Amazon, Meta Will Shell Out Big Bucks to Inaugural Fund in Effort to Curry Trump’s Favor

Jeff Bezos may have wanted his newspaper to stay out of politics when he killed a Washington Post endorsement for Kamala Harris … but he sure opened his wallet fast for President-elect Donald Trump.

A company spokesperson confirmed Thursday evening that the e-commerce giant will also stream Trump’s inauguration on its Prime Video service, a separate in-kind donation worth another $1 million.

Earlier in the day, Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, said it donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund.

Amazon’s plans were first reported by The Wall Street Journal. The report came after Trump said Thursday morning that the company’s founder, Jeff Bezos, was planning to visit him in person next week.

The two men had feuded in the past. During his first term, Trump criticized Amazon and railed against the political coverage at The Washington Post, which Bezos owns.

Meanwhile, Bezos had criticized some of Trump’s past rhetoric. In 2019, Amazon also argued in a court case that Trump’s bias against the company harmed its chances of winning a $10 billion Pentagon contract. The Biden administration later pursued a contract with both Amazon and Microsoft.

More recently, Bezos has struck a more conciliatory tone. Last week, he said at The New York Times’ DealBook Summit in New York that he was “optimistic” about Trump’s second term while also endorsing president-elect’s plans to cut regulations.

In October, Bezos did not allow the Post to endorse a presidential candidate, a move that led to tens of thousands of people canceling their subscriptions and to protests from journalists with a deep history at the newspaper. At the time, Bezos wrote in an op-ed in the newspaper that editorial endorsements create a perception of bias at a time when many Americans don’t believe the media.

Separately, the donation from Meta, which was also first reported by the Journal, came just weeks after Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg met with Trump privately at Mar-a-Lago. A Meta spokesperson confirmed the offering Thursday.

Facebook did not donate to either Biden’s 2021 inaugural or Trump’s 2017 inaugural.

Google donated $285,000 each to Trump’s first inaugural and Biden’s inaugural, according to Federal Election Commission records. Inaugural committees are required to disclose the source of their fundraising, but not how they spend the money. Microsoft gave $1 million to Obama’s second inaugural, but only $500,000 to Trump in 2017 and Biden in 2021.

Amazon had donated roughly $58,000 to Trump’s 2017 inaugural, much lower than than $1 million it now plans to donate. The company also streamed Biden’s inauguration on Prime Video in 2021.

via: AP

The post Amazon, Meta Will Shell Out Big Bucks to Inaugural Fund in Effort to Curry Trump’s Favor appeared first on LOVEBSCOTT.