Culture
Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and Tim Cook Had Dinner With Their Boss
By Bruno Von Falken, . BSN Network. Satire.
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- President Donald Trump hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping at a formal state dinner Thursday evening, and the occasion was notable both for its diplomatic significance and for the fact that it accidentally solved a problem political scientists have been arguing about for decades: nobody can agree on who America's oligarchs are, but Trump's White House just put them all in one room and took a photograph.
The guest list included Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Tim Cook, Larry Ellison, Shou Zi Chew, David Sacks, and somewhere between two and three dozen other men whose net worths, combined, exceed the GDP of most continents. They arrived in black tie. They sat in gilded chairs. They dined at a table where the centerpiece, if you squinted, was a man who controls the factories where all of their products are made.
It was described by the White House as a historic moment of diplomatic engagement. It was described by everyone else as a shareholder meeting where one shareholder owns the building.
Elon Musk, who has spent the last four years positioning himself as the fearless disruptor of broken institutions, flew to Washington to eat a formal dinner with the General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party. He was seated, according to sources familiar with the arrangement, near enough to smile warmly and far enough to pretend it was coincidence. Tesla's Gigafactory in Shanghai was not mentioned at the table, which is exactly where you would expect it to not be mentioned.
Tim Cook, whose company manufactures approximately ninety percent of its products in China, attended what is being called a diplomatic dinner and not a vendor meeting, a distinction Apple's legal team will presumably maintain indefinitely. Cook has previously described his relationship with China as one of mutual respect and shared values, which is a sentence that must be very comforting to say out loud.
Larry Ellison was also present. Larry Ellison is always present. This is simply a fact about Larry Ellison.
Senior administration officials were quick to note that the dinner represented a new era of American strength and engagement, which is the specific phrase that gets used when the engagement in question requires everyone at the table to pretend they are not in a dependent relationship with the man at the head of it. A White House spokesperson described the atmosphere as warm, productive, and forward-looking, three adjectives that have never once appeared in a sentence describing something that went well for the person who needed them most.
Political commentators across the spectrum spent Thursday night pointing out that this is what oligarchy looks like, which is generous, because this is also what a dinner party looks like when the host has leverage over the caterers, the delivery drivers, the device in your pocket, and the satellite providing your Wi-Fi.
Trump, for his part, called the evening a tremendous success and noted that he had never seen so many talented people in one room, which is technically true and also the most accurate thing he has said about the American economy in ten years.
Xi Jinping flew home Friday morning. The CEOs returned to their respective headquarters to issue statements about the importance of global partnership.
The factories opened Monday, same as always.
The story we are making fun of: https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/political-commentary/trump-state-dinner-guest-list-american-oligarchs-1235632171/