Why America's CEOs are Cozying Up to Trump

Trump’s new corporate buddies clarifies the stakes

In the days after the Trump-inspired assault on the Capitol, the PACS for major corporations, including GE, CIGNA, and Blue Cross/Blue Shield, declared they could no longer support Republican members of Congress that voted against certifying the election. Social media companies like Twitter, Meta, and Google banned or suspended Donald Trump from using their platforms. This was all part of a recognition that Trump and his allies had gone too far. Being a “good corporate citizen” was incompatible with supporting insurrectionists.

Even before January 6th, many corporations and CEOs were publicly critical of Trump’s immigration policies, Muslim ban, and inflammatory rhetoric. Sure, they did business with the government but were wary of being seen as too closely associated with a dangerously divisive and incompetent President.

Flash forward to now, and America’s CEOs are in a race to crawl as far up Trump’s ass as fast as possible. As the Wall Street Journal recently reported:

Titans of the business world are rushing to make inroads with the president-elect, gambling that personal relationships with the next occupant of the Oval Office will help their bottom lines and spare them from Trump’s wrath.

In the weeks since the election, Trump and his advisers have been flooded with calls from c-suite executives who are eager to get face time with the president-elect and his team at Mar-a-Lago, the private Florida club where the transition team conducts much of its planning for the second term.

Meta, Amazon, OpenAI, and others are donating $1 million to Trump’s inauguration. CEOs like Mark Zuckerberg and Tim Cook have all made a pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago to dine with the President. During his visit, Zuckerberg stood with Trump, hand over heart, while a version of the national anthem performed by imprisoned January 6th rioters played. Another group of CEO’s chanted USA, USA. Then, over the weekend, ABC News — a subsidiary of the Disney Corporation — agreed to pay Trump $15 million and offer him an apology to settle a lawsuit. An embarrassing wave of the white flag by a media entity in a free speech case.

Trump himself summed up the new dynamic at a press conference on Monday when he said:

In the first term, everyone was fighting me. This time, everyone wants to be my friend.

While all of this corporate coddling of Trump is a relatively sharp pivot from four years ago, it shouldn’t be a surprise, and Democrats should see it as an opportunity to better align our messaging with the public.

Corporations Are Not Our Friends

During the first Trump term, much effort was expended to pressure corporations to oppose him. Campaigns were launched to get social media platforms to ban Trump and his allies from spreading hate and disinformation. In the 2020 Democratic primary, Kamala Harris made banning Trump from Twitter a major message push. Organizations like Sleeping Giants and Media Matters called out corporations, whose public values included diversity, for advertising on Breitbart and Fox News.