Spare a thought this week for Silicon Valley’s broligarchy – the tech titans who prostrated themselves so low before Donald Trump in the aftermath of the 2024 election that they’ll be seeing a chiropractor for years.

In the coming weeks, as they desperately try to resurrect their inner Democrat and reverse the precipitous falls in their share prices, it’ll be worth reminding ourselves of a few things. Chief among these are the tech dollars that poured into Donald Trump’s inauguration fund in 2025 courtesy of Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, OpenAI chief Sam Altman, Apple boss Tim Cook and Google.

Cook went one better – like a modern-day wise man paying homage to baby Jesus, he arrived at the Oval Office armed with gold, presenting the new president with a glass disc mounted on a solid 24-carat gold base, engraved with both men’s names.

Bezos made an offering he deemed even better than gold, frankincense or myrrh – he sent Trump a selfie with his then-fiancee Lauren Sanchez. Over dinner with Trump, Bezos moaned about the Washington Post, the newspaper he owns, like it was his recalcitrant teenage offspring. “The people there are terrible,” Bezos said. “They don’t listen.” Amazon spent $35 million (€31 million) promoting the impressively bad “documentary” Melania.

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