Amazon said on Thursday that it was planning to donate $1 million to President-elect Donald J. Trump’s inaugural fund, part of a pattern in which tech companies and their leaders are taking steps to repair their relationships with Mr. Trump.
Meta, the parent company of Facebook, said on Wednesday that it was putting $1 million into the inaugural fund, just weeks after Mr. Zuckerberg met with Mr. Trump at Mar-a-Lago.
Amazon and its founder, Jeff Bezos, who also owns The Washington Post, have had a rocky history with Mr. Trump. Mr. Trump had long harbored frustration with Mr. Bezos over reporting in The Washington Post. During his first administration, Mr. Trump had also questioned whether the U.S. Postal Service gave Amazon a sweetheart deal, and Amazon accused Mr. Trump of improperly pressuring the Pentagon to deny the company a major cloud computing contract.
But over the summer, Mr. Bezos spoke with Mr. Trump after the former president was shot at a campaign event, and on social media he praised Mr. Trump’s “grace and courage under literal fire.” More recently, Mr. Bezos has said that he is “very optimistic” about the incoming Trump administration.
At the DealBook Summit in New York on Dec. 4, Mr. Bezos said that Mr. Trump “seems to have a lot of energy around reducing regulation. And my point of view is, if I can help him do that, I’m going to help him, because we do have too much regulation in this country.”
Amazon also said it would livestream the inauguration next month, as it has done with previous inaugurations. The donation was previously reported by The Wall Street Journal.
Mr. Trump said on Thursday that Mr. Bezos, who chairs Amazon’s board, was meeting him next week. Mr. Trump said he wanted to get ideas from Mr. Bezos and other tech leaders.
Gifts to inaugural committees, which do not have contribution limits, are popular among businesses and individuals eager to curry favor with an incoming administration. Mr. Trump’s inaugural committee is offering top-tier benefits to donors who contribute $1 million.
Amazon gave $57,746 to Mr. Trump’s 2017 inaugural committee, according to OpenSecrets, which tracks political donations. The company said the Biden campaign did not accept donations from tech companies in 2020.
