David Edwards

Sen. John Cornyn spent years voting as President Donald Trump's demanded, cheering the president's speeches, and trying to rename a Texas highway after him. He lost his Senate seat anyway. Now he's done toeing the line for Trump and the Republican Party.

The four-term Texas Republican was ousted in May by Ken Paxton, whom President Donald Trump endorsed at the last minute. Paxton won by 28 points.

Cornyn sat down with Semafor this week and said what he apparently kept quiet through years of courtship.

The contrast with what came before is stark.

Cornyn wrote on X that he had a 99.3 percent voting record with the president and was "proud of what we have accomplished together." He pushed a state bill to rename a Dallas-area highway as Interstate 47 in Trump's honor — an effort he told the Daily Beast "may not make it into my priorities the next seven months." He posed for a widely mocked photo in which he appeared to be reading Trump's ghostwritten book, The Art of the Deal.

None of it was enough.

"The president seems to revel in chaos, which is so different from any other leader that I've ever seen," Cornyn told Semafor recently. "I don't know about you, but I like to minimize the chaos in my life. He just seems to revel in it."

Cornyn also made clear he has no illusions about Trump's reliability. Conversations with the president aren't "particularly useful," he said, "because he can and will change his mind depending on the next person he talks to on the phone."

Cornyn showed his remaining leverage by withholding his vote on Trump's immigration spending bill until the White House agreed to release more than $10 billion in border security reimbursements owed to Texas.

On Trump's decision to back Paxton over him — and spend on the general — Cornyn was dry. "The president picked Paxton, and he's got $350 million dollars," he said. "I think he can spend his money."

After the primary loss, Cornyn posted what he called "an old, but apt fable" — the frog and the scorpion. "The dying frog asks the scorpion why it stung despite knowing the consequence," he recited, "to which the scorpion replies: 'I am sorry, but I couldn't help myself. It's my character.'"

And as for taking on his own party, Semafor noted Cornyn was "positioned to play more hardball" in an "unusual" move for him.

“That’s one example I think of what you can do when you have some cards to play," the senator told the publication.

Fox News host Brian Kilmeade lost it, calling for President Donald Trump to replace JD Vance as Iran negotiator — blasting his Israel criticism as "ridiculous."

On Fox & Friends, Kilmeade unloaded on Vice President JD Vance after Vance warned Israeli cabinet members Thursday that Trump is "the only powerful ally" they have "anywhere left in the entire world." The remarks came as U.S. and Iranian negotiators were deep into a 60-day sprint to flesh out the memorandum of understanding the two countries signed last week.

"The president's gotta go on the inside," Kilmeade said, "because then the negotiators are wasting their time. No one's happy with this document. The president doesn't seem to be happy."

"The fact that he hopped on Friday and started ripping Israel and said they have no friends — that is ridiculous!" Kilmeade continued. "Have you heard of the Abraham Accords? Do you understand that the Gulf States are tighter with Israel than ever before?"

He then demanded Trump take over directly — and called Vance out by name.

"I think JD Vance, who's late to this party, doesn't understand the depth of the disagreement," Kilmeade said.

MS NOW reported this week that Vance has compounded his inexperience with a series of false claims — including insisting that the deal's terms for destroying Iran's enriched uranium stockpile are "spelled out very clearly," when the memorandum of understanding includes no such provisions. Vance repeated the claim even after it was discredited.

The vice president arrived Sunday at the Lake Lucerne Summit in Switzerland — where U.S. negotiators sat across from Iran's foreign minister and parliamentary speaker — but PBS reported Trump threatened to "hit Iran very hard again" on social media while talks were underway.

Fox & Friends contributor Lawrence Jones, who spoke with Trump over the weekend, said the president told him privately the memorandum of understanding "was a starting point" — and that if Iran kept pushing him, "I gotta strike them."

Reporters received exclusive tours of the new Air Force One, a former Qatari jet reported to have "gold plating throughout" to match the design requests of President Donald Trump.

The tours offered the public their first look inside the plane.

The aircraft, designated the VC-25B Bridge, arrived Friday at Joint Base Andrews after a $400 million military overhaul that added secure communications and anti-missile defenses to the Boeing 747-8 once owned by the Qatari royal family.

The U.S. Air Force kept the interior largely intact.

"This feels more like a house than a plane," Daily Caller White House correspondent Reagan Reese wrote on X.

She counted solid wood tables, lounge couches, photos of the National Mall in the conference room, and a presidential seal on every seatbelt buckle. The press cabin is two to three times the size of the old plane's.

Center Square Washington bureau chief Sarah Roderick-Fitch saw white leather, wooden paneling, cream carpet, and silver accents. The decor was "simple, but elegant," she wrote.

GB News Chief U.S. Correspondent Ben Leo called it "INSANE."

Trump's office and meeting rooms, he said, were "better than five star hotels." He counted 24 press seats reclining fully flat and four Rolls-Royce engines.

"This plane was transformed into a flying White House at a level of luxury that nobody has ever seen before," Trump said as "God Bless the USA" played.

"Nobody tops this one," Trump said of landing at foreign airports, "and that's the way we have to have it for our country."

The New York Times reported Trump's personal plane has "gold plating throughout, including on the seatbelt buckles," and that he wanted "gold trim" on the new jet.

The Qatari interior, by French firm Alberto Pinto Cabinet, featured gold-colored walls and gold furnishings. The Air Force said the layout was kept "minimally changed."

Qatar gifted the 747-8 amid ethics objections. Sen. Patty Murray, a Washington Democrat, called it a "brazen" violation of the Constitution's Emoluments Clause. Trump dismissed the criticism as "stupid."

The plane will complete commissioning flights before entering presidential service. Trump has promised it will lead a flyover of Washington on July 4.

Following his 2024 win, President Donald Trump required help from aides because he couldn't remember the names of the people he promised to retaliate against.

That's the scene described in "Regime Change," a new book by New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan.

One of the targets was Chris Krebs, the former head of the Department of Homeland Security's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency — fired by Trump in November 2020 after he publicly declared that year's election "the most secure in American history."

But in a meeting with senior staff, including deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller and longtime aide Boris Epshteyn, Trump outright forgot his name.

"I remember there was this lawyer who was in the administration who said the election was fair and there's no fraud. Who was he?" Trump asked, according to the book.

"Oh the DHS — I think you're talking about the DHS guy," Miller replied. "I forget his name."

Epshteyn then Googled it.

"Yeah, Chris Krebs," Trump said. "Whatever happened to him? He was a bad one. Take a look at him."

Haberman and Swan write that Miller then had a presidential memo drawn up, "unleashing the resources of the federal government on a man whose sole offense against Trump had been to attest to the security and validity of his 2020 election."

The anecdote lands as questions about Trump's memory mount. Earlier this year, during a New York Magazine interview, Trump blanked on the word "Alzheimer's" while discussing his father's decline — turning to press secretary Karoline Leavitt, who supplied it.

"Well, I don't have it," Trump said.

Pro-MAGA influencers erupted in outrage after CNN tested the bright green water in the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, which President Donald Trump recently renovated.

Trump ordered the landmark repainted "American flag blue" for $14.2 million — far exceeding his initial $2 million estimate. Algae turned the water green within days of the pool being refilled in early June.

CNN sampled the water and had it independently tested, finding phosphate levels far higher than recommended for a pool holding 6.5 million gallons.

"They are having a field day out here," an algae specialist told the network.

Florida's Voice chief content officer Eric Daugherty griped on X that "CNN is digging deeper into water color than they dug into hundreds of billions of fraud" — a post that racked up 2 million views.

"Pond scum gets the full investigative treatment," Benny Johnson, host of The Benny Show and a Turning Point USA contributor, fumed on X. "Massive fraud against the American taxpayer? Crickets."

Kristin Sokoloff, co-host of the Dirtyside of Leadership podcast, was blunter. "CNN [is] obsessed with Reflecting Pool paint while America burns," she posted.

Retired Lt. Col. Buzz Patterson, a RedState columnist, mocked the network as "that crack journalistic enterprise that liberals and airports live on."

"If only they cared this much about Hunter's laptop," Newsmax host Rob Schmitt snapped on X.

A pro-Trump commentator triggered a White House attack after she called President Donald Trump's preliminary deal with Iran a humiliation for the United States.

Batya Ungar-Sargon, a self-described "MAGA lefty" who hosts a weekend show on NewsNation, broke with the administration over the memorandum of understanding Trump signed with Iran.

Ungar-Sargon is an Orthodox Jewish commentator and vocal Trump supporter who has repeatedly championed his presidency. But the Iran deal crossed a line she said she could not defend — particularly after Vice President JD Vance began blaming Israel for the region's instability.

"This is an utter humiliation of the United States, and everybody knows it," Ungar-Sargon told NewsNation's Elizabeth Vargas. "Everybody knows it, but especially Iran knows it. They are celebrating this."

She went further with Vance.

"JD Vance is out there criticizing Israel, making up fantasies about how it is Israel's fault," she said. "It is the complete Tucker Carlsonification of the Vice President of the United States, and it is utterly deplorable."

The White House's official rapid-response account fired back with a vicious personal attack.

"The only humiliation here is Batya desperately begging for an additional brain cell because her failing TV show is even more irrelevant than the likes of Kaitlan Collins and Fake Tapper," wrote Rapid Response 47 on X. "Only a moron of her caliber could still doubt President Trump's leadership."

The attack made no mention of the Iran deal or Vance's comments on Israel.

The reply also invoked CNN's Kaitlan Collins as a benchmark for irrelevance — notable given that Trump himself has repeatedly attacked Collins, calling her "the worst reporter" after she questioned him about the Epstein scandal.

The White House's response fits a broader pattern. Trump and his administration have repeatedly targeted women journalists with personal attacks — on their intelligence, their appearance, and their careers — rather than engaging with their reporting.

In May, Trump called one woman reporter "a dumb person" and told another she was "a stupid person" during a single South Lawn exchange. He previously called Bloomberg's Catherine Lucey "piggy" on Air Force One after she asked about the Epstein files.

"VP JD Vance just brought the US to its knees with a humiliating deal weeks before our 250th birthday," Ungar-Sargon wrote on X, "and he has the audacity to blame … Israel!"

Secretary of State Marco Rubio scrambled for a printer inside the Palace of Versailles after President Donald Trump went to the sign his Iran deal — without bringing a copy with him.

A new report sheds light on the chaotic behind-the-scenes details of how the historic agreement came together.

According to Agence France-Presse, Trump decided to sign at a candlelit dinner in Versailles "quite spontaneously" — the text hadn't even been printed, leaving Rubio to hunt down a printer somewhere inside the grand palace.

When Trump finally put pen to paper, he used a fat black marker, the crockery still on the table after a dinner of lobster and caviar.

The deal itself had been announced three days earlier — on Trump's 80th birthday, June 14 — while he was still in Washington, celebrating by watching MMA cage fights at the White House.

The signing venue had shifted multiple times. French President Emmanuel Macron had said the deal had already been signed "electronically."

It had then been expected that Vice President JD Vance would formalize it with top Iranian negotiator Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf in Switzerland. Trump then muddied the waters by saying it would be signed "tomorrow, maybe the next day" — before simply signing it himself at the Versailles dinner, reportedly impressed by the palace's "golden splendor."

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian signed his own copy in a parallel move, with Iranian news agencies showing him brandishing the document for the cameras.

The follow-on talks at the luxury Bürgenstock resort in Switzerland — a mountaintop complex where hotel guests had reportedly been quietly asked to leave — were postponed at the last minute, reportedly due to Israeli military action against Hezbollah in Lebanon late Thursday.

Journalists waiting on the tarmac at Andrews Air Force Base to fly to the meeting with Vice President JD Vance received a terse message: the vice president wasn't leaving that evening.

Iran said Friday there was now "no urgency," but that it was "planning to hold a meeting in the coming days."

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ran a secret online search operation that effectively punished subordinates for behavior he has described as "woke."

The result of what the New York Times called Hegseth's "war on diversity" had serious consequences for officers who were up for promotion.

Hegseth and his top aides ordered the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps to scour the internet for photos, videos or news articles that might draw his ire, the Times reported Friday. Then his own staff ran the searches again — to make sure the branches hadn't missed anything, or tried to protect anyone.

Inside the Pentagon, the flagged material was code-named "derogatory material" screening.

Hegseth blocked promotions for at least 40 senior officers to general and admiral ranks this year. About half were women or members of minority groups.

Officers who had spoken publicly about diversity or urged troops to get the COVID vaccine were targeted. Photos and articles posted on official Navy websites were turned into evidence against the officers they once celebrated.

Rear Adm. Stephen Barnett, already a one-star admiral, was the Navy's top pick to be promoted to vice admiral and run its global base command — more experienced than any other candidate, and fresh off three years cleaning up a catastrophic fuel spill in Hawaii that sickened thousands. Hegseth passed over him anyway, selecting the Navy's third choice, after flagging Barnett's years-old remarks on the importance of diversity.

Hegseth has made no secret of what he was after. At West Point last month, he told graduates that previous military leaders had been "woke and weak." He declared at the Army War College in 2025 that "DEI is dead."

It was not clear whether Hegseth had the legal authority to pull names from the lists at all — Congress had entrusted that power to the service secretaries, not the defense secretary.

President Donald Trump's new acting spy chief arrived at his post Friday with orders to fire hundreds of intelligence officials — clearing the way for Trump's election meddling aspirations in the midterms.

Bill Pulte, who took over the Office of the Director of National Intelligence on Friday without Senate confirmation, can hold the post for up to 210 days under the Federal Vacancies Reform Act — well past November's midterm elections.

CNN reported that Pulte showed up on his first day with a list of employees and that he "eyes firing hundreds."

Trump has been explicit about what he wants Pulte to do with that window.

"He may find out some things about the rigged elections," Trump told reporters this month. "I think he wants to do it very much."

Reuters reported Friday that the White House has suppressed an ODNI report on voting machine vulnerabilities for months.

Some officials believe the report doesn't go far enough to validate Trump's false claims that the 2020 election was stolen. Pulte has already been briefed on it, two sources told Reuters.

Trump has told the Wall Street Journal he wants Pulte to fire "a lot of people." Pulte's acting status is the point, Trump said: "You're less shackled."

Those firings would gut the career analysts most likely to push back on the ODNI report's findings, and on any action taken aimed at midterms.

Reuters and Foreign Policy have reported that the CIA has already stopped contributing to some ODNI assessments because of friction under outgoing DNI Tulsi Gabbard, and that top analysts are avoiding the National Intelligence Council for fear of political pressure.

"DNI Gabbard spent 18 months and untold taxpayer dollars trying to give substance to lies about the 2020 election and found absolutely nothing," election law expert David Becker said, adding that Pulte was "hand-picked to replace her precisely because he too embraces the lies and conspiracy theories while ignoring the evidence."

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche is just hours away from violating a judge's order on President Donald Trump's January 6 slush fund after thumbing his nose at it for weeks.

U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema gave Blanche and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent until Friday afternoon to file sworn declarations confirming the $1.776 billion Anti-Weaponization Fund is dead.

As of Friday morning, nothing had been filed.

Journalist Scott MacFarlane wrote that he had been checking the court docket all morning.

"Crickets," MacFarlane wrote.

Brinkema extended her block on the fund on June 12 after ruling that Blanche's verbal claims to Congress were insufficient. She demanded written sworn declarations from both officials.

The judge noted that Trump himself said after Blanche's testimony that he wanted to move forward with the fund — comments she said carried "a lot of weight," MS NOW reported.

The fund was created through a private settlement of Trump's lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service. Critics noted it could pay Jan. 6 defendants, including those convicted of assaulting police officers.

Pooja Boistute, senior counsel at advocacy group Democracy Forward, said after the June 12 hearing she "honestly" did not believe Blanche and Bessent would comply.

"I think it will tell...a lot to the court that they have represented that they're terminating the fund, and there's no evidence to support that," Boistute said.

It is not the only court where Blanche faces jeopardy. Georgetown Law professor and former senior Justice Department official Marty Lederman argued this week that a federal judge already has sufficient evidence to order a criminal contempt trial against Blanche over deportation flights that defied a court order in March 2025.

"While mistruths and obfuscation may be the standard playbook for the Trump-Vance administration, it is telling that they have repeatedly refused to say under oath that the Slush Fund is truly dead," said Skye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward.

If Blanche and Bessent file a sufficient declaration, the preliminary injunction will remain in place. If they don't, the court has said the case will proceed with the injunction in place.

President Donald Trump's maneuver to install a conspiracist atop the nation's intelligence apparatus may have dire consequences for November's midterm elections, a new report warns.

Bill Pulte, the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency with no known intelligence experience, takes over this month as acting director of national intelligence.

The new spy chief will inherit a suppressed government report on voting machine vulnerabilities that some in the White House admit could undermine U.S. elections, Reuters reported.

As Pulte comes in, there is a new push to release the controversial report, Reuters reporter Erin Banco revealed on X Friday. Democrats have feared the move is part of an election-interference plot.

Both a White House faction and Democrats have warned the report could damage U.S. elections — for very different reasons.

Some White House officials fear releasing it could shake Republican confidence in the voting machines their own voters use, three sources told Reuters.

Democrats fear something darker: that the administration would use the findings to pressure states into switching to paper ballots — a move critics warn could sow chaos ahead of November.

All sources said they were unaware of any evidence of vote manipulation in U.S. elections.

Pulte's record outside the intelligence world alarmed watchdogs long before Friday. The Government Accountability Office launched an investigation into whether he misused sensitive financial data at the Federal Housing Finance Agency to manufacture mortgage fraud allegations against Trump's political enemies, including a sitting U.S. senator, a state attorney general, and a Federal Reserve governor.

"I think, unfortunately, it appears there may be a coordinated effort to try to interfere in the 2026 midterms," Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA), the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, told reporters.

"I'm worried about his willingness to take a fabricated piece of intelligence, or a raw piece of intelligence that has not been verified, and use it as an excuse to interfere in the elections," Warner added.

Trump canceled the June 17 confirmation hearing for his own DNI nominee, Jay Clayton, who had drawn rare bipartisan support, blocking the one congressional offramp available to replace Pulte.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said Trump "deliberately" kept the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act lapsed to protect Pulte's hold on the post.

"He may find out some things about the rigged elections," Trump said in the Oval Office when asked what qualified Pulte for the role.

President Donald Trump is reportedly "determined" to have better sleeping quarters than his wife since she is isolated in the master bedroom, leaving him with the "living room."

New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan reveal the details in Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump, a copy of which the Daily Mail obtained. First lady Melania Trump occupies the traditional master bedroom with an en suite dressing room and bath; Donald Trump occupies the second-floor space typically labeled the "living room" on White House maps, next to the Yellow Oval.

The competition started almost immediately. With Melania spending little time at the White House in the early weeks, items began disappearing from the corridor into the president's room.

"'In the early weeks of the new administration, items were spirited from the second-floor corridor into the President's bedroom,'" Haberman and Swan wrote. "'Sometimes Trump carried the objects in himself, rearranging things across the private quarters on a whim.'"

When staff reminded him he was taking things Melania had personally selected, the authors said he brushed it off.

"'He made clear he didn't care,'" they wrote.

"'He seemed almost to be competing with her — determined to have the better room,'" Haberman and Swan added.

The dynamic left staff rattled.

"'The President's redecorating generated such a flurry of activity that staff often felt caught between the two Trumps,'" the authors wrote, noting the couple are the only White House pair to regularly use separate bedrooms since Richard and Pat Nixon.

"'Trump's obsessive focus on interior decorating made the staff yearn for the First Lady to return and hopefully rein him in,'" they said.

Following that, the president demolished the East Wing — traditionally home to the first lady's offices — to build a ballroom. By early 2026, the project was expected to be larger than the White House building itself, the authors said.

A Republican senator pleaded with reporters to "take a breath" as they tore apart President Donald Trump's Iran deal claim by claim.

Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-OH) found himself on the defensive on Thursday during a Capitol Hill press availability, struggling to answer pointed questions about the memorandum of understanding the Trump administration struck with Iran.

It started with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX).

"What would you say to your Republican colleagues — like Ted Cruz — who say the deal is bad and that we are sending a lot of money across?" a reporter asked.

"If not this, what would you do?" Moreno shot back. "Give me an alternative."

The reporters kept coming.

"We didn't achieve anything," one pressed. "Nothing was achieved. They've still got their nuclear capabilities."

"That's not a fact," Moreno insisted. "That's an opinion."

A second reporter zeroed in on the MOU's claim that $300 billion could flow to Iran. Moreno explained it was contingent on Arab and other nations investing in Iranian infrastructure — but only if Iran ended its nuclear program and returned enriched uranium.

"They're not going to do that," the reporter said flatly.

"You don't know that!" Moreno fired back. "Maybe they won't."

"They won't."

"Maybe they — well, do you have a crystal ball?"

Moreno had opened the exchange on an upbeat note, calling the deal "a very positive thing" and urging his colleagues and the press corps alike to hope for the best.

"Why not take a breath," he said, "and hope that we have a good outcome — that we have peace and stability?"

"Although," he added, "we aren't allowed to bet on Polymarket anymore."

Fox News cut away from former President Barack Obama's historic remarks at the opening of his presidential library on Thursday to go to political analyst Reince Priebus.

The abrupt switch came during Obama's dedication speech at the $850 million Obama Presidential Center in Chicago's Jackson Park, where three former presidents and a roster of A-list performers had gathered for an invitation-only ceremony.

Obama was mid-sentence when anchor Sandra Smith pulled the plug.

"Hard things are hard," Obama told the crowd. "And that's especially true in a big, raucous, diverse, argumentative democracy like the United States of America. Everybody's got an opinion. And that means getting stuff done involves reconciling the demands of a couple hundred million people."

"Alright," Smith said, cutting him off. "You've been listening live to former President Barack Obama there in Chicago at the grand opening of the Obama Presidential Center."

Co-anchor John Roberts offered a brief recap — noting that former Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush were in the audience and remarking that Bono "still looks pretty good" — before pivoting hard to Iran.

" JD Vance becoming a public face to the Trump administration's deal with Iran and what could be a moment that shapes a potential 2028 White House bid," Roberts said. "Reince Priebus is standing by."

Priebus, a Fox News political analyst and former Republican National Committee chairman, then held forth on the Iran memorandum of understanding, calling it "a sixty-day trial run."

"Americans care more about $5 gasoline than they do staying in a war with Iran," Priebus said. "That is an unpleasant thing for some people out there to live with, but it's true."

President Donald Trump was not invited to the ceremony. Obama Foundation CEO Valerie Jarrett said the event was reserved for those who supported Obama's journey.

The center opens to the public on Friday.

President Donald Trump privately laughed at two top tech billionaires behind their backs as they sought to curry favor with him following the 2024 race.

According to "Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump" — a new book by New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, obtained ahead of its June 23 release by Wired — Trump spent weeks regaling associates with stories of how Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos were "kissing my a—."

"You would not believe the texts I got from these tech guys. I've got to show you," Trump told guests, according to the book.

Among the texts Trump showed off: a photo of a letter written by one of Zuckerberg's grade-school-age children, who wrote that they "looked forward to the golden age of America." When Zuckerberg visited Mar-a-Lago the night before Thanksgiving 2024, Trump welcomed him by playing the national anthem — performed by the J6 Prison Choir, a group of detained January 6 rioters.

Trump also recounted the dynamic to SpaceX CEO Elon Musk. "Think of where these guys were in 2016," Trump told Musk, per the book. "They hated me. They were doing everything they could to knock me down. And look at them now."

"First-class groveling," Musk replied.

Bezos fared no better. Over dinner at Mar-a-Lago in December 2024, Bezos trashed his own newspaper to Trump, calling Washington Post staffers "terrible." "They don't listen," Bezos said, per the book. "My other companies, they listen."

Months later, in July 2025, Bezos traveled to the Oval Office to pitch Trump on steering Pentagon space contracts toward his Blue Origin company — an effort to compete with Musk's SpaceX. Trump said he would consider it but never did, instead expanding access for SpaceX.

Neither man had always been so accommodating. Zuckerberg banned Trump from Facebook and Instagram after January 6, 2021, calling the risks of keeping him on the platform "simply too great." He and his wife, Priscilla Chan, once wrote that they were "deeply shaken and disgusted" by Trump's rhetoric.

Bezos, meanwhile, called Trump's behavior "eroding our democracy" in 2016 and offered to send him to space on one of his rockets.

After Trump won in 2024, Meta and Amazon each donated $1 million to his inaugural committee, and both men attended his inauguration. Zuckerberg axed Meta's fact-checking program, ended its diversity initiatives, and hired Trump loyalists to top company posts.

White House spokesperson Kush Desai did not directly address the book's reporting. "President Trump is committed to working with every American business and business leader to cement America's innovative dominance, re-shore critical manufacturing, and accelerate economic growth," Desai said.