Trump has the billionaire class running scared

At the swearing-in ceremony inside the Capitol rotunda, Trump gave better seats to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk, Apple CEO Tim Cook, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew, and Google CEO Sundar Pichai than he did to the individuals the president had nominated to fill his Cabinet.

It was a stunning visual. The richest men in the world, who collectively control all of the dominant mediums of communication and commerce, stood behind the new president of the United States as he took the oath of office and delivered his inaugural address. Never before had a president been sworn in under such a backdrop. And for Trump’s political opponents in the Democratic Party, it was proof enough that the president would spend his time in office selling out to the billionaire class and thus betraying the populist sentiments that propelled him into office.

Now, accusing Republicans of being the party of the rich and wealthy has effectively been the Democratic Party’s messaging playbook for as long as anyone can remember. Democrats are for the working man, Republicans are for Wall Street, or so they insist. And in many respects, historically speaking, at least the second part of that was true. 

Republican strength was concentrated in the elite, well-off suburbs of major cities and their donors included many billionaires and corporate interests. On the other hand, the Democratic Party’s strength with voters lay with the blue-collar working class and its donor strength, even to this day, lies with unions and in grassroots organizations. This has remained true even as a growing number of corporate and billionaire interests have embraced the party and thus tied it to Wall Street.

But how much influence does Cook, Bezos, Zuckerberg, and the rest of the billionaire class really have with the Trump administration? Was the Trump campaign, as some prominent Democrats have claimed, really a stalking horse for the richest and most powerful people in the corporate world to take control of the federal government and remove any constraint on their ability to accumulate wealth, disseminate information, and influence policymaking? Has every billionaire that made the pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago during the transition period and made donations to the inaugural committee about to get every little thing that they could have dreamed of?

The short answer is no. But to answer these questions, we must first understand how Trump operates.

Each billionaire was on the stage behind Trump not because of what Trump could give him, but because the newly empowered president knows the power of visuals and the importance of engaging with the people who make the economy run.

The visual of having Cook, Bezos, Pichai, and the rest of the billionaires was for Trump, who famously hews largely to his own instincts, more about sending a message to the entire world that he had tamed the Silicon Valley titans that had so viciously opposed him for the past eight years.

Take Zuckerberg, for instance. Before his latest rebrand as a T-shirt-and-chain-clad tech-bro libertarian, the founder and CEO of Meta and Facebook was a stuffy suit that followed the whims of the moment and censored and banned conservatives on his social media platforms. But as the political right ascended with a vengeful Trump as its champion, Zuckerberg changed his tune and bowed before the president and his movement.

Not to be outdone in the Johnny-come-lately department, Amazon founder Bezos completely changed his business approach to Trump in the weeks before and after the election. In 2017, the Human Rights Campaign, a far-left activist group, gave Bezos its “National Equality Award” and trumpeted Amazon as the standard of how companies should embrace social activism. At the same time, his newspaper, the Washington Post, branded itself as the defender of democracy and was captured by a subscriber base that expected the paper to bash Trump at each and every turn. Fast forward to 2025, and Amazon has curtailed its “diversity, equity, and inclusion” programs while Bezos blocked the Post from endorsing Kamala Harris and donated $1 million dollars to Trump’s inaugural committee.

But the only billionaire who can make a plausible claim that he has Trump’s ear on policy is Musk, who has charted an unconventional path that prioritizes innovation over profit. At the end of the day, few would argue that his only life goal is to place a human being on Mars. Trump has promised to help him achieve that goal while also giving Musk the opportunity to help root out waste and fraud throughout the federal government. 

But the vast majority of Trump’s economic agenda runs counter to the interests of the billionaire class. His proposed tariffs will make their goods more expensive and could force them to spend billions to ramp up domestic production to cut costs. And Vice President JD Vance is a dyed-in-the-wool populist with a history of corporate skepticism. Trump even appointed Gail Slater, a former Vance aide, to lead the Department of Justice’s antitrust division. And in his first term, his administration launched a major antitrust lawsuit against Google that is ongoing.

But without influence (Musk excluded), why would these billionaires work so hard to tie themselves so closely to Trump and allow themselves to be featured so prominently on the stage as Trump began his second term? The answer is simple: fear.

As the chief executive of the U.S., Trump has enormous capacity to make life miserable for these men and their companies. And with Trump’s propensity to hold grudges against those who have maligned or sought to ruin him, the risk of not making nice with him was enormous.

But making nice did not come without a cost. And the price that Trump extracted from the billionaire class was a visual one that came with no guarantees that he would do their bidding.

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By placing those rich and powerful men on the stage as he excoriated the political elites of both parties, he was sending a message that with the power of the mandate given to him by the people, he can bring the world’s richest men and their vast wealth and corporate strength to his heel. And if he can do that to gatekeepers of information and technology, he can and will do it to the political and bureaucratic elites that inhabit the corridors of power in Washington, D.C. 

And if his first week-and-a-half in office is any indication, Trump is doing precisely that. For the first time in a very long time, substantive change has come to the nation’s capital, and it has the billionaire class running scared.