Billionaires lined up for Donald Trump’s inauguration
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Days after Donald Trump took office for the last time in 2017, Google co-founder Sergey Brin joined the protests against the new administration’s immigration policies, saying they threatened America’s “fundamental values.”
On Monday, he joined more than a dozen billionaires in Trump’s second term as prime minister, applauding the man who pledged to deport millions of immigrants, crack down on political opponents of US justice allies and launch higher tariffs.
Trump’s inauguration ceremony at the US Capitol highlighted the president’s deep ties to industry titans and the business leaders he has previously scorned. Four of the world’s five richest people are more prominent than their own cabinet members, and some of their spouses sit at the expense of governors and members of Congress.
Elon Musk, a former Joe Biden supporter who spent a quarter of a billion dollars to elect Trump, has joined the tumultuous meta Mark Zuckerberg, who this month scrapped fact-checking as a sacrifice for peace on social media platforms. In support of Trump and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, the newspaper’s editorial board has suspended its endorsement of Kamala Harris.
Meters away are European billionaire Bernard Arnault, head of the LVMH luxury goods empire, India’s Mukesh Ambani and Apple CEO Tim Cook, among others. Tech executives donated $1 million to Trump early in the process. He joined cabinet nominees who are billionaires in their own right, including Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Treasury nominee Scott Bessant.
“The man is the power,” Trump of Lutnick said Monday at the Capital One Forum, where supporters of the president gathered to watch him take the oath of office.
He was followed by Lutnick, who received thunderous applause when he promised to help usher in a “golden age” of Trump. The billionaire made two straight-armed gestures to the crowd that many observers saw as a fascist salute.
Demonstrating Musk’s power and influence, the crowd also cheered Trump’s promise to send astronauts to Mars — a move that benefits Musk’s SpaceX and is considered wasteful and unnecessary by scientists in the US government.
Such displays of corporate power have been frowned upon by some members of Trump’s core ‘mega’ support base. Steve Bannon, Trump’s former chief strategist, this week hit out at Mook and the tech moguls in the president’s orbit, calling Biden an “oligarch” who was “created by the Democratic Party and the lords of easy money.”
Democrats were also quick to use the spectacle at the inauguration to undermine Trump’s public profile, with the Democratic National Committee “literally leaving their own supporters out in the cold and giving billionaires worth more than a ton a front-row seat,” the president said. He has always shown that he “puts himself and his super-rich supporters before the American people.”
Inside Capitol One Arena, where Trump supporters gathered to watch his inauguration on Monday, the billionaire’s presence — not by the puppet masters but by many Maga loyalists — was seen as a plea.
Minnesota farmer Cheri Fiedler hopes the rise of tech billionaires will mean “all censorship will go away,” and predicts diversity, equity and inclusion policies will be scrapped at the world’s biggest companies with a Trump win.
“Many of those business leaders . . . Missouri accountant Paul Kirby, who traveled to Washington for the ceremony, added on Trump. “All those leaders were basically on their knees . . .[Trump took control]He got his power back.
