A new book paints an unflattering picture of how Silicon Valley's most powerful men handled Donald Trump's return to power. According to its authors, they grovelled. And Trump, they write, mocked them for it behind their backs.
The book is “Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump”, by the New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan. Wired obtained a copy ahead of its release on 23 June. Its claims about Big Tech are striking, though the White House has not confirmed them.
‘First-class groveling'
After the 2024 election, the book says, Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos rushed to win Trump over. At Mar-a-Lago, Trump allegedly showed Elon Musk the texts they had sent him. “Think of where these guys were in 2016,” he is quoted as saying. “They hated me … And look at them now.”
Musk's reported reply was blunt: “first-class groveling.” Trump, the authors add, later told associates the executives were “kissing my a–“. He also boasted, “You would not believe the texts I got from these tech guys.”
The letters and the anthem
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Some of the details are vivid. The book claims Zuckerberg texted Trump a photo of a letter from one of his young children, who wrote that they “looked forward to the golden age of America”, echoing a Trump campaign slogan.
When Zuckerberg visited around Thanksgiving 2024, the authors say, Trump played the national anthem as recorded by a choir of jailed 6 January defendants.
Bezos, the Post, and a dig at SpaceX
Bezos features heavily, too. Over a Mar-a-Lago dinner, the book says, he criticised his own newspaper, The Washington Post: “The people there are terrible. They don't listen.” More notably for the tech world, he reportedly urged Trump to spread federal space contracts more widely. Relying on a single contractor, Musk's SpaceX, he argued, was a national-security risk.
That pitch would also have helped Bezos's own rocket firm, Blue Origin, which has long clashed with SpaceX over government work. Trump said he would consider it, the authors write. He never did. Instead, he repaired his ties with Musk and expanded SpaceX's operations.
Why it matters
None of this is confirmed, and the book is a collection of claims rather than a court record.
The White House did not address the specifics. It said only that Trump wants to work with “every American business … to cement America's innovative dominance”. Still, the account lands on a theme that is hard to ignore: how quickly Silicon Valley bent toward Trump after the election. The same men sat in the front row at his inauguration.
If the book is right, Trump enjoyed the spectacle but did not respect it. It is also a reminder that the Bezos–Musk–Trump triangle is as tangled as ever.