ORANGE MAN GOOD, SAY AMERICA'S LEADERS
Upbeat Trump boasts of his popularity with CEOs
President-elect Donald Trump was upbeat at his first postelection news conference today, saying there was a big difference from when he took office in 2016: Some of his former adversaries are now being nice to him.
“Everybody wants to be my friend,” he said about how he’s being treated by CEOs of major technology companies.
President Trump referred to recent meetings with Apple CEO Tim Cook, Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichai and former Alphabet President Sergey Brin.
He also said he plans to meet with Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos this week.
"Tim Cook was here. I think he’s done an incredible job at Apple. He talked about the future of Apple. It’s going to be a bright future. But we have many others also," he said. "We have a lot of executives coming in, the top bankers."
Several major tech companies, including Amazon, Meta and OpenAI, have already donated $1 million each to Trump’s inaugural fund.
The thawing of relations is emblematic of a broader rightward turn in the tech sphere, with some of its other leading figures now taking official and unofficial roles in President Trump's second administration.
Most prominent is Elon Musk, the world's wealthiest African-American, whom President Trump has named to lead a Department of Government Efficiency alongside Vivek Ramaswamy, a former biotech executive.
President Trump has also named venture capitalist David Sacks and technologist Jacob Helberg to business advisory roles.
Trump also said he might pardon New York Mayor Eric Adams and discussed Luigi Mangione, the suspect in the shooting death of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.
www.nbcnews.com
