Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg and Other Billionaires at the Inauguration

ImageThe C.E.O.inauguration crowd In a stark display of money and power, the three wealthiest men on the planet lined up on Monday in the Capitol Rotunda to witness Donald Trump being sworn in as the 47th president.The message was clear: With a president in office who wants to be known as a deal maker, Washington is open for business.The three men, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg, collectively worth close to a trillion dollars, were seated in front of Trump’s cabinet picks and behind his family, creating what might be a hierarchy of influence.

(Sundar Pichai, the billionaire head of Google, was between Bezos and Musk.)The visuals spoke volumes.In contrast, Trump’s inauguration speech, in which he vowed to usher in a “golden age of America” and also took on contentious issues like gender politics, carried few surprises.Taking note of the conspicuous invitees could reveal a lot about what to expect in Trump’s second term; The Times’s Mike Isaac, Karen Weise, Ryan Mac, Cade Metz, Cecilia Kang and Theodore Schleifer broke it down for DealBook.

It was also notable who was relegated to the Siberia section, including the Republican governors Greg Abbott and Ron DeSantis.(Here’s a zoomed-in view of the V.I.P.

section.)The inauguration on Monday was a marked contrast to Trump’s first presidential run, when tech titans (and other business leaders) largely ignored him and only reluctantly showed up to a summit after he won the White House.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe....