The CEOs and founders of some of the largest tech companies in the world are set to have a front row seat for President-elect Donald Trump's inauguration on Monday.
The latest to reportedly join the list is Google CEO Sundar Pichai, according to POLITICO. His counterparts from Meta, Mark Zuckerberg, and Apple, Tim Cook, will be there, as well as Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.
Billionaire Elon Musk, who owns X and SpaceX, among other companies, will have a more privileged place as he takes an active role in the administration as co-leader of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which will seek to reduce public spending.
Tech giants have been seeking to get closer to Trump since his election. Google, Meta, Amazon, and Cook have donated $1 million to the inauguration fund.
Meta has also announced it will get rid of the fact checkers they introduced into 2016 to usher in a more Elon Musk "X" style approach, adding a user-generated "community notes," a tool that allows users to add context to posts that may be misleading, Zuckerberg said earlier this month.
Dana White, the CEO of the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) and close ally to president-elect Donald Trump, will also join Meta's board along with John Elkann, the leader of investment firm Exor and Charlie Songhurst, a former Microsoft executive,
In a Facebook video announcing the new guideline, Zuckerberg said "fact checkers" have "destroyed more trust than they've created."
The presence of the mentioned tech leaders on January 20 will provide outgoing president Joe Biden with an image to illustrate his warning about the need to "stand guard" against a "dangerous" oligarchy forming under Trump.
In a primetime speech from the Oval Office to mark the end of his term, Biden warned of a "tech industrial complex" that could gain unchecked power over the country. "Today, an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy," Biden said.
"That's a dangerous concentration of power in the hands of a very few ultra-wealthy people." He also took on social media directly, saying that "Americans are being buried under an avalanche of misinformation and disinformation, enabling the abuse of power."
"Now it's your turn to stand guard," Biden concluded.
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