DISCUSS: Trump and the Billionaires

Last updated on: January 30, 2025 at 2:56 pm

February 7, 2025 by Gene Veith

Do we need to be concerned about the tech billionaires prominently displayed with the best seats at President Trump’s inauguration?

Or that big business is settling Trump’s lawsuits against them? Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta, for example, is paying Trump $22 million to drop his suit against the company for temporarily cancelling his Face Book account after the January 6 riots, a suit the president would be unlikely to win. ABC settled a defamation suit, paying $15 million. CBS and Simon & Schuster are considering similar settlements. The payments are going towards Trump’s future presidential library. A number of the tech moguls also gave million-dollar donations to the president’s inaugural festivities.

Are these payments, in effect, bribes? Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) said of Meta’s settlement, “It looks like a bribe and a signal to every company that corruption is the name of the game. . . .After Meta pays to play, what does Mark Zuckerberg expect as a return on this investment?”

Is she wrong?

Is this seeming alliance with billionaires a betrayal of Trump’s populism and his working class base? Or does it signal a blue collar victory, in which the billionaires are kowtowing to the voice of the people? Is it just a case of Republicans returning to their traditional pro-business stance? Or is it evidence of fear on the part of the tech moguls, lest the new populist regime threaten their status quo?

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