Google and Microsoft announced this week that they will invest $1 million into President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration fund.
“Google is pleased to support the 2025 inauguration, with a livestream on YouTube and a direct link on our homepage. We’re also donating to the inaugural committee,” Karan Bhatia, Google’s global head of government affairs and public policy, said in a statement to German-owned Politico.
Trump, who will take his oath of office on January 20, has received many Big Tech donations.
According to CNBC, his inauguration fund has received a $1 million donation from Amazon, Meta, Uber, and Open AI CEO Sam Altman. Also, Trump got a $2 million donation from Robinhood Markets.
Apple CEO Tim Cook pledged $1 million to the inauguration fund as well.
Some Big Tech companies changed their policies after Trump was elected president. This week, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that Facebook, Instagram, and Threads will stop using fact-checkers and use an X-style community notes system.
“We’re going to work with President Trump to push back on governments around the world that are going after American companies and pushing to censor more,” Zuckerberg said.
Trump seeing Big Tech companies donating to his inauguration fund is quite the turn of how they treated him after he lost the 2020 presidential election.
For example, Meta’s Oversight Board suspended Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts on January 7, 2021, a day after the Capitol riot. Also, the Oversight Board kept a suspension on these accounts for two years.
According to Newsmax, Meta, Alphabet, and Microsoft employees donated significantly more to Kamala Harris than Trump in the 2024 presidential election.
The Associated Press reported that Trump has received over $170 million in donations for his inauguration. This is a record amount of money for an inauguration committee, the AP says.
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Zachery Schmidt is the digital editor of The Star News Network. Email tips to Zachery at zschmidt1717@gmail.com. Follow Zachery on Twitter @zacheryschmidt2.
