By Michelle Goldberg
During a media briefing at Mar-a-Lago on Monday, Donald Trump discussed recent encounters with Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple, Sergey Brin, a Google co-founder, among other tech moguls. “In my first term, everyone opposed me,” he noted. “In this term, everyone desires to be my ally.” For once, he wasn’t exaggerating.
Since Trump’s reelection — this time securing the popular vote — many of the nation’s most powerful figures appear to have dropped any resolve to oppose him as he aims to shape America into the kind of authoritarian oligarchy he respects. This can be termed the Great Capitulation.
After January 6, Mark Zuckerberg, who co-founded Facebook, temporarily banned Trump’s account. However, last month at Mar-a-Lago, as reported by The Wall Street Journal, Zuckerberg was seen with his hand on his heart while “the club played a version of the national anthem performed by imprisoned” defendants from January 6. (It’s unclear if Zuckerberg was aware of what he was hearing.) He has committed to a million-dollar contribution towards Trump’s inauguration, along with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Jeff Bezos’ Amazon, which will also broadcast the inauguration on its streaming service.
After Time magazine named Trump “Person of the Year,” Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, the magazine’s owner, proclaimed on the social media site X, “This signals a time of significant hope for our country.” Similarly, the proprietor of the Los Angeles Times, billionaire pharma and biomedical tycoon Patrick Soon-Shiong, halted publication of an editorial that criticized Trump’s Cabinet selections and urged the Senate to resist recess appointments.
Perhaps most astonishing was ABC News, owned by The Walt Disney Co., which took the questionable step of settling a weak defamation case initiated by Trump.
Recall that last year, a jury found Trump civilly accountable for sexually assaulting writer E. Jean Carroll. A memorandum from the presiding judge clarified that while the jury did not conclude that Trump had raped Carroll, it was bound by New York criminal law defining rape as solely “vaginal penetration by a penis.” It did determine that he had forcibly penetrated her with his fingers.
“The determination that Ms. Carroll did not demonstrate that she was ‘raped’ under New York Penal Law does not imply that she failed to establish that Mr. Trump ‘raped’ her in the common understanding of the term,” the judge wrote. “Indeed, as the trial evidence outlined below confirms, the jury concluded that Mr. Trump did exactly that.”
ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos seemed to adopt this broader interpretation when he stated on-air in March that a jury had found Trump “liable for rape.” Trump, accustomed to threatening and occasionally filing defamation lawsuits against those he considers adversaries in the media, initiated a lawsuit. Although his case appeared patently weak, ABC News chose to settle by agreeing to a $15 million contribution to Trump’s future presidential library or museum, $1 million for legal expenses, and a public apology from Stephanopoulos and the network.
Acts of subjugation aren’t confined to tech and media sectors. Christopher Wray, the FBI chief, consented to resign before completing his 10-year tenure rather than compel Trump to dismiss him. Several Democrats have expressed their readiness to collaborate with Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, whose purported Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, seems set to slash at our already precarious safety net.
In The New Yorker, Jonathan Blitzer commented on the current administration’s hesitance, thus far, to renew humanitarian parole for immigrants from nations such as Venezuela and Haiti in order to potentially protect them from deportation under Trump. “For a president who sees Trump as a fascist and has cautioned against the horrors of large-scale deportation, the vibe within Biden’s White House has struck several sources I’ve spoken with as oddly tranquil,” Blitzer noted.
Various individuals have diverse motivations for aligning themselves. Some might simply dread confrontation or believe, not without reason, that resistance is pointless. Yet, our tech overlords, seemingly once liberal, now seem to embrace the new reality. Many abhorred wokeness, resented the demands of newly assertive employees, and were discontent with attempts by the Biden administration to regulate cryptocurrency and artificial intelligence, both of which hold the potential for significant and enduring social harm. Certain CEOs achieved their positions by aligning with the prevailing sentiments; they can readily shift from expressing empty platitudes about racial justice to donning a red MAGA cap.
Some Democrats seem to believe they might guide DOGE in a constructive manner, and that, irrespective of the outcome, they’ll receive acknowledgment for bipartisanship. The electorate, after all, has delivered its assessment of #Resistance.
One of Kamala Harris’ polling experts reportedly cautioned the Democratic National Committee leadership against fretting over Trump’s offenses, including the highly unsuitable individuals he has nominated for his administration. Voters, she stated, “are indifferent to who he appoints to Cabinet roles.”
These collective elite choices to concede to Trump suggest a diminishing of the former liberal framework. In its stead will emerge something more relentless and Nietzschean.
“The individual possesses the inherent moral right to live a life that is distinct and fulfilling without subjugating to the collective,” Marc Andreessen, a software engineer and venture capitalist at the forefront of Silicon Valley’s rightward shift, expressed on X last week. “Purveyors of abstract guilt must not rob you of that.” Even influential figures who did not endorse this severe new reality can extract their reassurances from it.
