Protect the company, protect the brand. It’s Rule #1.
Because it’s always about, only about the money.
Populism (and corruption) is ascendant and the time has come for the wealthy and powerful to come to terms with it and start positioning for the new era.
And nobody wants to be on the losing side of history.
14 December 2024 — When a new mafia don is crowned, all the capos must visit him to bend the knee. Some will already be in his good books; others may find the incoming political reality very sticky indeed.
So it is at Mar-a-Lago, where for more than a month the President-elect has been receiving a constant string of ring-kissers, eager to shore up their own turf by making nice with the new regime.
Enter Mark Zuckerberg last week, bearing a $1-million gift for The Don’s inaugural fund. Joining Jeff Bezos and Tim Cook who have done the same – each ponied up $1 million. None of them did this for Trump in 2016, or Biden in 2021. But the times – they are a-changin’.
Oh, I almost forgot. Both Sam Altman (the chief executive officer of OpenAI) and Aravind Srinivas (chief executive officer of the AI search startup Perplexity) also each ponied up $1 million for the Trump inauguration.
Jonathan Last of The Bulwark (a fabulous site that provides analysis and reporting on politics and culture in America) called it out for exactly what it was:
This is a slush fund, pure and simple. There is no required accounting for how the money is spent, making it the perfect way for rich people to funnel money to the incoming president that he can then use however he sees fit, completely unfettered and under cover of darkness. The inauguration fund is no different than feudal lords approaching the new king with gifts of rubies, or mobsters showering a new mayor with envelopes of cash. Trump knows that and members of his team were *suggesting* to discreet parties how they might help.
Like many at the top of tech, Zuckerberg has “been on a journey” lately. Like many, it’s not entirely clear whether he actually wanted to go on that journey. It’s long forgotten now, but 4 years ago the election cycle coughed up the neologism of “Zuckerbucks”, after the Meta founder gave $400 million to voter turnout projects that — with a focus on poor, often black constituencies — seemed engineered to tip the scales towards Joe Biden. Trump half-joked that he might like to imprison Zuckerberg and his wife for election interference. Back then, he used to call him The Zuckerschmuck.
But, like much of the smart money, it wasn’t long before Zuckerberg worked out that Kamala Harris was a dud. Internal Silicon Valley polling showed she would lose. In fact, as the NY Times recently revealed, even the Harris campaign internal polling knew it was a long shot and probably doomed.
By mid-September Zuckerberg had already made two personal calls to Trump. But in July, after the alleged assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, Zuckerberg had deemed Trump’s response “badass” and posted a glowing tribute on his Facebook page. And a month later he was before Congress, admitting that he “regretted Facebook’s heavy-handed censorship of alternative views on Covid”. Oh, not to mention he also regretted his voter turnout fund, which he now admits “gave the impression of partiality. That was a mistake”.
As he continues to undergo a personal rebrand, Zuckerberg (possibly the most inscrutable of tech’s top tier) has reflected Silicon Valley’s Rightward drift in recent years. Is this cynicism on his part? How much is genuine change of heart? As I noted in a piece over the summer, some serious Silicon Valley money went rightward to support Trump, with some SV companies even loaning employees to the Trump campaign.
Zuckerberg’s present political identity is perhaps downstream of whether he is anything more than a businessman. He has often traded on that ambiguity over whether he is a player or just an ordinary guy who loves to code. And like Bill Gates before him, there are bright flashes of ruthlessness to go with the lack of intelligence. Or as the Brits say, the “gormlessness”. I love that word.
Those close to him say that, at 40, Zuckerberg has become jaded by politics. Well, being harangued at no fewer than 10 different Congressional hearings across the past decade will do that to a fellow. At the start of 2024, the last hearing, he underwent little short of a show trial.
For his part, Elon Musk clearly needs Trump’s benediction in order to smash through the many legislative hurdles his self-driving taxis will face.
Note to readers: as I said before, the most likely outcome of “DOGE” – the Department of Government Efficiency to be run by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to cut regulations, spending, and head-counts within the federal government – is corruption. Nothing more. Based on a DOGE recommendation, Trump’s transition team announced yesterday it will recommend scrapping an autonomous car crash reporting requirement which has been opposed by Musk and Tesla for years.
It’s not so transparent what Zuckerberg wants. But one thing he might be seeking is simply continued strategic dominance. The tech giants which emerged in the 2000s now see a coming wave of disruption from AI, and they want two things from it: more freedom to pursue their own projects in the space, and less freedom for their competitors. As near-monopolies 20 years into their lifespan, these are companies which secretly love regulation — because of who it keeps out.
Zuckerberg will want to be upwind of a rapidly shifting legislative landscape, as AI begins to break down the old giants and throw up new ones. Two weeks ago, Meta’s president of global affairs Nick Clegg told journalists:
Mr Zuckerberg hopes to play an active role in the debates that any administration needs to have about maintaining America’s leadership in the technological sphere.
It’s a framing that speaks to the limiting horizons of our new world. In truth, MAGA 2 is a rearguard action to save American prestige against an encroaching multipolar world. Zuckerberg has woken up to this new reality — and he doesn’t want to miss out. None of Silicon Valley does.
Yesterday I published the first of my traditional end-of-the-year essays, this one about Donald Trump and his power to dismantle America. You can read it by clicking here.
I noted the thing about Trump is you never really know what he’ll do, even given all the powers he will have. As I said, I listened to his mini-press conference and read his Time magazine interview (published after he was named Time’s “Person of Year”).
A number of you emailed me to ask “do you really think he will wreak devastation? “
I do. But the corruption (as noted above, with more below) will be first and foremost. Just a few more thoughts as I put my Donald Trump writing to bed for the year.
As I said, he was his usual self. Trump isn’t even President yet, and already some people are starting to realize that they didn’t get quite what they hoped they were voting for. During his campaign, Trump promised angry consumers that his policies would “rapidly drive prices down” and “bring your grocery bill way down”. Unsurprisingly, Trump has now equivocated on that promise, declaring that “it’s hard to bring things down once they’re up”. He also backed off his strident campaign promises of “no transgender rights!!”
Nobody has covered this issue better than Heather Cox Richardson and if you do not subscribe to her blog (link here) you should do so. I want to snag a few bits from her most recent piece.
She quotes a bit from Atlantic magazine writer Tom Nichols, and I want to give you more of the quote for the whole context:
Time magazine’s interview with President-elect Donald Trump revealed a man who was so desperate to be reelected to the presidency that he constructed a performance that he believed would woo voters, but who has no apparent plans for actual governance.
Trump deliberately patterned the Republican National Convention where he accepted the party’s nomination for president on a professional wrestling event, even featuring a number of professional wrestlers. It appears now that the campaign itself was, similarly, a performance. I think it was all simply to avoid the threat of conviction in one of the many federal or state cases pending against him. In the Time interview, Trump called his campaign “72 Days of Fury”. That was it. A performance.
And now that he has won back power, Trump has lost all interest in the promises of the campaign.
As Richardson goes on to say, if Trump has now abandoned the performance he used to win the election, Trump’s planned appointments to office reveal that the actual pillars of his presidency will be personal revenge, the destruction of American institutions, and the use of political office for gain – also known as graft.
And Richardson goes on to write about Trump’s “henchmen”, picked to exact that revenge, especially those chosen to lead the Justice Department (DOJ) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). It is these people I am sorry for (are fearful for) – the friends and colleagues in both the DOJ and the FBI. All of those friends and colleagues see the handwriting on the wall and they have either put in for retirement, or put in notice they were quitting and are trying to segue into the private sector.
As Richardson notes, Trump’s appointments feed his anti-establishment supporters who want to destroy institutions. She especially calls out Robert Kennedy Jr. who has been tapped to become the secretary of Health and Human Services:
A leader in the anti-vax movement, Kennedy has attacked the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health, and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
Yesterday, Christina Jewett and Sheryl Gay Stolberg of the New York Times reported that the lawyer who is helping Kennedy pick the health officials he will bring into office, Aaron Siri, has tried to stop the distribution of 13 vaccines. In addition, in 2022 he petitioned the FDA to revoke its approval of the polio vaccine. If approved, Kennedy will oversee the FDA.
But the worst pillar of Trump’s presidency will be the graft for himself, and his cronies, and his family. The Trump inauguration slush fund I laid out above is only one effort people will use to shore up their ties to the incoming Don. There are so, so many other ways to buy influence in the new administration. Richardson points out:
• As Judd Legum pointed out last week in his column Popular Information, crypto currency entrepreneur Justin Sun, a Chinese national, bought $30 million in crypto tokens from Trump’s new crypto venture, an essentially worthless investment that nonetheless freed up about $18 million directly to Trump himself.
• Does the name Justin Sun ring a bell? In March 2023 the Securities and Exchange Commission charged Sun with fraud and market manipulation. Last week Sun posted on social media that his company “is committed to making America great again”. Legum noted others are buying crypto tokens from the Trump venture, but masking their identity. But I am sure their purchases have been relayed to the Don.
• Better yet, Trump is squeezing Florida governor Ron DeSantis to name his daughter-in-law Lara Trump to the Senate seat that will be vacated by Marco Rubio’s elevation to secretary of state. And he has tapped his daughter Tiffany’s father-in-law, Massad Boulos, to become his Middle East advisor.
Bottom line? If there is one major continuity between Trump’s campaign and plans for his administration, then Richardson, Tom Nichols and I are in total agreement. Trump’s focus will remain on shock and performance, rather than the detailed work of governing. And the media – blind as they/it can be – will keep eating this shit up.
Yes, impunity. And that impunity and lack of accountability for corruption and simply fuels the culture of impunity we see globally. Impunity is a helpful lens through which to understand the global drift to polycrisis, from climate change to the weakening of democracy. Where corruption runs rampant. Where billionaires can evade taxes, oil companies can misrepresent the severity of the climate crisis, elected politicians subvert the judiciary, and human rights are rolled back.
This is impunity in action. Impunity is the mind-set that laws and norms are for suckers.