What do Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg have in common? They’re all tech industry billionaires with 12-figure net worths that rival the GDPs of many countries. They also hold the top three slots on the Forbes 400 list. And as a political matter, they’ve also spent quite a bit of time — in varying degrees of genuflecting — cozying up to Donald Trump.
Their sycophantic efforts have apparently not gone unnoticed. NBC News reported:
Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg will attend President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration Monday, according to an official involved with planning the event. They will have a prominent spot at the ceremony, seated together on the platform with other notable guests, including Trump’s Cabinet nominees and elected officials.
Around the same time as the NBC News report was published, Musk confirmed online that he will, in fact, have a prominent spot at Monday’s inauguration.
In case this isn’t obvious, a presidential inaugural dais — at least in this country — usually features members of the incoming president’s family, his White House predecessors and prominent U.S. officials, including congressional leaders.
It does not traditionally feature megadonors and billionaires hoping to curry favor with the new administration. Such a display not only would’ve been unseemly in the recent past, it would also have been politically risky: Incoming presidents do not generally want to be seen as rewarding the hyper-wealthy with special political perks, especially at an important public event.
Team Trump, however, apparently doesn’t much care. It’s also worth emphasizing for context that Zuckerberg, who recently announced that he’s moving part of his Meta operation from California (a blue state) to Texas (a red state), won’t just be hanging out with powerful officials during Monday’s event. After joining Trump on the inaugural platform, the billionaire will also reportedly co-host a pro-Trump reception with Republican megadonor Miriam Adelson and Todd Ricketts, Trump’s choice for deputy secretary of commerce. As for the larger context, the latest column from The New York Times’ Ezra Klein about the president-elect and his “alliance of oligarchs” continues to ring true. Trump is now flanked by an alliance of oligarchs led by Elon Musk. The billionaire owners of The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times killed presidential endorsements of Kamala Harris, ABC News (owned by Disney) gave Trump’s “future presidential foundation and museum” $15 million to settle a defamation lawsuit Trump brought, Mark Zuckerberg is refocusing Meta platforms around “free expression” and his company against D.E.I., and Amazon reportedly paid $40 million for Melania Trump’s documentary about herself. Tim Cook, Sundar Pichai and a slew of other chief executives have recently traveled to Mar-a-Lago to dine with Trump. This differs from 2017, when Trump was treated as an aberration to be endured or a malignancy to reject. The billionaires see that the rules have changed. They are signaling their willingness to abide by them.
By playing by these new rules, Musk, Bezos and Zuckerberg will receive a special reward on Monday. What additional rewards should they expect in the coming weeks, months and years? Watch this space.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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