7 tech leaders cozying up to Donald Trump before Election Day

The former president is a big fan of Apple’s head honcho, Tim Cook. Earlier this October, he said Apple (AAPL) needed a CEO like Tim Cook rather than Steve Jobs, the company’s late founder.

“I believe that if Tim Cook didn’t run Apple, if Steve Jobs did, it wouldn’t be nearly as successful as it is now,” Trump said on an episode of the PBD Podcast. “I think so because I think Tim Cook has done an amazing job, and I’m not knocking Steve Jobs, but it wouldn’t have been the same.”

Cook frequently called Trump when he was president, sat on the administration’s Workforce Policy Advisory Board, and hosted Trump at Apple’s campus in Austin. Trump said on the PBD Podcast that Cook had called him to complain about Apple’s legal troubles with European regulators, including fines levied against the iPhone maker.

In 2019, after Cook managed to convince Trump to get Apple an exemption from a series of tariffs affecting Chinese imports, Cook gifted the then-president with one of the first Mac Pros built at its new U.S. facility. In an interview with Bloomberg News in June, Trump remarked that he found Cook to be “a very good businessman.”

Amazon (AMZN) CEO Andy Jassy recently reached out to check in with Trump, according to CNN reports, citing two people who were familiar with their phone calls. That call was described as a “general, hello-type thing” instigated at Amazon’s request.

Although Amazon has less to fear from a potential Trump administration than social media giants like Meta or Google, Trump’s distaste for founder Jeff Bezos is a threat.

During the Trump administration, Amazon sued the federal government after it lost a lucrative contract known as JEDI to Microsoft. That $10 billion deal was later canceled by the Pentagon during the first few months of the Biden administration, which announced a new contract.

Amazon had argued that Trump had launched “behind-the-scenes attacks” against it, pointing to his criticism of Bezos and the Washington Post.

“The question is whether the President of the United States should be allowed to use the budget of [the Defense Department] to pursue his own personal and political ends,” Amazon Web Service laid out in a 103-page document at the time.

“The department’s substantial and pervasive errors are hard to understand and impossible to assess separate and apart from the President’s repeatedly expressed determination to, in the words of the President himself, ‘screw Amazon,’” the filing stated.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has had a rocky relationship with the former president, to say the least.

Trump has called Facebook an “enemy of the people” (even as he bought ads on it), claimed that Zuckerberg plotted against him during the 2020 presidential election, and pledged that the founder would “spend the rest of his life in prison” if he — allegedly — did it again. He’s also a fan of ByteDance-owned TikTok because it competes with Facebook and Instagram.

In August, Zuckerberg expressed regret over Meta’s decision to censor content related to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021, something Trump and other conservatives have criticized him for. After years of being a punching bag for Democrats and Republicans alike, Zuckerberg has publicly moved to focus on nonpartisanship and away from the liberal causes he once backed. In private, he considers himself a libertarian.

“I’ve done some stuff personally in the past,” Zuckerberg told Bloomberg News in July. “I’m not planning on doing that this time, and that includes not endorsing either of the candidates.”

And Trump approves. In a recent interview, Trump said he likes Zuckerberg “much better now.” He’s also told a story claiming that Zuckerberg called him and said, “I’ve never supported a Republican before, but there’s no way I can vote for a Democrat in this election.” Meta has said Zuckerberg hasn’t told anyone, including Trump, how he plans to vote.

As for Zuckerberg, he’s publicly expressed some admiration for Trump, at least in the aftermath of an assassination attempt in July.

“Seeing Donald Trump get up after getting shot in the face and pump his fist in the air with the American flag is one of the most badass things I’ve ever seen in my life,” he told Bloomberg. “On some level as an American, it’s like hard to not get kind of emotional about that spirit and that fight, and I think that that’s why a lot of people like the guy.”

Elon Musk and Trump had a rocky relationship seven years ago after Musk resigned from his spot on Trump’s White House advisory councils following the then-president’s withdrawing the U.S. from the Paris climate agreement, calling the move “not good for America or the world.” And just two years ago, Trump wrote that “I could have said, ‘drop to your knees and beg,’ and he would have done it,” in return for help getting subsidies for Tesla (TSLA) and SpaceX.

But now, their relationship is tighter than ever.

The Tesla and SpaceX CEO has made himself a close ally in recent months, speaking alongside Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, and delivering a series of pro-Trump speeches elsewhere in the swing state. Musk has also donated tens of millions of dollars to his pro-Trump “America PAC,” which has been organizing canvassing efforts in battleground states.

Musk has also been offered a hypothetical job in the potential Trump administration, leading a commission he pitched. The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which pays tribute to Musk’s favorite memecoin, would conduct a “complete financial and performance audit of the entire federal government” and recommend reforms. Musk, who has frequently railed against government overspending, would lead the task force, which Trump has vowed to launch if he wins the Nov. 5 presidential election.

For Musk, leading DOGE would put him in a position to influence government agencies that regulate his companies, including Tesla and SpaceX. Both of those firms have repeatedly come into conflict with federal agencies, such as the Environmental Protection Agency.

Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp had a hurried meeting with the former president on Friday, setting the stage for a brutal headache for the company’s founder, Jeff Bezos.

The meeting occurred on Friday, the same day Bezos’s Washington Post said it would not endorse a candidate for president for the first time in 36 years. Backlash was swift, with some 250,000 subscriptions canceled as of Tuesday afternoon, according to NPR.

“I would also like to be clear that no quid pro quo of any kind is at work here,” Bezos wrote in an editorial Monday evening, adding that the decision was made entirely internally. “Neither campaign nor candidate was consulted or informed at any level or in any way about this decision.”

The third-richest man alive said that he sighed when he “found out” that Limp had met with Trump, writing that neither he nor Limp had known about the meeting ahead of time. According to Bezos, it was planned “quickly that morning.” Trump also met with Megan Mitchell, Blue Origin’s vice president of government relations, the Associated Press reported.

Blue Origin has a $3.4 billion contract to build spacecraft for astronauts to travel to and from the Moon and is competing with Elon Musk’s SpaceX and the United Launch Alliance for contracts worth up to $5.6 billion across fiscal years 2025 through 2029.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai has recently spoken with Trump on a number of occasions, according to the former president.

“I actually got a call from Sundar, Sundar, who’s great, from Google, he’s a great guy, very smart. The head of Google,” Trump said during a rally over the weekend. “And he said, ‘Sir I just want to tell you, what you did with McDonald’s was one of the single biggest events we’ve ever had at Google.’”

Trump has recounted that story on at least two other occasions, once in a Las Vegas rally and once while speaking to podcaster Joe Rogan. During an interview in Chicago on Oct. 15, Trump said he called Pichai because he was frustrated with a lack of positive stories about him.

“I’m getting a lot of good stories lately, but you don’t find them in Google,” Trump said he told Pichai. “I think it’s a whole rigged deal. I think Google’s rigged just like our government is rigged.”

Trump has long gone after Google and other tech companies, routinely accusing them of bias and controlling what results get shown to the public. In 2019, he claimed Pichai was “working very hard to explain how much he liked me” and the Trump administration.

Pichai, like many other executives, also publicly wished Trump well after he was almost assassinated in July.

“I’m wishing President Trump a speedy recovery. I’m shocked by today’s shooting and loss of life. Political violence is intolerable and we must all come together to strongly oppose it,” he wrote on social media.