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Days after Donald Trump took office for the last time in 2017, Google co-founder Sergey Brin joined the protest against the new administration’s immigration policies, warning that they threaten “core values” of the US.
On Monday, he joined more than a dozen billionaires in major places at Trump’s second inauguration, applauding the man who has promised to deport millions of migrants, use the levers of American justice to prosecute political opponents and launch sweeping tariffs.
Trump’s inauguration ceremony in the US Capitol highlighted the president’s deepening ties to titans of industry and the changing attitudes of business leaders who had previously despised him. Four of the five richest people in the world were more prominent than members of their own cabinet, and some of their spouses held positions at the expense of governors and members of Congress.
Elon Muskformer Joe Biden supporter who spent a quarter of a billion dollars to get Trump elected, he was joined on a packed podium by Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, who this month abolished fact-checking on his social media platforms as a peace offering to Trump, and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, who suspended the editorial board of his newspaper to support Kamala Harris.
A few meters away were the richest European Bernard Arnault, the head of the luxury goods empire LVMH, the Indian Mukesh Ambani and Apple’s CEO Tim Cook, who, like other CEOs of the technology sector, donated a million dollars to Trump ahead of the procedure. They joined cabinet nominees who are billionaires in their own right, including Commerce Secretary-elect Howard Lutnick and Treasury nominee Scott Bessent.
“The man is the power,” Lutnick said of Trump in a speech Monday at Capital One Arena, where supporters of the president gathered to watch him take the oath of office. “He is a power.”
Lutnick was followed by Musk, who received thunderous applause when he promised to help Trump usher in a “golden age.”
In a sign of Musk’s growing power and influence, the crowd cheered the billionaire’s mention of Trump’s promise to send astronauts to Mars — a move that would benefit Musk’s SpaceX and which scientists within the US government have deemed wasteful and unnecessary.
Such a show of corporate power was criticized by some members of the Trump administration basic ‘Maga’ support base. Steve Bannon, Trump’s former chief strategist, lashed out at Musk and the tech moguls in the president’s orbit this week, echoing Biden in calling them “oligarchs” and claiming they were “created by the Democratic Party and the lords of easy money.”
Democrats were also quick to use the inauguration spectacle to undermine Trump’s populist reputation, with the Democratic National Committee claiming that the president “left his own supporters literally out in the cold while billionaires worth more than a billion dollars got a front row seat” showed that he would always “put himself and his ultra-wealthy supporters before the American people”.
Inside the Capitol One Arena on Monday, where Trump supporters gathered to watch the inauguration after it was moved indoors, the presence of the billionaire — seen by many Magicians as supplicants rather than puppet masters — was largely welcomed.
Minnesota farmer Cherry Fiedler said she hopes the prominence of the tech billionaires means “all the censorship will go away” and the expected diversity, equality and inclusion policies will also be scaled back at the world’s biggest companies after a Trump victory.
“Many of these business leaders were once . . . against Trump,” added Paul Kirby, an accountant from Missouri who traveled to Washington for the ceremony. “All these leaders actually bow down. . .[Trump is]in control, he has his strength back.”
