Yesterday, news broke that Apple CEO Tim Cook was one of many tech CEOs who had been invited for a “White House event on AI hosted by first lady Melania Trump.” Now, The Wall Street Journal has a few details of how the event went.
Taking turns to praise Trump
As reported by the WSJ, the list of tech CEOs at tonight’s dinner included OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg (who sat alongside Trump), Microsoft founder and ex-CEO Bill Gates, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, and IBM CEO Arvind Krishna, among others:
“President Trump on Thursday led leaders of the world’s biggest technology companies in a version of his cabinet meetings, in which each participant takes a turn thanking and praising him, this time for his efforts to promote investments in chip manufacturing and artificial intelligence.”
While Altman thanked Trump for being “such a pro-business, pro-innovation president,” contrasting it with the Biden administration, Cook reportedly highlighted Apple’s recent domestic commitments when it was his turn to praise the President:
“I want to thank you for setting the tone such that we can make a major investment in the United States and have some key manufacturing here. I think it says a lot about your leadership and focus on innovation.”
Cook, of course, was referring to the recent repackaging of Apple’s domestic investments into the $600 billion American Manufacturing Program.
During the event, Trump also asked Pichai about this week’s favorable decision in the antitrust case that could have compelled it to sell Chrome and Android, and stop its partnerships with Apple and Mozilla:
“You had a very good day yesterday,” Trump said. “Do you want to talk about that big day you had yesterday?”
“I’m glad it’s over,” Pichai said.
“Biden was the one who prosecuted that lawsuit,” Trump said. “You know that, right?”
As observed by the Journal, a few notable absences from today’s dinner included Elon Musk, as well as Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang.
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