President-elect Donald Trump dined with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg at the president-elect’s Mar-a-Lago club in Florida on Wednesday, bringing together the Facebook founder and the former president once banned from the social network.
A Meta spokesperson confirmed the meeting in a statement to CBS News, saying Zuckerberg “was grateful for the invitation to join President Trump for dinner and the opportunity to meet with members of his team about the new administration.
Stephen Miller, who was named deputy chief of staff for Trump’s second term, said Zuckerberg, like other business leaders, wanted to support Trump’s economic plans. The tech CEO is seeking to shift perceptions of his company to the right following a rocky relationship with Trump.
“Mark, obviously, he has his own interests, he has his own business and he has his own agenda,” Miller said in an interview on Fox News about the meeting. “But he has made it clear that he wants to support America’s national renewal under Trump’s leadership.”
Trump was launched Facebook following the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol after determining that his messages potentially encouraged the violence that occurred that day. The company restored your account early 2023, but with certain “safeguards”. In July, these restrictions were raised by Meta.
Trump has a total of 65 million followers on Facebook and Instagram.
During the 2024 campaign, Zuckerberg did not endorse any presidential candidate.
Zuckerberg has since taken a more positive stance toward Trump. Earlier this year, he praised Trump’s response to his first assassination attempt, calling it “badass.” Zuckerberg also complained that senior Biden administration officials had pressured Facebook to “censor” some COVID-19-related content during the pandemic.
Yet in recent months, Trump has continued to publicly attack Zuckerberg. In July, he posted a message on his own social network Truth Social threatening to send election fraudsters to jail, in part by citing a nickname he used for Meta’s CEO. “ZUCKERBUCKS, be careful!” Trump wrote.
Thanksgiving Eve visit also comes as tech mogul Elon Musk became most influential in Trump’s Make America Great Again movement, contributing approximately $200 million through his political action committee to help elect Trump. Musk is the billionaire owner of the social network X, a competitor to Meta.
Trump’s X account, then known as Twitter, was also suspended in January 2021. But his story was reinstated in November 2022 following the takeover of the company by Musk. Must reinstated Trump’s account after posting a poll asking users whether they should do so.
Musk has spent a lot of time at Mar-a-Lago since the election, and Trump chose him to lead an external advisory committee known as the “Department of Government Effectiveness” to identify waste with Vivek Ramaswamy, a venture capitalist and former GOP presidential candidate.
