As Oracle seeks U.S. approval for a landmark partnership with the short-form video app Ticket OK, experts say questions over Trump’s political relationship with Oracle chairman and co-founder Larry Ellison will intensify.
Alice, one of the richest men in the world, has built a wide bridge with Trump. He has voiced support for the president and is reported to be a major fundraiser for him this year where donors who paid $ 100,000 had the opportunity to golf with Trump.
That probe will not be limited to Allison; Oracle CEO Safra Katz also shares a close relationship with Trump. According to data from the Federal Election Commission, it has donated more than 130,000 to Trump’s re-election efforts this year. Katz served on Trump’s presidential transition team in 2016 and was at a stage considered for a position within the administration. Both Katz and Allison have served in Trump’s industry working groups dedicated to economic recovery.
Oracle did not respond to requests for comment. The White House declined to comment.
Trump raised eyebrows last month when he publicly backed the possibility of a deal involving ticket ok and Oracle. At the time, Oracle and Microsoft were competing to acquire .ft tickets, while Microsoft was seen in the forefront. Oracle, experts said, lacks experience in customer service and offers no products in the social media sector.
But on Sunday evening, sources told CNN that the ticket is next to Oracle on the Chinese parent company, Bytens, Micro .ft. Oracle and Treasury Secretary Steven Manucci confirmed the proposed deal on Monday. In a statement, Tickett said he believed the proposal “would address the administration’s security concerns.”
Administrative officials have complained for months that the ticket ok represents a threat to national security because of the current ownership by the Chinese company. Ticket OK has denied the allegations, saying it collects data on all U.S. users outside of China and that information is not subject to Chinese law; Cybersecurity experts say there is no evidence that Tiktok was tampered with by Chinese intelligence.
Oracle’s proposed partnership with Ticket OK Must be reviewed by the government. And it’s unclear whether those discussions will be resolved before the Trump administration’s ban on ticket ok takes effect on September 20, although Munchin said the government would study the deal this week.
Asked directly whether Allison’s relationship with Trump is a factor in the proposed deal negotiations, a person familiar with the negotiations insisted it was “a business decision, not a political one.”
But outside analysts said it was impossible to separate from one another given Trump’s personality. Trump has a track record of injecting himself into seemingly neutral public policy processes. For example, Trump appeared to be interfering in the decision of a multi-billion dollar cloud deal, which many expected Amazon to win; Eventually, and after a quiet push campaign by Oracle, the Pentagon handed over the deal to Micro .ft. In another closely watched case, Trump vowed to block the acquisition of Time Warner (now Warnermedia, CNN’s parent company) by AT&T. The announcement came as a surprise to experts as reviews of the merger’s no-confidence motion are expected to be independent of presidential influence.
As the Oracle-Ticket ok negotiations progressed, some reports shed light on how the microsoft .ft has built its own relationship with the Trump administration.
However, Eric Schiff, chairman of the Patriarch Organization, a tech-focused private equity firm, said Alison’s MicroSoft connections were unmatched.
“Microsoft has done everything they can, except to show up at the rally with Maga’s hat to win,” Schiffer said. “There is no question that the traditional wisdom was that the micro .ft was strategically located, he made a big political entry into the administration and played politics with Trump compared to most corporations. But not even Larry at the same time.”
Other experts said that while Allison’s relationship with Trump may have given Oracle an edge, the proposal made at the end of the day still needs to adequately address the U.S. government’s national security concerns.
Harry Broadman, a partner and former member of the Berkeley Research Group, said the proposal was made because Oracle had stopped selling tickets. The Committee on Foreign Investments in the United States, a government agency that examines certain deals that may give foreign investors control of U.S. business.
“Yeah, Larry Allison is friends with Trump, and maybe that means something, I don’t know,” Broadman said. “But there’s an executive order out there, and people will be careful to see how the executive orders say this.”
Alex Stamos, Facebook’s former chief security officer, said whether the Oracle deal passes security master depends heavily on the specifics of the agreement.
“A deal where Oracle takes over hosting [of TikTok’s data] Without source code and significant operational changes, any legal concerns about ticket ok will not be addressed, and the acceptance of such a deal by the White House will show that the exercise was a pure clause, “Stamos said.
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