I did have dinner with Tim Cook. I had dinner with sort of almost all of them, and the rest are coming. And this is one of the big differences, I think, between we were talking about it before. One of the big differences between the first term and the first term, [00:00:17] everybody was fighting me in this term. Everybody wants to be my friend. I don't know. My personality changed or something. Your power levels changed. I think that's what happened. And the opposing political party, the Democrats, have embarrassed themselves [00:00:35] dramatically in this past election. So with that in mind, let's talk a little bit about Donald Trump now, suddenly thinking that billionaire tech CEOs meeting with him and being nice to him means that they want to be his friend. No quid pro quo. [00:00:50] Quid pro quo. And look, I suspect that Trump knows that. But I don't know. Let me give you the details and maybe you guys can decide for yourselves. So last night, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos had dinner with Donald Trump at Mar a Lago. Despite previous feuds between all three of them. [00:01:06] Okay. Elon Musk in the past has said terrible things about Trump. Obviously, Jeff Bezos has said terrible things about Trump as well. But things are changing. So that makes Musk and Bezos just two of a whole slew of these tech executives, essentially courting Donald Trump [00:01:25] and shelling out donations in the hopes of getting on his good side. And so you're seeing a graphic that lists just some of them right now. You know, you have the TikTok CEO Xiaohongshu, you have Apple CEO Tim Cook, [00:01:40] aka Tim Apple, of course. Google CEO Sundar Pichai. You have meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. You guys get the picture. Okay. Some people that I should probably know, but I'm not familiar with, but nonetheless, nonetheless, after this wine and dine session last night, [00:01:58] he once again bragged about his new circle of friends, saying, everybody wants to be my friend in all caps. Why do you write that? Why do you write that? But they want him to push through deregulation and tax cuts, [00:02:14] and something Jeff Bezos made perfectly clear just a few weeks ago at the New York Times Dealbook summit. Take a look. If we're talking about Trump, I think it's very interesting. I'm I'm actually very optimistic this time around that we're going to see [00:02:32] I'm very hopeful about this. His. He seems to have a lot of energy around reducing regulation. And my point of view, if I can help him do that, I'm going to help him because we do have too much regulation in this country. There's so many advantages here, but we are burdened [00:02:50] by excessive permitting and regulation. You can't build a bridge and all these things. You know what they are. We see these examples all the time. We need to be able to build solar fields and everything else. - So you're. - Optimistic. I'm super optimistic about this president. And the reason I ask is because I'm. Very optimistic that that President Trump is serious about this regulatory agenda. [00:03:08] And I, I think he's going to I think he has a good chance of succeeding. I love how one of the richest men in the world is like, you know, if he wants to do away with regulations, I want to help him. I bet you do, buddy. I bet you do. [00:03:25] Now it seems as though Bezos had to work pretty hard to get around Elon Musk. At last night's dinner. So. Lebanese's. A reporter and lawyer who was at Mar-A-Lago said she witnessed Bezos on a mission to win Trump over before Musk arrived unceremoniously [00:03:45] around 50 minutes later, catching his fellow billionaire off guard and making him uncomfortable like he had been c blocked. I know, I know, you guys know what that means. I can't say it. - Clock blocked. - Clock blocked. [00:04:02] Because he was on the clock and. And, you know, you guys get the picture. Okay. And he took some of his time. Yeah. That's good. Actually, I like that. All right, so the folks that we showed you earlier, those are actually the very top business leaders in the world these days, because those are all like, [00:04:18] the Silicon Valley rules the world now. And that's pretty much all of Silicon Valley, including the AI companies, all the way to Netflix. Right. So Trump's a funny guy because, you know, he I think he probably means both of these things in this case. Like in the old days, we told you about how Trump used to go [00:04:33] to these parties of super rich people, and he wanted to fit in. And he once told a story of a guy who had lost all his money. And then everybody thought he was embarrassing. And that was like his worst fear of all time. And he whenever someone more wealthy than him was coming to one of his parties, [00:04:49] he's like, Steve Wynn's going to be here. Steve Wynn's going to be here. So this whole everyone loves me now, everyone wants to be my friend is partly that. And that's the funny part and the slightly embarrassing part. Or maybe really embarrassing anyway. But the other half is, I know what he's saying. He's saying like, funny how everybody wants to be my friend now. [00:05:07] Yeah. No, totally. I think look, I honestly think it's more that than, you know, the prior like the previous thing. But yeah, I hear you. But also at the same time, I think you're probably right that it's a little bit of both, because, look, the one thing that we've been saying about Trump over and over again is that he [00:05:26] desires admiration, he desires validation. And so he probably feels really good about the fact that these billionaires who had previously said terrible things about him are now coming around and buddying up to him, sucking up to him because they want favors. [00:05:43] Let's keep it real, of. Course, and they don't want to be burned by Trump. So what they're doing is super rational. So even though we might find it distasteful. So in the beginning, why do they a lot of these guys oppose him in the beginning because the business world hates instability. So when the establishment is in charge, they know exactly [00:06:01] what they're going to get. They're going to get the status quo, which they love, because they're already at the top. They're going to get some tax cuts where they play these good cop, bad cop games, right. They're going to get some deregulation. They're largely in charge. Would they like more tax cuts? Would they like more deregulation? Sure. But they could live with the status quo. The status quo has been wonderful to them. Right. [00:06:18] So they don't want a bull in a China shop like Trump. But now that he won, they go, okay, first of all, this guy's a little bit dangerous. And so I got to get I got to get on his good side so he doesn't punish me because he has threatened to punish Amazon because of what Washington Post wrote, [00:06:34] because Bezos also owns Washington Post as an example. But he's really done that with a lot of people. So if if you don't care about morality, you don't care about the country, you don't care about anything but your fiduciary responsibility to maximize profit for your company, you'd be nuts not to go talk to Trump if you're them. [00:06:50] Right? Because billions and billions of dollars are on the line so that they want to protect against the downside. But now they realize, as Bezos just told you, oh, there's some good upside in these hills. This guy's going to get rid of all the regulation. I don't have to protect my workers anymore. [00:07:06] I don't have to protect the community anymore. I don't have to protect the environment. I don't have to protect anything. I just run amok. We're in mad Max world now. Okay? So these guys love that. Yeah, they do. And so they realize, especially with Elon doing what he did. [00:07:22] Like, oh, you just go pay him and then you get whatever you want. Yeah genius Elon. So they were all going to say oh kiss up. There's two ways you pay. One is compliments. You're amazing. You're the best one of us all okay. And the second is you're kind of. [00:07:38] Like a smart person. Yeah, yeah. You're like a very stable genius. And the second thing is that you fund his inauguration, you send him more money, it's you promise some goodies, and then he's going to give you giant tax cuts and deregulation. He's very, very transactional. Trump is incredibly transactional. So that's why I say quid pro quo. [00:07:57] I mean, that's the way he operates. Now, with that in mind, there are some who are getting very frustrated with Elon Musk essentially serving as a gatekeeper to Donald Trump. And so, apparently after his last minute [00:08:12] decision to kill Mike Johnson's continuing resolution to fund the government, there's a lot of anger about Elon Musk and his role in the, you know, upcoming Trump administration. And in fact, Trump administration hasn't even begun. And Elon Musk clearly already has a lot of influence. [00:08:30] And so here's Maggie Haberman explaining how frustrated people are feeling. Take a look. Certainly, Elon Musk has an enormous amount of influence, at least in communicating for Donald Trump. I don't know how much of this is Elon Musk whispering in Trump's ear versus other people whispering in Trump's ear? [00:08:46] And Musk is being, you know, vocally against this particular piece of this bill. It does speak about the fact that Elon Musk is going to be a very powerful ally for Trump. It's also raising concerns for some Republicans I've been talking to over the last couple of hours. [00:09:01] What does this look like for those legislative priorities, such as extending the tax cuts such as, you know, any number of things that Trump wants to try to enact and that he has campaigned on, what does this look like for actually, competently and functionally running a government? [00:09:18] Now, as we all know from Donald Trump's first term, he doesn't take kindly to these narratives that he's not the one in charge. And so immediately, his team fought back against this narrative. A Trump spokesperson weighed in. Caroline Leavitt says Elon Musk in regard to the allegations [00:09:37] that Elon Musk is the real leader. She says as soon as President Trump released his official stance on the continuing resolution, Republicans on Capitol Hill echoed his point of view. President Trump is the leader of the Republican Party. - Full stop. - So yeah. [00:09:55] And Trump also put out a statement saying because here let me just back up. So you know the timeline here on the on the budget. Elon first tweeted saying this is unacceptable and we're not going to let this pass. [00:10:11] Then Trump came out and said the same thing, but now it got awkward because it looks like Elon is in charge. So Trump in his statement said, I had already given Elon permission to say what he said. I'm like, all right, brother, maybe okay. Or maybe he said that. [00:10:28] And then it was awkward and I said, so look, is Elon playing with fire here? Are we soon going to get a Trump going? Very disappointed with my head of Doge. Okay. Maybe could you never know. But look, I'm going to keep it real. [00:10:44] So this you you you I don't think you'll hear this in mainstream media. I don't think you'll hear it in left wing media at all. And I'm not sure you'll hear it in right wing away anyway. So there are people who are incentivized to make sure that they do split. So they're going to press on that wound. [00:11:00] So there's a lot of Democratic congressmen coming out now. Dan Goldman and others going, oh, who's really in charge? And they're trying to get under Trump's skin so that they break that bond. And and so whenever you've got a strong team, the other side [00:11:15] always tries to create dissension and, and break them apart. So the reason why I'm skeptical that Trump is going to throw Ellen, you know, under the bus is because Ellen holds a lot of cards. He has a tremendous amount of money that he could use to help Trump [00:11:33] in a lot of contexts. Plus, Ellen has X, and X is driving a lot of the messaging. Right. So if that messaging turns against Trump, well that hurts Trump. So it's not like Ellen's like sessions where he can just throw him under the bus [00:11:51] and sessions can't do anything about it. His former attorney general in his first term. Right. So that's why this is a little bit of a tango here. Trump doesn't hold all the power. Elon does hold some significant power. [00:12:06] And then finally, what I'd be super curious about is, if they separate, can Elon swing the MAGA guys on X against Trump? Is that possible? Or do the MAGA guys on X rebel against Elon Musk? [00:12:25] I don't know. I don't know if we're going to find out. On the other hand, four years of Trump staying an ally of someone that is super hard, you know. Yeah, I mean it's a personality this big. Yeah. And that has his own independent thoughts and ambitions and and you know, agenda. [00:12:46] A lot of egos. - Yeah. - Those two egos man. If they make it the whole four years, it'll be amazing.