Former Trump White House chief strategist Steve Bannon described the tech giants gathered at Monday's inauguration as "supplicants" for Donald Trump's "formal surrender", similar to Japan's attack on the USS Missouri Surrender to the Allies on the deck of the aircraft carrier. September 1945.

Bannon was an architect of Trump's 2016 presidential victory but later feuded with the president-elect over criticism of his intelligence and family. Bannon said in an interview with ABC News that aired Sunday that Trump "broke up the oligarchy." Make an alliance with him.

Elon Musk, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Meta's Mark Zuckerberg, Apple CEO Tim Cook, Google CEO Sundar Pichai and TikTok CEO Shouzi Zhou is expected to attend Trump's second inauguration, and they have already visited Trump at Mar-a-Lago. They, or companies they founded or represented, gave generously to Trump’s first fund.

"Jeff Bezos is here," Trump said last week. "Bill Gates is here. Mark Zuckerberg is here. Many of them have been here countless times. The bankers are here. Everybody is here."

Bannon spent four months in jail for defying a House committee's January 6 investigative subpoena. He told the media that tech giants were lining up after Mark Zuckerberg visited Trump and said he would attend the inauguration. Zuckerberg had previously banned Trump from Meta's Facebook and Instagram following the 2021 U.S. Capitol riots.

Zuckerberg later said he was "grateful to President Trump for inviting him to dinner and for the opportunity to meet with members of his team about the incoming administration."

Bannon said that after Zuckerberg's visit, "the floodgates opened and they were all out there trying to be supplicants. I saw that and I think most people in our movement are paying attention to that because of Trump The president broke up the oligarchy. He broke them up and they surrendered," Bannon added with a laugh: "Oh, we're going to lift any restrictions, no more inspections, everything.'"

"I think this is the USS Missouri in September 1945, you have the (Japanese) Imperial High Command, he's like Douglas MacArthur. It's a formal surrender, well, I think it's powerful," Bannon added road.

The comments came as Joe Biden warned that "America is developing an oligarchy of extreme wealth, power and influence that actually threatens our entire democracy" and that "power is dangerously concentrated in a few In the hands of the super rich.”

But Biden had never uttered the word "oligarchy" in the context of American politics until last week, according to White House archives. Progressive Democrats accuse Biden of being an imperfect messenger who has courted and relied on big donors throughout his 50-year career.

Nina Turner, national co-chair of Sen. Bernie Sanders' last presidential campaign, said: "After 50 years of representing the oligarchy, he has just days left in his term. "It's cowardly to speak out about threats to our country."

Turner added that Biden "enabled, benefited from, and emboldened this system that threatens us all, and he will fade into the sunset without feeling the harm of the system he built."

Biden's comments came in the shadow of Zuckerberg's announcement that Facebook and Instagram would abandon fact-checking services and rely on community-contributed note-taking systems.

Zuckerberg said the decision was made because fact-checking, which Facebook introduced in December 2016, would do more harm than good for public trust.

"The recent election also feels like a cultural turning point that once again prioritizes speech," Zuckerberg said. "So we're going back to our roots to focus on reducing errors, simplifying our policies, and restoring free speech on our platform. "

Biden fired back, calling the decision a "very shameful" choice.

Zuckerberg also accused the Biden White House of pressuring Facebook to censor certain topics and posts, particularly those related to the coronavirus vaccine.

"Basically, these people in the Biden administration would call our team and scream and curse at them," he told podcaster Joe Rogan. "It got to the point where we were like, 'No, we're not going to, we're not going to delete the real thing. It's ridiculous."

Zuckerberg said he is not opposed to vaccines per se. But he told Rogan that while the Biden administration is "trying to push forward" the Covid-19 vaccination program, "they're also trying to censor anyone who basically opposes it."