In a stark demonstration of whose presence Donald Trump most values, billionaire tech leaders together with Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg, Apple CEO Tim Cook dinner, and Google CEO Sundar Pichai loved prime seating throughout his inauguration on Monday. However whereas these males, in addition to Tesla founder Elon Musk, podcaster Joe Rogan, and pundits Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham loved a plum view of the President’s swearing-in and subsequent speech, a number of crimson state governors and different elected officers had been shuffled off to an overflow room to observe the proceedings on a big-screen TV.
It is no shock that the boys behind Fb, Amazon, and the telephone you are doubtless studying this on had been seated near Donald Trump. On the conventional pre-inauguration church service at St. John’s Episcopal Church Monday, Zuckerberg, Cook dinner, and Bezos had been seated in a pew simply behind Trump and his household. (Bezos’s fiancee, Lauren Sánchez, was reportedly seated additional again throughout the service, sharing a row with former British prime minister Boris Johnson.)
That united entrance continued on the Capitol Rotunda, with a church-skipping Musk becoming a member of the group. Even Rogan, whose wealth and energy is arguably dwarfed by the CEOs within the room, had a spot within the room the place it occurred.
The identical cannot be mentioned for supportive Republican governors similar to Mike Braun of Indiana, Glenn Youngkin of Virginia, and Mississippi’s Tate Reeves. These males, in addition to Trump loyalist and unsuccessful Arizona political candidate Kari Lake had been reportedly relegated to Emancipation Corridor, the place they watched the occasion on TV like the remainder of us. Additionally saved out of the VIP part: Florida governor and Trump-opponent-turned-supporter Ron DeSantis, Georgia governor Brian Kemp. In the meantime, and New York’s embattled mayor Eric Adams posed for photos with YouTubers Jake and Logan Paul, who had been also seated in Emancipation Corridor, together with one other highly effective tech determine: OpenAI’s Sam Altman.
The presence of Bezos, Zuckerberg and firm entrance and middle speaks to the tech realignment below manner as Trump returns to the White Home. In maybe probably the most notable elevation, TikTok CEO Shou Chew was seated within the Rotunda simply behind Trump, in a spot some may characterize as the perfect within the room. Trump, who unsuccessfully tried to ban TikTok in 2020 by way of government order, modified place in March, saying then that shutting down the app would “make Fb greater, and I contemplate Fb to be an enemy of the folks.”
However with Chew and Zuckerberg seated shut by—the leaders of the states that eagerly elected him off on the sidelines—it is clear that, because the forty seventh president mentioned in his inaugural speech, {that a} tide of change is really sweeping the nation.
