6 ms·

Tech CEOs Take Turns Praising Trump at White House Dinner

104 points by BallsInIt 1y ago

apples_oranges 1y ago
These news depressed me. Am I the only one who is saddened by this pathetic show by our industry leaders? Made me pessimistic about the future.
- shadowgovt 1y ago
  At this point, it is really important for everyone in the industry to recognize that the industry leaders (in terms of "running the most successful companies") should not be considered ethical or moral leaders. It's a categorical error. Like expecting a boat captain to be Descartes because they're good at leading people to operate a boat (or, for that matter, expecting Descartes to take first in a marathon because he was really good at applying logic to philosophical questions).
  - tastyface 1y ago
    Moral neutrality is one thing. It may be disappointing (but not unexpected) for the CEO of your favorite company to wine and dine the leader of an unsavory political party. But... this person is currently all over the news for being best friends with one of the most prolific pedophiles in America, as well as trying desperately to suppress the release of documents where he and prominent members of his circle may be implicated. This meeting is not just morally neutral, not just immoral, but utterly depraved.
  - dwb 1y ago
    They may not be moral leaders, but I expect them to be leaders who are moral. Well, I don’t expect that they will be, but that’s my standard.
    - shadowgovt 1y ago
      And the key thing to recognize is that there's nothing in the system to enforce that standard. "Good at making money" or "Good at running a business" doesn't mean one is good at anything else, or, indeed, is good. I think it's easy for people to make this error because humans like heroes; heroes simplify things. We want to believe that the people who are succeeding are succeeding because they're virtuous, not because (just spitballing here) the mechanisms we use to evaluate success are fundamentally detached from (if not opposed to) "virtue" as most people would understand the concept. if the latter is true, the world is far messier. Sometimes it takes all those people voluntarily sitting at the same table as a convicted, unrepentant, and unpunished sexual abuser for the outside observer to "get" it. Perhaps the still-open question is "Now what should one do with that knowledge?"
      - dwb 1y ago
        > And the key thing to recognize is that there's nothing in the system to enforce that standard. "Good at making money" or "Good at running a business" doesn't mean one is good at anything else, or, indeed, is good. I’m well aware of that, no need to get all pedagogical. The system is quite far from what I favour. I’m saying that we shouldn’t be shrugging and saying “well that’s just what they are”, it’s no excuse.
        shadowgovt 1y ago
        Oh, agreed. If anything, I'm asking people to stop shrugging and saying "that's just what they are." Physicists had their come-to-Pugwash moment two (three?) generations ago and I'm hoping this generation of computer scientist can get there without waking up one day to discover their research was directly contributory to removing a quarter-million people from the face of the planet. Their forebears, sadly, did not. Specifically the ones who worked at IBM, but others as well.
    - geodel 1y ago
      Yup, standards are the best thing applied to others.
- InsideOutSanta 1y ago
  This is devastating enough on its own. But what makes it even more troubling is that the United States has a president who demands such transparently false praise. What's going on in this man's head? Does he not understand that these people are lying to him because they are afraid of what he will do to their companies? Or does he know, and that is the point? What in the world is wrong with this man?
  - shadowgovt 1y ago
    In general, when there are no consequences for people's actions they don't change those actions.
  - wand3r 1y ago
    The power is real. The fear is real. The praise is the only fake thing.
  - dmonitor 1y ago
    It's about enforcing a power dynamic. Groveling and empty praise is about showing loyalty and control. Trump thinks enforcing this level of control over others is what success looks like.
  - karmakurtisaani 1y ago
    This is what kissing the ring looks like. It's a loyalty test. In Soviet Union it was a sign of loyalty not to question obviously false statistics and news. In Joe Rogan's circles is laughing at his shit jokes and praising his comic abilities in his podcast.
    - geodel 1y ago
      I think people are laughing at atrocious jokes forever just to be on right side of political climate at that time.
- GuinansEyebrows 1y ago
  let it be the curtain pulled back on how this class of people operates. just because we can see it now doesn't mean this kind of thing hasn't been happening behind the scenes for... ever. not to excuse the brazenness of it - i'm as disgusted as you are.
  - ElevenLathe 1y ago
    The troubling fact is that the country's owners no longer feel the need to put on a show of democratic values. It's like witnessing Diocletian do away with the republican pretense of earlier emperors.
    - herval 1y ago
      I feel like this curtain drop started in earnest in tech as well, when Musk took over Twitter and declared (along with certain VC) that engineers are no longer "special" and need to be treated like cattle. The entire industry gladly dropped their masks. Quite the irony, for a group of people that takes so much pride in "thinking different" and "changing the world".
- mingus88 1y ago
  Business has always been this way. It’s the nature of power. It just so happens when you have a fragile ego in power, people seeking power will naturally play to that ego for a leg up. We knew before 2015 that he was easy to manipulate. Easy to push his buttons, easy to flatter. Frankly if you are a CEO in 2015 and you aren’t flattering this idiot to profit then you are violating your duties to your shareholders
  - jordanpg 1y ago
    Indeed. It is a calibrated, lawyer-defined behavior called executing their fiduciary duties. In other words, they are behaving as necessary (and as advised) to avoid later being exposed to a lawsuit.
    - herval 1y ago
      The cray part is they're doing it by openly doing stuff that's clearly and unambiguously classified as illegal (eg the gifts in exchange for benefits)
      - dragonwriter 1y ago
        This is routine; businesses don’t follow laws because they are laws, they follow laws to the extent that the perceived cost of violations exceed the perceived benefits. The whole reason the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act exist is to impose a domestic cost on foreign bribery by US entities to dissuade them from engaging in corruption abroad where enforcement is weak. But this President, who is explicit against that, is also very obviously, if less explicitly, also against enforcement of the laws against domestic corruption when it is him or his friends benefiting. So, there is literally no cost to weigh against the benefits.
      - mingus88 1y ago
        As always, in business, if the penalty for breaking the law is less than the benefit you get out of the violation, then you have to go for it. Or your competitors will. It’s the cost of doing business.
    - 1y ago
poisonborz 1y ago
Incredible video. It's one piece of media that would shake the tech world, where it to be shown in 2017 through a time machine. I wish this would gain more publicity. But I guess people are already desensitized for such news.
- AtlasBarfed 1y ago
  Look at the fear. LOOK AT THE FEAR. These people are terrified. They are the controlling oligarchs of the USA. The United States is in serious danger.
- Centigonal 1y ago
  "If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently shocked—if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in ’43 had come immediately after the ‘German Firm’ stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in ’33. But of course this isn’t the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D." -They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45, Milton Mayer
  - herval 1y ago
    I recommend this book so often recently, I'm thinking about buying a dozen copies so I can give them away
- bigyabai 1y ago
  Cook's sycophancy towards Trump was readily apparent in 2017: https://fortune.com/2017/07/25/apple-ceo-big-plants-trump/ https://fortune.com/2017/07/25/apple-ceo-big-plants-trump/ > But I guess people are already desensitized for such news. Apple can do no wrong in the eyes of consumers. Tim Cook could be caught on video clubbing seals and nobody would bat an eye.
  - 1y ago
llllm 1y ago
To all of you reading this, that work for these CEOs, we laugh at you.
- cosmicgadget 1y ago
  There are two types of employees: ones that work for a CEO that praises Trump and ones that work for a CEO too insignificant to be worth Trump's time. NEETs on parade.
  - llllm 1y ago
    Keep telling yourself that if it makes it easier for you to swallow.
    - cosmicgadget 1y ago
      I work for the latter, my friend.
      - llllm 1y ago
        My advice was not conditional on who you work for. We are not friends.
- geodel 1y ago
  Who is this grand "we"? Are you more than one person?
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- angiolillo 1y ago
  I certainly don't laugh at you. I've been in a similar situation and I know it can feel agonizing. But if you find their behavior unconscionable and yet continue to work for Apple, Alphabet/Google, OpenAI, Microsoft, Meta/Facebook, Oracle, etc then you're doing the same thing as your CEO, just at a smaller scale -- swallowing your pride to keep your job. I can't speak to anyone else's situation, but until I built up the courage to quit such a situation myself I never realized how much these compromises weighed on my soul.
cosmicgadget 1y ago
Has anybody seen any funny allhands questions of these CEOs?
- 1659447091 1y ago
  The current South Park season, episode 3 has a funny bit of this. I stopped watching it a decade or more ago after becoming a bit repetitive and thought it went away like all the other things. Then the twitter spat with the WH made news and discovered it again. This administration made it worth watching again for the funnies
RyanOD 1y ago
It's hard for me not to believe every tech leader in this room is thinking, "This guy is a total idiot. I can't believe I have to sit here and kiss his ass. What a total waste of my time. But a CEO has to do what a CEO has to do...how can I take advantage of this mess."
- geodel 1y ago
  That would be the case if CEO do not routinely waste innumerable hours on so many meetings, lunches, events etc with so many idiots filling the room. But may be "No punching down" theory demand to not call those people idiots.
  - RyanOD 1y ago
    Fair. And yes, CEOs certainly find their schedules full of what you mentioned.
- aaron695 1y ago
  [dead]
bb88 1y ago
This is what an oligarchy looks like. Apple, Google, Meta, etc, are on display here for who they really are.
tbeseda 1y ago
https://archive.li/4pWuk https://archive.li/4pWuk I'm surprised Cook was there. I'm sad that I'm surprised Cook was there. I can likely get away from macOS by EOY. But this phone has a stranglehold on my mobile, digital life.
- GuinansEyebrows 1y ago
  there's always the used option, along with minimizing your reliance on paid digital services provided by apple. i'm trying to move in that direction as much as possible.
- bigyabai 1y ago
  > I'm surprised Cook was there. You have had more than a decade to reconcile Tim Cook's friendship (or at least "business relationship") with Donald Trump. If it disgusts you, then make a move. Cook isn't motivated by emotional pleas and the shareholders won't kick him out until he screws up as CEO.
- init2null 1y ago
  He has a shareholder duty to try for all the best-friend-forever preferential treatment he can get. We've recently learned that he's decent at diplomacy, but he's been honing it for years in China. He isn't responsible for this oddly-personal political system as it is, but he has to take advantage of those weaknesses.
- aagha 1y ago
  Android + GrapheneOS
DazWilkin 1y ago
If there are no consequences to bad behavior, bad people will behave badly. None of these people will ever suffer any consequences for this.
tastyface 1y ago
Just as a reminder, the person these CEOs are cheerfully meeting with is either a brutal pedophile, or at the very least, the documented best friend of one of the most prolific and notorious pedophiles in America -- someone the administration is trying to wipe from the news cycle through any means necessary, including pampering his co-conspirator/co-rapist and claiming the whole thing is some sort of Democratic hoax. Lies upon lies to conceal the rape of countless children in service of the glorious Party. But these tech magnates don’t give an iota of a shit as long as the money keeps flowing in. This is some real end-of-a-republic degeneracy. Decades down the line, people will point to these events in history books to show that we weren’t remotely as civilized as we thought. In a just world everyone at this table would spend their retirement years in a cell.
hagbard_c 1y ago
https://dailycaller.com/2025/09/05/trump-zuckerberg-bill-gates-tim-cook-meeting-ai-artificial-intelligence-china-race-melania-trump/ https://dailycaller.com/2025/09/05/trump-zuckerberg-bill-gat... The view from 'the other side' (from most of the HN readership that is) where the invited CEOs are seen as Some Of The Right’s Biggest Villains - i.e. nobody likes them. For many conservatives, it’s hard to wrap your brain around the visual of billionaire Bill Gates being seated next to a smiling Melania Trump at the recent event, especially given Gates’ villain-like status among Trump’s most loyal base.
puppycodes 1y ago
wow this is completely surreal
Copenjin 1y ago
It's like one of those movies they used to make in the 80s.

104 points by BallsInIt 1y ago

These news depressed me. Am I the only one who is saddened by this pathetic show by our industry leaders? Made me pessimistic about the future.

shadowgovt 1y ago
At this point, it is really important for everyone in the industry to recognize that the industry leaders (in terms of "running the most successful companies") should not be considered ethical or moral leaders. It's a categorical error. Like expecting a boat captain to be Descartes because they're good at leading people to operate a boat (or, for that matter, expecting Descartes to take first in a marathon because he was really good at applying logic to philosophical questions).
- tastyface 1y ago
  Moral neutrality is one thing. It may be disappointing (but not unexpected) for the CEO of your favorite company to wine and dine the leader of an unsavory political party. But... this person is currently all over the news for being best friends with one of the most prolific pedophiles in America, as well as trying desperately to suppress the release of documents where he and prominent members of his circle may be implicated. This meeting is not just morally neutral, not just immoral, but utterly depraved.
- dwb 1y ago
  They may not be moral leaders, but I expect them to be leaders who are moral. Well, I don’t expect that they will be, but that’s my standard.
  - shadowgovt 1y ago
    And the key thing to recognize is that there's nothing in the system to enforce that standard. "Good at making money" or "Good at running a business" doesn't mean one is good at anything else, or, indeed, is good. I think it's easy for people to make this error because humans like heroes; heroes simplify things. We want to believe that the people who are succeeding are succeeding because they're virtuous, not because (just spitballing here) the mechanisms we use to evaluate success are fundamentally detached from (if not opposed to) "virtue" as most people would understand the concept. if the latter is true, the world is far messier. Sometimes it takes all those people voluntarily sitting at the same table as a convicted, unrepentant, and unpunished sexual abuser for the outside observer to "get" it. Perhaps the still-open question is "Now what should one do with that knowledge?"
    - dwb 1y ago
      > And the key thing to recognize is that there's nothing in the system to enforce that standard. "Good at making money" or "Good at running a business" doesn't mean one is good at anything else, or, indeed, is good. I’m well aware of that, no need to get all pedagogical. The system is quite far from what I favour. I’m saying that we shouldn’t be shrugging and saying “well that’s just what they are”, it’s no excuse.
      - shadowgovt 1y ago
        Oh, agreed. If anything, I'm asking people to stop shrugging and saying "that's just what they are." Physicists had their come-to-Pugwash moment two (three?) generations ago and I'm hoping this generation of computer scientist can get there without waking up one day to discover their research was directly contributory to removing a quarter-million people from the face of the planet. Their forebears, sadly, did not. Specifically the ones who worked at IBM, but others as well.
  - geodel 1y ago
    Yup, standards are the best thing applied to others.
InsideOutSanta 1y ago
This is devastating enough on its own. But what makes it even more troubling is that the United States has a president who demands such transparently false praise. What's going on in this man's head? Does he not understand that these people are lying to him because they are afraid of what he will do to their companies? Or does he know, and that is the point? What in the world is wrong with this man?
- shadowgovt 1y ago
  In general, when there are no consequences for people's actions they don't change those actions.
- wand3r 1y ago
  The power is real. The fear is real. The praise is the only fake thing.
- dmonitor 1y ago
  It's about enforcing a power dynamic. Groveling and empty praise is about showing loyalty and control. Trump thinks enforcing this level of control over others is what success looks like.
- karmakurtisaani 1y ago
  This is what kissing the ring looks like. It's a loyalty test. In Soviet Union it was a sign of loyalty not to question obviously false statistics and news. In Joe Rogan's circles is laughing at his shit jokes and praising his comic abilities in his podcast.
  - geodel 1y ago
    I think people are laughing at atrocious jokes forever just to be on right side of political climate at that time.
GuinansEyebrows 1y ago
let it be the curtain pulled back on how this class of people operates. just because we can see it now doesn't mean this kind of thing hasn't been happening behind the scenes for... ever. not to excuse the brazenness of it - i'm as disgusted as you are.
- ElevenLathe 1y ago
  The troubling fact is that the country's owners no longer feel the need to put on a show of democratic values. It's like witnessing Diocletian do away with the republican pretense of earlier emperors.
  - herval 1y ago
    I feel like this curtain drop started in earnest in tech as well, when Musk took over Twitter and declared (along with certain VC) that engineers are no longer "special" and need to be treated like cattle. The entire industry gladly dropped their masks. Quite the irony, for a group of people that takes so much pride in "thinking different" and "changing the world".
mingus88 1y ago
Business has always been this way. It’s the nature of power. It just so happens when you have a fragile ego in power, people seeking power will naturally play to that ego for a leg up. We knew before 2015 that he was easy to manipulate. Easy to push his buttons, easy to flatter. Frankly if you are a CEO in 2015 and you aren’t flattering this idiot to profit then you are violating your duties to your shareholders
- jordanpg 1y ago
  Indeed. It is a calibrated, lawyer-defined behavior called executing their fiduciary duties. In other words, they are behaving as necessary (and as advised) to avoid later being exposed to a lawsuit.
  - herval 1y ago
    The cray part is they're doing it by openly doing stuff that's clearly and unambiguously classified as illegal (eg the gifts in exchange for benefits)
    - dragonwriter 1y ago
      This is routine; businesses don’t follow laws because they are laws, they follow laws to the extent that the perceived cost of violations exceed the perceived benefits. The whole reason the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act exist is to impose a domestic cost on foreign bribery by US entities to dissuade them from engaging in corruption abroad where enforcement is weak. But this President, who is explicit against that, is also very obviously, if less explicitly, also against enforcement of the laws against domestic corruption when it is him or his friends benefiting. So, there is literally no cost to weigh against the benefits.
    - mingus88 1y ago
      As always, in business, if the penalty for breaking the law is less than the benefit you get out of the violation, then you have to go for it. Or your competitors will. It’s the cost of doing business.
  - 1y ago

poisonborz 1y ago

Incredible video. It's one piece of media that would shake the tech world, where it to be shown in 2017 through a time machine. I wish this would gain more publicity. But I guess people are already desensitized for such news.

AtlasBarfed 1y ago
Look at the fear. LOOK AT THE FEAR. These people are terrified. They are the controlling oligarchs of the USA. The United States is in serious danger.
Centigonal 1y ago
"If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently shocked—if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in ’43 had come immediately after the ‘German Firm’ stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in ’33. But of course this isn’t the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D." -They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45, Milton Mayer
- herval 1y ago
  I recommend this book so often recently, I'm thinking about buying a dozen copies so I can give them away
bigyabai 1y ago
Cook's sycophancy towards Trump was readily apparent in 2017: https://fortune.com/2017/07/25/apple-ceo-big-plants-trump/ https://fortune.com/2017/07/25/apple-ceo-big-plants-trump/ > But I guess people are already desensitized for such news. Apple can do no wrong in the eyes of consumers. Tim Cook could be caught on video clubbing seals and nobody would bat an eye.
- 1y ago

llllm 1y ago

To all of you reading this, that work for these CEOs, we laugh at you.

cosmicgadget 1y ago
There are two types of employees: ones that work for a CEO that praises Trump and ones that work for a CEO too insignificant to be worth Trump's time. NEETs on parade.
- llllm 1y ago
  Keep telling yourself that if it makes it easier for you to swallow.
  - cosmicgadget 1y ago
    I work for the latter, my friend.
    - llllm 1y ago
      My advice was not conditional on who you work for. We are not friends.
geodel 1y ago
Who is this grand "we"? Are you more than one person?
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
angiolillo 1y ago
I certainly don't laugh at you. I've been in a similar situation and I know it can feel agonizing. But if you find their behavior unconscionable and yet continue to work for Apple, Alphabet/Google, OpenAI, Microsoft, Meta/Facebook, Oracle, etc then you're doing the same thing as your CEO, just at a smaller scale -- swallowing your pride to keep your job. I can't speak to anyone else's situation, but until I built up the courage to quit such a situation myself I never realized how much these compromises weighed on my soul.

cosmicgadget 1y ago

Has anybody seen any funny allhands questions of these CEOs?

1659447091 1y ago
The current South Park season, episode 3 has a funny bit of this. I stopped watching it a decade or more ago after becoming a bit repetitive and thought it went away like all the other things. Then the twitter spat with the WH made news and discovered it again. This administration made it worth watching again for the funnies

RyanOD 1y ago

It's hard for me not to believe every tech leader in this room is thinking, "This guy is a total idiot. I can't believe I have to sit here and kiss his ass. What a total waste of my time. But a CEO has to do what a CEO has to do...how can I take advantage of this mess."

geodel 1y ago
That would be the case if CEO do not routinely waste innumerable hours on so many meetings, lunches, events etc with so many idiots filling the room. But may be "No punching down" theory demand to not call those people idiots.
- RyanOD 1y ago
  Fair. And yes, CEOs certainly find their schedules full of what you mentioned.
aaron695 1y ago
[dead]

bb88 1y ago

This is what an oligarchy looks like. Apple, Google, Meta, etc, are on display here for who they really are.

tbeseda 1y ago

https://archive.li/4pWuk https://archive.li/4pWuk I'm surprised Cook was there. I'm sad that I'm surprised Cook was there. I can likely get away from macOS by EOY. But this phone has a stranglehold on my mobile, digital life.

GuinansEyebrows 1y ago
there's always the used option, along with minimizing your reliance on paid digital services provided by apple. i'm trying to move in that direction as much as possible.
bigyabai 1y ago
> I'm surprised Cook was there. You have had more than a decade to reconcile Tim Cook's friendship (or at least "business relationship") with Donald Trump. If it disgusts you, then make a move. Cook isn't motivated by emotional pleas and the shareholders won't kick him out until he screws up as CEO.
init2null 1y ago
He has a shareholder duty to try for all the best-friend-forever preferential treatment he can get. We've recently learned that he's decent at diplomacy, but he's been honing it for years in China. He isn't responsible for this oddly-personal political system as it is, but he has to take advantage of those weaknesses.
aagha 1y ago
Android + GrapheneOS

DazWilkin 1y ago

If there are no consequences to bad behavior, bad people will behave badly. None of these people will ever suffer any consequences for this.

tastyface 1y ago

Just as a reminder, the person these CEOs are cheerfully meeting with is either a brutal pedophile, or at the very least, the documented best friend of one of the most prolific and notorious pedophiles in America -- someone the administration is trying to wipe from the news cycle through any means necessary, including pampering his co-conspirator/co-rapist and claiming the whole thing is some sort of Democratic hoax. Lies upon lies to conceal the rape of countless children in service of the glorious Party. But these tech magnates don’t give an iota of a shit as long as the money keeps flowing in. This is some real end-of-a-republic degeneracy. Decades down the line, people will point to these events in history books to show that we weren’t remotely as civilized as we thought. In a just world everyone at this table would spend their retirement years in a cell.

hagbard_c 1y ago

https://dailycaller.com/2025/09/05/trump-zuckerberg-bill-gates-tim-cook-meeting-ai-artificial-intelligence-china-race-melania-trump/ https://dailycaller.com/2025/09/05/trump-zuckerberg-bill-gat... The view from 'the other side' (from most of the HN readership that is) where the invited CEOs are seen as Some Of The Right’s Biggest Villains - i.e. nobody likes them. For many conservatives, it’s hard to wrap your brain around the visual of billionaire Bill Gates being seated next to a smiling Melania Trump at the recent event, especially given Gates’ villain-like status among Trump’s most loyal base.

puppycodes 1y ago

wow this is completely surreal

Copenjin 1y ago

It's like one of those movies they used to make in the 80s.