With only a few days left until the US presidential election, Donald Trump is claiming that some of Silicon Valley’s most powerful billionaires and tech leaders are seeking him out.
Many of these leaders, like Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, became figureheads for Trump’s ire over what he believed to be censorship of conservative speech online. Now, as some of the most powerful people in Silicon Valley appear to be quietly sitting out the presidential election cycle, Trump is saying they’ve grown more complimentary of the former president as polls continue to show Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris neck and neck. Influential business leaders are hedging their bets and preparing themselves and their interests just in case Trump wins, according to the Washington Post.
Of course, it’s not all just hearsay—Tesla CEO Elon Musk has explicitly thrown his money and support behind the former president in recent weeks.
Here’s a running list of the Silicon Valley CEOs Trump says are courting him in the lead up to the election:
Google CEO Sundar Pichai
On Joe Rogan’s podcast on Friday, Trump claimed that Google CEO Sundar Pichai called to congratulate the former president on his viral McDonald’s stunt. “This McDonald’s thing, I want to tell you, it’s one of the biggest things we’ve seen on Google,” Trump said Pichai told him.
Trump repeated the claim again during a Saturday rally in Pennsylvania: “I actually got a call from Sundar, Sundar, who’s great, from Google, he’s a great guy, very smart. The head of Google,” he said. “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 once again described the alleged call during a Sunday evening rally at Madison Square Garden in New York City. Pichai has not publicly confirmed if this conversation took place. Google has not responded to requests for comment from WIRED.
Apple CEO Tim Cook
Earlier this month, Trump said that Cook had called him to complain about a multi-billion dollar fine Apple received from the European Union this year.
“[Cook] said something that was interesting,” Trump said. “He said they’re using that to run their enterprise, meaning Europe is their enterprise.” I said, ‘That’s a lot… But Tim, I got to get elected first, but I’m not going to let them take advantage of our companies — that won’t, you know, be happening.’”
