A procession of tech billionaires and key members of his orbit joined President-elect Donald Trump as he began his pre-inauguration celebrations with a church mass on Monday morning.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg, Apple chief Tim Cook, and Google chief Sundar Pichai were seen taking their prime seats in St John's Church.
Media mogul Rupert Murdoch, FIFA president Gianni Infantino and former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson were also seen at the church.
Many of these executives were among Trump's earliest critics in the business world during his first term, speaking out on issues like climate change and immigration.
TikTok CEO Xu Zhizhou is also expected to attend the opening ceremony, as his company faces the fallout from the US ban, as well as OpenAI's Sam Altman and Uber's Dara Khosrowshahi.
Then of course there's SpaceX and Tesla boss Elon Musk, who spent nearly $300 million to help the president's campaign and has stuck by his side ever since.
It's an amazing sight. The last public event in Washington that brought this many tech heads together in the same room was a 2020 congressional hearing targeting their companies.
Today, most companies still have serious issues pending before the US government, including antitrust lawsuits, investigations, regulatory battles and tariffs.
Last week, Senators Elizabeth Warren and Michael Bennet, both Democrats, shared a letter to executives, accusing them of trying to “cosy to the incoming Trump administration in an effort to avoid scrutiny and limit regulation and procurement of services.”
“Funny they never sent me one of these to contribute to the Democrats,” Altman said on social media in response.
How long this tech bromance will last, and how far Trump will push on many of these issues, remain open questions.
But the president, who left office for the first time as a business pariah, appears to be relishing his new position.
As he wrote on social media last month: “Everyone wants to be my friend!!!”
