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Just a year ago, Steve Bannon, the powerful, populist MAGA podcaster, was thrilled to see Big Tech CEOs hanging around Donald Trump. In the days leading up to his inauguration, major players were visiting Mar-a-Lago, signing checks, and were even seen sitting quietly behind him during his second inauguration. Bannon told ABC’s Jonathan Carl in an interview, ‘Big Tech had weakened Trump for years: Jeff Bezos’ Washington Post For example, he was critically reported on, while Meta and Alphabet’s subsidiaries reportedly silenced his online presence. Now, Bannon said, they were Trump’s “prayers,” who hired MAGA regulators ready to break up those companies at any time. “The majority of our movement sees this as the way President Trump broke up the oligarchs,” he boasted.
The company is even citing small things in favor of the tech industry from MAGA and the feedback it has received from the said base. Last November, Trump sparked outrage on the right by defending the existence of H1-B visas for high-skilled foreign tech workers, even saying American workers lacked “certain talents” that prevented Big Tech from hiring domestically. Although Trump overhauled the immigration lottery system in a more nativist favor, the continued existence of the H1-B visa program created a massive rift within the MAGAsphere: how could Trump get into it Any Foreign workers, doesn’t that mean they were better than American workers? What was “America First” like? He?
For decades, even as a businessman, Trump had a consistent organizing principle: People and factions must constantly fight each other for his attention and favor. This happened all the time during Trump’s first term, when New York financiers, the Republican establishment, career officials, Trump’s children, and the proto-MAGA wing were all fighting each other inside the West Wing. But by the time Trump returned to the campaign trail in 2024, New Yorkers were fed up and had gone home, the Republican establishment had caved to Trump, and career officials were about to be wiped out. MAGA populism had won, and they were confident, to paraphrase Trump, that they would win so much that they would get tired of winning. It’s not like populists Not there. Territory claimed in Trump’s second administration. The Justice Department is wielding law enforcement against Trump’s critics, the Department of Homeland Security has given ICE a broadly terrifying mandate, and the Defense Department (sorry, war) has kidnapped a foreign head of state for LOL.
But honestly, I didn’t expect a year ago, when I saw tech CEOs applauding Trump in the Rotunda, that these “prayers” would eventually get their way with Trump. I’m not sure what the next year will be like for the internal drama coming out of the White House. However, I would say that it is very, Very Bannon, who once boasted that it was unconstitutional for Trump to run for a third term, is reportedly eyeing a presidential run himself.
Well, in the sense of the Senate being on recess for a week, during which I will follow the drama of Coinbase derailing the Interest Rates Clarity Act before the Senate Banking Committee reconvenes. I regret to say that I am not in Davos, where CEO Brian Armstrong is and where most of the talking seems to be taking place. So if you’re in a private Swiss meeting with other tech giants and have some insight into whether a real market structure bill will pass in the coming year, please email me at tina@theverge.com, or tina_nguyen.19 on Signal.
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