WASHINGTON: US tech multibillionaires \u2014 including Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and Jeff Bezos \u2014 were given prime positions at Donald Trump\u2019s inauguration on Monday, in an unprecedented demonstration of their power and influence in the White House.<\/p>\n
The tech tycoons, whose companies are among the world\u2019s most valuable, have spent the ten weeks since the election courting favour with Trump, marking a dramatic shift from Silicon Valley\u2019s more hostile response to his first term four years ago.<\/p>\n
Attendees also included Apple CEO Tim Cook and Google CEO Sundar Pichai, along with the search engine\u2019s founder Sergey Brin. TikTok CEO Shou Chew sat in the back row of the stage, even as his platform\u2019s future remains uncertain. TikTok on Sunday credited Trump for promising an executive order to save the app from a US ban, though its fate in the United States remains unclear while under Chinese company ByteDance\u2019s ownership, in defiance of a US law.<\/p>\n
Despite highly limited seating after the ceremony moved indoors due to bad weather, Meta CEO Zuckerberg attended with his wife Priscilla Chan, while Amazon executive Bezos was accompanied by his fiance, Lauren Sanchez.<\/p>\n
Their prominent positions on the inauguration stage \u2014 more visible than many cabinet members \u2014 was particularly notable for Zuckerberg, whom Trump had threatened with life imprisonment just months ago. Zuckerberg recently made headlines by brashly aligning his company\u2019s policies with Trump\u2019s worldview, notably by eliminating fact-checking in the United States and relaxing hate speech restrictions on Facebook and Instagram.<\/p>\n
Musk has shown the strongest support for Trump, contributing $277 million to the president\u2019s campaign and transforming his X platform into an amplifier for pro-Trump voices. Bezos, like Zuckerberg and his peers, has visited Trump\u2019s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida leading up to the inauguration, with favourable treatment, government contracts and reduced regulatory scrutiny for Amazon in the balance.<\/p>\n
As owner of The Washington Post, Bezos sparked controversy by blocking the newspaper\u2019s planned endor\u00adsement of Vice President Kamala Harris for the 2024 presidential election, triggering newsroom protests and subscriber cancellations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
WASHINGTON: US tech multibillionaires \u2014 including Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and Jeff Bezos \u2014 were given prime positions at Donald Trump\u2019s inauguration on Monday, in an unprecedented demonstration of their power and influence in the White House. The tech tycoons, whose companies are among the world\u2019s most valuable, have spent the ten weeks since the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4916,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4915","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4915","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4915"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4915\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4917,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4915\/revisions\/4917"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4916"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}