Donald Trump ‘gets even’ with Twitter boss at big tech meet

New York: Donald Trump met Wednesday with some of America’s most powerful tech executives in a bid to mend fences with a largely pro-Hillary Clinton industry and promote job creation and trade.

The afternoon summit at Trump Tower in New York gathered some of the wealthiest and brightest brains in the tech industry around the same table as the incoming billionaire Republican president after a bruising election campaign that revealed a bitterly divided country.

It was hostile territory for Mr Trump by meeting Silicon Valley titans who — with the notable exception of PayPal co-founder and Mr Trump supporter Peter Thiel — threw their weight behind his Democratic rival Ms Clinton during the campaign.

“I’m here to help you folks do well,” Mr Trump told the executives in opening remarks that reporters were briefly allowed to observe. “We want you to keep going with the incredible innovation. There’s nobody like you in the world,” he said.

Mr Trump and Vice President-elect Mike Pence sat side-by-side in the middle of the table surrounded by CEOs that included Tim Cook of Apple, Satya Nadella of Microsoft and Larry Page of Alphabet (Google). The executives attending also included Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, Tesla and SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk, Facebook’s chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg and Oracle CEO Safra Catz.

Mr Trump’s three eldest children — Don Jr, Ivanka and Eric — also attended as did Ivanka’s husband Jared Kushner, and other key Mr Trump staffers.

The most glaring absence was Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey — even more so given the President-elect’s prolific use of the social network and its expanding list of 17.3 million followers.

Politico reported that Twitter was “bounced” from the meeting in retribution for refusing during the campaign to allow an emoji version of the hashtag #CrookedHillary.