President-elect Donald Trump warmly welcomed another tech mogul on Wednesday evening, as Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos was seen arriving at Mar-a-Lago.
Bezos, alongside his fiancée Lauren Sanchez, was observed strolling into Trump’s Florida residence that night for a meal with the newly elected president. The couple walked together, hand in hand, trailing behind Trump and his spouse, Melania, to enthusiastic applause.
Having contributed $1 million to the Trump inauguration via Amazon, Bezos joins the roster of tech innovators looking to align themselves with the Trump administration. OpenAI’s CEO, Sam Altman, also committed $1 million to the inauguration, while Meta’s head, Mark Zuckerberg, contributed the same amount and visited Mar-a-Lago. Additionally, TikTok’s CEO, Shou Zi Chew, had a meeting with the president-elect recently.
Furthermore, Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX and owner of X, has been a significant advocate for Trump lately.
Bezos’ visit to Palm Beach coincides with walkouts by Amazon staff from a warehouse in San Francisco and six delivery hubs located in southern California, New York City, Atlanta, and Skokie, Illinois.
Although not typically aligned with Trump, Bezos has shown enthusiasm for the president’s second term in the White House. “I’m genuinely hopeful this time around,” Bezos stated at The New York Times’ DealBook Summit in New York earlier this month. “He appears to be energizing efforts to cut regulations. If I can assist in that, I’m on board.”
“Our country indeed has too many regulations,” Bezos remarked.
Recently, the dynamic between Trump and Bezos improved when the Amazon founder’s newspaper, The Washington Post, broke with convention by opting not to endorse a presidential candidate this year, after having consistently supported Democratic nominees in previous elections.
This week at the New York Stock Exchange, Trump expressed his enthusiasm for his tech-savvy calendar.
“I want to gather insights from them,” Trump commented after receiving the honor of being named Time’s Person of the Year. “We genuinely want them to thrive.”
