Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos sought to ingratiate themselves with President Donald Trump after he won the 2024 election, and in return he mocked their efforts behind their backs, according to a new book by The New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan.
Zuckerberg once texted Trump a photo of a letter written by one of his grade-school-age children, who wrote that they “looked forward to the golden age of America,” a slogan Trump had repeated at rallies during the presidential campaign.
And over dinner at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club, Bezos denigrated The Washington Post to Trump and essentially described the newspaper as one of his worst financial investments, months before he unsuccessfully sought a business favor from the president.
These episodes are detailed in the book Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump, a copy of which WIRED obtained ahead of its release on June 23. They illustrate the extraordinary scramble by some of the most powerful men in Silicon Valley to curry favor with Trump before the start of his second term.
Weeks after they met with Trump, he was still regaling associates with stories of how Zuckerberg and Bezos were “kissing my ass,” according to the book. “You would not believe the texts I got from these tech guys. I’ve got to show you,” Trump is quoted as telling some guests.
The episodes also show how Trump reveled in the genuflections of the titans of Big Tech—Google’s Sundar Pichai and Apple’s Tim Cook also met with the incoming president—before relentlessly deriding their efforts.
“Think of where these guys were in 2016,” Trump is quoted as saying of Zuckerberg and Bezos in a conversation with Elon Musk recounted in the book. “They hated me. They were doing everything they could to knock me down. And look at them now.”
Musk seemed delighted in the humiliation of his rivals, according to the book. “First-class groveling,” Musk is quoted as replying.
Presented with the book’s reporting, White House spokesperson Kush Desai did not directly respond. “President Trump is committed to working with every American business and business leader to cement America’s innovative dominance, re-shore critical manufacturing, and accelerate economic growth,” he said.
A person familiar with the Bezos episodes said the Amazon founder has been working with Trump in the same way that he has worked with every president since Bill Clinton, including donating $100 million to Barack Obama’s presidential library, and intended to work with whoever next occupies the Oval Office. A spokesperson for Bezos’ Blue Origin did not respond to requests for comment. Musk and spokespeople for Meta also did not respond to requests for comment.
The book shows Trump frequently mocking Zuckerberg and Bezos as they attempted to win his favor following the 2024 election—revealing, for example, text messages he received from the Meta CEO to various guests.
When Zuckerberg arrived shortly after Thanksgiving 2024, the authors write, Trump played the national anthem over the speakers. It soon became clear that this was no ordinary rendition, but one by a group of detained January 6 rioters known as the J6 Prison Choir.
Weeks later, according to the book, as Trump showed guests and visitors some of the ingratiating texts that Zuckerberg had sent, he stopped on a photo of the “letter to the president” written by one of the Meta CEO’s three children, the oldest of whom would have been 8 or 9 at the time.
Trump was also unsparing with Bezos, who is portrayed by Haberman and Swan as transactionally obsequious in indulging and doubling down on Trump’s criticisms of The Washington Post, as well as sending Trump a selfie featuring himself and his then-fiancée, Lauren Sánchez, over text.
