President- elect Donald Trump assured technology industry elite leaders that his administration is "here to help" them shape the technology industry to greater heights, dispelling the animosity he spewed during the campaign season.
Trump's encouragement was heard by many of the country's top tech executives Tesla's Elon Musk, Google's Larry Page and Eric Schmidt, Facebook's Sheryl Sandberg, Amazon's Jeff Bezos and Apple's Timothy Cook, among others, who heard it straight from the president- elect's lips.
"This is a truly amazing group of people. I'm here to help you folks do well. In the world! There's nobody like the people in this room and we're going to be there for you," Trump said, during the meeting Wednesday at the 25th-floor conference room of the Trump Tower in Manhattan.
Trump, during the campaign, did not mince words when he charged at Apple to bring back iPhone manufacturing jobs to the US mainland which had been outsourced to China and possible antitrust charges against Amazon. These, however, did not seem to be brought up during the meeting but no indications were made if these would prosper or not.
The meeting was initiated to help "reboot" the relationship between the incoming administration and the tech industry, which many claims were off to a rocky start when Trump's critical view of tech companies taking jobs out from the US and outsourcing it abroad. It was organized by Trump's adviser and son in law Jared Kushner, incoming Chief of Staff Reince Priebus and tech executive Peter Thiel.
Amazon's Bezos, in a statement issued after the meeting with Trump, stated that the meeting was "very productive."
"I shared the view that the administration should make innovation one of its key pillars, which would create a huge number of jobs across the whole country, in all sectors, not just tech - agriculture, infrastructure, manufacturing - everywhere," Bezos added.
Not all from Silicon Valley, however, have been won over by Trump as some top-ranking tech executives have been campaigning to boycott the meeting based on the statements issued by Trump in the last election campaign. There were those, however, who came in efforts to present their stand clearly before the president- elect.
Meanwhile, a group formed by engineers and tech specialists issued a statement that they disagree with an attempt to develop a consolidated database which the government may use to monitor citizens, particularly based on religion, race, and origin.
The petition already drew up some 500 signatures which included some tech personnel and employees from Apple, Microsoft, and Google.
