Elon Musk Attends Dinner with Jeff Bezos and Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago

Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon and owner of the Washington Post, is the most recent billionaire to have a meeting with Donald Trump at his Florida estate. Social media videos showed Mr. Bezos arriving at Mar-a-Lago on Wednesday evening for a dinner engagement with the president-elect. Reports from US media indicated that Elon Musk also attended the gathering. Following the event, Mr. Musk tweeted, stating, “it was a great conversation.” Mr. Bezos has committed $1 million (£780,000) to the fund for Trump’s inauguration, aligning with pledges made by several other prominent figures in the technology sector. Through various ventures, including Amazon’s cloud computing division and his space exploration firm Blue Origin, Mr. Bezos maintains substantial business ties with the United States government. Other notable individuals who have recently visited Mar-a-Lago include Mark Zuckerberg of Meta, Sam Altman of OpenAI, Shou Zi Chew of TikTok, and Tim Cook of Apple. Additionally, Google CEO Sundar Pichai is slated to meet with Trump on Thursday. These meetings are taking place at a time when Trump has both lauded and criticized technology companies, alleging censorship by some and vowing to address certain business practices. Amazon’s Prime Video service is set to stream Trump’s inauguration on January 20, an action that CBS News, the BBC’s US news partner, reports will be equivalent to an additional $1 million in-kind contribution to his inauguration fund. Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta—the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp—has committed $1 million to the fund, a pledge matched by OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman. Public records indicate that Mr. Musk directed more than $250 million towards election initiatives supporting Trump. Trump has selected Mr. Musk and former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy to spearhead an initiative aimed at reducing government expenditures. For the 2024 budget year, Mr. Musk’s company, SpaceX, holds US government contracts valued at $3.8 billion, as per the government database USASpending.gov. Mr. Bezos similarly maintains substantial business dealings with the government. In 2021, Amazon Web Services secured a 10-year contract with the National Security Agency, valued at $10 billion. Furthermore, in 2023, Nasa disclosed a $3.4 billion contract with Blue Origin for the construction of a lunar lander intended for an upcoming mission to the moon. Days prior to the November election, the Washington Post declared its decision not to endorse any candidate, marking the first instance of such a stance in decades. Mr. Bezos clarified this choice, stating that endorsements foster a perception of bias. He articulated in the Post, “Ending them is a principled decision, and it’s the right one.” Mr. Musk, along with other business figures like Howard Lutnick, CEO of financial services firm Cantor Fitzgerald and Trump’s designated commerce secretary, have been members of Trump’s close circle since before the election. In contrast, other technology leaders and billionaires have maintained a more removed association. Following his defeat in the 2020 election and the subsequent Capitol riot, Trump was suspended from Facebook, though he was later reinstated. On this occasion, Mr. Zuckerberg seems to have adopted a different approach.