Tim Cook Becomes the Newest Big Donor to the Trump Inaugural Fund ⇥ axios.com

In the United States, donations to the extravagant presidential inauguration ceremony by U.S. citizens and corporations are unlimited. As a result, it is the perfect vehicle with which to get comfortable with the incoming administration. It is not a bribe, though. Money or goods given to holders of public office with the implication of favours is almost never bribery. If you call it a bribe, everyone involved seems to get mad. So do not call it a bribe.

Kathryn Watson and Libby Cathey, CBS News:

Amazon, run by billionaire Jeff Bezos, intends to donate $1 million to the president-elect’s inaugural fund and will stream the ceremony on Prime, amounting to another $1 million in-kind donation, according to a source familiar with the donations. The Wall Street Journal first reported Amazon’s plans.

Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, also plans to send $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman plans to make a $1 million personal donation to Trump’s inaugural fund, according to an OpenAI spokesperson. Fox News Digital first reported Altman’s intended donation.

That makes three-for-three on billionaires who see nothing but good news in getting cozy with Trump administration figures.

Edward Helmore, the Guardian:

US business leaders are spending big on Donald Trump’s second inaugural fund, which is predicted to exceed even the record-setting $107m raised in 2017.

[…]

“EVERYBODY WANTS TO BE MY FRIEND!!!” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social on Thursday.

I had blessedly forgotten what this seventy-eight year old sounds like.

Mike Allen, Axios:

Apple CEO Tim Cook will personally donate $1 million to President-elect Trump’s inaugural committee, sources with knowledge of the donation tell Axios.

[…]

Cook, a proud Alabama native, believes the inauguration is a great American tradition, and is donating to the inauguration in the spirit of unity, the sources said. The company is not expected to give.

The sources’ names? Cim Took and Ptim Kooc.

Call this what you want: bipartisanship, diplomacy, pragmatic, outright support, or “the spirit of unity”. But one thing you cannot call it is principled. We have become accustomed to business leaders sacrificing some of their personal principles to support their company in some way — for some reason, it is just business is a universal excuse for terrible behaviour — but all of these figures have already seen what the incoming administration does with power and they want to support it. For anyone who claims to support laws or customs, this is not principled behaviour.

Or, I guess, bribery.