Mark Zuckerberg's MAGA Phase Risks Leaving Meta Friendless

Meta’s CEO has done everything he can to win over Trump, and it’s not clear how much he has to show for it. Bloomberg's Kurt Wagner reports.

In early February, Mark Zuckerberg boarded his Gulfstream G650 for a trip to Washington, DC—a cross-country route he was flying with newfound frequency. After years on the outs, the chief executive officer of Meta Platforms Inc. had regained something valuable he’d lost: direct access to the president.

Since November, Zuckerberg had already had a string of postelection get-togethers with Donald Trump. He’d made multiple trips to Mar-a-Lago in Florida, and he’d sat in the Capitol Rotunda with other tech executives when the president-elect took the oath of office in January. Meta had also donated $1 million to the inauguration, and Zuckerberg co-hosted a black-tie reception that evening in Trump’s honor. In a sign that he plans to spend more time in Washington, Zuckerberg in March purchased a $23 million mansion just paces from Vice President JD Vance’s residence at the Naval Observatory.

On this particular February visit, Zuckerberg had a short chat with Trump, according to people familiar with the meeting, but his agenda centered on a discussion with Vance. The vice president was headed to Paris for a summit on artificial intelligence, and Zuckerberg wanted him to hammer home to European leaders that their regulators were treating Meta unfairly, making it difficult to roll out AI products.

When Vance spoke in Paris five days later, his speech delivered exactly the sort of message Zuckerberg had had in mind, warning against overregulation in AI and abandoning the Biden administration’s more careful approach to the technology. Vance said he was troubled by reports about governments “considering tightening the screws” on US tech companies, telling his audience that “America cannot and will not accept that, and we think it’s a terrible mistake.”

Vance’s speech seemed like tangible evidence that Zuckerberg’s clout in DC was on the upswing. Joe Biden’s disdain for Meta was evident well before he assumed office, and once in, he pointed to the company as the source of some of the US’s greatest problems, among them the spread of conspiracy theories, the surge in political polarization and the exploitation of children. He repeatedly called for the repeal of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, a rule shielding internet platforms from legal liability for content posted by their users, which Silicon Valley considers a critical protection. Biden’s appointees to the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice had pursued an aggressive antitrust agenda that included Meta among its targets, and his administration had pushed Meta to control misinformation in ways the company deemed inappropriate.

Unlike Trump and President Barack Obama before him, Biden never met with Zuckerberg personally, and Meta insiders had heard he was known to throw around demeaning nicknames for Zuckerberg in private. (“Little Twerp” and “F---erberg” were among the favorites, according to Biden aides.) A spokesperson for Biden’s office declined to comment for this article.

Zuckerberg had been hinting at a move toward Trump even before the election. He’d described the candidate’s reaction to an assassination attempt in July as “badass,” called him personally on several occasions last summer and bashed the Biden administration in a letter to Congress.

Once the election results were in, Zuckerberg sprinted Trumpward. He appointed Ultimate Fighting Championship CEO Dana White—a Trump ally—to Meta’s board of directors, elevated Republican strategist Joel Kaplan to chief global affairs officer and rolled back diversity efforts both at his company and his family’s philanthropic organization, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.

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