America’s largest tech companies made a big, public fuss after President Trump vowed to pull out of the Paris Climate Accord earlier this month. But top executives from many of those same companies are meeting with members of the Trump regime this week. Who needs principles when there’s money to be made?
Yes, this week is officially Technology Week at the White House. And while the list of cowards meeting with Trump has been kept pretty quiet by the technology companies themselves, we now have a better idea of who will be kissing Trump’s ass. And virtually all of the usual suspects will be there.
Axios has a list of the technology industry collaborators that will be in Washington, DC for meetings held today and on Thursday. Some people like IBM’s Ginni Rometty have been longtime Trump allies, unapologetic in their support for Trump. Others, like Apple CEO Tim Cook, have pretended like they’re outraged with President Trump in public, but continued to work with him behind closed doors.
Here’s the list that we know about so far:
- Apple’s Tim Cook
- Amazon’s Jeff Bezos
- Alphabet’s Eric Schmidt
- Microsoft’s Satya Nadella
- Palantir’s Alex Karp
- IBM’s Ginni Rometty
- Intel’s Brian Krzanich
- Oracle’s Safra Catz
- Adobe’s Shantanu Narayen
- Qualcomm’s Steven Mollenkopf
- OpenGov’s Zachary Bookman
- VMware’s Pat Gelsinger
- Akamai’s Tom Leighton
- SAP’s Bill McDermott
- Accenture’s Julie Sweet
- Kleiner Perkins’ John Doerr
But that’s not all. Tech industry executives from roughly 18 American organizations are scheduled to meet at the White House this week during meetings organized by Trump’s terribly unqualified son-in-law Jared Kushner and his equally unqualified wife Ivanka Trump.
The meetings are reportedly focused on making government more efficient, and will touch on everything from cybersecurity to drones to the Internet of Things to database systems. There’s a whole lot of money to be made with the new White House Office of American Innovation. And companies are coming with their hands out.
Peter Thiel will be there as well, to no one’s surprise. Thiel was a huge part of Trump’s transition team, though it’s unclear precisely what job title he may have within the White House at this point. But there are a few notable people skipping the meetings this week. Uber’s Travis Kalanick was one of the earliest to drop out of an advisory role to Trump under public pressure. And so far it looks like Elon Musk has kept his word to stop advising Trump after he pulled the US out of the Paris Climate Accord.
Facebook won’t have anyone at the meeting either, as Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg are reportedly not on the list. But what about the others? Apparently tech executives don’t consider it too risky to be seen with Trump these days. Many of them aren’t proud of their associations, but they’re not embarrassed enough to withdraw their support for Trump and his racist, hateful policies.
An unnamed official at the White House told CBS News that there has been “virtually no fallback” due to the Trump regime’s decision to pull out of the Paris agreement.
“Some liked the decision, some didn’t like the decision, but they see a bigger relationship and they’ve been very happy with the level of dialogue that comes out of this White House, and with the president,” the official told CBS News.
So why do tech CEOs continue to meet with a regime that’s pushing the US further into an authoritarian dystopia with each passing day? Because there’s no downside for them. They need lucrative contracts with the government and will continue to meet with the Trump regime because they’re feeling absolutely no pressure from the American public to change their ways.
Meanwhile, people of principle are dropping from the Trump regime like flies. Six members of the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS (PACHA) resigned over the weekend in protest, saying that Trump “has no strategy to address the on-going HIV/AIDS epidemic.”
But as long as President Trump can get photo-ops with top tech executives, he can help control the news cycle and appear to be helping the country, no matter how much real harm he’s doing to America every single day.
Ironically, all Trump needs to do now in order for his Technology Week to be a success is to stay off Twitter so that his lawyers don’t need to run damage control and directly contradict everything he says.
But we’re not holding our breath on that one.