Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg met with President-elect Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago on Wednesday New York Times they first reported, citing two sources briefed on the meeting.
The meeting was confirmed by Meta, which said in a statement: “This is an important time for the future of American Innovation. Mark was grateful for the invitation to join President Trump for dinner and the opportunity to meet with members of his team about the upcoming Administration.”
It’s the latest twist in Trump and Zuckerberg’s relationship, which has seen its share of strains over the past few years.
The assassination of the president-elect against Zuckerberg has spiked since Facebook banned Trump in the wake of the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol.
In July 2021, Trump sued Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube—as well as the three companies’ CEOs—for engaging in “censorship” when they disabled his account following the unrest at the Capitol.
In March, Trump weighed in on legislative efforts to ban TikTok in the US, saying they would work to Zuckerberg’s advantage.
“If you get rid of TikTok, Facebook and Zuckerschmuck will double their business,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “I don’t want Facebook, who cheated in the last election, to do better. They are the real enemy of the people!”
Trump also accused Zuckerberg of personally conspiring against him during the 2020 election and repeatedly threatened him with jail time.
Zuckerberg “came to see me in the Oval Office,” Trump wrote in his book Save Americawhich came out in September. “He took his very lovely wife out to dinners, was as nice as anyone could be, while always planning to install nefarious lock boxes in a true FILING AGAINST THE PRESIDENT.”
Trump was referring to a $419 million donation that Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, made to two nonprofits that provide grants to election offices around the country to help fund election infrastructure.
The president-elect went on to threaten to jail Zuckerberg, writing: “He told me there is no one like Trump on Facebook. But at the same time, for whatever reason, he directed it against me. We are watching him closely and if he does anything illegal this time, ” he will spend the rest of his life in prison – just like the others who cheated in the 2024 presidential election.”
In July, Trump referred to Zuckerberg as “Zuckerbucks” and wrote on his social media platform that “if I am elected president, we will prosecute election fraud on a level never seen before and they will be sent to prison for a long time.” . We already know who you are, DON’T DO IT!
Two months later, Trump claimed that Zuckerberg reached out to him after the first attempt to assassinate Trump in July.
“Mark Zuckerberg called and said, ‘I’ve never supported a Republican before, but there’s no way I’m going to vote for a Democrat in this election,'” Trump said. New York Magazine in a wide-ranging interview in September. “He’s a guy whose parents, they’ve all always been Democrats. He said, ‘I’m never going to vote for people who run against you when I’ve seen what you’ve done.’
When asked about Trump’s claim, a Meta spokesman said at the time that “as Mark has said publicly, he is not endorsing anyone in this race and has not told anyone how he intends to vote.”
Nevertheless, Zuckerberg publicly praised Trump for raising his fist after the assassination attempt, calling it “one of the worst things I’ve ever seen in my life.”
“It’s hard on some level for an American not to be a little bit emotionally affected by that spirit and that struggle,” Zuckerberg told Bloomberg in a July 24 interview. “And I think that’s why a lot of people like the guy.
The Meta CEO joined a host of other business and tech tycoons in congratulating Trump after he won the 2024 US election.
“Congratulations to President Trump on his decisive victory. We have great opportunities ahead of us as a country,” Zuckerberg wrote on Threads. “I look forward to working with you and your administration.”
