Democratic strategist and CNN contributor Julie Roginsky claimed Friday on CNN’s “Newsroom” that President-elect Donald Trump meeting with leaders in industry such as X’s Elon Musk and Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg is what happens when “authoritarians come in.”
Host Jim Acosta said, “Elon Musk is not the only tech executive visiting Mar-a-Lago these days. Apparently, Mark Zuckerberg had dinner there on Wednesday. What do you think that means? It sounds as though a lot of these tech CEOs Silicon Valley titans feel like they need to go down to Mar-a-Lago?”
Roginsky said, “They’re all bending the knee the same way that Jeff Bezos bent the knee even before the election with what he did at ‘The Washington Post.’ This is what you see when authoritarians come in. This is exactly speaking of Russia, what you saw in the 1990s and the early 2000s with oligarchs bending the knee to Vladimir Putin, thinking they could control him. Well, I’ve got news for them. They’re not going to be able to in any way, shape, or form the same way that the oligarchs in Moscow were not able to control Vladimir Putin, so if they want to continue to make money off of a guy that they think is a dope, that they’re going to be able to play they probably will. They’ll continue to be very rich, but by no means should we believe that they’re in any way, shape or form going to be the ones dictating to him. That starts with Elon Musk and ends with Mark Zuckerberg. He will dictate to them. That’s how autocracy begins.”
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