SoftBank and Big Tech flash corporate dollars at Donald Trump

Good morning — it’s nice to be back with you! Welcome to White House Watch. Let’s jump into:

• How chief executives are trying to win over Trump

• Mexico gets in the middle of Trump’s China trade war

• The dangers of ABC’s settlement with Trump

Technology executives are lining up to kiss the presidential ring and flash their corporate dollars at Donald Trump to get in his good graces.

SoftBank’s billionaire chief Masayoshi Son stood next to Trump at Mar-a-Lago yesterday so they could unveil the Japanese tech group’s plans to invest $100bn and create 100,000 jobs in the US. The two men are both known for their lofty pronouncements.

As the pair lavished praise — Trump’s love language — on one another from the podium, it was not clear how exactly Son will be able to fund this mega pledge.

SoftBank made a similar commitment after Trump won his first term in 2016, vowing to inject $50bn into the US economy and create 50,000 jobs. With the support of Saudi Arabia, the investor raised $100bn for the SoftBank Vision Fund that year to back US companies such as Uber and WeWork. But it’s not clear how many jobs it created while Trump was in the White House.

The tech company’s announcement came as US peers have been courting Trump by donating millions of dollars to his inaugural fund. Amazon, Meta and Perplexity have each contributed $1mn, as has OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman.

Executives are flocking to Mar-a-Lago as they try to curry favour with the president-elect. Yesterday, Trump hosted TikTok boss Shou Zi Chew at his Florida compound as the app seeks rescue from a looming ban. On today’s agenda: Trump plans to meet Netflix co-chief Ted Sarandos.

Trump said yesterday that Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s founder and executive chair, would also be travelling to Florida to see him, and that he recently had dinner with Apple’s Tim Cook.

“In the first term, everybody was fighting me. In this term, everybody wants to be my friend,” Trump said during the press conference. “I don’t know — my personality changed or something.”

Team 47: who’s made the cut

Trump loyalist Ric Grenell, who previously served as his intelligence chief and ambassador to Germany, will be the presidential envoy for special missions.

Devin Nunes, chief of Trump’s social media platform Truth Social and a former lawmaker, has been picked to head up the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board. (Politico)

Transitional times: the latest headlines

What we’re hearing

ABC News’s $15mn defamation settlement with Trump has set a dangerous precedent for journalistic freedom, according to legal experts and news executives, as the president-elect continues his crusade against the “corrupt” press [free to read].

Genevieve Lakier, a law professor at the University of Chicago, told the FT’s Anna Nicolaou:

I genuinely don’t know what ABC was thinking when they agreed to do this . . . Unless there is something we don’t know, it looks like it was a weak suit.

For ABC to give in and settle so quickly, surely it will embolden similar suits. I am disturbed.

While there could be some information we’re unaware of, the bar in the US for proving defamation is extremely high, so the settlement has fuelled speculation that ABC settled to avoid further wrath. 

Trump has recently doubled down on his attacks, threatening to revoke broadcast licences for news channels including ABC. Yesterday, during a press conference he said he’d “probably” sue the Des Moines Register, the Iowa newspaper, for a poll published right before the election that showed Kamala Harris leading in the state.

ABC’s decision to settle was “dangerous”, said Samantha Barbas, a University of Iowa law professor. “It will embolden Trump and his allies to keep bringing these libel suits.”

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