Amazon is planning to make a $1 million donation to President-elect Trump’s inaugural fund as founder Jeff Bezos and other tech leaders work to smooth ties with the incoming commander-in-chief, the company confirmed to FOX Business.
The donation is being prepared by Bezos ahead of his visit next week to Mar-a-Lago, The Wall Street Journal first reported.
“Bezos is donating through Amazon,” a source close to Bezos told the newspaper.
Amazon will also stream the inauguration on Prime Video, the company confirmed, which will amount to an in-kind donation valued at another $1 million, the Journal reported.
MARK ZUCKERBERG VISITS TRUMP AT MAR-A-LAGO, REPORTEDLY ‘WANTS TO SUPPORT THE NATIONAL RENEWAL’
FOX Business reached out to the Trump transition team but has not heard back.
Bezos is among leaders in the tech industry, including Elon Musk and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, who have sought to get closer to the new administration.
Musk, the most outspoken among them, endorsed Trump in July and has remained close with him.
Musk donated around $250 million to pro-Trump causes to help him get elected, and Zuckerberg also plans to donate $1 million to the inaugural fund.
Bezos and Musk also both compete for NASA contracts through their space companies, SpaceX and Blue Origin, although SpaceX is the main company ferrying astronauts to the International Space Station.
Musk has also been tapped along with Vivek Ramaswamy to head the newly created Department of Government Efficiency for the incoming administration.
DOGE CAN FIND THE $2 TRILLION IN SPENDING CUTS MUSK WANTS, BUT THE SAVINGS COULD TAKE A WHILE
“I want to get ideas from them,” Trump told CNBC Thursday of meeting with the three businessmen. “Look, we want them to do well. We want everybody, and we want great jobs, fantastic salaries. We want people to love, and when they wake up in the morning, like get up and ‘I love to go to work, I want to go to work.’ We want people working, and we want them working for a lot of money.”
Bezos, who also owns The Washington Post, and Trump have feuded in the past, often over the newspaper’s coverage of Trump.
However, the Post stirred controversy before this year’s election by deciding not to endorse a candidate, which some took as a tacit endorsement of Trump.
“If @amazon ever had to pay fair taxes, its stock would crash and it would crumble like a paper bag. The @washingtonpost scam is saving it!,” Trump wrote in a tweet nine years ago.
Bezos blamed Trump’s influence in a legal challenge after the Department of Defense awarded a $10 million cloud computing contract to Microsoft instead of Amazon in 2019.
Amazon claimed at the time the Microsoft contract was “not based on the merits of the proposals and instead was the result of outside influence that has no place in government procurement.”
More recently, Bezos wrote on X that Trump showed “tremendous grace and courage” during an assassination attempt and congratulated him the day after the election.
“Big congratulations to our 45th and now 47th President on an extraordinary political comeback and decisive victory. No nation has bigger opportunities. Wishing @RealDonaldTrump all success in leading and uniting the America we all love,” he wrote.
Read the full article here
