Critics to cheerleaders: Five richest men who bent their knees to Trump

The exclusive club of tech billionaires was almost unanimous in its opposition to Trump in the 2016 and 2020 election cycles. But most of them kissed Trump’s ring in 2024 as he won a second term.

Tech billionaires Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk attend Donald Trump’s inauguration as the 47th US president in the rotunda of the Capitol in Washington DC on January 20, 2025. Photo: Reuters
Reuters

Tech billionaires Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk attend Donald Trump’s inauguration as the 47th US president in the rotunda of the Capitol in Washington DC on January 20, 2025. Photo: Reuters

US billionaires have traditionally sided with the Republican Party. But the trend has been different for the hippie-dippie billionaires from the tech sector, which “overwhelmingly” supported Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Joe Biden in 2020.

In fact, the small cohort of tech billionaires remained nearly unanimous in its opposition to Trump in the 2016 and 2020 election cycles.

Some of them expressed shock and confusion at Trump’s election in 2016, while others devoted countless tweets to tearing down Trump’s provocative pronouncements like a ban on Muslims from entering the US.

Some tech billionaires took an unusually bold stance and banned Trump from their social media platforms.

But all that bad blood is a thing of the past with Trump entering the White House again for a second term.

In a stark reversal from eight years ago when he first won the White House, Trump has now been fully embraced by tech executives and founders.

“In the first term, everybody was fighting. In this term, everybody wants to be my friend,” Trump said, while noting the outreach from the business community as “one of the big differences” from his first term.

In particular, five of the richest tech billionaires – Elon Musk of Tesla, Bill Gates of Microsoft, Mark Zuckerberg of Meta, Jeff Bezos of Amazon and Sergey Brin of Google – have taken a 180-degree turn from being staunch opponents of Trump to his most enthusiastic cheerleaders.

The five men are among the 10 richest people in the world, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. They have so much wealth amassed that even if they lost 99 percent of it overnight, they would still be worth more than a billion dollars each.

Three of these five billionaires attended the presidential inauguration ceremony on January 20 in Washington DC.

In the words of former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon, tech billionaires’ attendance at the inauguration is a sign of their “official surrender” to Trump.

“As soon as (Mark) Zuckerberg said, ‘I’ve been invited. I’m going,’ the floodgates opened up and they were all there knocking, trying to be supplicants… President Trump broke the oligarchs, he broke them and they surrendered,” Bannon said.

Here’s a quick look at how these tech billionaires have fallen in line with Trump as he retook Washington after a definitive victory in presidential and Congressional elections in November.

Musk: influencer-in-chief

Musk’s outsized sway on Trump and his incoming administration showcases the interplay between corporate power and political influence.

Musk’s authorised biographer Walter Isaacson wrote in the 2023 book Elon Musk that the tech billionaire was originally liberal on social issues and contributed to the presidential campaigns of Barack Obama and then Hillary Clinton.

In fact, Musk was a “vocal critic” of Trump ahead of the 2016 election.

“(Trump) doesn’t seem to have the sort of character that reflects well on the United States,” Musk told a TV channel at the time.

But Musk changed gears after Trump won the presidency in 2016.

The bonhomie reached a feverish pitch in 2024. In addition to pouring millions of dollars into Trump’s campaign, Musk fully leveraged his social media platform X as well as his public image to sway voters towards the Republican Party.

Since acquiring X, Musk has used it to amplify pro-Trump narratives, often sharing his own endorsements and engaging with Trump directly on the platform.

This digital megaphone has been instrumental in shaping public discourse in the US, especially among Musk’s 208 million X followers, who view him as a self-styled champion of free speech.

Trump has tasked Musk with a semi-formal role in a yet-to-be-formally-created Department of Government Efficiency. This role will allow Musk to influence how government spending is managed, potentially aligning federal policies with his business interests.

Musk and Trump have vowed to reduce government bureaucracy, cut regulations and restructure federal agencies — objectives that can directly benefit Musk’s businesses like electric automaker Tesla and rocket firm SpaceX by easing regulatory burdens and securing favourable government contracts.

Though Trump said that Musk's role in the government will not have any conflict of interest, the net worth of the Tesla founder has increased by almost $186 billion to $450 billion since the first week of November.

That’s because Tesla is expected to benefit from a national regulatory framework for self-driving cars, rather than the patchwork of rules that currently exists.

Similarly, SpaceX will benefit from a continued flow — or perhaps even an increase — in federal funding for its interstellar projects.

Reuters

Tech billionaire Elon Musk gestures at the podium inside the Capital One arena on the inauguration day of Donald Trump's second presidential term in Washington DC on January 20, 2025. Photo: Reuters

Brin: The reluctant supporter

The relationship between Trump and Brin, a co-founder of Google, was initially marred by public dissent. Brin described Trump’s 2016 win as “deeply offensive” and “stressful”.

“As an immigrant and a refugee, I certainly find this election deeply offensive… I think it’s a very stressful time. It conflicts with many of our values,” he said in a private listening session of Google, which was taped the day after the 2016 election.

Trump was quick to hit back. “Google is crooked, election interference machine. Totally illegal, they will pay a big price for what they are doing!”

Google further alienated the Trump camp by pulling Parler, a social media app for far-right extremists, from its app store.

YouTube, Google’s video-sharing platform, removed the clip that Trump posted in 2021 about the January 6 riots in the Capitol building by his supporters without fully condemning it.

But Brin seems to have set aside his dislike of Trump and fully embraced his politics. He dined with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago home last December along with other notable tech CEOs and founders.

Afterwards, Google donated $1 million to an inauguration fund for Trump.

‘Masculine’ Zuckerberg

Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta – the company that owns Facebook and WhatsApp – often found himself at odds with the administration during Trump’s first term in the White House.

For example, Zuckerberg publicly criticised Trump’s executive order limiting immigrants and refugees from certain countries in January 2017.

Tensions escalated following the events of January 6, 2021, when Trump’s supporters attacked the Capitol building in Washington DC in an attempt to stop the ratification of the 2020 presidential election.

Meta suspended Trump’s accounts on Facebook and Instagram, citing the risk of further incitement of violence – a decision that underscored the strained relationship between Zuckerberg and Trump after his presidency.

However, signs of a thaw emerged in the run-up to the 2024 presidential election. In November 2024, Zuckerberg dined with Trump at the Mar-a-Lago resort, signalling efforts to mend their relationship.

Subsequently, Meta donated $1 million to Trump’s fund for the inauguration ceremony in a gesture of support.

At the same time, Meta implemented policy changes that aligned the company and its CEO with the emerging political landscape. He announced the discontinuation of professional fact-checking in favour of a community-based system preferred by the Republican Party.

Zuckerberg also announced rolling back the company’s efforts to increase diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programmes that have been a constant target of Trump’s disparagement.

In a surprising move, Zuckerberg appointed Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) CEO Dana White, a close Trump ally, to Meta’s board in a move apparently aimed at improving ties with the president.

“Zuckerberg’s display of fealty came after Trump threatened to throw him in prison for life if the president-elect came to believe he interfered in the election,” according to Blake Montgomery, tech editor for Guardian US.

Meta also stands to gain from a friendly Trump administration as the company has been accused by the US government of unfair and monopolistic business practices.

Reuters

Zuckerberg recently appointed Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) CEO Dana White, a close Trump ally, to Meta’s board in a move apparently aimed at improving ties with the president. Photo: Reuters

Bezos: from foe to friend

The relationship between Trump and Bezos, founder of Amazon and owner of The Washington Post, has been marked by nasty public disputes.

The discord between Bezos and Trump became particularly evident during the 2016 presidential campaign. Trump frequently targeted Bezos on social media, accusing Amazon of unfair business practices, such as tax avoidance and exploiting the US Postal Service.

He also criticised Bezos-owned The Washington Post for its coverage, suggesting that the billionaire used the newspaper as a lobbying tool to protect Amazon’s interests.

Bezos responded with a cheeky tweet that offered to send Trump to space.

Their rivalry extended into the business realm, particularly concerning government contracts. In 2018, Amazon was a leading contender for a $10 billion defence contract.

But the contract was awarded to Microsoft in 2019, prompting Amazon to file a lawsuit, alleging that Trump’s personal animosity toward Bezos influenced the decision.

The lawsuit claimed that Trump’s interference stemmed from his “repeated public and behind-the-scenes attacks” against Amazon and Bezos.

Late last year, Bezos dined with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort. Following the dinner, Bezos expressed optimism about Trump's return to office, saying “I’m actually very optimistic about another Trump term.”

Amazon donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund.

Gates bows down to Trump

The tense relationship between Trump and Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft and one of the world’s richest philanthropists, probably began in 2018.

At a Gates Foundation event, the man with a net worth of $162 billion publicly talked about Trump’s poor understanding of key scientific concepts.

Gates has long been a vocal advocate for environmental causes, vaccination and pandemic preparedness. In contrast, Trump has often been dismissive of scientific consensus.

Gates emerged as a leading voice calling for coordinated international efforts to combat COVID-19 when it started spreading in early 2020. But Trump chose to downplay the severity of the virus and promoted unorthodox treatments.

Trump’s subsequent decision to withdraw the US from the World Health Organization (WHO) in 2020, citing alleged mismanagement and favouritism towards China, drew criticism from Gates.

In a social media post, Gates called the decision “as dangerous as it sounds”.

With the election of Trump for the second term in November 2024, however, Gates seems to have softened his stance towards the incoming president.

He held a three-hour-long meeting with the president recently. He said he was “frankly impressed” with Trump’s interest in global health issues during their “long and actually quite intriguing dinner.”

Microsoft donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund.

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