Why Amazon, Facebook, Ford spend big money

CEOs of leading companies and their companies are pledging to donate millions of dollars to the president-elect Donald Trumpof the inaugural committee as they seek to get on his good side and fight their way to his inauguration.

Some of planned donations according to reports includes $1 million each of Jeff Bezos‘ AmazonOpenAI CEO Sam Altman and parent company Facebook Metaheaded by Mark Zuckerberg. Others include $2 million Robinhood Markets and $1 million each from both Uber and its CEO, Gift of Khasrowshahi.

Ford there is according to reports combined with its own $1 million donation to the fleet.

Hedge fund manager Ken Griffin also said he plans to give $1 million to the tax-exempt inaugural committee. This is reported by Bloomberg. Other donations are reported from financial executives at work.

Buoyed by a landslide election victory, Trump has vowed to overhaul US economic policy in a way that could bring huge benefits to a handful of favored industries, such as fossil fuels.

At the same time, he conveyed to the telegraph the importance, both personal and political, that he attaches to personal meetings and public praise of the heads of the world’s largest companies.

“EVERYONE WANTS TO BE MY FRIEND!!!” Trump wrote Thursday in a message on Social trutha social media app he runs himself a technology company.

Many of these CEOs have already made or plan to make trips to Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s Palm Beach, Fla., resort and de facto transition headquarters as they seek to gain influence and access to the incoming administration.

To that end, Trump’s inaugural committee presents a “unique opportunity,” Brendan Glavin, director of research at OpenSecrets, a nonprofit that tracks money in politics, said in an interview.

Inaugural committees, which are appointed by presidents-elect, plan and finance much of the pomp and circumstance that traditionally surrounds the transition of power from one administration to another.

While the money ultimately benefits a recent political candidate, it doesn’t have the same significance as donations to, say, a super PAC, which can fund partisan political activity that might cause controversy.

And unlike a direct contribution to a candidate’s campaign, there are no limits on how much a person—either a corporation or a labor group—can give to an inaugural committee.

Moreover, since Trump has already won the election, the inaugural contribution carries no risk for a senior executive to support a losing candidate.

“It’s a really great opportunity for them to curry favor with the next administration,” Glavin said.

While it’s nothing new for corporations and power brokers to spend big on inaugural committees, experts told CNBC that the Trump factor is changing the calculus.

“Everything is elevated now,” Glavin said. “None of these people, they want to be Trump’s punching bag for four years.”

Trump’s inaugural committee and his transition team did not respond to requests for comment.

Trump’s inaugural committee raised about $107 million in 2017, far more than anyone in US history. The previous record was set in 2009 during the first inauguration of the city Barack Obamathe committee of which raised $53 million.

Trump’s second inauguration is on pace to break that record, with pledges already surpassing the $150 million fundraising goal. This is reported by ABC News.

President Joe Bidenthe inaugural committee, by comparison, raised almost 62 million dollars.

“One of the oldest adages in Washington is that if you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu, and the price of admission to a seat at the table continues to rise,” said Michael Beckel, director of research at Issue One, a political reform advocacy group.

Funding for Trump’s second inaugural committee has been boosted in part by tech giants, many of which largely shied away from supporting his first inauguration.

Aside from GoDaddy.com founder Robert Parsons, who donated $1 million, few Big Tech leaders have donated Trump Committee 2017.

Trump once openly clashed with some of them, including Zuckerberg Bezoswho also owns The Washington Post, a frequent target of the president-elect’s ire.

Not so this time. As Trump vows to dismantle a slew of federal regulations but also continues to accuse Big Tech of stifling competition, industry leaders may be more dependent than ever on their relationship with the White House.

“I’m actually very optimistic” – said Bezos of Trump’s second presidency in an interview on December 4 at The New York Times DealBook conference. “I really hope so. He seems to have a lot of energy to reduce regulation. And from my perspective, if I can help him do that, I will help him. Because we have too much regulation in this country.”

The comments came on the heels of a scandal at The Washington Post in October when the paper reported it Bezos decided not to publish his editorial board’s endorsement of the vice president Kamala Harris over Trump. Bezos in an op-ed defended the paper’s decision to no longer endorse presidential candidates, but the cancellation prompted an exodus of subscribers and forced many employees to resign in protest.

Nowhere is Trump’s newfound affinity for the tech world more evident than in his blossoming relationship with Tesla and the SpaceX CEO Elon Muskwhich spent more than $250 million to help elect Trump.

Musk, the world’s richest man, frequently appeared alongside Trump before and after his election victory and was reportedly involved in all aspects of Trump’s transition planning. He and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy have been appointed to head a consultancy tasked with cutting government spending.

This could put Altman of OpenAI, which is currently confused in a claim for breach of contract put Musk in an awkward position.

Along with his $1 million inaugural donation, Altman praised Trump earlier this month. “President Trump will lead our country into the age of artificial intelligence, and I stand ready to support his efforts to keep America ahead,” he said.

Craig Holman, a government relations lobbyist for the progressive nonprofit Public Citizen, told CNBC that the numbers are “very scary that Donald Trump might retaliate against them.”

“So they’re throwing money at his feet to curry favor,” Holman said.

Four days after the presidential election, Trump announced the creation of a non-profit organization “Trump Vance Inaugural Committee, Inc.” 501(c)(4). Its co-chairs are real estate investor Steve Witkoff and former Republican senator. Kelly Loeffler of Georgia, who is also Trump’s pick to head the Small Business Administration.

Reince Priebus, who was one of Trump’s chiefs of staff in the White House during his first term, said in X post that he was appointed to the position of Chairman of the Finance Committee.

Priebus also shared a screenshot of the invitation, which listed the names of other CFOs. Among them is Miriam Adelson, a megadonor to the Republican Party who has spent money $100 million this year on a Trump-supporting super PAC and a billionaire Trump donor Diane Hendrix.

Inaugural committees are required to publicly disclose the names of donors who donate $200 or more, but those documents must be filed no earlier than 90 days after the inauguration ceremony.

If the committee has a surplus after all the festivities, finding out how much is left can be a challenge.

Trump’s 2017 inauguration was a smaller event than Obama’s 2009 inauguration, even though Trump raised more than twice as much money as Obama. As a result, many expected Trump’s committee to be left with tens of millions of dollars after paying for balls and hotels.

But it was years later it is not clear what happened for a large part of this money.

Federal filings show that about a quarter of all funds raised, $26 million, were paid to a a newly established firm led by an adviser to First Lady Melania Trump.

“We look at the history of inauguration funding, and it’s clear that it comes from very large donors, wealthy special interests and corporations, almost all of whom have cases pending before the federal government,” Public Citizen’s Holman said.

He added: “It’s a real cesspool of service buying.”