Trump's corporate coronation: The rich rush to curry favor ahead of inauguration

Trump's corporate coronation: The rich rush to curry favor ahead of inauguration
Trump holds banquets at his Florida palace where wealthy, powerful people come from all over to pledge their fealty

By Heather Digby Parton
Columnist
Published December 16, 2024 9:00AM (EST)


(Salon) In May of 2023, the world watched as Charles III was crowned King of England after his mother, Queen Elizabeth II, passed away at the age of 96. Very few people alive could have remembered her coronation almost 71 years before and most Americans' only familiarity with that medieval ritual comes from viewing Netflix's "The Crown."

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I couldn't help but think of all this as I read about all the billionaires and foreign leaders making the pilgrimage to Donald Trump's golden palace down in Mar-a-Lago. The coronation (or what we used to call the inauguration) hasn't happened yet, but he's already being feted like a medieval king. And unlike the British monarchy, which has eliminated the paying of tribute to the king, here in America — where we supposedly cast off such practices in our revolution — our new president is busily collecting payments and demanding fealty from his liege lords and foreign allies. And he's making it very clear that he will not be happy if they don't come across with plenty of lucre to fill his royal coffers.

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But nothing compares to the media moguls and corporations who are racing to outdo each other to get into Trump's good favor or spare themselves from becoming the object of his anger. We all know that the man who never leaves his side these days is Elon Musk. He spent over a quarter of a billion dollars to help Trump get elected, has a great deal of business with the federal government and has an apparent burning desire to turn the country into the same grotesque shadow of its former self as he's done to his social media company X. Trump is clearly thrilled to have the richest man in the world acting as his majordomo.

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As the Journal reports, Meta's Mark Zuckerberg and Amazon's Jeff Bezos, both billionaires who own media companies made ostentatious trips to pay tribute to the new president after having been on his enemies list in the first term. They each pledged a million dollars to Trump's inaugural (which is basically a personal slush fund with virtually no ethics requirements) as has OpenAI's Sam Altman. ...............(more)

https://www.salon.com/2024/12/16/corporate-coronation-the-rich-rush-to-curry-favor-ahead-of-inauguration/