So, a very partial list of donors to Trump’s second inauguration includes:
- Apple’s Tim Cook.
- Ken Griffon of Citadel.
- Amazon’s Jeff Bezos.
- Sam Altman of OpenAI.
- Zuckerberg of Meta/Facebook.
- Dara Koroshawi of Uber.
- General Motors, Ford and Toyota.
Trump imposed a lot of sanctions on China in his first term but somehow Apple avoided most of them. Not coincidentally Tim Cook supposedly talked to Trump every week. I’m sure he spent that time being Trump’s good friend and toady.
I don’t blame him for it, it was his job. Apple sold a ton of phones in China and made most of their gear in China. Trump could have (and can) tear the heart of out of Apple.
The FTC is planning to take Meta to court over anti-trust violations this year. Want to bet they change their minds?
Amazon is nothing but a giant sucking anti-trust violation.
Olds will remember that Microsoft was almost broken up by an anti-trust suit. The government was clearly winning its case in 2000, but when Bush Jr. took power, the government suddenly decided to drop the case. Saved Gates billions and billions.
Trump’s tariff plans are going to hit a lot of companies hard, but some will likely get waivers, as Apple did. Wouldn’t you pay a million dollars, or ten million, to predispose Trump to make sure you get a waiver that will save you billions?
Sure you would.
Wearing kneepads for the President and other important political figures is part of the CEO’s job. And Trump, more than most Presidents requires sycophants and courtiers around him. You make him feel good, he takes care of you.
You tell him he’s wearing the Emperor’s “New Clothes” and that doesn’t end well for you. You steal the limelight from him too often (like Bannon did and Musk seems to be) and that may end badly for you.
Musk, by the way, is in particular trouble. Though most people haven’t caught on yet, Tesla, which is the vast majority of his wealth in terms of over-inflated stock, is in huge trouble. Chinese EV firms produce better cars for half the price. Even domestic firms like GM are now producing cars which are, arguably, better and given how slow Tesla’s model cycle is, it won’t be arguable for much longer. Musk needs government protection and aid, like the 100% tariffs Biden put on Chinese cars. He should be very careful not to irritate Trump and be eager to get down, not just on his knees, but on his belly,. All it would take is Trump providing a waiver for BYD and Musk would be lucky to be worth a hundred billion let alone be the richest man in the world.
Of course if you run a small or medium business, you aren’t going to have a personal relationship with Trump and are a lot less likely to get a business-saving waiver or a rule made especially to help your company. That’s America under imperial Presidency rule.
In the meantime, the kneepads are on, the CEOs are kneeling and Trump’s enjoying himself. Welcome to the second Trump Presidency.
Ian Welsh
Commenters will note, accurately, that all Presidents gets sucked up to. Just saying that Trump requires a lot of extra service.
mago
Guess that kiss my ring a ding thing echoes through the ages, and the trumpen proles pay the price once again.
Step right up/bend right over/gonna give you the business.. . . Thanks Tom Waits.
Mark Pontin
Ian: “Musk, by the way, is in particular trouble. Though most people haven’t caught on yet, Tesla, which is the vast majority of his wealth in terms of over-inflated stock, is in huge trouble. Chinese EV firms produce better cars for half the price.”
True. Elon’s got a number of problems that don’t appear to have easy solutions.
[1] He needs to push Trump to levy punishing costs on those Chinese EVs so that they’re not such a threat to his Teslas in the US. As you say, it’s an existential matter of survival for Musk, right?
[2] But the question then becomes how does Musk square the circle with Beijing, given that Tesla’s Gigafactory Shanghai, aka Giga Shanghai, is Tesla’s primary production site for its Model 3 and Model Y, annually producing 950,000 vehicles. Indeed, half of all Tesla electric vehicles are now made in China.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gigafactory_Shanghai
[3] In fact, given China’s key role in the global battery supply chain, crucial for Tesla’s EVs, Musk needs the Chinese more than they need him.
[4] But then the question also becomes: How does Musk square the circle in Washington?
Elon Musk’s Business Ties to China—What to Know as MAGA Turns on Trump Ally
https://www.newsweek.com/elon-musk-business-ties-china-2006722
We’re possibly seeing Peak Elon — thank God! — unless he does something remarkable with SpaceX/TwitterX, like giving away Twitter services with added AI via Starlink.
Elon is reminiscent of Crassus, the richest man in imperial Rome. In the end, they poured molten gold down Crassus’s throat and nobody was sorry.
bruce wilder
Musk needs that $50 billion bonus.
NR
As Ian has pointed out, this kind of corruption is nothing new. The only new thing is how blatant and out in the open it is this time. In the past, I might have hoped that that would mean something might change as a result, but I have no faith left in my countrymen anymore. Trump will get paid, the people buying him off will get what they want, and nothing will be done.
bruce wilder
Bush and Cheney got paid, Clinton got paid, Obama got paid, Biden got paid. A lot of my countrymen pretended otherwise. Pretended they believed various sundry lies and went along with the gaslighting. And, the financial crisis and perpetual war. Especially the perpetual war part. A lot of folks who didn’t get paid put Ukrainian flags on their Instagram accounts and overlooked genocide.
John
A thing I find interesting is that Trump’s new overlord for Treasury is Scott Bessent, who has been in thrall to George Soros his whole life.
As Carlin said, there’s a club…..
Feral Finster
“Commenters will note, accurately, that all Presidents gets sucked up to. Just saying that Trump requires a lot of extra service.”
I would say that extra service is all that Trump requires. Give the man a few flattering words and he will eat out of your hand.
StewartM
Bruce Wilder
Bush and Cheney got paid, Clinton got paid, Obama got paid, Biden got paid
Once again, the normalization of Trump continues. Talk about gaslighting!
The very fact that Trump is transparently being bribed while in office (not even waiting until post-office to be rewarded) is yet another step in US decline. But yeah, Trump is the one who’s going to stick it to the neoliberalism and “da man”, right?
different clue
Given that the extra service and flattery to his fragile brittle pride is what Trump wants most of all, I still think that gives millions of ordinary people millions of tiny little opportunities to goad Trump into firing DOGE and firing Musk.
If millions of people keep referring to President Musk and keep memeing those President Musk memes, Trump can’t help but notice. And oh if only the Democratic Officeholders would do the same, insisting that President Musk be in the room every time the Republican Officeholders want to negotiate with Democrats over the least little thing, deciding and announcing that they won’t attend the swearing in, the State of the Union Speech, etc. unless Musk is standing up on the podium right there with Trump.
And keep doing it till Trump fires Musk and DOGE.
( And yes, I remember the Microsoft case and the sudden setaside of it. Which means that I am one of the olds now.).
Mark Level
Bruce, as usual you are 100% right. What you refer to is what our Communist brethren (I confess, I am anti-authoritarian, so much as I respect Marx’s sociology & economics, I’ll never join that cult) call “False consciousness.” Russel Dobular of the Due Dissidence podcast calls it “feudal mentality”– sign up for vicarious mojo (you won’t get paid, you won’t get anything) with Lord Musk, Lord Trump, Lord Kamala, etc. . . .
Not only do people tend toward lemming-like following, all our institutions are deeply corrupt and infiltrated by this zeitgeist. I shared recently that I had to angrily quit our local Unitarian Church (I was affiliated on and off with them since the 80s when I lived in New Orleans) did a “service” 2 days before the election called “The Power of Voting”!! Yes, ignore the Biden-Harris genocide, they’re so much nicer to LGBTQ+ folks, what’s a little mass murder of indigenous people? And these stinking hypocrites start every service with a “land acknowledgement” to what was stolen from the Ojibwe & Dakota people c. 1888 when whitey started taking over. Just sickening!!I pointed this out to the 6 member board, & I pointed out that they were defying their own national org, which called for a cease fire way back in Feb. of last year–https://www.uua.org/pressroom/press-releases/uua-condemns-violence-urges-ceasefire — All I got in response from these smug, entitled assholes was a 2 sentence “share” that they felt bad about losing my membership & support (to the tune of $420 annually; at least that will hurt ’em a little. Frankly a lot of the booboisie either condescended to or feared me. My personal Mark of Cain is that because I had to support myself at age 17 due to an abusive and dangerous (Republican, authoritarian) dad, I worked in the Merchant Marine, construction, in bars, moving, etc. I have some dreaded prole affectations in my speech & actions. Horrors!
This reminds me of a great quote I heard recently from Sarah Manguso– (in writing, not directly) “Those who are not on intimate terms with illness, poverty, violence, exile, and war are fundamentally different from those who are. That difference isn’t a choice, it’s simply there, a gulf that cannot be bridged.”
________________________________________________________________________
On the upside, as the saying goes, when one door slams shut, another one (or 2?) opens up. Just in the last week, I learned about a Loaves and Fishes benefit coming up soon from one of the area conventional (Lutheranism!? Ugh! But if they sponsor L&F while the “humanist” UU’s tell me to accept genocide, I’ll dip my toe in) churches. Additionally, there’s a crazy old “former Catholic” who writes for the local free paper who turned me onto the 7 Fundamental tenets of a different “religious” (well, Gnostic might be a better word) group:
1. One should strive to act with compassion and empathy towards all creatures in accordance with reason.
2. The struggle for justice is an ongoing and necessary pursuit that should prevail over laws and institutions.
3. One’s body is inviolable, subject to one’s own will alone.
4. The freedoms of others should be respected, including the freedom to offend. To willfully and unjustly accroach upon the freedoms of another is to forgo your own.
5. Beliefs should conform to our best scientific understanding of the world. We should take care never to distort scientific facts to fit our beliefs.
6. People are fallible. If we make a mistake, we should do our best to rectify it and resolve any harm that may have been caused.
7. Every tenet is a guiding principle designed to inspire nobility in action and thought. The spirit of compassion, wisdom and justice should always prevail over the written or spoken word.
While I might dissent quite a bit on the embrace of Scientism in the preceding (knowing the value of the Irrational for a balanced life), I think this is overall quite good.
What group is it? It’s the atheistic, dissident, ACLU-affiliated Satanic Temple Church. (Not to be confused with the moronic, head-banger Black Metal traditionalist “Evil” Church of Satan.)
In Idres Shah’s wonderful Caravan of Dreams, one teaching was (paraphrasing) “If Shaitan himself approaches you with the secret to Enlightenment, you should not refuse him.” Live & Learn!!