Top CEOs and their companies are pledging to donate millions of dollars to President-elect Donald Trump’s inaugural committee, as they seek to get on his good side and make inroads before he takes office.
Some of the planned donations reportedly include $1 million each from Jeff Bezos’ Amazon, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Facebook parent company Meta, led by Mark Zuckerberg. Others include $2 million from Robinhood Markets and $1 million each from both Uber and its CEO, Dara Khosrowshahi.
Ford is reportedly coupling its own $1 million donation with a fleet of vehicles….
Empowered by a decisive electoral victory, Trump has vowed to revamp U.S. economic policy in a way that could have outsized benefits for a few favored industries, like fossil fuels.
At the same time, he has telegraphed the value, both personal and political, that he places on face-to-face meetings and public praise from chief executives of the world’s largest companies.
“EVERYBODY WANTS TO BE MY FRIEND!!!” Trump wrote Thursday in a post on Truth Social, the social media app run by his own tech company.
Many of those CEOs have already made, or are planning to make, trips to Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s Palm Beach, Florida, resort and de facto transition headquarters, as they seek to gain influence with and access to the incoming administration.
To that end, Trump’s inaugural committee presents a “unique opportunity,” said Brendan Glavin, director of research for the money-in-politics nonprofit OpenSecrets, in an interview….