President Trump’s Tech CEO Posse Assembles in China

Elon Musk has been very busy.

He is one of just a few CEOs

that are joining President Trump

to his state visit to China.

It's the administration's first one

since almost a decade ago.

In addition to Musk, you've got Apple's Tim Cook,

or Tim Apple, as Trump likes to say,

Larry Fink of BlackRock.

And my favorite story around this, NVIDIA's Jensen Huang,

who was not included on the trip.

There were lots of news reports

about how he was not included on the trip,

and how he had volunteered to go on the trip

and was still not included on the trip,

until finally he met them in Alaska

and got on the plane just in time to make it to China.

As Air Force One refueled in Anchorage.

It's just incredible stuff.

You can't make it up!

So good. You can't make it up.

So I guess, Leah, my question to you is,

does anybody actually want to get anything done here?

What are we doing?

It's such a great question.

We have Iran happening.

You have the chips battle.

You have like all of these different like,

AI strategy machinations.

But what's really, really interesting to me as well

is that I'm very much getting,

in some ways, inauguration vibes.

Like when Trump surrounded himself

with like the tech leaders, everyone's lined up in a row,

and that's like not dissimilar

to what's happening right now.

What do we know about why Jensen Huang

was left off the list and then re-added last minute?

'Cause my thought when I saw it was like,

Oh, this is about like export controls,

and they think it's gonna be kind of like weird

and complicated to have him on the trip.

But then, obviously, he is now on the trip.

So someone who I cannot name, someone said to me,

Oh, I think the president might have just forgotten him.

To which I laughed, to which I laughed like a very,

no, I was like, This is not true.

Like this, it's just like not even sort of true,

to the point where I was like, I'm sorry you.

I mean. You're expecting me

to entertain this? I would absolutely buy

that Trump forgot this man, but I'm like,

Trump has other people around him.

He didn't forget this man.

Yes, please.

No, there's no way on Earth.

I was very much just like,

Yeah, yeah, yeah, keep it moving.

But again, it's like this idea of like,

Trump is sort of,

he's sort of stuck with these guys,

like this legion of tech titans

that he himself has like created and endorsed

and called his own like personal private

billionaires in this way.

And obviously I, guys, we have

to talk about the Musk of it all.

I know that Elon has been making his appearances

back at like a variety of White House

or White House adjacent events.

But this does feel like such a big moment for him

to be on the international stage, again, by Trump's side.