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The public detente between President Donald Trump and Big Tech titans, forged in the wake of his return to power, has yet to take hold at the country’s annual gathering of his most devoted supporters. Inside the Conservative Political Action Committee this week, mentions of Facebook or its billionaire founder Mark Zuckerberg were met with jeers. A speaker from the main stage described Google as “the worst of the worst” tech monopolies.
The conference hallways were lined with advertisements for conservative-friendly alternatives to mainstream platforms like X and YouTube. No industry has pushed harder to repair its relationship with Trump amid his remarkable political comeback than the technology sector. Meta’s Zuckerberg, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Apple CEO Tim Cook and Google CEO Sundar Pichai made high-profile visits to Mar-a-Lago during the transition.
Tech companies and their executives contributed millions to his inaugural celebrations, helping him shatter fundraising records. And X owner Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, has become Trump’s right-hand man in turning the federal government upside down. Musk, in fact, may be the only tech titan who’s been spared the MAGA movement’s wrath.
Donning dark sunglasses and brandishing a chainsaw gifted by Argentina President Javier Milei, Musk received a hero’s welcome at CPAC on Thursday for his early work targeting government spending. “There’s living the dream, and there’s living the meme,” Musk said. “And that’s pretty much what’s happening, you know.
” Others in the industry have adopted new policies that appear calibrated to appease Trump and win back conservatives as customers and users. But if the reaction at CPAC is any indication, those efforts have done little to assuage lingering resentment among Trump’s most ardent followers. For many at CPAC, the past actions of social media giants — deplatforming prominent right-wing figures, including Trump, and enforcing content moderation policies that conservatives argue disproportionately targeted them — are not easily forgotten.
Outreach efforts by the companies drew some glib responses. “I will say this to the big tech platforms like Google and Facebook: Thank you for paying for Trump’s inauguration,” conservative legal advocate Mike Davis said during a panel titled “Nowhere to Run: The Takedown of the Left Tech.” “I think Mark Zuckerberg donated a million dollars.
We appreciate that. It was a fun party.” Davis, who has advised Trump on judicial and justice matters in the past, was quick to note that such contributions would not be enough to secure leniency from the new administration.
“I don’t think that he’s going to buy antitrust amnesty,” he said. Despite the industry’s outreach, the animosity that defined the last decade of the conservative movement’s relationship with Silicon Valley remains deeply ingrained. “Screw Facebook,” said Karli Bonne, a prolific pro-Trump poster during a social media training for MAGA activists.
“I want nothing to do with Facebook. You gotta do your thing, but (Zuckerberg) can kiss my ass.” The ramifications for Big Tech extend beyond the walls of CPAC.
Even with Trump now in the White House, some Republican lawmakers continue to threaten to remove legal protections that prevent tech companies from facing legal action for the content posted on their websites. “You’re either gonna be an open platform or you’re gonna be a publisher who can get sued like ‘60 Minutes’ ought to get sued for the nonsense that they did to President Trump and the interviews. So they gotta pick a team,” Missouri Sen.
Eric Schmitt told CPAC. (Trump has sued CBS over the editing of a “60 Minutes” interview with his 2024 opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris. CBS has called the suit meritless.
) Trump himself has largely set aside his public feuds with Silicon Valley’s elite. At Trump’s invitation, the country’s most powerful tech executives stood behind him at the U.S.
Capitol as he took the oath of office for a second term, some occupying spots closer to the president than his family and top officials in his new government. He regularly name-checks his conversations with Silicon Valley’s leaders The unlikely alliance underscores the swiftness of Trump’s transformation—from a firebrand outsider who declared himself a “political dissident” at last year’s CPAC to a triumphant executive firmly steering the machinery of power. Throughout this week’s gatherings, some conservatives seem to still be fighting past battles – pandemic policies, 2020 election results, President Joe Biden’s immigration policies – without fully acknowledging that the political landscape is now tilted their way.
Big Tech isn’t alone in facing continued scrutiny from Trump supporters. One CPAC panel targeting “woke” boardrooms in the financial industry was critical of BlackRock CEO Larry Fink and JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon, who have friendly relationships with Trump. At a White House event Thursday, Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla faced boos when introduced by Trump, an episode that quickly generated buzz across the Potomac at National Harbor where CPAC was meeting.
Former Trump strategist Steve Bannon, a powerful voice in the MAGA movement and an outspoken critic of Musk and his peers, urged continued skepticism of an industry that only recently aligned itself with Trump. “All these guys don’t support us,” Bannon told CNN at the start of CPAC, adding that “they don’t support MAGA.” “They’ve abandoned the progressive left.
They will abandon us,” Bannon said. “They seek power.” These ongoing concerns have created an opening for conservative-aligned companies to emerge in the tech space, many of which are prominently featured throughout the convention center.
CPAC organizer Matt Schlapp encouraged attendees to shop around for companies that are “fighting the woke crap.” Still, the landscape for the burgeoning alt-tech industry is complicated by Trump’s willingness to embrace blue chip companies once again. The reemergence of X, named Twitter before Musk bought it and rebranded it, creates challenges for competitors that rose to prominence at a time when the social media platform kicked off Trump and barred accounts that violated rules for spreading misinformation and hate speech.
Parler, a social media site temporarily banned by Amazon, Apple and Google after its use by participants in the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol became widely known, is now marketing itself as an app that takes advantage of the blockchain, allows users to own their content and keeps algorithms from impacting what people see. Still, their pitch to conservatives remains at least partially intertwined with political events of the past five years. “People are not going to 100% leave those platforms, but I think you can still be a little bit leery about it,” Amy Robbins, a spokeswoman for Parler, told CNN at CPAC, where the company had a large presence.
“Can we trust Zuckerberg that he’s going to stop censoring?”.
