Steve Bannon says tech billionaires’ attendance at Trump inauguration signals ‘surrender’

"As soon as [Mark] Zuckerberg said, 'I've been invited. I'm going,' the floodgates opened up and they were all there knocking, trying to be supplicants,” Bannon said. “So I look at this and I think most people in our movement look at this as President Trump broke the oligarchs, he broke them and they surrendered.”

Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos are among the prominent tech figures expected to attend Monday's inauguration, alongside Tesla and X owner Elon Musk, who has emerged as a Trump ally in recent months. Both Meta and Amazon have also reportedly contributed to Trump’s inaugural fund.

Tech leaders have shown signs of softening controversial policies in the wake of Trump’s victory. Zuckerberg recently announced that Facebook would eliminate its fact-checking services, adopting a community notes system similar to X. He also appeared on The Joe Rogan Experience, where he criticized the Biden administration and admitted that under his leadership, the federal government pressured Facebook to censor certain posts.

Despite these shifts, Bannon expressed skepticism about these tech leaders’ motivations. He also called Zuckerberg a “criminal.”

"Zuckerberg's, you know, road to Damascus came a little late. It was after the Fifth of November," Bannon remarked. "It's very, you know, now wants to be a bro. He Kung Fu fights. He's going to UFC. He's got his hair done differently. He's, he's cut. That doesn't hack it with me. That guy will flip on President Trump and he'll flip on us in the second. When it's convenient for him. He will flip."

Bannon also reiterated his past criticisms of Musk, including calling him an “evil person,” despite the Tesla CEO’s recent support for the Republican Party. When asked if Trump ever pushes back on his critiques of Musk, Bannon responded, “If President Trump has a conversation with me I will keep that conversation between President Trump and myself."

Looking forward, Bannon argued that Trump has a unique ability to unite a broad coalition of Americans, comparing him to historical figures like George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. "If you had to have somebody to do it, he's the guy to do it," Bannon added. "That's why he is at the level of Washington and Lincoln."