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Thursday, February 27, 2025

Big Tech CEOs, foreign leaders at Trump’s inauguration today

by

38 days ago
20250120
Supporters of President-elect Donald Trump gather before a rally ahead of the 60th Presidential Inauguration, yesterday, in Washington, USA.

Supporters of President-elect Donald Trump gather before a rally ahead of the 60th Presidential Inauguration, yesterday, in Washington, USA.

Matt Rourke

Don­ald Trump’s in­au­gu­ra­tion as the coun­try’s 47th pres­i­dent was ex­pect­ed to be an ex­trav­a­gant break from tra­di­tion—be­fore it got moved in­doors due to cold weath­er.

There will still be well-known per­form­ers, in­flu­en­tial bil­lion­aires as guests and for­eign heads of state. Un­like his first in­au­gu­ra­tion eight years ago, Trump will be wel­comed back to of­fice by busi­ness ti­tans and glob­al lead­ers, groups that of­ten shunned him in his first term.

Here are some things to look out for dur­ing Trump’s in­au­gu­ra­tion.

Trumps in­side the Capi­tol Ro­tun­da, but who else?

Ex­pect to see Mela­nia Trump, the pres­i­dent-elect’s five chil­dren and grand­kids. Don Jr, his el­dest son, and Lara Trump, who is mar­ried to Er­ic Trump, have gained more in­flu­ence over the past year. The fa­thers of Trump’s two sons-in-law were giv­en key ad­vis­er posts as well. While Ivan­ka Trump and Jared Kush­n­er have tak­en a step back, they are ex­pect­ed to at­tend just like they did for elec­tion night.

But the Capi­tol Ro­tun­da can on­ly hold around 600 peo­ple, ac­cord­ing to or­gan­is­ers. There will be pre­cious few spots for Supreme Court jus­tices, mil­i­tary lead­ers, for­mer pres­i­dents and their spous­es, Cab­i­net nom­i­nees and vis­it­ing dig­ni­taries—along with the 535 mem­bers of Con­gress who tra­di­tion­al­ly get prime spots, though some De­mo­c­ra­t­ic law­mak­ers are skip­ping the cer­e­mo­ny.

Tes­la and X own­er Elon Musk was in­vit­ed to the dais along with Meta CEO Mark Zucker­berg, Tik­Tok CEO Shou Zi Chew, Ama­zon founder Jeff Be­zos and Ope­nAI CEO Sam Alt­man. Who will make it in­to the Ro­tun­da?

The in­au­gur­al ad­dress

Trump is known for de­liv­er­ing hour-plus speech­es where he makes grand promis­es, at­tacks po­lit­i­cal op­po­nents and mocks some for­eign lead­ers.

Dur­ing his 16-minute in­au­gur­al ad­dress in 2017, Trump stuck to his cam­paign script and paint­ed a bleak pic­ture of the coun­try blam­ing oth­er coun­tries for shut­ter­ing fac­to­ries and shrink­ing the mid­dle class. He said he would end “Amer­i­can car­nage” and would gov­ern with an “Amer­i­ca First” ap­proach.

This time around, his main cam­paign promise has been to launch the largest de­por­ta­tion op­er­a­tion in his­to­ry and seal off the US-Mex­i­co bor­der. He has spo­ken about ush­er­ing in a “gold­en age” and pledged to im­pose tar­iffs on im­ports, rolling out more de­tails in re­cent days on how he plans to pur­sue those goals.

He told NBC News on Sat­ur­day that the theme of his in­au­gur­al ad­dress will be “uni­ty and strength, and al­so the word ‘fair­ness.’”

“Be­cause you have to be treat­ing peo­ple fair­ly,” Trump said. “You can’t just say, ‘Oh, every­thing’s go­ing to be won­der­ful.’ You know, we went through hell for four years with these peo­ple. And so, you know, some­thing has to be done about it. ... You can’t have that hap­pen, and we shouldn’t have that hap­pen.”

For­eign lead­ers in town

Trump may be break­ing a tra­di­tion on In­au­gu­ra­tion Day af­ter ex­tend­ing in­vi­ta­tions to world lead­ers. No heads of state have pre­vi­ous­ly made an of­fi­cial vis­it to the US for the in­au­gu­ra­tion.

Chi­nese Pres­i­dent Xi Jin­ping was the first for­eign leader whose in­vi­ta­tion to the in­au­gu­ra­tion be­came pub­lic last De­cem­ber. Xi will not at­tend but is send­ing Vice Pres­i­dent Han Zheng as his spe­cial rep­re­sen­ta­tive.

Ar­genti­na’s pres­i­dent, Javier Milei, and Italy’s pre­mier Gior­gia Mel­oni, ac­cept­ed Trump’s of­fer. The of­fices of Ecuadore­an Pres­i­dent Daniel Noboa and Paraguayan Pres­i­dent San­ti­a­go Peña have al­so said they were in­vit­ed and were plan­ning to at­tend.


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