Amazon plans to donate $1 million to President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration

CNN
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Amazon plans to donate $1 million to President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration, a person familiar with the matter told CNN. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is expected to visit Trump in person in the coming days as he and other tech founders seek closer ties with the new president.

Amazon will donate $1 million in cash to the inauguration and make a $1 million in-kind donation by broadcasting the event on Amazon Video, the company confirmed to CNN on Thursday evening.

Bezos and Trump spoke to each other in the summer after the first assassination attempt. Bezos publicly praised Trump at the time.

“Our former president showed tremendous grace and courage under literal fire tonight,” Bezos wrote on X at the time.

Trump has warmed to tech giants. He has flaunted his private conversations with them in interviews and appearances and now praises companies he once blamed in part for his 2020 election defeat.

The Wall Street Journal first reported on the planned donation.

Bezos joins other tech leaders in seeking a closer relationship with the president-elect.

Meta confirmed Wednesday that it donated $1 million to the inaugural fund, two weeks after Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg met privately with Trump at Mar-a-Lago. It’s a major shift from the company’s previous approach to Trump nearly four years ago, when it banned him from its platforms following the January 6, 2021 insurrection.

Trump had also previously criticized Bezos over his ownership of The Washington Post and the newspaper’s coverage of him.

Trump tweeted in 2015: “If @amazon ever had to pay fair taxes, its stock would crash and disintegrate like a paper bag. The @washingtonpost scam saves it!”

Most recently, the Post was thrown into turmoil at the end of October after Bezos refused to support the newspaper in the 2024 presidential election.

“Supporting the president does nothing to tip the balance in an election,” Bezos wrote in an editorial. “No undecided voter in Pennsylvania is going to say, ‘I support supporting Newspaper A.’ None. In fact, the president’s recommendations create the impression of bias. A perception of non-independence. Ending it is a principled decision, and it is the right one.”

The decision had far-reaching consequences for the newspaper. Members of the Post’s editorial board resigned over its decision not to support Vice President Kamala Harris, and thousands of readers canceled their subscriptions to the newspaper. The employees also publicly expressed their objection.

Trump also met with executives from Blue Origin, a space company founded by Bezos. In his editorial, Bezos dismissed allegations that he withheld consent to curry favor with Trump, saying he had no prior knowledge of the meeting.

Trump has also repeatedly argued with Zuckerberg over the years. In a book published this year, the president-elect appeared to threaten the meta boss.

“We are watching him closely, and if he does anything illegal this time, he will spend the rest of his life in prison – as will others who cheat in the 2024 presidential election,” he wrote.

This story has been updated with additional context and developments.

CNN’s Elisabeth Buchwald, Jon Passantino and Liam Reilly contributed to this report.