrets.
Meanwhile, while a Google PAC donated almost $200,000 more to Republicans during the 2016 campaign cycle, that difference dropped to about $33,000 by 2024. The Google PAC also donated significantly less money overall in 2024 than in 2016 or 2020.
Cook, who made his donations as an individual, gave small amounts of money to Trump in 2020 and 2024 but larger amounts to Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Joe Biden in 2020.
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