Mark Zuckerberg donates $1M to Trump after suppressing political content

Facebook CEo Mark Zuckerberg

Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and Threads led by CEO Mark Zuckerberg, has donated $1 million to Donald Trump’s inauguration committee.

The news of the seven-figure donation comes just a few weeks after Zuckerberg went to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate for a private dinner with the president-elect. A spokesperson for Meta told the BBC at the time, “Mark was grateful for the invitation to join President Trump for dinner and the opportunity to meet with members of his team about the incoming administration.”

Earlier in the year, Zuckerberg praised Trump as a “badass” for pumping his fist after Trump was shot at during a July 13 campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. 

Zuckerberg is one of the most influential technology and media executives on Earth and is worth over $219 billion as of Thursday morning, ranking as the fourth-richest person in the world. In the past, conservatives have derisively labeled his political donations as “Zuck bucks,” though they surely have a different take on the CEO’s latest contribution.

Early in 2024, Meta announced it would limit the reach of political content on Threads and Instagram, meaning millions of people would simply not see information relating to the ongoing election. A subsequent investigation by The Washington Post found that the suppression of content across Meta’s platforms, including Facebook, meant that posts incidentally mentioning voting were hidden from millions of users.

Meta’s actions occurred at the same time that Trump backer and megadonor Elon Musk opened the floodgates on X, formerly known as Twitter, to amplify right-wing content, including content from neo-Nazis and Republicans.

Before this election cycle, there was more friction between Zuckerberg and Trump. Immediately after Trump incited the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, he was suspended from Meta’s platforms, though this ban was lifted two years later. Earlier this year, Trump threatened that Zuckerberg could “spend the rest of his life in prison” if Meta platforms continued to limit the spread of right-wing misinformation and other falsehoods, such as election denialism.

But now that Trump is headed back to the White House, it appears that all is forgiven.

The budding alliance between Trump and Zuckerberg echoes the praise Trump received from Amazon head and Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos. “Big congratulations to our 45th and now 47th President on an extraordinary political comeback and decisive victory,” Bezos wrote on X following Trump’s victory.

Bezos’ congratulations came a few weeks after he prevented the Post from publishing an editorial endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris’ candidacy.

Trump now has three of the leading tech and media titans in his camp—Zuckerberg, Bezos, and Musk—and he isn’t even president yet.