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Trump and the tech CEOs

Trump recently organized a big dinner with the most important minds from the tech world, which caused quite a stir worldwide. It was particularly striking that all the guests gave a kind of acceptance speech to Trump, which was a bit reminiscent of the GDR and the like.


Although I'm actually still quite sympathetic to Trump (he's at least not half as embarrassing as most European heads of government), I still find it a bit strange. It does seem a bit like a staged soap opera.


I mean, it's clear that as a serious businessman you exchange formal courtesies on such an occasion and don't go completely crazy and start insulting the president or something. So it's not entirely funny. But I also kind of wonder who came up with the idea that everyone should say a few words in turn? I mean, they can't help but say something nice. Still, it's kind of a funny picture howt Bill Gates has to attest to Trump's "great leadership".


Among others also present were Sam Altman ($AMD (-1.9%) ) Lisa Su ($AAPL (+0.76%) ) Tim Cook ($ORCL (-6.85%) ) Safra Catz and ( $MU (+7.9%) ) Sanjay Mehrotra


But more important than who was there is actually who was missing. The press noted with great satisfaction that ($TSLA (+5.42%) ) Elon Musk was not there and speculated that he had not even been invited - which Musk has already denied. ($NVDA (-0.46%) ) Jensen Huang and ($AMZN (-0.84%) ) Andy Jassy were also not on site.


Trump is definitely seeking proximity to the tech industry. The behavior of ($META (-0.47%) ) Mark Zuckerbergwho took the place of honor to Trump's right, but actually seemed frightened rather than confident. Another important moment was a brief conversation between Trump and ($GOOG (+0.12%)
$GOOGL (+0.07%) ) Sundar Pichai regarding a federal judge's ruling this week in an antitrust case involving Google's monopoly on search. The judge handed down a lenient sentence and rejected the demands for harsh penalties. The company thus escaped being broken up.


"You had a very good day yesterday," said Trump. "Do you want to talk about that great day you had yesterday?" He was glad it was over, Pichai replied. "Biden was the one who pushed this lawsuit,"Trump said. "You know that, right?"


So Trump is pursuing a Bismarckian carrot and stick policy with the tech CEOs. Those who get in line get help from the state, those who step out of line are reprimanded.

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59 Comments

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How can a normal rational person find Trump better than European politicians? I'm really the last person to defend or approve of our dear statesmen, but think Trump is better? You can't be serious.
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@CMustermann I'm afraid he's serious. 😎
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@CMustermann I can see the criticisms of Trump, but he is better than his reputation. I don't think I see Trump in such a positive light, I just see the Europeans in a much more negative light.

Reagan, Clinton and Nixon were not that much more presentable than Trump. On the other hand, the difference between Merz and Adenauer, Starmer and Thatcher or Macron and Mitterand is so great that it can only be measured in units of astrophysics.
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What exactly do the European statesmen have over him?
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@Maverick4831 Our chancellor was not on Epstein's plane.

Nor did our Europeans cuddle up to the greatest war criminal of modern times (apart from a few nutcases from the East).

Finally, we are not throwing the painstakingly built transatlantic trade relations and mutually low tariffs overboard just to justify some populist nonsense (abolishing tax through tariffs - that this won't work is first semester business studies).

I can think of a few more. Everyone here on the platform should have an interest in this guy being gone quickly.
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@CMustermann our chancellor has "forgotten" the cum-cum/cum-ex affair.

Which biggest war criminal do you mean? Netanyahu, to whom Germany continues to supply weapons because he does the "quote: dirty work" for us.

The Habdels relations were more advantageous for the Europeans (just as we rested on the military strength of the USA). He does a lot of things right and the Europeans don't like it.
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@CMustermann Thank you. That went through my head too...
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@CMustermann You can ask Novartis, Roche and other companies why they are now going to the USA and not expanding further in beautiful Europe. Trump is a bruiser and certainly has a lot of quirks and sometimes talks garbage, but at least he stands up for his own people. I find it questionable how German or European politicians can see eye-to-eye with him. After all, he recently showed off von der Leyen. We like to remember how she showed him her teeth beforehand and demonized him. In the end, he had her turn up at his estate between rounds of golf and she licked his feet. Before Trump, our cars had a 2.5% tariff. Now it's 15%, and some horndogs want to sell that as a success. It's sad that people who deal with finance even fall for it.
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@CMustermann ich find Jack White bringt es ganz gut auf den Punkt :

Listen, I’m an artist and not a politician so I’m in no need to give my answer or opinion on anything if I’m not inspired or compelled, but how funny that it wasn’t me calling out trump’s blatant fascist manipulation of government, his gestapo ICE tactics, his racist remarks about Latinos, Native Americans, etc. his ridiculous ‘wall’ construction, his attacks on the disabled, his attempted coup and mob insurrection and destruction of the sacred halls of congress, his disparaging sexist and pedophilic remarks about women, his obvious attempts at distraction about being a close personal friend of Jeffrey Epstein and his inclusion in the Epstein files, his ignorance of the dying children in Sudan, Gaza, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, his lack of empathy for military veterans and those struggling with poverty, his attempts to dismantle healthcare, his obvious wimpy and pathetic kowtowing to the dictators Putin and Kim Jong Un, his nazi like rallies, his attempts to sell merchandise and products like Goya beans through the office of the President, his fake “gunshot to the ear” that he showed no medical records or photographs of, his constant, constant, constant lying to the American people, etc. etc. etc. No, it wasn’t me calling out any of that, it was the fucking DECOR OF THE OVAL OFFICE remarks I made that got them to respond with insults. How petty and pathetic and thin skinned could this administration get? “Masquerading as a real artist”? Thank you for giving me my tombstone. Well, here’s my opinion, trump is masquerading as a human being.
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@Maverick4831 thanks for the comment - you can see that public service broadcasting works.
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@Tobiwankenobi500 haha, I am an absolute GEZ opponent and definitely not a ÖRR fan, but the main thing is that your binary world view is not disturbed
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It doesn't look like a production. It is one. And one in which the "most important minds in the tech world" are degraded to embarrassing laughingstocks. That's not strange, it's dangerous.
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@Fanni_Spielgeld Well, it's not like they're forced to read out moderation cards with a gun to their head. They still say it voluntarily.
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@Soprano Do you really think that? Then it would be even more embarrassing.
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The voters, the country determines what the president does. Everything is going right for the USA at the moment.
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@Smudeo Funny, radio and newspapers in Germany have been trying for ages to make the opposite claim 😆
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@user28461 I was only in the USA and (almost) everyone is happy with him
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What Trump is doing is going in a dangerous direction and, in my opinion, cannot be supported.
When a president publicly parades corporations, demands loyalty, punishes critics and even ignores Supreme Court rulings, this is no longer a normal power play, but shows clear authoritarian patterns.
Anyone who weakens institutions and makes companies dependent is moving towards dictatorship rather than democracy.
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@Kai_ And where do you see the alternative? Can you name a single law or a single politician in the last 10 years who has strengthened democracy? Feel free to use ChatGPT for that, you won't find anything useful.

Democracy has become a mere buzzword that you can use to accuse your political opponents of doing something wrong, but not a single politician wants to implement anything themselves to actually hand over power to the voters.

The USA has always been much more liberal than Western Europe. In the US, you don't get a prison sentence for making a cartoon. In the USA, there are no house searches for expressive offenses. And the Supreme Court, for example, has also ruled that the kind of interference that takes place in Europe is not compatible with democracy and has therefore banned it in the USA - even under Obama.

Trump has undoubtedly brought the USA a step closer to authoritarian structures. In comparison, the USA is now perhaps 20% as authoritarian as the EU. However, because his authoritarian approach does not agree with left-wing ideas on all points, this is apparently causing great irritation.
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@Soprano The punishment of unlawful(!) expressions of opinion is a trifle compared to Trump's attacks on liberal principles. There is no freedom without the rule of law, free media, separation of powers, free market or even such "little things" as the recognition of election results.
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@Fanni_Spielgeld ? 😂😂😂
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Well-disposed towards Trump? Bottomless
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That's why the Americans are now angry and kicking out tech stocksđŸ€”
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It is one big show, Zuck had to say a number and asked Trump, "I didn't know which number you wanted me to say....". Clown show.
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@Demas You sure that video wasn’t AI mate?
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@Soprano haha, I wish it was AI 😌
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You find Trump less embarrassing than European politicians? Strange perception... 🙄
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@Johann_van_der_Smut EU bubble - I recommend watching news from CH / RUS / USA... goes exactly in the other direction :D

It is extremely difficult to form your own opinion from this!
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@Tobiwankenobi500 I am concerned with the embarrassing appearance of the orange narcissist in the WH. No one can top that for me at the moment
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@Johann_van_der_Smut well, look at the other side and then look at our Pinnochio, for example... they would say the same thing.

From that point of view, I would always look at it a little more differentiated.
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@Tobiwankenobi500 ah, so they also post AI-generated images of themselves online and threaten their own population?!
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@Johann_van_der_Smut So far, Trump hasn't reported or imprisoned anyone, I mean NO ONE, just for criticizing him or making fun of him. Compare that with the HUNDREDS of people who have had their doors kicked in by masked stormtroopers at the request of politicians in Germany in recent years. So who is threatening whose population again?
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@Soprano Where can you read that? Seriously. That everyone's door was kicked in. I can't imagine that. It may have been because of what they said to the politicians.
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@Johann_van_der_Smut In every single newspaper/news format such as WDR, Tagesschau, just enter "Beleidigung Anzeige Habeck" or another name into Google. There are hundreds of cases. And what has been said (if known) is in no way worse than what is said about Trump - and yet this bad bad dictator does NOTHING about it but lets those who hate him speak their minds.
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@Soprano I don't think we're coming together here. But that doesn't matter. Everyone can have their own opinion. I'm not a fan of any politician here either.
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@Johann_van_der_Smut Why can't we get together? You asked for sources, I supplied them. That should actually convince you of the point.

I'm not a fan of Trump either, I rarely say anything purely positive about him. The reason why I often have to defend him is because the people who don't like him apply a complete double standard to accuse him of mistakes that they can't see in other politicians at all.
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@Soprano I quickly read about hundreds of reports, but I don't read that an SEK has bumped into people every time. I don't spend any more time on that.
My first answer was also about the word embarrassing. What I find embarrassing about Trump is how he speaks, how he simply repeats false claims over and over again like a mantra, how clueless he is on many topics, his statements on how quickly he can end which conflict, etc.
As I said, I'm not defending any German politicians here, but for me the prize for the most embarrassing appearance and the least seriousness goes to Trump.
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The whole circus becomes even funnier when you listen to Zuckerberg's hot mic recording. He didn't know what number Trump wanted to hear, he just said 600 trillion đŸ€Ł
The house of cards is crumbling
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Do you actually know AI?
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@Soprano Sure, you mean that was AI-generated?
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@Hofi I don't want to claim anything, but I think it's possible. The video seemed a bit strange, and I also don't know whether it's allowed to publish such secretly tapped recordings at official events without further ado
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@Soprano Mark Zuckerberg justified it in a "Threads" post afterwards, so it had nothing to do with AI

I think reporters, or even people close to him, are ultra keen on clips that make waves in the media again...
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@Hofi Yeah okay that's why I'm always careful with claims :D It's still strange with all the "hot mics" because of course you would always like to know what e.g. Biden and Obama are talking about when they feel unobserved, but that wasn't always published ^^
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@Soprano There are no hot mic moments from Biden because they had to keep him away from every mic anyway 😂 I have no explanation for Obama in a hurry haha
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@Hofi Well, no hot mics are actually the norm. In Germany, from Adenauer to Merz, there is no such thing. Don't mistakes in sound engineering ever happen here? With us, something like that is simply discreetly deleted instead of leaked just to make the politician look stupid.
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Stopped reading after the second paragraph, sorry...
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@pedaleurd3charm3 Then you're not the reader group - I don't get any money for it here
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