Jeff Bezos’ Amazon plans $1 million donation to Trump’s inaugural fund: report

• According to WSJ, Amazon plans to donate $1 million to Donald Trump’s inauguration.
• Meta also confirmed that it will donate $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund.
• The moves reflect Big Tech’s efforts to improve relations with Trump, who has been critical of the industry.

Jeff Bezos’ Amazon plans to donate $1 million to Donald Trump’s inauguration after it was revealed on Wednesday that Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta made the same contribution, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Meta confirmed to the Journal on Wednesday that the company donated $1 million to the president-elect’s inaugural fund.

The donations would mark a shift in the relationship between tech leaders and Trump, who had previously been critical of Big Tech bosses. Trump has previously accused Zuckerberg and Bezos of, among other things, bias against his government.

Last month, meta-CEO Trump paid a Thanksgiving dinner visit to the president-elect’s Mar-a-Lago resort. Google CEO Sundar Pichai is also planning a meeting with Trump, The Information reported.

“Mark Zuckerberg was with me and I can tell you, Elon is another and Jeff Bezos is coming next week and I want to get ideas from them,” Trump told CNBC’s Jim Cramer on Thursday.

Spokespeople for Amazon and Trump did not respond to a request for comment.

There have been frequent arguments between Bezos and Trump in recent years. During his first campaign and first term, Trump attacked Amazon, once declaring that the company was “doing great harm to taxpaying retailers.”

Bezos, on the other hand, has previously criticized Trump’s inflammatory rhetoric, including the president-elect’s call at the time to send Hilary Clinton to prison.

When Trump took office in 2017, Amazon donated about $58,000 to Trump’s inauguration — much less than what other tech companies donated at the time, the Journal said.

Zuckerberg also criticized Trump’s violent comments on Facebook. In 2021, the social media platform took the extraordinary step of deplatforming the president after Trump praised the January 6 rioters.

Both tech leaders appear to have become more comfortable with Trump in recent months.

The Amazon tycoon told The New York Times’ DealBook Summit last week that he is “actually very optimistic” about a second Trump term, saying that Trump has likely “grown over the last eight years” and that he will benefit from the election the president was encouraged to focus on deregulation.

“He seems to have a lot of energy in reducing regulation. If I can help with that, I will help him,” Bezos said.

Zuckerberg also appears to be mending his relationship with the president-elect, despite Trump threatening to throw the meta-CEO in prison as recently as July.

After the first assassination attempt against Trump, Zuckerberg called the president-elect a “tough guy” but did not support him in the Bloomberg interview.

On November 6, Zuckerberg joined the chorus of CEOs congratulating Trump on his decisive election victory.

“I look forward to working with you and your administration,” Zuckerberg wrote in a Threads post.