‘We Have No Formal Chain of Command Around Here’
Donald Trump’s three adult children participated in Wednesday afternoon’s meeting with 12 top tech leaders, mostly CEO’s. Ivanka, Donald Jr., and Eric Trump joined the president-elect and Mike Pence in the meeting that was coordinated by billionaire Facebook investor, Libertarian Peter Thiel, a Trump supporter, and Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner. It’s unclear if Kushner attended.
All three of Trump’s adult children are part of his transition team, which poses a conflict of interest as at least two of them, Eric and Donald Jr., are expected to take over the family businesses, at least on paper, once Trump is inaugurated. Ivanka Trump is expected to move to D.C. And work alongside her father in the White House.
“I’m here to help you folks do well,” Trump told the group, who gathered around a large table in his Trump Tower offices. “This is truly an amazing group of people.”
Also participating were Apple’s Tim Cook, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos (who personally owns The Washington Post), SpaceX and Tesla’s Elon Musk, Alphabet’s Larry Page, Microsoft’s Satya Nadella, IBM’s Ginni Rometty, Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg, and Intel’s Brian Krzanich.
“There’s nobody like you in the world. There’s nobody like the people in this room,” Trump said for the camera, promising to “make it a lot easier for you to trade across borders.”
“We want you to keep going with the incredible innovation,” Trump told the group, adding, “you can call my people, call me — it makes no difference — we have no formal chain of command around here.”
USA Today notes that the attendees combines “represent more than 1.3 million U.S. jobs and a total market cap of $2.9 trillion.”
Ahead of the meeting WIRED, anticipating how the meeting would be awkward, reported “Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos made the ripest target as the owner of the Washington Post, which Trump banned from campaign events due to what he saw as unfavorable coverage. He accused Amazon of being a monopoly and said he would sic antitrust forces on the company. Bezos responded with a hashtag: #sendDonaldtospace.”
“Trump also went after Apple, claiming he could get the company to start building its gadgets in the US and calling for a boycott of the company if it refused to hack the San Bernardino shooter’s phone. (In the an apparent lack of understanding of global supply chains in the first instance and of encryption in the in the second.) The president-elect is at odds with the industry, most notably Facebook, on immigration reform. And Silicon Valley sees little upside in Trump’s promised trade war.”
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