Companies that previously feuded with President-elect Trump are now making seven-figure donations to his 2025 inauguration.
Trump has butted heads with several Fortune 500 company executives over the years, but following his presidential election victory in November, some of those same big-business leaders are dropping major cash on the incoming president’s exclusive inaugural festivities.
“In the first term, everyone was fighting me. This time, everyone wants to be my friend,” Trump recently said at Mar-a-Lago, according to The Washington Post.
Meta, the world’s largest social media network headed by Mark Zuckerberg, suspended Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts in 2021 after the events of Jan. 6 — which Trump called an “insult” to his voters. In his new book, titled “Save America,” Trump accused Zuckerberg of “plotting” against him in 2020.
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“He told me there was nobody like Trump on Facebook. But at the same time, and for whatever reason, steered it against me,” Trump wrote. “We are watching him closely, and if he does anything illegal this time he will spend the rest of his life in prison — as will others who cheat in the 2024 Presidential Election.”
Trump, in his book, also accused Zuckerberg of “always plotting to install shameful Lock Boxes in a true PLOT AGAINST THE PRESIDENT.”
However, the relationship appeared to change course as the election drew nearer. After Trump’s Butler, Pennsylvania, assassination attempt in July, Zuckerberg said Trump’s fist pump in the air after suffering a bullet wound to the ear was “one of the most bada– things I’ve ever seen in my life.”
Shortly after Trump won the election in November, Zuckerberg met with the incoming president at Mar-a-Lago. Just weeks later, Meta donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund.
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“Mark Zuckerberg has been very clear about his desire to be a supporter of and a participant in this change that we’re seeing all around America, all around the world with this reform movement that Donald Trump is leading,” Trump adviser Stephen Miller said during an appearance on “The Ingraham Angle.”
Despite a yearlong clash between Amazon’s billionaire founder, Jeff Bezos — who also owns The Washington Post — and the incoming president, the e-commerce company recently pledged to donate $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund.
After Trump told Fox News’ Sean Hannity in 2016 that Amazon was “getting away with murder, tax-wise,” Bezos fired back at the then-presidential candidate.
Bezos, appearing at a technology conference, said that Trump’s comments were “not an appropriate way for a presidential candidate to behave.”
“Washington Post employees want to go on strike because Bezos isn’t paying them enough. I think a really long strike would be a great idea,” Trump wrote in another hit at the billionaire on X, then Twitter, in June 2018. “Employees would get more money and we would get rid of Fake News for an extended period of time! Is @WaPo a registered lobbyist?”
The mood appeared to have shifted following the 2024 election, when Bezos said he was “very optimistic” about Trump’s regulatory agenda.
“I’m very hopeful — he seems to have a lot of energy around reducing regulation,” Bezos said at the New York Times DealBook Summit. “My point of view is, if I can help him do that, I’m going to help him.”
When Ford agreed to make a deal to meet California’s efficiency standards, the company defied then-President Trump’s plans to push back on the state setting its own green energy standards for automakers.
Trump voiced his opposition to the auto giant’s decision, saying that Henry Ford, the company’s founder, would be “very disappointed if he saw his modern-day descendants wanting to build a much more expensive car that is far less safe and doesn’t work as well, because execs don’t want to fight California regulators.”
Ford, one of the world’s largest automakers, recently announced it will be making a seven-figure donation to Trump’s inauguration in January.
Other major automakers, such as GM and Toyota, will also make individual donations of $1 million to Trump.
Trump will also receive a $1 million inauguration donation from Intuit, whose stock recently dropped in November after it was reported that the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) was considering creating a free tax-filing app.
