At his first postelection news conference on Monday, President-elect Donald Trump expressed optimism, stating that there was a significant change from when he entered office in 2016: Some of his old opponents are now showing him kindness.
Regarding his treatment by CEOs of large technology companies, whom he has previously characterized as enemies, he remarked, “Everyone wants to be my friend.” I’m not sure if my personality changed or what.
Trump stated One of the most significant changes over the past four years, according to the extensive news conference held at his Mar-a-Lago residence, is that “everybody was fighting me.”
“The biggest difference is that people want to get along with me this time,” he stated.
It was the first event that Trump had held himself since November and his first press conference since winning the election.
Trump mentioned recent talks with Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Alphabet and Google, former Alphabet President Sergey Brin, and Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple. Additionally, he stated that this week he will meet with Jeff Bezos, the CEO of Amazon.
“Tim Cook was present. He has done a fantastic job at Apple, in my opinion. He spoke about Apple’s future. The future is going to be bright. However, we also have a lot of other people who are not in that line of work,” he stated. “We have a lot of great executives coming in, the top executives, the top bankers, they were calling.”
A number of significant tech firms have already contributed $1 million apiece to Trump’s inaugural fund, including Amazon, Meta, and OpenAI.
Trump’s relationship with several of the CEOs of Big Tech has been tense; during the Jan. 6, 2021, uprising, several of them banned him from social media and condemned measures implemented under his previous presidency.
In 2020, for example,executives lambasted Trump over his executive order to freeze new visas for foreign workers, arguing that immigrants have helped strengthen the U.S. economy and, specifically, technology companies.
Trump was prohibited from accessing his Facebook and Twitter accounts following January 6. Some of the prohibitions were lifted by Google, Facebook, and Twitter.
Trump had alsofeuded with Bezosover his ownership of The Washington Post, Amazon’s decisionnot to do businesswith the far-right social media app Parler in 2021 and a bid Amazon made on a $10 billion Defense Department contract.
With several of its other key players also assuming both official and informal positions in Trump’s second administration, the thawing of ties is representative of a larger rightward shift in the IT industry. Most prominent is Tesla CEO Elon Musk, the world’s wealthiest person, whom Trump has named to lead a Department of Government Efficiency alongside Vivek Ramaswamy, a former biotech executive. Technologist Jacob Helberg and venture investor David Sacks have also been appointed to business advisory positions by Trump.
Trump also signaled Monday that he would be willing to pardon New York Mayor Eric Adams, who wascharged in Septemberwith bribery and wire fraud as part of a scheme that spanned nearly 10 years.
“Yeah, I would, I think that he was treated pretty unfairly,” Trump said, adding that he doesn’t know the “gravity” of the case but that the allegations don’t seem fair. “I mean, I’d have to see it, because I don’t know the facts.”
When asked about the purported drone sightings over New Jersey and New York, Trump responded, “The government knows what is happening.” He refused to say if he had been briefed on it by intelligence.
“For some reason, they don’t want to comment, and I think they’d be better off saying what it is our military knows and our president knows. And for some reason, they want to keep people in suspense.”
Trump commented on the suspected shooter in the death of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, Luigi Mangione, and the people who have praised him for committing the crime.
“It’s really terrible that some people seem to admire him, like him,” Trump said. “It was cold-blooded, just a cold-blooded, horrible killing.”
Asked whether plans to stopa ban on TikToknext month, Trump said, “We’ll take a look at TikTok.”
“You know, I have a warm spot in my heart for TikTok,” he said, adding that he thought his electoral performance with young voters was in part due to his use of TikTok. “I won youth by 34 points. And there are those that say that TikTok has something to do with that. Trumplost the majority of votersunder 44,according to national exit polls.
Trump also said he plans to sue The Des Moines Register over the newspaper’sfinal poll of the election cyclereporting that Vice President Kamala Harris led by 3 percentage points. Trump wound up winning the traditionally red state by more than 13 percentage points.
While the news conference was Trump s first since he won the election, he has attended other organizations events, including a SpaceX test launch, and gone to numerous sporting events. During the same period in 2016, Trump had already held eight victory rallies around the country and gaggled with media in the lobby of Trump Tower numerous times. And Joe Biden in 2020 had held 15 events organized by his incoming administration.
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