KTAF NEWS

Amazon founder and Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos has become the latest billionaire to meet Donald Trump at his Florida resort.

He was seen entering Mar-a-Lago on Wednesday night on his way to dinner with the president-elect, in video posted on social media.

US media reported that Elon Musk joined the pair. Mr Musk later tweeted “it was a great conversation”.

Mr Bezos has pledged $1m (£780,000) to Trump’s inauguration fund, one of a number of donations pledged by tech bosses.

Mr Bezos has large business interests with the US government through several of his companies, including Amazon’s cloud computing division and Blue Origin, his space exploration company.

Others who have travelled to Mar-a-Lago recently include Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, OpenAI’s Sam Altman, TikTok’s Shou Zi Chew and Apple’s Tim Cook.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai is also scheduled to meet Trump on Thursday.

The meetings come as Trump has both threatened and praised tech companies, accusing some of censorship and threatening to crack down on some of their business practices.

Amazon will stream Trump’s 20 January inauguration on its Prime Video service, which will count as another $1m donation in-kind to his inauguration fund, according to CBS News, the BBC’s US news partner.

Mr Zuckerberg of Meta – the owner of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp – has pledged $1m to the fund, as has OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman.

Mr Musk funnelled more than $250m to election efforts backing Trump, according to public records.

Trump has picked Mr Musk and former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy to head an effort to slash government spending. In the 2024 budget year, Mr Musk’s SpaceX has US government contracts worth $3.8bn, according to government database USASpending.gov.

Mr Bezos also has significant business with the government.

Amazon Web Services was awarded a 10-year, $10bn contract with the National Security Agency in 2021. In 2023, Nasa announced a $3.4bn contract with Blue Origin to build a lunar lander for a planned mission to the moon.

Just days before the November election, the Washington Post announced that it would not be endorsing a candidate for the first time in decades.

Mr Bezos explained the decision by saying endorsements create a perception of bias.

“Ending them is a principled decision, and it’s the right one,” he wrote in the Post.

Mr Musk and other business leaders such as financial services firm Cantor Fitzgerald’s CEO Howard Lutnick – Trump’s pick for commerce secretary – have been part of Trump’s inner circle since before the election.

But other tech leaders and billionaires have had a more distant relationship.

Trump was suspended from Facebook after the Capitol riot following his loss in the 2020 election, and later reinstated.

This time around, Mr Zuckerberg appears to have changed tack.