Silicon Valley Billionaires Compete in Trump Flattery Olympics

The State Dining Room looked less like a seat of power and more like a high school talent show for billionaires. At the far-too-long table sat Silicon Valley’s top brass—Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Tim Cook, Satya Nadella, Sam Altman, Sergey Brin—assembled to shower Donald Trump with praise and numbers. Lots of numbers. Especially made-up ones.

Trump opened with his trademark word salad: “It’s an honor to be here with this group of people. They’re leading a revolution in business, and in genius, and in every other word.” Nobody was sure what that last part meant, but everyone clapped anyway.

The ritual soon began: Trump demanded each executive state how much they’re “investing in America,” like a game show where the prize is avoiding tariffs. Tim Cook thanked Trump for “setting the tone” that allowed Apple to fork over billions to U.S. manufacturing—translation: “thanks for shaking us down, Don.”

Zuckerberg, not to be outdone, just blurted out, “It’s going to be something like $600 billion through ’28.” He gave an eyebrow wiggle across the table as if to say: “Yeah, I just made that number up. What are you gonna do?” Trump beamed like he’d just been handed a golden chalice of flattery.

Satya Nadella praised Melania Trump for her “leadership in AI skilling,” which is like crediting your cat for inventing Wi-Fi. Sergey Brin congratulated Trump on his “pressure in Venezuela,” delivered just two days after a U.S. drone strike killed 11 people at sea. Nothing says “bon appétit” like extrajudicial killings over the appetizer course.

Oracle’s Safra Catz took the prize for most over-the-top praise, declaring, “This is the most exciting time in America ever.” Yes, even more exciting than the moon landing, Woodstock, or the invention of the Taco Bell Doritos Locos Taco.

Seating arrangements, of course, spoke volumes. Zuckerberg, Teacher’s Pet, was glued to Trump’s right. Gates landed next to Melania. Nadella, poor guy, was banished to the end of the table near the decorative ferns. Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Nvidia’s Jensen Huang were MIA—presumably too busy mining Dogecoin, dismantling newspapers, or calculating how many GPUs it would take to power the sun.

Conspicuously absent from the dinner chat were topics like immigration (half the table are immigrants), tariffs (remember those?), or how exactly America plans to power the AI boom without turning the Midwest into a giant Bitcoin mine. Instead, the evening stayed laser-focused on sycophancy, invented numbers, and praising the president’s “tone.”

By the end, it was clear the dinner wasn’t really about innovation, or even America. It was about power, Trump’s favorite meal. Big Tech dutifully played their part: servile, smiling, and, in Zuckerberg’s case, armed with the kind of math you’d expect from a freshman pulling a number out of the air during show-and-tell.

If history remembers this dinner at all, it’ll be as the night when Silicon Valley’s titans pledged fealty to Trump, and the only thing bigger than the promises was the collective lack of shame.