Voters who picked the so-called ‘anti-establishment’ candidate in the US election have been rinsed on social media after Donald Trump packed his inauguration with billionaire tech titans.
Leaders including Meta’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg; Apple’s CEO, Tim Cook; Google’s CEO, Sundar Pichai; Amazon’s founder, Jeff Bezos; and Tesla’s CEO, Elon Musk, gathered together to symbolise the increasingly close relationship between the tech industry and the new American president.
The industry leaders were originally supposed to sit on the dais – a position of honor where Trump’s family members, former presidents and other high-profile guests when the ceremony was still scheduled to be held outside.
But with the cold weather in Washington on Monday, the inauguration was moved inside the Capitol, scrambling existing seating arrangements, and promoting the tech leaders to positions next to Trump family members and ahead of cabinet nominees.
“Big Tech billionaires have a front row seat at Trump’s inauguration,” posted the Massachusetts senator Elisabeth Warren on X. “They have even better seats than Trump’s own cabinet picks. That says it all.”
Others on social media lampooned those who sided with the ‘anti-establishment’ candidate, saying they had been taken for fools if they thought he would be the one who will “shake up the system”.
Here’s a pick of the reaction: