Former Trump chief strategist Steve Bannon said the tech giants gathered for Monday’s inauguration were “petitioners” for President Donald Trump to make a “formal surrender,” a move he made in 1990. He said that it was similar to Japan’s surrender to the Allied forces on the deck of the USS Missouri in 1999. September 1945.
Bannon, who later fell out with Trump after criticizing his intelligence and family as an architect of his 2016 presidential victory, told ABC News in an interview broadcast Sunday that Trump had been in control until then. “We have defeated the oligarchy,” he said. I agreed with him.
Elon Musk, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Apple CEO Tim Cook, Google’s Sundar Pichai, TikTok CEO ( CEO) Shou Zi Chiu is scheduled to attend President Trump’s second inauguration and has already visited Mar-a-Lago. They, or the companies they founded or represent, have contributed generously to President Trump’s inaugural fund.
“Jeff Bezos is here,” President Trump said last week. “Bill Gates came. Mark Zuckerberg came. Many of them came many times. All the bankers came. They’re all here.”
Bannon, who served a four-month prison sentence for defying a subpoena from the House Committee on Investigations on January 6, announced that Mark Zuckerberg would visit Trump and attend the inauguration. told the media that some of the biggest names in the technology world had lined up. Zuckerberg previously banned Trump from Meta’s Facebook and Instagram following the 2021 Capitol riot.
Zuckerberg later said he was “grateful for the invitation to dinner with President Trump and the opportunity to meet with members of his team about the incoming administration.”
“The floodgates opened and everyone was there to be supplicants,” Bannon said after Zuckerberg’s visit. “I’m looking at this because President Trump has defeated the oligarchy, and we’re seeing this in our movement. I think most people see this: He defeated them, and they surrendered,” Bannon added with a laugh. “They came in and said, ‘Oh, we’re going to remove all the restrictions and no more testing.'”
“I think of this as the Missouri in September 1945. You’re the Imperial Supreme Commander (of Japan), and he’s like Douglas MacArthur. It’s a formal surrender, OK. And I think that’s powerful,” Bannon added.
This comment comes after Joe Biden warned that “an oligarchy is forming in America with extreme wealth, power, and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy,” and that “power is dangerous in the hands of a few ultra-rich people.” This came amid a warning that people should concentrate on their activities.
But until last week, Biden had not used the word “oligarchy” in the context of American politics, according to White House archives. Progressive Democrats criticized Biden as a flawed messenger who courted and relied on big donors during his 50-year career.
Nina Turner, national co-chair of Sen. Bernie Sanders’ last presidential campaign, said, “With just days left in his term as president, he is the leader of the oligarchy for 50 years, It is despicable to call out this threat against.”
While Biden and Turner “enabled, benefited from, and emboldened this system that threatens us all, he will ride off into the sunset and feel no harm in what was built.” ” he added.
Biden’s comments came in the shadow of Zuckerberg’s announcement that Facebook and Instagram would scrap their fact-checking services and rely on a system of community-submitted notes.
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Zuckerberg said the decision was made because Facebook’s fact-checking, introduced in December 2016, did more harm than good in terms of public trust.
“The recent election feels like a cultural tipping point to once again prioritize speech,” Zuckerberg said. “That’s why we’re going back to basics and focusing on reducing mistakes, simplifying policies, and restoring free expression on our platforms.”
Biden called the decision “truly shameful.”
Zuckerberg also accused President Biden of pressuring Facebook to censor certain topics and posts, particularly regarding coronavirus vaccines.
“Basically, people in the Biden administration are going to call our team and scream and curse at them,” he told podcaster Joe Rogan. “It got to this point where we were like, ‘No, we’re not going to do that, we’re not going to take the truth down. That’s crazy.’
Zuckerberg said he is not opposed to vaccines per se. But he told Rogan that while the Biden administration was “trying to push forward” with the coronavirus vaccination program, it was “basically trying to censor anyone who was opposed to it.”
