Meet The Tech Company That Wants To Appear To Like Trump But Support His Opponents

AP Photo/Evan Vucci
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President Donald Trump listens during a meeting on opportunity zones in the Cabinet Room of the White House, Monday, May 18, 2020, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
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Back in October, I wrote about a tech company called Oracle that was trying to appear friendly with President Donald Trump because they wanted a Department of Defense contract (and screw Amazon over in the process). The funny part about their plan is that they were also bankrolling Rep. Jerry Nadler at the same time.

A company called Oracle was trying to beat out Amazon for the contract. They did not win, and apparently they are very upset about it. The contract has not actually been awarded (the finalists are Amazon and Microsoft), but they are so upset that they’ve admitted to contributing to a Hillary Clinton-Chuck Schumer consultant-run anti-Amazon astroturf effort that possibly isn’t complying with lobbying rules in some sort of quasi-trolling effort.

Well, it seems that that’s not enough, and Oracle is just out for blood. They are also doing some serious lobbying of the Trump Administration, who will be awarding the contract. Not entirely sure what their goal is outside of “Screw Amazon over!” because by everything I’ve seen it’s impossible for them to get the contract at this point. They have also decided to essentially bankrolling Rep. Jerry Nadler’s 2020 campaign.

Obviously, Nadler is the chair of the Judiciary Committee, so his favor is something Oracle does need to win over at some point. However, it’s probably not the greatest strategy to lobby both the Trump Administration AND Jerry Nadler when the latter has been openly calling for Trump’s impeachment since pretty much the beginning. It just seems like you might alienate one in promoting the other, and the former definitely controls what happens in the Department of Defense.

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Now, Oracle sure does want you – or, rather, Trump – to think that they are all in for him. Oracle’s billionaire founder and chairman held a big fundraiser for the President and the CEO was a member of Trump’s transition team.

Another interesting tidbit? Oracle DC head honcho Ken Glueck was a staffer to former Sen. Joe Lieberman but in the era of Trump he’s become a full Trump supporter, re-registered as a Republican. He also allegedly authored the anti-Amazon dossier that made its way to the White House and got on Trump’s radar just before the $10 billion JEDI contract was awarded to Microsoft and not Amazon (this matters because as Geek Wire noted this week, Oracle was acting as Microsoft’s “secret ally” in trying to get Microsoft to land the $10 billion JEDI contract.

So there is a lot of “We love Trump!” going on there while they are trying to better serve their company. Which is fine and all, but keep that in mind as we go through some of what’s been revealed in their donation history since then.

  • Oracle employees gave more to Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren than any other candidate in the Democratic primary. In fact, they gave more to Sanders than Oracle employees and PACs gave to all but the NRCC.
  • Oracle gave almost exactly as much to the NRCC and NRSC in a tough cycle as to the DCCC and DSCC.
  • Oracle’s PAC has given Trump nothing at all.
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That says a lot about who they are and what’s been going on at the company. The company is not as all-in on Trump as you might think. Considering tech companies are rarely conservative and are frequently very progressive, one has to wonder if they really mean any of it or if they are just trying to pad their bottom line with lucrative government contracts.

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