{"id":80309,"date":"2025-02-07T05:55:02","date_gmt":"2025-02-07T10:55:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/?p=80309"},"modified":"2025-01-30T14:56:43","modified_gmt":"2025-01-30T19:56:43","slug":"discuss-trump-and-the-billionaires","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2025\/02\/discuss-trump-and-the-billionaires\/","title":{"rendered":"DISCUSS: Trump and the Billionaires"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Do we need to be concerned about the tech billionaires<\/a> prominently displayed with the best seats at President Trump\u2019s inauguration?<\/p>\n

Or that big business is settling Trump\u2019s lawsuits against them?\u00a0 Mark Zuckerberg\u2019s Meta, for example, is paying Trump $22 million<\/a> 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.\u00a0 CBS and Simon & Schuster are considering similar settlements.\u00a0 The payments are going towards Trump\u2019s future presidential library.\u00a0 A number of the tech moguls also gave million-dollar donations to the president\u2019s inaugural festivities.<\/p>\n

\n

Are these payments, in effect, bribes?\u00a0 Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) said of Meta\u2019s settlement, \u201cIt 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\u00a0expect as a return on this investment?\u201d<\/p>\n

Is she wrong?<\/p>\n

Is this seeming alliance with billionaires a betrayal of Trump\u2019s populism and his working class base?\u00a0 Or does it signal a blue collar victory, in which the billionaires are kowtowing to the voice of the people?\u00a0 Is it just a case of Republicans returning to their traditional pro-business stance?\u00a0 Or is it evidence of fear on the part of the tech moguls, lest the new populist regime threaten their status quo?<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p><\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Do we need to be concerned about the tech billionaires prominently displayed with the best seats at President Trump’s inauguration?\u00a0 How does this fit with Trump’s working class base?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1281,"featured_media":59751,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,19,44],"tags":[8904,4923,15902],"class_list":["post-80309","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-economics","category-government","category-technology","tag-billionaires","tag-president-donald-trump","tag-tech-moguls"],"yoast_head":"\nDISCUSS: Trump and the Billionaires<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Do we need to be concerned about the tech billionaires prominently displayed with the best seats at President Trump's inauguration?\u00a0 How does this fit with Trump's working class base?\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, 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