Powerful tech leaders start day in church with Trumppublished at 14:55 Greenwich Mean Time
Anthony Zurcher
BBC North America correspondent
Image source, Getty ImagesThe president-elect attending a morning service at St John’s
Episcopal Church is an inauguration day tradition. Having some of the wealthiest
– and most powerful – corporate leaders sitting a few pews behind the incoming
president is something new, however.
Apple’s Tim Cook, multi-billionaire Elon Musk, Amazon’s Jeff
Bezos and Google/Alphabet’s Sundar Pichai were all expected to attend the Capitol
swearing-in ceremony later this morning. But they also showed up at the much
more intimate religious gathering, smiling and chatting amongst themselves.
Popular podcaster Joe Rogan, whose endorsement helped boost
Trump in the final days of the campaign, was also in the church.
Donald Trump’s increasingly close relationship with tech
leaders has been noted for weeks now. They’ve donated millions to his inauguration
fund, taken trips to the president-elect’s Mar-a-Lago resort and, in the case
of Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, altered Facebook’s moderation policies to accommodate
conservative concerns.
Although Trump campaigned against the privileged elite, today
he’s rubbing elbows with men at the very pinnacle of US corporate power.