Donald Trump’s guests said a lot about American power.
What makes America great and unique? Obviously, the baseline is the founding documents and associated freedoms that we as Americans enjoy. One only has to look to England where freedom of speech is no longer guaranteed online or outdoors. In Australia, they took away the citizens’ guns. Maybe American greatness relates to its beauty and wealth of natural resources. That plays a part as do the people, but other countries also enjoy natural beauty and resources. When one thinks of American greatness, he thinks about American power. And that power was reflected in the group of people sitting immediately behind Donald Trump’s family.
If the inauguration had taken place in say the 1950s, then the titans of industry who might have attended would have been the makers of steel and automobiles. The heads of Boeing and “Ma Bell” might also have been in the crowd. But today, those companies are on life support. US Steel is trying to get itself bought by a Japanese rival. The “Big Three” automakers are worth less together than Tesla. AT&T was broken up decades ago, while Boeing’s stock has as much of a problem flying as do some of their planes. The people sitting in the second row behind the president are the face of American power, and I am glad that they were at the formal inauguration. I saw them schmoozing while the heads of Argentina and Italy stood in the back of the room.
While the festivities were on, I did a quick check of top companies by market value. The heads of five or six of the top 10 companies in the world were sitting behind Donald Trump’s family. They were sitting in the same row as Marco Rubio, the new secretary of state. The companies represented by Bezos, Cook, Zuckerberg, and friends have a total market cap of $10 trillion or more. The individuals there, in that one row, together are approaching $1 trillion in personal net worth. Every single world leader would want those fellows sitting behind him as he took office. And it was brilliant of Donald Trump to have them front and center, rather than say a bunch of DEI-loving generals who should probably be looking for retirement barracks.
I have no delusions as to the reason why these titans cut Donald Trump’s inauguration fund $1 million checks. They want to be on the in and not on the out. They know that the president wields enormous power over their companies via laws and presidential decrees that can severely impact their businesses—for the good or the bad. If a company like Facebook is made legally responsible for content on its platform, it can shut shop. If tariffs are structured in such a way as to make Amazon’s business model sink, Jeff Bezos might be selling his yachts. Those billionaires were not there out of some patriotic fervor, but rather to keep their businesses afloat and profitable. And that is exactly what they should be doing.
There is no question that these companies, and many others, used the Obama/Biden years to harm Americans and the country. Whether it was Twitter and Facebook deciding with the FBI and Tony Fauci what Covid information could be spread and not or Google whose searches could find nothing on an attempted assassination of Donald Trump only six months ago, these companies toed the official Democratic line. They did enormous damage to personal freedoms and the well-being of the United States. Zuckerberg spent over $400 million to make sure that Joe Biden was declared the winner in 2020. Google made the “Great Barrington Declaration”—which was a direct threat to Fauci’s approach to COVID—simply disappear from the internet. This is not about bygones be bygones or turning the other cheek. These companies represent American power. Every day, billions of people around the world use their products. Millions of people work for them directly or as contractors or suppliers. And we want to keep it that way. The one thing that we need is to get these companies out of the culture wars and politics. Just as Twitter became X under Elon Musk and is far more open to conservative expression, we need Apple, Bezos’ Washington Post and Facebook to even the playing field for all Americans. We don’t need them on the right or pretending to embrace MAGA; we need them in the disinterested middle.
Of all people, Isoroku Yamamoto, the architect of the Pearl Harbor attack, understood American power. He studied at Harvard and traveled the country. He told leaders in Tokyo that with American economic might, he would have six months of free reign in the Pacific before the U.S. would be able to defeat him. And sure enough, from Pearl Harbor in December of 1941 to his losing his four aircraft carriers at Midway Island in June of 1942, he was mostly unchallenged. After Midway, the U.S. never lost another naval battle.
It is hard for us to understand that generation’s production of bombers, ships, tanks, and jeeps by the thousands per year. A modern submarine takes years to build and if the U.S. produces a handful of fighters per month, that would be considered success. Donald Trump wants to bring manufacturing back to America, and that is important both for jobs and economic security. But at the end of the day, it is not steel production or railroads that today signifies American economic power, but rather the companies represented by that motley crew of Americans sitting behind the president. None of them was ever poor, but each of them went from well-to-do to stratospheric wealth by providing goods and services that people all over the world can’t get enough of. In Israel, iPhones are everywhere, and everybody tries to buy Amazon goods from $50 where shipping is free to $75 where duties apply.
Donald Trump has made it clear that he does not plan to hold grudges or go after his political enemies. He could have taken the titans’ money and put their seats in the Capitol kitchen. Rather, he chose to put them front and center to let these leaders know that if they play fair, he will be an ally. He also put the world on notice that there are more trillion dollar companies on the way. That rarified elite club will have new American members under the old/new president.