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Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta has donated $1 million to a fund for Donald Trump’s inauguration events, in the social media platform’s latest overture aimed at improving relations with the US president-elect.
The donation marks the first time Facebook’s owner has contributed to an inauguration fund and comes after a recent maneuver to curry favor with Trump, who previously accused the platform of censoring right-wing voices and threatened to jail his staff. executive director.
Last week, Meta’s head of global affairs, Nick Clegg, admitted that the company “went a little overboard” in moderating content related to the pandemic, an admission that seemed designed to assuage the president-elect’s concerns.
Clegg also said Zuckerberg was willing to play “an active role in the discussions any administration must have about maintaining America’s leadership in the technological sphere,” including in areas such as artificial intelligence.
Executives in Silicon Valley, which Trump had previously considered a left-leaning constituency, have been racing to court him since his election victory last month.
Major tech figures are also finding roles in his administration. Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of X, has become one of Trump’s closest advisers, while David Sacks, a Silicon Valley investor in Musk’s inner circle, has been named artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency czar for the incoming administration.
Trump and Zuckerberg have had a testy relationship, which worsened when Meta tagged and removed some of the then-president’s content in 2020, before suspending his account in the wake of the Jan. 6 uprising at the Capitol.
In July, Trump warned that if elected, he would “go after election fraudsters” and send them to “prison for long periods of time,” adding, “ZUCKERBUCKS, beware!” in clear reference to the head of the Executive. That month, Meta lifted restrictions on Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts.
Earlier this year, Zuckerberg said he wanted Meta to be politically “neutral,” and the company has reduced the prominence of political content in its apps.
However, in the months before the election, Zuckerberg called Trump a “badass” for his reaction to an assassination attempt and wrote a letter to the Republican-led House Judiciary Committee accusing the Biden administration of of repeatedly pressuring Meta to “censor” certain Covid-19 Content during the pandemic.
More recently, since the election victory, he had dinner with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. Meta later said Zuckerberg was “grateful” for the invitation, adding, “It’s an important moment for the future of American innovation.”
The donation was first reported by the Wall Street Journal.
