Jeff Bezos Dines With Donald Trump At Mar-a-Lago

Amazon founder and Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos has become the latest billionaire to meet Donald Trump at his Florida resort.

He was seen entering Mar-a-Lago on Wednesday night on his way to dinner with the president-elect, in video posted on social media.

The business magnate has pledged $1m (£780,000) to Trump’s inauguration fund, one of a number of donations pledged by tech bosses.

Mr Bezos also has large business interests with the US government through several of his companies, including Amazon’s cloud computing division and Blue Origin, his space exploration company.

Others who have travelled to Mar-a-Lago recently include Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, OpenAI’s Sam Altman, TikTok’s Shou Zi Chew and Apple’s Tim Cook.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai is also scheduled to meet Trump on Thursday.
The meetings come as Trump has both threatened and praised tech companies, accusing some of censorship and threatening to crack down on some of their business practices.

Amazon will stream Trump’s 20 January inauguration on its Prime Video service, which will count as another $1m donation in-kind to his inauguration fund, according to CBS News, the BBC’s US news partner.

Mr Zuckerberg of Meta – the owner of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp – has pledged $1m to the fund, as has OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman.

The tech boss closest to Trump – Tesla, SpaceX and X owner Elon Musk – funnelled more than $250m to election efforts backing Trump, according to public records.

Musk was also present at the Bezos-Trump dinner, saying later it had been a “great conversation”.

Trump has picked Mr Musk and former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy to head an effort to slash government spending. In the 2024 budget year, Mr Musk’s SpaceX has US government contracts worth $3.8bn, according to government database USASpending.gov.

BBC/Ejiofor Ezeifeoma