In a string of visits, dinners, calls, monetary pledges and social media overtures, big tech chiefs — including Apple’s Tim Cook
, OpenAI’s Sam Altman
, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg
, SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son
and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos
— have joined a parade of business and world leaders in trying to improve their standing with President-elect Donald Trump before he takes office in January.
“The first term, everybody was fighting me,” Trump said in remarks at Mar-a-Lago
. “In this term, everybody wants to be my friend.”
Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff
Tech companies and leaders have now poured
millions into his inauguration fund, a sharp increase — in most cases — from past pledges to incoming presidents. But what does the tech industry expect to gain out of their renewed relationships with Trump?
During an interview Tuesday, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff said the incoming Trump administration seems more interested in hearing about issues that are important to the industry than the Biden administration.
“Put all the politics aside, everybody wants to reboot some things,” said Benioff, who stressed he strives to stay nonpartisan because he also owns Time magazine. ”We are just at a very exciting moment, it’s a new chapter for America. I think we should all have our best intentions going forward. I think a lot of people realize there is a lot of incredible people like Elon Musk in the tech industry and in the business community. If you tap the power and expertise of the best in America to make the best of America, that’s a great vision.”
Clearing the way for AI development
A clue to what the industry is looking for came just days before the election when Microsoft executives — who’ve largely tried to show a neutral or bipartisan stance — joined with a close Trump ally, venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, to publish a blog post
outlining their approach to artificial intelligence policy.
“Regulation should be implemented only if its benefits outweigh its costs,” said the document signed by Andreessen, his business partner Ben Horowitz, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and the company’s president, Brad Smith.
They also urged the government to back off on any attempt to strengthen copyright laws that would make it harder for companies to use publicly available data to train their AI systems. And they said, “the government should examine its procurement practices to enable more startups to sell technology to the government.”
Trump has pledged to rescind President Joe Biden’s sweeping AI executive order, which sought to protect people’s rights and safety without stifling innovation. He hasn’t specified what he would do in its place, but his campaign said AI development should be “rooted in Free Speech and Human Flourishing.”
Easier energy for data centers
Trump’s choice to head the Interior Department, North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, has spoken openly about the need to boost electricity production to meet increased demand from data centers and artificial intelligence.
North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum
“The AI battle affects everything from defense to healthcare to education to productivity as a country,″ Burgum said on Nov. 15, referring to artificial intelligence. “And the AI that’s coming in the next 18 months is going to be revolutionary. So there’s just a sense of urgency and a sense of understanding in the Trump administration″ to address it.
Demand for data centers ballooned in recent years
due to the rapid growth of cloud computing and AI, and local governments are competing for lucrative deals with big tech companies.
But as data centers begin to consume more resources, some residents are pushing back against the world’s most powerful corporations over concerns about the economic, social and environmental health of their communities.
Changing the antitrust discussion
“Maybe Big Tech should buy a copy of ‘The Art of The Deal’ to figure out how to best negotiate with this administration,” suggested Paul Swanson, an antitrust attorney for the law firm Holland & Hart. “I won’t be surprised if they find ways to reach some accommodations and we end up seeing more negotiated resolutions and consent decrees.”
Although federal regulators began cracking down on Google and Facebook during Trump’s first term as president — and flourished under Biden — most experts expect his second administration to ease up on antitrust enforcement
and be more receptive to business mergers.
Google may benefit from Trump’s return after he made comments on the campaign trail suggesting a breakup of the company
isn’t in the U.S. national interest, after a judge declared its search engine an illegal monopoly
. But recent nominations put forward by his transition team have favored those who have been critical of Big Tech companies, suggesting Google won’t be entirely off the hook.
Fending off the EU
Cook’s notoriously rocky relationship with the EU can be traced back to a 2016 ruling from Brussels in a tax case targeting Apple. Cook slammed the bloc’s order for Apple to pay back up to 13 billion euros ($13.7 billion) in Irish back taxes as “total political crap.”
Trump, then in his first term as president, piled on, referring to the European Commissioner Margrethe Vestager, who was spearheading a campaign on special tax deals and a crackdown on Big Tech companies, as someone who “really hates the U.S.”
Brussels was eventually vindicated
after the bloc’s top court rejected Apple’s appeal this year, though it didn’t stop Cook from calling Trump to complain, Trump recounted in a podcast
in October.
Making amends?
Altman
, Amazon and Meta all pledged to donate $1 million each to Trump’s inaugural fund.
Salesforce’s Benioff said Tuesday that he won’t be donating money to the inauguration because of his ties to Time, which named Trump
as its “Person of The Year” — a decision that landed picture of the president elect on the magazine’s cover. “I think we just donated that photo,” Benioff said as he chuckled. “He can use the Time magazine cover for free.”
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos
During his first term, Trump criticized Amazon and railed against the political coverage at The Washington Post, which billionaire Bezos owns. Meanwhile, Bezos had criticized some of Trump’s past rhetoric. In 2019, Amazon also argued in a court case that Trump’s bias against the company harmed its chances of winning a $10 billion Pentagon contract.
More recently, Bezos has struck a more conciliatory tone. He recently said at The New York Times’ DealBook Summit in New York that he was “optimistic” about Trump’s second term, while also endorsing president-elect’s plans to cut regulations.
During the 2024 campaign, Zuckerberg did not endorse a candidate for president, but voiced a more positive stance toward Trump. Earlier this year, he praised Trump’s response to his first assassination attempt. Still, Trump in recent months had continued to attack Zuckerberg publicly.
And Altman, who is in a legal dispute with AI rival Elon Musk, has said he is “not that worried”
about the Tesla CEO’s influence in the incoming administration. Musk, an early OpenAI investor and board member, sued the company earlier this year alleging that the maker of ChatGPT betrayed its founding aims of benefiting the public good rather than pursuing profits.
What about Elon Musk?
“We have two multi-billionaires, Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, who are tasked with cutting what they’re saying will be multiple trillions of dollars from the federal budget, reducing the civil service, the workforce,” said Rob Lalka, a business professor at Tulane University.
Musk, he said, has a level of access to the White House that very few others have had — access that allows him to potentially influence
multiple policy areas, including foreign policy, automotive and energy policy through EVs, and tech policy on artificial intelligence.
“Elon Musk walked into Twitter’s headquarters with a sink and then posted, ‘let that sink in,‘” he said. “Elon Musk then posted a status update on X, a picture of himself with a sink in the Oval Office and said, ‘Let that sink in.′”
While millions of Americans gathered with friends and family to celebrate Christmas, Donald Trump and his co-president and benefactor, Elon Musk, spent the holiday glued to social media, writing unhinged, mean-spirited, and downright bizarre posts.
Trump’s social media bender began bright and early Christmas morning with a normal “MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL!
” message on his failing social media platform, Truth Social.
From there it all went downhill.
He fired off dozens of Truth Social posts. Some were fairly normal-for-Trump self-promotional ones, with links to right-wing media outlets urging the Senate to confirm the unqualified
lunatics he’s nominated to his Cabinet, but others? They featured vindictive messages against perceived enemies or responded to negative press.
For example, he posted
an image of a five-day-old Musk post
on X that suggests Trump is not happy about the narrative that Musk is in charge.
“The political & legacy media puppets all got their new instructions yesterday and are now parroting the same message to drive a wedge between @realDonaldTrump and me,” the Musk post Trump screenshotted says. “They will fail.”
The father of five adults and grandfather of 10
also posted a meme
of former President Barack Obama looking on at a smiling Trump at Trump’s 2017 inauguration with the text “When you see the guy who said ‘you’ll never be president’ at your inauguration.”
But the pièce de resistance is a two
–part
, lie-filled rant sarcastically offering holiday greetings to people he hates.
Read it and weep, literally:
Merry Christmas to all, including to the wonderful soldiers of China, who are lovingly, but illegally, operating the Panama Canal (where we lost 38,000 people in its building 110 years ago), always making certain that the United States puts in Billions of Dollars in “repair” money, but will have absolutely nothing to say about “anything.” Also, to Governor Justin Trudeau of Canada, whose Citizens’ Taxes are far too high, but if Canada was to become our 51st State, their Taxes would be cut by more than 60%, their businesses would immediately double in size, and they would be militarily protected like no other Country anywhere in the World. Likewise, to the people of Greenland, which is needed by the United States for National Security purposes and, who want the U.S. to be there, and we will!
Merry Christmas to the Radical Left Lunatics, who are constantly trying to obstruct our Court System and our Elections, and are always going after the Great Citizens and Patriots of the United States but, in particular, their Political Opponent, ME. They know that their only chance of survival is getting pardons from a man who has absolutely no idea what he is doing. Also, to the 37 most violent criminals, who killed, raped, and plundered like virtually no one before them, but were just given, incredibly, a pardon by Sleepy Joe Biden. I refuse to wish a Merry Christmas to those lucky “souls” but, instead, will say, GO TO HELL! We had the Greatest Election in the History of our Country, a bright light is now shining over the U.S.A. and, in 26 days, we will, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN. MERRY CHRISTMAS!
Of course, Biden did not pardon 37 death row inmates. He commuted their sentences
, which means they will spend their lives in prison rather than be executed.
Trump’s Yuletide post also seems to threaten Democrats who investigated Trump’s unlawful conduct in office, as well as the prosecutors who sought indictments for Trump’s actions, saying ominously that, “they know their only chance of survival is getting pardons from a man who has absolutely no idea what he is doing.”
After getting that off his chest, Trump then posted a gif
of himself in a Santa hat on a present-filled sleigh doing his embarrassing dance
, as well as another post that applauded his ridiculous Christmas rant. The post
was from @MagaVoice, which said Trump’s two-part Truth Social doozy was “literally Trump at his best.”
Musk, meanwhile, spent his time posting memes and other weird images on his disinformation platform X.
He posted one picture of himself dressed as Santa Claus in front of a Christmas tree with the caption “Ozempic Santa
,” before writing in a subsequent post that he is actually on Moujnaro
, a different GLP1 drug that helps aid diabetics and others struggling with obesity with weight loss.
In another he posted a gif
of himself doing his cringey jump at a Trump campaign rally.
And in another, he posted a comic
of a man starting to say “Happy Holidays” before an angry-looking Santa Claus slaps him while yelling “It’s Merry Christmas!” Republicans wrongly believe that you can’t say “Merry Christmas” when Democrats are in office, even though that’s obviously not true.
There was one sign of self-awareness, however, when Musk, a father of 11—all but five of them under the age of 9
—re-posted a meme
of a woman holding a sign that says “Guess who is looking at memes instead of spending time with their family.”
The insane social media posts are just another sign of the stupidity that is to come when Trump is sworn in on Jan. 20.
The childish posts were in stark contrast to President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, who continued their lifelong streaks of behaving like normal adult humans.
Biden posted a photo
of himself and first lady Jill Biden in front of a Christmas tree with a simple “Merry Christmas, everyone!”
Biden also posted a photo of himself and Jill lighting a menorah
, as the first night of Hannukah coincided with Christmas for the first time in years.
Harris, meanwhile, posted a photo
of her and second gentleman Doug Emhoff speaking with troops deployed overseas, as well as a video
of her and Emhoff, who is Jewish, lighting a menorah.
“The story of Hanukkah reminds us that even in darkness, we can find the light. May the next eight nights of reflection bring you hope, joy, and love. Happy Hanukkah,” Harris wrote.
The story of Hanukkah reminds us that even in darkness, we can find the light. May the next eight nights of reflection bring you hope, joy, and love. Happy Hanukkah. pic.twitter.com/krqPTyVlwk
We could have had a normal president, but instead Americans chose two childish man-children to lead the free world. As the Yiddish saying goes, what a shanda.
For anyone wondering what the second Donald Trump administration will look like in practice, look no further than the Lone Star State. Under Gov. Greg Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton, Texas has already perfected the art of using all levers of government to force unpopular policies on its citizens.
Take, for example, imposing religion upon schoolchildren. Well, just theone religion. In November, the Texas State Board of Education voted to approve a new elementary school curriculum that the Texas Observer politely characterized as
“Bible-infused.” How Bible-infused, exactly? When first-graders learn about the Liberty Bell, they’ll also learn
that “God told Moses about the laws he wanted his people to follow.” Fifth-graders studying Leonardo da Vinci’s “The Last Supper” will be challenged to consider “how the disciples may have felt upon hearing Jesus telling them about his betrayal and death.”
Republicans are quick to tell critics that schools don’t have to adopt the curriculum, but they get an extra $60 per pupil if they do. Since Texas fails to adequately fund
schools and districts keep having to tighten their belts
by cutting staff, eliminating services, and reducing department budgets, that $60 per pupil is desperately needed.
At least Texas hasn’t followed the lead of Oklahoma in that state’s quest
to require a Trump Bible in every classroom.
Notably, to get this change through, Abbott had to engage in some trickery. Members of the school board are elected, and earlier this year, Aicha Davis, a Democrat who was on the board, won
a Texas House seat. Voters in her district elected another Democrat, Tiffany Clark, to fill the seat. But rather than seat Clark, Abbott handpicked a Republican, Leslie Recine, to fill the seat until the end of the year. Recine was the deciding vote in favor of the curriculum.
Abbott has also tied the fortunes of Texas public schools to the legislation’s embrace of vouchers, functionally starving education funding until the state legislature agrees to enact
a school voucher program. Requiring federal tax dollars to be shifted from public schools to private ones—especially religious schools—is a key goal of Project 2025
, and Trump’s pick for the Department of Education, the comically-underqualified Linda McMahon, is a big fan
.
It’s not just the Texas GOP’s approach to education that Trump will subject the rest of the country to. Trump has made very clear that he plans to use the full weight of the federal government to attack companies he doesn’t like or he thinks are too “woke.” Expect Kash Patel to use the FBI to make good on his threat to “come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens” and Brendan Carr to use the FCC
to attack broadcasters
.
Ken Paxton has been a trailblazer in weaponizing state government to engage in these sorts of attacks. In 2023, he opened an investigation
into Media Matters for reporting
—correctly!—that ads from major companies were running alongside white nationalist and antisemitic posts since Elon Musk bought Twitter and turned it into X. That isn’t the only time Paxton has decided to use his power to do Musk’s bidding.
Donald Trump, right, shakes hands with Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton at a campaign rally on Saturday, Oct. 22, 2022, in Robstown, Texas.
Last month, Paxton announced
an investigation into what he’s calling a “possible conspiracy” by companies to boycott “certain social media platforms.” You get one guess which social media platform Paxton is concerned about. Indeed, Paxton’s inquiry is identical to
Musk’s lawsuit earlier this year accusing the Global Alliance for Responsible Media of violating antitrust laws by working with brands who pulled their advertising from X once Musk started turning it into a Nazi bar. Musk’s lawsuit already wiped out GARM, a nonprofit that didn’t have the resources to continue to fight X in court, but Paxton is still going after them.
Texas has also led the way in finding innovative ways to attack reproductive health rights, which Trump is sure to go after. Back before the Supreme Court threw out Roe v. Wade, Texas passed SB8, which gave private citizens the right to sue anyone who aided or abetted an abortion—and get at least $10,000
in damages if they won. This allowed the state to sidestep the fact that abortion was still legal, as it could say that it was neither banning abortion nor taking any government action to stop someone from having one.
SB8 was the brainchild of Texas attorney Jonathan Mitchell, a rabidly anti-choice lawyer who also represented Trump
in his lawsuit against Colorado after that state kicked him off the 2024 ballot. Mitchell is also a key proponent
of using the Comstock Act to make it a crime to ship abortion pills—regardless of whether those pills were destined for a state where abortion is legal. This would result in a de facto abortion ban, as medication abortions account for 63%
of all abortions, and states without bans could not have pills shipped to them legally. Mitchell has even bragged
that if the Comstock Act were used in this way, Republicans wouldn’t even need a federal ban.
Project 2025’s authors are fans
of the idea, and incoming V President JD Vance loves the idea so much that he already asked
the Department of Justice to use the Act to crack down on the mailing of abortion pills—way back in January 2023.
It’s a perfectly Trumpian approach. It allows the administration to insist that they have not banned abortion while managing to do it anyway—exactly what Texas managed with SB8. It’s a smug, cynical approach to governing, one which Texas has perfected, and Trump now has another four years to hone.
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