Axios reported on Friday that Apple CEO Tim Cook will donate $1 million to Donald Trump’s inauguration, the latest tech company figure to do so. These donations—which aren’t covered by campaign finance law and can be unlimited—signal a clear willingness to work with the Trump administration and a desire to curry favor with the once and future president.
The tech sector is particularly eager to suck up.
In December, Meta and Amazon donated $1 million to the inauguration committee, and OpenAI’s Sam Altman said he planned to do the same. Uber and its CEO Dara Khosrowshahi have both donated $1 million apiece (even as the company’s chief legal officer Tony West is vice president Kamala Harris’ brother-in-law). The donations to Trump’s inauguaral committee total about $150 million so far, a record-breaking sum, with more expected to flow in. Amazon’s Jeff Bezos also dined at Mar-a-Lago with Trump just before Christmas, joined by Elon Musk.
It’s common, of course, for companies to make donations to inaugural committees to signal that they intend to work with the new administration; President Biden’s inaugural committee ultimately raised $62 million, including from Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Pfizer, and Bank of America. Amazon donated $267,000—a significantly lower sum than they’re now giving Trump— while Google gave $337,000. (Google has not announced any donations to Trump’s second inauguration.)
The tech sector is particularly eager to suck up to Trump now, as they seek policies favorable to artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency. (Crypto companies have donated especially lavishly to the inaugural committee; the largest single donation comes from Ripple, which announced a $5 million contribution in XRP, its own crypto token.) Parts of the sector are also clearly hoping to avoid backlash from people like Andrew Ferguson, Trump’s pick to chair the Federal Trade Commission, who has said he will use his perch to fight “censorship” of conservative viewpoints from Big Tech and, of course, go after “wokeness.” Trump and many others in his incoming administration are unusually obsessed with tech companies, seeing them as architects of conservative suppression, and have made clear that balancing the scales is one of their first priorities.
“Big Tech should be accountable for years of censorship and deplatforming,” tweeted venture capitalist David Sacks on Twitter, in a reply to Elon Musk and far-right figure Laura Loomer. “It’s got to stop.” Trump has announced that Sacks will serve as an AI and cryptocurrency “czar” in his new administration, and also lead a council of science and tech advisers.
The money flowing into Trump’s various coffers also isn’t limited to donations from the tech sector. The New York Times reported Saturday that post-election donations to Trump-affiliated entities—benefitting the inauguration, his eventual presidential library, and the Make America Great Again Inc. super-PAC—have totaled $200 million.
“EVERYBODY WANTS TO BE MY FRIEND!!!” Trump posted on TruthSocial, shortly after the dinner with Bezos. For once, what he’s saying appears to be completely true.
