(Ken Silva, Headline USA) Donald Trump’s shocking 2016 presidential election victory sparked a major liberal backlash known at the time as the “The Resistance:” Thousands of ladies paraded Washington DC in their pussyhats, Antifa took to the streets, and corporations poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into left-wing causes—culminating in what Time Magazine described as a “Shadow Campaign That Saved the 2020 Election.”
Though Democrats are still waging lawfare and a few protests are occurring here and there, the aftermath of the 2024 election is markedly different. On Sunday, the New York Times reported a probable reason for why that’s the case: Corporations are attempting to gain favor with Trump instead of backing the so-called “resistance.”
“This time, demonstrations have been minimal to nonexistent, as corporate leaders curry favor with the new administration and liberal celebrities mute their opposition out of fear of retribution,” the Times reported.
NYT basically admitting that the liberal #Resistance hasn't occurred after the 2024 election because corporations aren't funding it. pic.twitter.com/PObu4TiuMF
— Ken Silva (@JD_Cashless) February 3, 2025
“The lack of public outcry has left Democrats debating whether liberals are simply tired of politics or whether they agree with more of Mr. Trump’s platform than they want to admit.”
To the Times’ point, corporate leaders such as Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos and other previously anti-Trump billionaires are now vying to work with the President.
Gates, for instance, made a secretive $50 million donation to support Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential run—but he now wants to work with Trump on global health issues.
“I had a chance, about two weeks ago, to go have a long and actually quite intriguing dinner with him,” Gates said last month during an interview with Wall Street Journal Editor in Chief Emma Tucker, the contents of which were published Friday.
“I felt like he was energized and looking forward to helping to drive innovation,” Gates reportedly said. “I was frankly impressed with how well he showed a lot of interest in the issues I brought up.”
Similarly, Zuckerberg donated to Democrats and helped secure the election for them in 2020 by censoring the Hunter Biden laptop story. But in the wake of Trump’s 2024 victory, he’s repeated Facebook’s fact-checking regime and made other attempts to shift his company’s culture to the right.
Bezos, meanwhile, has also pushed his newspaper, the Washington Post, to publish stories that will appeal to a more conservative audience.
The question remains from skeptics as to whether Trump conquered corporate America, or whether corporate America conquered Trump. Time will tell.
Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/jd_cashless.
