by Owen Klinsky
On Wednesday, The Wall Street Journal reported that Meta had donated $1 million to President-elect Donald Trump’s inaugural fund.
The donation comes amid a thaw in relations between Trump and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg after Zuckerberg visited Trump’s private Mar-a-Lago club in Florida two weeks ago. According to to WSJ. Zuckerberg and Meta did not donate to Trump’s 2017 inaugural fund or President Biden’s 2021 fund.
Meta banned Trump from posting after the US Capitol riot on January 6, 2021. Meanwhile, Trump claimed in an August book that Zuckerberg would “spend the rest of his life in prison” if he tried to influence the 2024 election.
However, Zuckerberg and Trump’s relationship with the Meta CEO appears to be improving recently describing Trump answer to the attempted assassination of Butler in Pennsylvania as “one of the craziest things I’ve ever seen” in July, and Trump claimed in an October interview that he likes Zuckerberg “more now” and believes the tech mogul should “stay out of the election.”
Zuckerberg (pictured above) wrote a letter to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan in August admission the Biden-Harris administration pressured Meta to censor content.
“I believe the government’s pressure was misguided and I wish we had expressed that more openly.” – Zuckerberg he wrote. “I also think we made some choices that we wouldn’t make today with hindsight and new information.”
Zuckerberg also apologized in the letter censorship the New York Post’s 2020 Hunter Biden laptop story. Shortly after the apology, an October report by the House Judiciary Committee revealed that Meta’s leadership planned to suppress the New York Post report to curry favor with the incoming Biden-Harris administration.
“Of course, our appeals on this matter [New York Post story] may color the way the new Biden administration views us more than anything else,” said a WhatsApp message from Facebook’s then-vice president of global affairs, Nick Clegg, on the same day the Post published its first exposé on foreign ties Hunter Biden, According to to the report.
A slew of Silicon Valley moguls, including Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Apple CEO Tim Cook, Jeff Bezos and Zuckerberg, I congratulated Trump after winning the November 5 election.
“I congratulate President Trump on his decisive victory” – Zuckerberg he stated in Instagram threads. “As a country, we have enormous opportunities ahead of us. I look forward to working with you and your administration.”
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Owen Klinsky is a reporter at the Daily Caller News Foundation.
