President Donald Trump wined and dined a flock of Silicon Valley billionaires at the White House on Thursday, with the tech lords competing to stay on the president’s good side.
Former “first buddy” Elon Musk was notably absent from the entitled gathering, with the Tesla CEO posting on X after a user wondered why Bill Gates was present at the event, but not him. “I was invited, but unfortunately, I could not attend,” Musk said. ”A representative of mine will be there.”
Trump broke his silence on his relationship with Musk this week, telling The Scott Jennings Show, “He’s got 80 percent super-genius, and then 20 percent he’s got some problems. When he works out the 20 percent, he’ll be great.”
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Dinner guests included Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, who was seated next to Trump, while Microsoft founder Bill Gates sat next to Melania Trump. Also present were Apple CEO Tim Cook and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
At one point, Trump asked the guests to talk about their companies, which quickly turned into flagrant fawning over the president.
Cook, seated on the non-Trump side of the table, gushed, “It’s incredible to be among everyone here, particularly you and the first lady. I’ve always enjoyed having dinner and interacting.”
It turned back into a work dinner when Trump asked guest after guest how much money they were investing in America.
“I want to thank you for setting the tone such that we could make a major investment in the United States and have some key advanced manufacturing here,” Cook, who was at the White House earlier this year to give Trump a gaudy gold gift to mark Apple moving some of their production to America, said at Thursday’s dinner.
Trump asked, “How much money will Apple be investing in the United States? Because I know it’s a lot and you know, you were elsewhere and now you’re really coming home in a big way. How much will you be investing?”
Cook said it would be $600 billion. “We’re very proud to do it,” he said. Apple has previously said that while the glass, semiconductors, and Face ID modules will soon be made in the U.S., the “final assembly” of their products “will be elsewhere for a while.”
Altman also spoke Trump’s love language, saying, “Thank you for being such a pro-business, pro-innovation president. It’s a very refreshing change.”
After talking up the potential of AI and their investments in America, Altman promised: “We will invest a ton in the United States.” Trump jumped in to clarify it would be “hundreds of billions of dollars.”
That started Trump going around the table like an auctioneer: “Come to think of it, how much is Google investing?” ($250 billion in the next two years), and then “What about Microsoft? That’s a big number.” ($75-$80 billion).
Before the dinner, some of the tech guests attended a session of the new Artificial Intelligence Education Task Force, chaired by Melania Trump.
Facebook founder Zuckerberg seemed to avoid most of the media attention, until a reporter asked him a question about the latest crackdowns on social media posts in the U.K.
When Trump asked if he would like to answer the question he had been directly asked, Zuckerberg admitted, “Sorry I wasn’t paying attention.”
“This is the beginning of your political career,” Trump said. “No, it’s not,” the Meta CEO replied.
