Tech billionaire Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta has donated $1 million to US President-elect Donald Trump’s inaugural committee, according to the Wall Street Journal.
The donation was reportedly finalised before Zuckerberg’s November dinner with Trump at Mar-A-Lago, a meeting that surprised many given Trump’s past criticism of Facebook.
Trump, suspended from the platform after the January 6 Capitol riots, had previously accused Zuckerberg of wrongdoing and even said he should be in prison.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg demonstrated Meta’s new Ray-Ban Smart Glasses during a dinner with President-elect Donald Trump at Mar-A-Lago, where he also presented them as a gift.
The meeting comes as Zuckerberg faces scrutiny over Meta’s role in politics and looks to establish stronger ties with the incoming administration.
Zuckerberg’s donation comes after months of tension between the two. In September, Trump accused Zuckerberg of plotting against him during the 2020 election by steering Facebook’s policies in favour of his rivals. Trump even told Zuckerberg that if such actions continued during the 2024 election, the Facebook CEO would “spend the rest of his life in prison.”
Despite this, Trump’s adviser, Stephen Miller, described Zuckerberg as a supporter of the president’s reform movement. “Mark Zuckerberg has been very clear about his desire to be a supporter of, and a participant in, this change that we’re seeing all around America, all around the world with this reform movement that Donald Trump is leading,” Miller said.
He continued, “Mark Zuckerberg, like so many business leaders, understands that President Trump is an agent of change, an agent of prosperity.”
