Zuckerberg’s surprising $1m Trump move
Billionaire Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg and president-elect Donald Trump have had a rocky past, but now there’s been a surprising development.
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Meta, the company that owns Facebook and Instagram, has donated $1 million to an inauguration fund for President-elect Donald Trump — a perhaps surprising move given the pair’s rocky past.
The tech giant’s billionaire CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, dined with the president-elect at his Mar-a-Lago resort in November, as he tried to patch up relationship with the 78-year-old following the election.
The Republican previously was highly critical of Mr Zuckerberg and Facebook – calling the platform “anti-Trump” in 2017.
It is understood Meta didn’t make similar donations to President Joe Biden’s inaugural fund in 2020 or to Trump’s previous inaugural fund in 2016.
The company confirmed its million-dollar donation to the inaugural fund to US media on Wednesday.
While it sounds like a lot of money to the everyman, $1 million is pocket change for Mr Zuckerberg who is worth $214 billion personally and whose company Meta is worth $1.59 trillion.
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Inauguration funds are used to pay for events and activities when a new president takes office — although many see them as attempts to win influence with the new administration.
Mr Trump will be sworn in as the 47th US president on 20 January.
A rocky past
It has been far from smooth sailing between Mr Trump and Mr Zuckerberg in recent years.
Things went even further south when Facebook and Instagram suspended the former president’s accounts in 2021, after they said he praised those engaged in violence at the Capitol riot on 6 January.
Since then, Mr Trump has slammed Meta – calling Facebook an “enemy of the people” in March.
He also said this year that a law banning TikTok in the US would unfairly benefit Facebook.
In August, Mr Zuckerberg told Republican politicians in a letter that he regretted bowing to pressure from the Biden administration to “censor” some Facebook and Instagram content during the coronavirus pandemic.
Mr Trump wrote in a book published in September that Mr Zuckerberg would “spend the rest of his life in prison” if he tried to intervene in the 2024 election.
But the president-elect appears to have changed his tune in recent months.
He told a podcast in October it was “nice” Mr Zuckerberg was “staying out of the election”, and thanked him for a personal phone call after he faced an assassination attempt.
However, there’s a clear favourite for Mr Trump when it comes to tech billionaires — with Elon Musk positioning himself as the president-elect’s ‘first buddy’ because of his extensive donations to his election campaign.
The bromance was so strong, it led to Mr Musk being placed in charge of a new Department of Government Efficiency (Doge).
So if Mr Zuckerberg is trying to impress he might have to dig a little deeper into those pockets.
Originally published as Zuckerberg’s surprising $1m Trump move
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