Somewhere in a file in Santa Clara sits a pledge form for $25 million, made out to something called the “Donald J. Trump Ballroom.” Apple signed one for the same amount. Microsoft and Palantir went for ten million each. Google paid its share through a lawsuit settlement, which is a very Google way to kiss the ring. All told, about $333 million to build a gold-plated dance hall on the rubble of the East Wing.
Now, eight days before the midterms, the people who wrote those checks are scared. Good. This Washington Post story, Powerful executives cozied up to Trump. Now they fear a reckoning got me thinking.
According to the Post, the tech titans and their defense-startup cousins (the ones who dress either like beach hobos or extras in a Call of Duty trailer) are calling Democratic strategists in a cold sweat. Which Democrats should we give to? Who can we put on the board? Cooper Teboe, one of the strategists fielding those calls, said they’d committed “the cardinal sin” of forgetting that pendulums swing back.
I’d put it less kindly. They didn’t forget anything. They ran the numbers.
Nvidia threw off more than $21 billion in free cash flow in a single quarter. Twenty-five million is lint in the dryer. When trillions ride on a tariff exemption, an export license, an antitrust case that quietly dies, or a Pentagon contract with no rival bidder, buying Washington is the cheapest date in America. Dinner, a ballroom, maybe a gold plaque for the Resolute Desk. Done.
Two years ago these men made a choice. They lined up behind Trump at his inauguration like groomsmen at a mob wedding. They rewrote their content rules for him, packed their boards with his people, swallowed every humiliation he served them with a smile. They looked at a man who tried to overturn an election and saw a growth opportunity. Their fortunes swelled past anything in human history. So did the rot.
