Weeks after CEO Mark Zuckerberg met with Donald Trump privately at Mar-a-Lago, comes news of donation to his inauguration fund
Meta Platforms, the parent firm of Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Threads, continues to make efforts to mend its troubled relationship with President-elect Donald Trump.
The Associated Press reported (citing an earlier Wall Street Journal report) that Meta has donated $1 million to President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration fund. A Meta spokesperson then confirmed the donation on Thursday.
The donation comes just weeks after Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg met with Trump privately at Mar-a-Lago, in the days following his election victory.
Donations by tech firms
According to AP, Stephen Miller, who has been appointed deputy chief of staff for Trump’s second term, said that Zuckerberg, like other business leaders, wants to support Trump’s economic plans.
Corporations and big tech firms have traditionally made up a large share of donors to presidential inaugurals, with an exception in 2009, when then-President-elect Barack Obama refused to accept corporate donations, AP noted. He reversed course for his second inaugural in 2013.
According to AP, Facebook did not donate to either Biden’s 2021 inaugural or Trump’s 2017 inaugural.
Google however donated $285,000 each to Trump first inaugural and Biden’s inaugural, according to Federal Election Commission records.
Microsoft gave $1 million to Obama’s second inaugural, but only $500,000 to Trump in 2017 and Biden in 2021.
Trump’s election victory resulted in a notable governmental role for one of his biggest tech supporters, namely Elon Musk, who alongside former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, is to head up the advisory group called the ‘Department of Government Efficiency‘ (Doge).
Musk has previously told reporters that the goal is to reduce government spending by $2 trillion, and cut regulations, prompting conflict of interest concerns that Musk could target regulations that impact his firms.
It should be remembered that Elon Musk has been one of Donald Trump’s most important financial backers, reportedly donating more than $119m (£92m) to a Super PAC to re-elect him.
Musk also appeared at multiple campaign events with Trump, and was with him during election night in Florida.
Troubled relationship
Meanwhile Mark Zuckerberg’s relationship with Donald Trump had been a lot more frosty in recent years.
Donald Trump had been immediately banned from Facebook and other platforms, after he was widely condemned for his role in inciting a mob of his supporters to storm the US Capitol building on Wednesday 6 January 2021, which resulted in the deaths of at least five people (including one police officer who was beaten to death).
In the immediate aftermath, Facebook (and other social media platforms) banned Trump for 24 hours, but as the full scale of the attempted insurrection became clear, Facebook suspended his accounts indefinitely.
YouTube and Twitter also initially banned Trump for a limited period of time, but Twitter opted to permanently ban Trump from its platform (this was before Elon Musk assumed control).
On 21 January 2021 Facebook referred its decision to indefinitely suspend Trump’s accounts to its independent Oversight Board.
In May 2021 the Oversight Board ruled that Mark Zuckerberg’s firm could keep suspending Donald Trump on Facebook and Instagram. However it advised that Meta revisit the account ban from 7 January 2023, two years after the suspension first began.
Trump repeatedly slammed Facebook for its ban and filed lawsuits in July 2021 against Twitter, Facebook and Google, as well as their respective CEOs Jack Dorsey, Mark Zuckerberg, and Sundar Pichai. He claimed at the time that he and other conservatives had been wrongfully censored.
Trump’s account on Facebook was restored in early 2023.
During the 2024 campaign, Zuckerberg did not endorse a candidate for president but according to the Associated Press, voiced a more positive stance toward Trump.
Earlier this year, Zuckerberg reportedly praised Trump’s response to his first assassination attempt.
Still, Trump had continued to attack Zuckerberg publicly during the campaign.
In July, he posted a message on his own social network Truth Social threatening to send election fraudsters to prison in part by citing a nickname he used for the Meta CEO. “ZUCKERBUCKS, be careful!” Trump wrote.
