| Hi all, it's Eric. Why did Apple Inc. Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook turn himself into a political prop in Texas this week? Why did Facebook Inc. CEO Mark Zuckerberg find himself eating dinner at the White House with a president many of his employees oppose with the very fiber of their beings? Why did Alphabet Inc.'s Google, a company that once held "don't be evil" as its guiding principle, cozy up to the Department of Defense? Or why did Jeff Bezos, maligned by the president and believing himself to be blackmailed by the president's friend, hire a team of people at Amazon.com Inc. to cozy up to the administration? You know why. Companies aspire to grow ever larger, and they need things from the government. They want federal contracts, to avoid antitrust investigations, and to be exempted from trade wars and taxes. Even if their executives personally oppose the man in the White House, they suppress the urge to do much about it. To do otherwise would go against the very essence of capitalism. There's nothing new about this, of course. As my colleague Shira Ovide wrote in Thursday's newsletter, Apple's participation in Trump's event in Texas was actually evidence of its political savvy. But it has become more noticeable because American culture has grown more polarized. On the whole tech workers vehemently oppose Trump, and they have an expectation of influence at their companies that past generations of workers may not have had. Their employers act in the way employers always have, fueling the tension. Trump makes it worse by turning even perfunctory pandering into abject humiliation. Everything feels personal. I wrote this week about Amazon's faltering efforts to win over the Trump administration, and one thing that stuck out was how one of Amazon's top policy executives felt the need to participate in a ceremony granting the president's daughter an award on behalf of a tech industry group. Critics saw it as a sham, and yet Trump didn't let up on his attacks on the company. Word came out this week that Zuckerberg and Facebook board member Peter Thiel dined at the White House with the president and the first lady. The news emerged just after the president's campaign basically accused Facebook of trying to undermine its electoral chances by changing its political ad rules. Every time Zuckerberg reaches out to the administration, the venom from Trump's critics bubbles up, but he's clearly calculated that trying to win over Trump is worth the blowback. The acquiescence may come from a sense of immunity. Google and Facebook's executives control their companies. Bezos and Cook look pretty safe in their jobs too. When Trump's tax cuts allow you to bring home $250 billion and a few phone calls let you duck tariffs, it's tempting to stomach the photo op. It's business as usual, and business is good. But that doesn't make it pretty. —Eric Newcomer | 
♯⊗⋮ 2020 Noticias del Gran Mundo PelÃcula Completa En LÃnea released 2020. story: Cinco años después del fin de la Guerra Civil estadounid...
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