Big Tech executives have held a close-knit relationship with the White House, visiting 1600 Pennsylvania Ave with such regularity that could explain President Biden's lackluster push for anti-trust legislation, insiders say.
An analysis of White House visitor logs found that between July 2021 and September 2022, Big Tech's most senior executives visited at least 38 times, averaging around 2.5 meetings per month.
Apple CEO Tim Cook paid a visit to the White House five times over the 15-month sampling, and Apple sent high-level representatives 16 times in total.
Google and its parent company Alphabet sent CEO Sundar Pichai and other top-level executives nine times, Facebook and EvDEn EvE nAkliYat parent company Meta visited seven times.
'The Biden Administration has essentially given Apple, Google, EVdeN EVe nAkLiYAt Facebook and Amazon a staff badge,' one former Republican House Judiciary aide told DailyMail.com.
'Instead of taking on Big Tech, they've allowed Big Tech to infiltrate the White House whenever they please.'
Tim Cook, Apple CEO, and Lisa Jackson, VP of Environment, Policy and Social Initiatives, eVdEN eVE nakliYat arrive at the White House for a state dinner in December
On the campaign trail, Biden said he wanted to break up Big Tech monopolies and end Section 230.
But the 2021-2022 Congress came and went and Big Tech legislation remained in limbo.
While it's normal for the White House to meet with business leaders, the frequency of such visits begs the question of what sort of closed-door promises were made, insiders say.
'The White House did very little to push Congress to move forward tech legislation anti-trust legislation, in 2021, and 2022,' one former Democratic congressional aide told DailyMail. If you loved this information and you would certainly such as to receive more facts relating to eVDEn EVe nAkliYat kindly see our web-site. com.
'They had all those meetings with Big Tech executives, but the real question is, how much were those executives successful in their private lobbying, in getting the White House not to escalate that fight?'
'The idea that this revolving door of tech lobbyists and executives are allowed to have access to officials who allegedly are working on reining in Big Tech who are allegedly going after some of the most egregious behavior, it's really problematic,' another former Democratic staffer on Capitol Hill told DailyMail.com.
Last Congress advocates criticized the White House for failing to utilize Democratic control of the White House and both chambers of Congress to prioritize legislation to take on Big Tech.
Apple CEO Tim Cook, eVdEN eVe NakliYat IBM CEO Arvind Krishna and Google CEO Sundar Pichai listen as U.S.
President Joe Biden speaks during a meeting about cybersecurity
Big Tech executives have held a close-knit relationship with the White House, visiting 1600 Pennsylvania Ave with such regularity that could explain President Biden's lackluster push for anti-trust legislation, insiders say
They failed to push through the American Innovation and Choice Online Act and the Open App Markets Act, both of which would have prevented tech companies from self-promoting their own products and thwarting competitors.
'You clearly have some gatekeepers in in the White House in the administration, who are preventing Biden's priorities as insofar as tech from moving forward,' said the staffer.
'Whenever Big Tech gets scared, they walk into the White House, they they meet with their friendly official and that gatekeeper says don't worry about it.'
Sens.
Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., and Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn. said in a statement on their Kids Online Safety Act, which set new guardrails for sites likely to attract traffic from children, was cut out of FY 2023 spending bill due to industry lobbying.
The American Data Privacy and Protection Act overwhelmingly passed the Energy and Commerce Committee 53-2 last Congress, but never came up for a floor vote.
The must-pass FY 2023 spending bill did include a bill that will raise money for anti-trust agencies by raising merger filing fees and a ban of TikTok on government phones.