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Tech is the belle of Trump’s ball
00:16:46
In Washington, seating charts are not left to chance. And yesterday’s inauguration sent a message that Big Tech not only has a seat at President Donald Trump’s table — but a really good one. And that industry leaders are more than happy to have it. Digital Future Daily author Derek Robertson joins host Steven Overly to discuss Trump’s brand of digital populism, and why his campaign rhetoric and embrace of wealthy technocrats may not be as incongruent as it seems.
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- [00:01]
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- [00:33]
Stephen Overle
Hey, welcome back to POLITICO Tech. Today's Tuesday, January 21st. I'm Stephen Overle. We talk a lot about tech's influence in Washington on this show, and we're going to keep talking about it, but yesterday we got to watch it play out live. At President Donald Trump's swearing in ceremony, big tech CEOs were given some of the most exclusive seats in the house. You had Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg seated directly behind Trump's family and in front of his Cabinet. Later, at a luncheon, Zuckerberg was spotted chatting up Senator Lindsey Graham and Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. And Bezos shared a table with Secretary of State nominee Marco Rubio and Senate Majority Leader John Thune. Now, you and I might have casual dinner parties at home, but in Washington, seating charts are not left to chance. The inauguration sent a message that tech not only has a seat at Trump's table, but a really good one, and that industry leaders are more than happy to have it. This all struck me in juxtaposition to the campaign trail just a few months ago, when Trump pledged to be a president for the Everyman and often railed against many of the tech companies now getting his affection. To chat through this, I called up Derek Robertson. Derek writes POLITICO's digital Future Daily newsletter and tackled Trump's brand of digital populism. In his latest edition, he tells me Trump's populist rhetoric and embrace of rich technocrats may not be as incongruent as it seems. Here's our conversation. Derek, welcome back to Politico Tech.
- [02:40]
Derek Robertson
Thank you, Stephen. Happy inauguration.
- [02:43]
Stephen Overle
Yes, we are now through the inauguration. It has come and gone and Trump's second term is officially in its first full day. You know, I knew that tech CEOs were attending the inauguration. I knew they were gonna be sitting with Trump. It was striking to me, though. I mean, these guys, Sundar Pichai, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg were seated with Trump's family, like in some cases in front of members of his cabinet how significant do you think their presence was, like, symbolically or otherwise?
- [03:16]
Derek Robertson
I think it's hugely significant. I've written a lot lately about how especially the events surrounding the TikTok ban reflect this kind of reckoning that government and the tech industry are having with how important tech platforms, social media platforms are to American governance and civic life. There used to be this kind of old fashioned view of how tech platforms worked, which was these are private companies building kind of tools that are just ancillary to people's lives that they are free to choose to use or not to use. All of that is still technically true, but in a greater sense. Nobody would dispute that platforms like TikTok, like Facebook, like Elon Musk's X, are totally central to how politics operate in the United States. And in fact, the sort of crowds that form on these platforms are used by politicians like Trump or people like Elon Musk to justify the political positions that they're taking. What we saw when Trump was elected in 2016 was an effort from tech CEOs to reinforce that old status quo that I was just describing. You know, we are off here in a corner in corporate America. There's normal stuff that American businesses do, and there's a normal way that we work with American government. And Trump is not it. And we are going to resist him, if not in the kind of liberal hashtag resistance way, we are not going to play ball with him. Now after, you know, three elections in which Donald Trump was on the ballot and in which he's scored millions and millions and millions of votes, they've essentially been proven wrong in that stance. Trump is normal, for lack of a better word. He is at the center of the political discussion, right? He holds the sword of Damocles over these tech CEOs in many different ways. And so therefore they are trying to get on his good side. It's about as simple as that.
- [05:11]
Stephen Overle
And it's interesting because, I mean, obviously these executives, for one, they paid to be there. You know, either they or their companies each donated a million dollars to Trump's inauguration fund. But sitting in such prominent seats, I mean, it does put them really at the center of kind of the throes of politics in a way that these executives and their companies once hated to be. I mean, even. And like the Obama years, right, like there was some coziness, but it was sort of around these big digital initiatives and coding ventures and STEM education. I mean, this is, you know, to me it seemed like really big tech saying, like, we're embracing politics, we're embracing potential controversy that comes from this, I guess, ultimately making the decision that that's good for business.
- [05:59]
Derek Robertson
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, lest any of us forget, these men are responsible for multi billion dollar global industries that are kind of the tip of the spear of American economic dominance globally. This was true when Barack Obama was president. It was true when Trump was president the first time. It was true when Biden was president. It is in their best interest for government not to interfere with their affairs. And what they have accepted this time is that for government not to interfere with your affairs under Donald Trump, you need to be on Donald Trump's good side personally. You need to show personal fealty to him. And so that's just. That's exactly what they're doing. In the exact same way, during the Biden administration, you saw tech CEOs coming to Capitol Hill and playing nice with congressional committees, playing nice with the White House, participating in the White House's AI initiatives. This is just a different form of kind of placating the beast. When Trump was initially president, it was seen as inappropriate to do this. It was seen as bad business, frankly, it's not seen as bad business anymore.
- [07:04]
Stephen Overle
Right. You know, the interesting thing is there's a lot that obviously these tech companies have to gain from Trump, whether that's AI policy, tax policy, antitrust investigations, you know, you name it. But what's interesting also is what Trump potentially gets out of this relationship. You know, he's railed against these companies for years. But there was an interesting comment from Ezra Klein at the New York Times. You know, he noted that for all Trump talks about manufacturing, he kind of chose tech executives to sit prominently at the inauguration. And he wrote, quote, it's the attentional oligarchs whose power he cares about. So, and these guys, they control attention. They control attention online, they control narratives online. Right. In the highest sense that they run these companies. Is that, you know, a motivator here?
- [07:56]
Derek Robertson
Yeah, definitely. I don't think it's lost on anyone that Trump spent his entire presidential campaign driving a garbage truck and putting firefighters and garbage collectors and these blue collar workers on stage with him.
- [08:11]
Stephen Overle
He worked at McDonald's.
- [08:12]
Derek Robertson
That's correct. Yes, Yes, A fry cook. And then he gets inaugurated, and suddenly the fry cook and the garbage collector and the firefighter are replaced with Sundar Pichai and Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos.
- [08:25]
Stephen Overle
Right.
- [08:25]
Derek Robertson
I think what Trump recognizes is that as I wrote about in Digital Future Daily, having a good relationship with these digital platforms is good for his political project because the incentives. There's a brilliant essay that I excerpted in Digital Future Daily by a sociologist at the University of California, Los Angeles named Rogers Brubaker. And he writes very succinctly and straightforwardly about how digital media platforms I'm putting this in very simple terms. Digital media platforms favor populist politics just by the nature of how the platform works. And so this is why Trump, after initially saying that TikTok should be banned because he's a China hawk, turned around and decided that TikTok shouldn't be banned because TikTok is good for Trump. He was far more successful than Joe Biden was on TikTok. And it should be said that TikTok's CEO in America was present to some extent around the inauguration activities. So Trump knows that these it's almost in the at least. Well, Donald Trump is president. It is in his interest and the CEO's mutual interest for them to have a good relationship.
- [09:45]
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- [10:07]
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- [10:16]
Stephen Overle
Well, that's, yeah, you wrote about this idea of sort of Trump's digital populism and how that is shaping his political views and some of these actions he's taking at the very beginning of his second term. Is there a dissonance between that sort of digital populism and these so called tech oligarchs he's embracing? You know, these are some of the richest men on the planet leading some of the wealthiest companies on the planet.
- [10:41]
Derek Robertson
Steven, I'm glad you asked that question because the answer, the answer is no. And this is an idea that seems counterintuitive at first, but it's something I've tried to explore in some of my writing. And it's something that again, the UCSF sociologist I just cited kind of gets at very cleanly where technocratic government is generally thought of as kind of unaccountable government by technological elites, a bunch of pointy headed data brokers kind of figuring out, crunching the numbers and seeing how government should work without any concern for the little guy. But as we know, this phenomenon of technocracy melding with populism is not without historical precedent. Ross Perot in 1992 ran a campaign that was remarkably similar to the themes that Trump and Elon Musk have kind of invoked together by way of representing the common man and making the government just make sense. It's almost like you need Trump and Musk to square this circle. You need Trump to say, I'm listening to you, the people, the real Americans out there who want your government to be more accountable. And Elon Musk is my friend who knows how the computers work and the numbers work, and he's going to roll up his sleeves with Doge, figure out what's right for America and just do it. And are you going to necessarily be a part of the conversation around what that that Doge does? Looks like you might not be, but you've spoken through Your support on TikTok, your support on X. You've said that you want Trump and Musk to do this. It's a rough, very kind of informal plebiscite. But this is the alliance of the populist voice and then the technocrats rolling up their sleeves and getting work done that is represented by Trump's government.
- [12:28]
Stephen Overle
And I guess the proof will be in the actual actions, because it's one thing to say your voice is being heard on X or on Facebook or whatever. It's another thing when these billionaires get into positions of power, when they start governing, as the Trump administration now has to do, whether they actually deliver on that sort of implicit promise of representing the views of the people.
- [12:52]
Derek Robertson
That's right. I mean, you know, the most direct form of democracy is not posting on X. You know, maybe in the world we live in today, that's the second most direct form of democracy. The most direct form is still voting. And it remains to be seen this is a very as. As you discussed with the replacement of kind of industrial advocacy and imagery from the first Trump administration with his embrace of tech CEOs. This is a very different Trump presidency than the first one we saw. It's quaint now to think about. I remember one of the very first controversies of Trump's first administration was his interference in some kind of labor issue at a carrier plant, the heavy machinery company that makes air conditioners and other machines in Indiana. And that was a big, high profile clash he was kind of wading into to show that these were going to be his priorities. We're a long way from the carrier plant right now, and it will be interesting to see how far Trump goes down the road of Ross Perot style technocracy and how voters respond to it and as their material conditions change.
- [13:57]
Stephen Overle
Right. We saw a lot in the first Trump presidency sort of the celebration of big announcements about new manufacturing plants and jobs being created. We'll certainly see some of that again, I think. But you know, when Trump talks about big beautiful deals now, he's also potentially talking about a deal to save TikTok, which is sort of next on his agenda. Right. And so, yes, I agree with you that I think we are going to see a different flavor to this administration and who knows if it'll last, But a different kind of approach to tech companies as well.
- [14:29]
Derek Robertson
You've already seen this with the clash over the immigration issue within the party that played out over the holiday recently. You know, allowing more high skill tech immigration is a big deal if you're Elon Musk and it's a big deal if you're in the anti immigration wing of the party in the opposite direction and that you don't want that to happen by any means. So this is kind of a new part of the Trump coalition that's bolted on. It almost sometimes seems like the this is not to say that the evangelical vote has left Trump quite the opposite. But they were so prominent in the 2016 campaign because they were some of the few people who are willing to wholeheartedly back him and the Republican coalition and that their place in the spotlight has kind of been taken by the technocrats. And that will lead to a very different character of this political project from 2016.
- [15:19]
Stephen Overle
Right. Absolutely. Well, the party's over like the real work starts. So Derek will have to check back in with you. But thanks for being here on Politico Tech.
- [15:28]
Derek Robertson
Yeah, you're welcome. I'm in New York, so I didn't get to go to any of the inauguration parties. The party never began up here.
- [15:34]
Stephen Overle
But I'm in D.C. i didn't go to any of them either, so you can't get me in a tux.
- [15:40]
Derek Robertson
All right, fair enough. Thanks, Steven.
- [15:43]
Stephen Overle
Bye. That's all for today's Politico Tech. If you enjoy Politico Tech, be sure to subscribe. And for more tech news, subscribe to our newsletters, Digital Future Daily and Morning Tech. Our managing producer is Annie Reiss. Our producer is Afra Abdullah. I'm Stephen Overle. See you back here tomorrow.