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{"id":5221,"date":"2025-01-22T05:20:29","date_gmt":"2025-01-22T05:20:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/trump-a-populist-president-is-flanked-by-tech-billionaires-at-his-inauguration\/"},"modified":"2025-01-22T05:20:29","modified_gmt":"2025-01-22T05:20:29","slug":"trump-a-populist-president-is-flanked-by-tech-billionaires-at-his-inauguration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/trump-a-populist-president-is-flanked-by-tech-billionaires-at-his-inauguration\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump, a populist president, is flanked by tech billionaires at his inauguration"},"content":{"rendered":"<div xmlns:xlink=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/1999\/xlink\">\n<div>\n<div><a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/author\/ali-swenson\"><picture data-crop=\"60x60\"><source type=\"image\/webp\" width=\"60\" height=\"60\"><source width=\"60\" height=\"60\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Image\" width=\"60\" height=\"60\" src=\"https:\/\/dims.apnews.com\/dims4\/default\/bb3d063\/2147483647\/strip\/true\/crop\/793x793+0+0\/resize\/60x60!\/quality\/90\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fassets.apnews.com%2F83%2F7a%2F5ab9078b4fd5b482122aed2630a3%2Fheadshota-ali-swenson.png\" loading=\"lazy\"><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/a><\/div>\n<div>\n<p>                                <bsp-timestamp data-timestamp=\"1737428654000\" data-recent-thresholdinhours=\"1\">                    <template data-date-tpl>Updated [hour]:[minute] [AMPM] [timezone], [monthFull] [day], [year]<\/template>                    <span data-date><\/span>                <\/bsp-timestamp>            <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>                                                                    <bsp-page-actions>                            <\/bsp-page-actions>                            <\/div>\n<div>\n<p>NEW YORK (AP) &mdash; Some of the most exclusive seats at <span><a data-gtm-enhancement-style=\"LinkEnhancementA\" href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/live\/trump-inauguration-updates\">President Donald Trump&rsquo;s inauguration<\/a><\/span>  on Monday were reserved for <span><a data-gtm-enhancement-style=\"LinkEnhancementA\" href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/oligarchy-musk-bezos-zuckerberg-trump-biden-altman-putin-3ade224cccfb287f7fadaeac42b76e3d\">powerful tech CEOs<\/a><\/span>  who also happen to be among the world&rsquo;s richest men.<\/p>\n<p>That&rsquo;s a shift from tradition, especially for a president who has characterized himself as a <span><a data-gtm-enhancement-style=\"LinkEnhancementA\" href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/trump-chavezderemer-labor-secretary-unions-republicans-1bff41e4caef610dbf38ead24d292e67\">champion of the working class<\/a><\/span>. Seats so close to the president are usually reserved for the president&rsquo;s family, past presidents and other honored guests.<\/p>\n<p>Photos show the tech CEOs mingling with several of Trump&rsquo;s picks for the Cabinet, including Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as health secretary and Marco Rubio as secretary of state.<\/p>\n<p>In one image, Rubio looks on from the background, facing a lineup of tech&rsquo;s wealthiest leaders. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, stand beside Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and his fiancee, Lauren S&aacute;nchez, along with Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Elon Musk, one of Trump&rsquo;s closest advisers. The world&rsquo;s wealthiest person, Musk also runs Tesla, SpaceX and the social platform X.<\/p>\n<p>Also at the Capitol for the day&rsquo;s events were Apple CEO Tim Cook and TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew.<\/p>\n<p>The mega-rich have long had a prominent role in national politics, and several billionaires helped bankroll the campaign of Trump&rsquo;s Democratic opponent, Vice President <span><a data-gtm-enhancement-style=\"LinkEnhancementA\" href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/kamala-harris\">Kamala Harris<\/a><\/span>. Then-President Joe Biden recently gave the Presidential Medal of Freedom to <span><a data-gtm-enhancement-style=\"LinkEnhancementA\" href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/biden-medal-of-freedom-clinton-soros-denzel-washington-4b19a363d3058ac3b8107e2002b93651\">George Soros<\/a><\/span>a billionaire donor to liberal causes.<\/p>\n<p>But the inaugural display highlights the unusually direct role the world&rsquo;s wealthiest people will likely have in the new administration. In his outgoing address, Biden warned that the U.S. was becoming an <span><a data-gtm-enhancement-style=\"LinkEnhancementA\" href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/oligarchy-biden-zuckerburg-bezos-musk-altman-a44e281c6dbf2fd6cd174f13cdcdc1c5\">oligarchy<\/a><\/span>  of tech billionaires wielding dangerous levels of power and influence on the nation.<\/p>\n<p>Speaking in the Oval Office Monday, Trump rejected Biden&rsquo;s criticism, saying the tech executives supported Democrats until they realized Biden &ldquo;didn&rsquo;t know what the hell he was talking about.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;They did desert him,&rdquo; Trump added. &ldquo;They were all with him, every one of them, and now they are all with me.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>Despite taking millions from the executives and their companies for his inaugural committee &mdash; and receiving more than $200 million in assistance from Musk in his presidential campaign &mdash; Trump claimed he didn&rsquo;t need their money and they wouldn&rsquo;t be receiving anything in return.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;They&rsquo;re not going to get anything from me,&rdquo; Trump said. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t need money, but I do want the nation to do well, and they&rsquo;re smart people and they create a lot of jobs.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<h2>___<\/h2>\n<p>The Associated Press&#8239;receives support from several private foundations to enhance its explanatory coverage of elections and democracy. See more about AP&rsquo;s democracy initiative <span><a data-gtm-enhancement-style=\"LinkEnhancementA\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ap.org\/press-releases\/2022\/ap-announces-sweeping-democracy-journalism-initiative\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">here<\/a><\/span>. The AP is solely responsible for all content.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/trump-inauguration-tech-billionaires-zuckerberg-musk-wealth-0896bfc3f50d941d62cebc3074267ecd\" class=\"button purchase\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Updated [hour]:[minute] [AMPM] [timezone], [monthFull] [day], [year] NEW YORK (AP) &mdash; Some of the most exclusive seats at President Donald Trump&rsquo;s inauguration on Monday were reserved for powerful tech CEOs who also happen to be among the world&rsquo;s richest men. That&rsquo;s a shift from tradition, especially for a president who has characterized himself as a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5222,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5221","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-trump"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5221","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5221"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5221\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5222"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}