Trump’s 2024 victory is panning out completely differently to 2016, when elite America spent four years battling him. “This time everybody wants to be my friend,” notes the President-elect. The Spectator‘s Freddy Gray has more.
This week, Jeff Bezos had dinner at Mar-a-Lago. The Amazon founder has said he’s “actually very optimistic” about all the regulation slashing that Trump plans to introduce in his second term, and he’s contributed a million dollars to the Trump 47 inauguration fund. …
And Bezos is just one of a number of once-hostile gazillionaires who are now queueing up to honour the Donald. Mark Zuckerberg – or “Zuckerbucks”, as Trump calls him – spent the years between 2016 and 2020 grovelling to the political class for Facebook’s role in Trump’s election and the spread of Right-wing populism across the world. …
Yet this year, Zuckerberg has gone to some lengths to suck up to the Donald. After Trump’s brave response to the assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, in July, Zuckerberg called him a “badass”. The two men have also had dinner at Mar-a-Lago. Zuckerberg’s company, Meta, has also given one million dollars to the Trump inauguration fund.
So did Perplexity, the AI search engine. So did Uber. So did Sam Altman, the Chief Executive of OpenAI. “President Trump will lead our country into the age of AI, and I am eager to support his efforts to ensure America stays ahead,” said Altman. …
Trump has noticed that the elite mood music has changed in his favour since 2016. “The first term everybody was fighting me,” he said on Monday. “This term everybody wants to be my friend. I don’t know. My personality changed or something.”
Silicon Valley’s pivot towards Trump is spearheaded, of course, by Elon Musk, the billionaire-in-chief. Tech moguls, even ones that dislike Musk, are very excited about his and Vivek Ramaswamy’s Department of Government Efficiency agenda. That’s probably why Apple’s Chief Executive, Tim Cook, and Google’s Sundar Pichai and Sergey Brin have also been to dinner at Mar-a-Lago of late.
Worth reading in full.
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Pontius Pilate and Brutus come to mind!
It would be a huge mistake for Trump to assume these people are actually his friends, especially those proffering gifts (influence). I’m sure (hopeful) he’s smart enough to see through their likely duplicity!
In politics, not even your (genuine) friends are friends, and certainly not the snakes in the grass variety.
He has already experienced all that in his first term. I don’t think he’ll be making the same mistake twice, nor would the big brains he has gathered around him.
I don’t think he really believes they are his friends. His remarks were a wry cynicism
Apparently Musk’s and Ramaswamy’s Department of Government Efficiency is not going to challenge the DoD’s trillion dollar budget , even though the DoD has failed its last 7 audits, i.e. is unable to declare where all the money is going.
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/understanding-the-deep-state-joe-rogans-fascinating-interview-with-mike-benz/
Excerpts of an interview Mike Benz had with Joe Rogan…
“what happened was in 2014 (up till which point) we had had about 25 years of successful free speech diplomacy. And then . . . we [the US] tried to overthrow the government of Ukraine. We successfully did. I’m not even arguing whether that’s a good or a bad thing. But the fact is, the US did effectively on January 6th, 2014 throw the Yanukovych government out of power.
‘We literally had our Assistant Secretary of State for Europe and Eurasian Affairs, Victoria Nuland, handing out cookies and water bottles to violent street protesters as they surrounded the parliament building and ran the democratically elected government out of office. What happened then is that the eastern side of the state completely broke away, saying, “We don’t respect this new US-installed government.” Crimea voted in a referendum to join the Russian Federation. And that . . . set in motion the events that would end the concept of free speech diplomacy [as] a US government unfettered good . . . They [had] pumped $5billion worth of US government money into media institutions in Ukraine. That’s the figure that’s cited by Victoria Nuland in December 2013, right before the coup. Five billion dollars setting up independent media companies, basically sponsoring, Mockingbird-style, our media assets in the region. And they still didn’t penetrate eastern Ukraine. Eastern Ukraine was primarily ethnic Russian. It didn’t penetrate Crimea.”
I’m shocked. Truly shocked. The USA started the war with Russia. Unbelievable.
I look forward to Monro popping along to set the record straight.
Naughty Putin.
He’s just a plant.
And with a similar IQ
The EU had a hand in it as well having pumped in $millions to pro-EU groups to drive Ukraine towards the EU and the trigger was Yanukovych refusing to sign a document to start the accession process. The youth were particularly keen on Ukraine joining the EU so they could, er, leg it somewhere else.
It goes back months. The establishment knew a while back, long before the presidential campaign, that Trump would win. They had it on the cover of The Economist a few months ago. It is a very simple demonstration of how capital flow works. We have no reason to be naive about this situation.
Where love rules there is no will to power, and where power predominates, love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other. This is what Carl Jung said after meeting Allen Dulles. The successful open air sacrifice of 1963 was an assertion of power over love from which we have never recovered.
You have no friends and the house of cards that is being built around you has no more stability or resilience than the one you are replacing. Might be a good idea to acquaint yourself with geopolitical affairs but you won’t. Some stupid egotist listening to any chancer that whispers in you ear. World afairs have moved on and rival groups have learned a lot and you will be completely out of your depth regardless of how many supporters you might have. Veneer thin, wafer thin this is a very poor substitute for a leader.
A very weak man if we faced the ultimate crisis. He doesn’t like war because he hates phoning the families of servicemen who have died. Don’t be deluded in these crucial times about where the real strength lies.
You will have no friends and no allies and your flock will be as lost as ever and you won’t care in the slightest. Wait a couple of months and see if you don’t believe me. It isn’t rocket science to see that your agenda is heading towards the iceberg of reality. A life of showbusiness and candy-coated crap doesn’t really prepare you for geopolitical realities. Please attempt to at least try to stop the rest of us sinking down with you into hell.
The US is going to unleash a torrent of economic activity as the dead hand of Washington DC is lifted off the productive and the parasites are removed (aka Twitter -> X). It is understandable that people with cash to invest will want to ride on that wave.
“And, my friends, in this story you have a history of this entire movement. First they ignore you. Then they ridicule you. And then they attack you and want to burn you. And then they build monuments to you.” Nicholas Klein