Zuckerberg, Bezos and Musk's tech-brother foes for a position at Trump's inauguration

OOn January 20th, the three richest people on Earth will all fit into an area smaller than a Mini Cooper.

“First Mate” Elon Musk, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Facebook and Instagram chief Mark Zuckerberg will sit together on the podium at Donald Trump’s inauguration in Washington, DC, NBC News reported on Tuesday.

The three men, who have a combined estimated net worth of $860 billion, are far from best friends. Most of them have openly disagreed with each other on a business and personal level.

But authoritarian leaders tend to make strange bedfellows, and in recent months all three men have bent the knee to Trump.

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has been at loggerheads with his tech brethren over the years (Getty Images for The New York Times)

Consider Musk and Bezos, who have been locked in a private space race for years. Their respective companies, SpaceX and Blue Origin, have long been at loggerheads over federal space launch contracts.

The two men reportedly fell out in early 2004 when they met for dinner to discuss the space industry. “[I told him,] “Dude, we tried it and it was really stupid, so don’t do the stupid thing we did,” Musk later recalled.

In 2013, Blue Origin filed a lawsuit to prevent SpaceX from using one of NASA’s launch pads, which Musk described as a “bogus blocking tactic.”

The rivalry intensified in 2019 as both men continued to jab at each other in public statements and on social media. Bezos mocked Musk’s desire to colonize Mars, while Musk called Bezos a “copycat” over his plans for a network of low-Earth orbiting satellites (similar to Musk’s Starlink).

The two companies continued to battle in court, with Musk accusing Bezos of “taking himself a little too seriously” and criticizing Amazon. lord of the rings TV series for sexism against men.

Zuckerberg has been in a public spat with Musk that has almost turned into a cage match (AP)

Then there’s Musk’s long and strangely public spat with boss Metta Zuckerberg. After a faulty SpaceX rocket blew up one of Facebook’s satellites on the launch pad in 2016, Zuckerberg called Musk’s “vindictive” views on artificial intelligence “irresponsible.”

In 2018, Musk joined the #deleteFacebook movement, shutting down his companies’ Facebook accounts, quipping, “What is Facebook?”

In 2023, things got weirder after Musk entered the social media market by buying Twitter and renaming it X. Harsh words over Facebook’s trustworthiness, and Instagram’s attempt to poach users from X, turned into a scheduled cage martial arts match between the two men. .

“Zack is a cuckoo,” tweeted Musk, offering to engage in a “literal dick-measuring contest.” Luckily for the world, that never happened, and neither did the cage match (both of whom blamed each other).

Still, business is business, and all three men now seem to have calculated that Trump’s scheming works to their advantage.

Bezos intervened The Washington Post (a newspaper he owns) to boost Kamala Harris’ planned campaign support, though he insisted it had nothing to do with Trump. He later donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund and visited him at Mar-a-Lago.

Meanwhile, Zuckerberg unveiled a series of Trump-friendly reforms at Meta, appointing a Trump ally to its board. Having spent 2020 selling himself as a sincere progressive, he then took on Joe Rogan to decry the meta’s “masculine energy” in his company (which is 63 percent female). Both Amazon and Meta have said they will be removed from diversity programs.

Europe was Musk on Trump's campaign trail — and has become one of his closest allies — Europe was Musk on Trump’s campaign trail — and has become one of his closest allies (Associated Press)

Of course, Musk’s evolution at MAGA is well known — his massive donations to the Trump campaign and his influence over the future White House.

One tech baron not mentioned in NBC’s report was Apple CEO Tim Cook, whom Trump once referred to as “Team Apple.” While Cook, who is gay, personally donated money to Trump’s inauguration and has worked hard to improve his relationship with Trump, his company has defended its diversity policies against a conservative challenge.

So when Trump is sworn in next week, these tech barons will be united by their vast scale of business interests and their shared desire to pay tribute to a man described by 14 of his own former officials as a power-hungry fascist.

I can’t help but wonder if their sitting together is a deliberate show by the ever-knowing and loyal Trump (or rather, one of his aides) — to show the world that these three powerful men are willing to put their lives on the line. Differences for this common interest

However, wouldn’t you like to be the federal agent assigned to eavesdrop on their conversations?