In a picturesque scene of decadent place settings and gold-accented tablecloths, President Donald Trump hosted his cadre of tech powerhouse CEOs and business tycoons at a lavish dinner honoring their donations to his White House ballroom — and among those in attendance, the Bay Area was abundantly represented.
Late this summer, the president announced his plan to demolish the White House’s historic East Wing to make room for a new 90,000 square foot ballroom. As bulldozers rammed through the office of the First Lady and the public’s gateway into the White House, Trump reassured the American people that the project would not touch a cent of taxpayer money. But this project’s reliance on private funding raises ethical concerns over the president’s prioritization of personal benefits over public interests and concerns. This is all the more the case when Trump’s donors — including Silicon Valley’s very own Google, Meta, Apple, Ripple, and Palantir Technologies — have already established chummy relationships with the president over chats on his private golf course. With these private talks, and with hefty donations, it is clear that these big corporations and CEOs are participating in a quid pro quo with the president, keeping up friendly relations with the White House in exchange for less restrictive technological policies and increased opportunities to rake in capital.
The Code of Federal Regulation states that no person in government can use the authority issued by their title to broker deals that personally benefit the government employee. So under federal ethics rules, Trump’s use of private funds (under the guise of public service) to fund his ballroom project defies these regulatory statutes. Because Trump’s expenditure occurred during a federal shutdown, Trump also likely violated the Antideficiency Act, which prohibits the executive branch from acting without funds.
In the last decade, Palantir Technologies has clawed its way up to being a major defense contractor for the United States, providing surveillance, intelligence, and defense software to the military. But as the Pentagon is looking down alternate avenues amidst their abundance of contracts with the company, Palantir is drooling at the Trump administration’s ability to deepen the company’s partnership with the United States. Through supplying U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement with a master database and surveillance technologies for tracking immigrants, Palantir’s donation to Trump’s ballroom is just a stepping stone in their quest to rake in profit through their partnership with the United States government. In their quest to merge existing data silos to create a holistic data base of personal information for the government, Palantir fails to acknowledge that the segregated data silos acted as a check on potential bad actors in government. By aiding Trump’s deportation efforts, Palantir wins itself an abundance of monetarily beneficial contracts with the government, placating Trump for its own benefit.
Many major Bay Area corporations’ recent donations to Trump’s White House ballroom are not their first declarations of loyalty to the president. Early this autumn, Trump hosted a private dinner for Silicon Valley tech CEOs where they eagerly jumped at the chance to laud the president for his pro-business administration — praise they backed with significant investment promises. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg pledged to invest $600 billion “in the United States” following his $1 million donation to Trump’s January inauguration ceremony. Google vowed to invest $250 billion into the country, and Microsoft projected an investment of $75-80 billion. Apple has also committed to investing $100 billion in domestic manufacturing, backing Trump’s effort to return industrial work to the United States. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, who plans to invest up to $500 billion in AI infrastructure in the United States, praised Trump for his openness to AI technologies — an openness Meta also supports with their frequent attempts to influence AI oversight forums and digital legislation initiatives.
But more than the money these Bay Area CEOs are funneling into the pockets of Trump, they have bent the knee to the president by restricting content that does not align with his administration.
After the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection of 2021, YouTube suspended Trump’s account for his role in enabling the riots. The president then sued the video sharing platform, claiming that the platform denied him of his First Amendment rights. Despite legal experts denouncing the technical merits of the president’s argument, Google, YouTube’s parent company, decided to settle. Of the $24.5 million settlement, $22 million will go to the ballroom’s construction, and the remaining $2.5 million will go to the right-wing nonprofit American Conservative Union and other plaintiffs who joined the lawsuit.
According to legal professionals, Google did not have to settle. Simply put, Trump was not likely to win the case. Private companies such as Youtube are granted constitutionally guaranteed rights to publish or restrict content, rendering Trump’s First Amendment argument largely baseless.
Compared to Google’s roughly $3.4 trillion valuation, $24.5 million is nothing. Talks about the lawsuit began in May at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort and golf club, and involved Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai, its co-founder Sergey Brin, and Trump. Following this meeting, and after a federal judge ruled in a separate case that Google violated antitrust laws through a monopolization of advertisements, Google eventually decided to settle.
As the Department of Justice decides what to do about Google’s advertising monopoly, the settlement appears to be a good business decision on Google’s part, as it won the company good relations with the president. While the settlement has not yet guaranteed Google an immunity from antitrust laws, the company has remained largely free of harm in recent discussions about how corporations should be penalized for illegal monopolies.
By settling, not only is Google engaging in a private exchange of favors with the government, but the company is also bending their knee to President Trump and his crusade against free speech. The settlement reinforced the notion that YouTube is not responsible for the content that gets published on the website, allowing the company to evade responsibility for content that perpetuates harm on their platform while simultaneously regulating and shadowbanning content behind the scenes. In not fighting the lawsuit, YouTube bows their head to Trump and admits that their restriction of content relating to the Capitol insurrection was a mistake.
In tandem with the settlement, Alphabet, the parent company of Google and YouTube, announced their reinstatement of YouTube accounts previously banned for COVID-19 and election misinformation. YouTube’s decisions to settle with Trump, and to further regulate their content in accordance with the president’s wishes, represent a complete betrayal of free speech and reveal the company’s belief that the government has a right to moderate the content of private organizations.
But YouTube is not the only Bay Area company intent on executing the president’s agenda on content regulations. Not only has Meta donated to Trump’s ballroom and pledged to invest billions of dollars into the United States, but its subsidiary Facebook is also taking orders from the federal government. At the request of attorney general Pam Bondi, the social media company removed a well-known group page used to identify ICE agents in Chicago this October. Earlier in the month, Bondi requested that Apple remove ICEBlock and Google remove Red Dot from the App Store. These were applications that allowed users to anonymously report the location of ICE agents. As with their other attempts to get on Trump’s favorable side, both companies heeded the call.
While operating from the liberal haven of the Bay Area, Silicon Valley tech companies bend the knee to President Trump, walking hand in hand with him as he embarks on his agenda to demolish the historic East Wing, deport immigrants, and restrict free speech. As these tech CEOs line the pockets of the president in hopes of earning less restrictive tech regulations and favorable federal legislation, they are simultaneously turning their backs on principles of free speech.
Featured Image Source: The White House