Amazon is set to donate $1 million to President-elect Donald Trump’s inaugural fund, matching a similar donation announced by Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta this week.
The Wall Street Journal first reported the tech giant is the latest to woo the incoming Trump administration after a particularly fractious period with Silicon Valley. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is also set to meet with the president-elect in Florida sometime next week.
“Mark Zuckerberg’s been over to see me. I can tell you Elon [Musk] is another, and Jeff Bezos is coming up next week,” Trump told CNBC on Thursday. “I want to get ideas from them. … Look, we want them to do well, we want everybody, and we want great jobs, fantastic salaries.”
Amazon will also match the money with an in-kind donation valued at $1 million by streaming the inauguration on its Prime Video service, the Journal reported.
Bezos has made overtures to Trump throughout the year, praising his response to the June 13 assassination attempt at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, as graceful and courageous. The billionaire also congratulated Trump after his election victory last month, saying the president-elect had waged an “extraordinary political comeback.”
Our former President showed tremendous grace and courage under literal fire tonight. So thankful for his safety and so sad for the victims and their families.
— Jeff Bezos (@JeffBezos) July 14, 2024
Bezos also owns another company that does big business with the federal government: Blue Origin, his rocket enterprise.
Meta broke with longstanding precedent when it said this week it, too, would give $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund. The social media giant did not donate to Trump’s first inaugural fund in 2017 or to Joe Biden’s in 2021.
Bezos, who also owns The Washington Post, had taken steps to limit the fallout from the election regardless of the winner. He directed the paper to end its tradition of endorsing presidential candidates. The Post had an endorsement for Vice President Kamala Harris prepared at the time, but editors were forced to pull it just 11 days before the November election.
He later said he was “proud” of the move, saying it would help address Americans’ concerns with media bias.
Bezos also told those gathered at The New York Times’ DealBook Summit that he was “actually very optimistic” about the upcoming Trump administration.
“What I’ve seen so far is that he is calmer than he was the first time and more confident, more settled,” the billionaire said of the president-elect.
