A parade of tech billionaires and key members of his orbit joined President-elect Donald Trump as he kicked off his pre-inaugural celebrations with a church service on Monday morning.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg, Apple chief Tim Cook dinner, and Google chief Sundar Pichai have been seen taking their prime seats at St John’s Church.
Media tycoon Rupert Murdoch, FIFA president Gianni Infantino and former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson have been additionally noticed on the church.
Many of those executives have been among the many first enterprise world critics of Trump throughout his first time period, talking out on points equivalent to local weather change and immigration.
TikTok chief government Shou Zi Chou too is anticipated to attend the inauguration, as his firm grapples with the fallout from a US ban, in addition to Sam Altman of OpenAI and Dara Khosrowshahi of Uber.
Then after all there may be SpaceX and Tesla boss Elon Musk, who spent almost $300m serving to the president marketing campaign and has caught intently to his aspect ever since.
It’s a placing spectacle. The final public occasion in Washington to convey so many tech bosses collectively in the identical room was a 2020 congressional listening to geared toward their firms.
Immediately, many of the companies nonetheless have critical excellent issues earlier than the US authorities, together with anti-monopoly lawsuits, investigations, regulatory fights and tariffs.
Final week, Senator Elizabeth Warren and Michael Bennett, each Democrats, shared a letter addressed to the executives, which accused them of making an attempt to “cozy as much as the incoming Trump administration in an effort to keep away from scrutiny, restrict regulation and purchase favor”.
“Humorous they by no means despatched me one in every of these for contributing to Democrats,” Mr Altman posted on social media in reply.
How enduring the tech bromance proves and the way far Trump will push on many of those points stay open questions.
However the president, who left workplace the primary time as a sort of pariah within the enterprise world, seems to be revelling in his new place.
As he wrote on social media final month: “Everyone needs to be my good friend!!!”