Zuckerberg buries hatchet with Trump and muscles in on Musk
Four years is a long time in politics and an even longer time in the orbit of a man who has made holding grudges an art form.
Four years is a long time in politics and an even longer time in the orbit of a man who has made holding grudges an art form.
Mark Zuckerberg has had considerable time to reflect since Facebook told Donald Trump he was not welcome on the social network after the January 6 riots in 2021. Since then Trump has threatened to lock him up and throw away the key, labelling him “Zuckerbucks” and “Zuckerschmuck”.
In his third coffee table book, Save America, Trump wrote that Zuckerberg “would come to the Oval Office to see me” and “bring his very nice wife to dinners, be as nice as anyone could be, while always plotting ... AGAINST THE PRESIDENT”.
So when Trump entertained Zuckerberg at his Florida mansion this week, it was a sea change for the old adversaries and an insight into how the president-elect’s administration is courting the titans of tech.
Though Trump’s team has not revealed what they discussed, Zuckerberg may have pushed for a ban on TikTok in the US. Trump, who on the campaign trail used his youngest son, Barron, as a social media guru, has switched from being hawkish to promising he would “never ban” the platform. TikTok is being forced under a bill signed in April to sell its American arm to avoid being blocked in the US next year.
Stephen Miller, Trump’s deputy chief of staff for policy, told Fox News that Zuckerberg “has been very clear about his desire to be a supporter of, and a participant in, this change we’re seeing all around America and the world, with this reform movement that Donald Trump is leading”.
While Trump’s second incarnation is similar to the first, Zuckerberg is utterly transformed and has in many ways reformed himself in the president-elect’s image. He is no longer the tech geek whom Trump accused of plotting against the Republicans in the 2020 election by censoring social media posts. Instead the Zuckerberg of 2024 is an MMA (mixed martial arts) fighter who appears cut from the same cloth as the legions of white men who helped to return Trump to the White House.
Zuckerberg recently praised Trump as a “badass” for his fist-pumping reaction to an assassination attempt. Trump’s embrace of male culture and “bar stool conservatives” was reflected in the hero’s welcome he received at a recent Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) event.
Trump’s campaign media strategy was based on a whistle-stop tour through the studios of podcasters such as Joe Rogan, a former UFC commentator who sits at the heart of the “manosphere”, in which masculinity is promoted and “wokeism” rejected.
Rogan is an impassioned advocate of the other tech titan who has placed himself at the heart of Trump’s second administration: Elon Musk. The chief executive of Tesla and SpaceX, who is an archenemy of Zuckerberg, played a critical role in financing Trump’s campaign and is now described as his “first buddy”.
These differences ignited in 2016 when Musk’s SpaceX rocket exploded, destroying a $US200m Facebook satellite. The rivalry came to a head when Musk bought Twitter and became a direct rival to Zuckerberg’s social media empire.
Trump must also recognise the power that Zuckerberg holds. His stock, and Meta’s, is rising after successful bets on augmented reality Ray-Ban glasses, AI and the video platform Reels, which is holding off the threat of TikTok. He is also the only big tech founder to still control his company, whose platforms – Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp – are used by three billion people every day.
The Musk-Trump relationship may be unsettling for Zuckerberg, but there is one area where many in Silicon Valley are cheering on the Tesla chief: his new role in slashing regulation and trimming federal government. Zuckerberg has expressed his admiration for Musk’s cost cutting at Twitter, in which 80 per cent of staff were sacked.
Trump’s pro-cryptocurrency policies have also swung large parts of the tech industry behind him and JD Vance, the vice-president, has a mentor in Peter Thiel, the co-founder of PayPal.
The Times
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