Mark Zuckerberg Wants to 'Play an Active Role' Shaping Tech Policies in Donald Trump's New Administration, According to a Meta Executive Zuckerberg and Trump are reportedly taking tech ahead of the president-elect's inauguration.
By Sherin Shibu Edited by Melissa Malamut
Key Takeaways
- According to Meta’s president of global affairs, Nick Clegg, company founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg is eager to play an active part in the Trump administration’s tech policies.
- Zuckerberg had dinner with Donald Trump last week at Mar-a-Lago.
- The Facebook founder is currently the third richest person in the world.
Though Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg may not have a department to lead like Elon Musk, he's reportedly still interested in helping shape the Trump administration's new tech policies.
Zuckerberg "is very keen to play an active role in the debates that any administration needs to have about maintaining America's leadership in the technological sphere," said Meta's President of Global Affairs Nick Clegg, per The Verge. The conversations between Trump and Zuckerberg "are clearly fairly high level," he added without going into specifics.
Zuckerberg had dinner with Trump at Mar-a-Lago last week at Trump's invitation, a move that Trump senior adviser Stephen Miller said indicated Zuckerberg's willingness to work with Trump.
"Mark Zuckerberg has been very clear about his desire to be a supporter of, and a participant in, this change we're seeing," Miller told Fox News last week.
Mark Zuckerberg. Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Zuckerberg did not endorse Trump before the election, though he did post on Threads, an app he owns, that he was "praying for a quick recovery" after the assassination attempt on the President-elect in July. After Trump's win, Zuckerberg extended his congratulations.
"Looking forward to working with you and your administration," Zuckerberg wrote in a post on Threads on November 6.
The relationship between Trump and Zuckerberg hasn't always been cordial or supportive.
Trump wrote in his book "Save America," which came out on September 3, that Zuckerberg plotted against him in the 2020 election. Trump warned that he was watching Zuckerberg "closely" and if Zuckerberg did "anything illegal" in the 2024 presidential election, he would go to prison.
Zuckerberg is the third richest person in the world at the time of writing with a net worth of $217 billion, per the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
