Mark Zuckerberg’s shocking letter to Congress this week, calling the Biden administration’s censorship campaign “wrong,” may signal another rightward shift in his policy.
Facebook founder a major Democratic donor who once supported former President Barack Obamahas spent the past few years appearing on right-leaning podcasts, mingling with MAGA-supporting UFC fighters and calling former President Donald Trump a “badass.”
The billionaire tech mogul has even struck up a friendship with UFC president Dana White, a longtime Trump ally who introduced Trump at this year’s 2024 Republican convention and still dreams of hosting a charity cage match between Zuckerberg and his billionaire rival Elon Musk.
Trump himself, in fact, He has assured that the CEO of Meta has called him ‘a lot’ during this election cycle for private and candid conversations.
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, who once praised President Barack Obama’s education policy at a public forum in 2011, has spent recent years practicing mixed martial arts instead of activism and calling former President Donald Trump “a tough guy.” Above, Zuckerberg in July 2011.
Above, Zuckerberg shares the stage with then-President Barack Obama during the 2016 Global Entrepreneurship Summit (GES) at Stanford University in California.
While the 40-year-old tech billionaire has expressly refused to endorse a candidate in the 2024 US presidential race, his actions have left many questioning his stances.
Whatever the truth behind that speculation, Zuckerberg’s political donations for 2024 have declined sharply, as his once-generous interest in giving to progressive causes and candidates wanes.
The apparent shift in policy has coincided with a dramatic physical makeover, with Zuckerberg trading in his comfy bedroom hoodies and Adidas flip-flops for bronzed Gen Z curls and fitted shirts studded with gold chains.
Zuckerberg has also become more enthusiastic about mixed martial arts training, sparring with former MMA champions and regularly attending UFC live events at which Trump is also a regular attendee.
Zuckerberg pictured training with UFC stars Israel Adesanya (left) and Alexander Volkanovski (right) last year
In a letter to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan on Monday, Zuckerberg said he “regrets” that Facebook and other social apps owned by its parent company Meta “have not been more outspoken” in their opposition to censorship.
The Biden administration, he wrote, was “wrong” to require Facebook to censor alleged “COVID misinformation” during the pandemic, among other posts.
He White HouseAccording to the CEO of Meta, ‘repeatedly pressured our teams for months to censor certain COVID-19 content, including humor and satire, and we expressed a lot of frustration with our teams when we disagreed.
“We made some decisions that, with the benefit of hindsight and new information,” Zuckerberg continued, “we would not make today.”
The comments — the Meta CEO’s most direct criticism of the White House yet — It came just weeks after Zuckerberg’s comments praising Trump’s resilience in the face of last July’s assassination attempt in Pennsylvania.
“Watching Donald Trump stand up after being shot in the face and raise his fist in the air with the American flag is one of the most badass things I’ve ever seen in my life,” Zuckerberg, 40, said during an interview with Bloomberg at Meta’s headquarters in Menlo Park, California.
“In some ways, as an American, it’s hard not to be moved by that spirit and that fight,” the Facebook founder added.
“And I think that’s why a lot of people like this guy.”
But Zuckerberg stopped short of endorsing either candidate, stressing: “I don’t plan to do that this time, and that includes not endorsing any of the candidates.”
Above, Zuckerberg testifies during the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on online child sexual exploitation at the US Capitol, in Washington DC, on January 31, 2024.
Above, a candid photo of Zuckerberg during Facebook’s early days. Tim Sparapani, Facebook’s first director of public policy, once said that Zuckerberg was “completely apolitical.”
Zuckerberg has also made it clear that he won’t repeat anything like the $400 million in nonprofit contributions he made during the last cycle this election cycle. to combat voter fraud and help keep polling places safe amid COVID.
Republicans were quick to call the funding partisan and say they see a pattern in the districts where the money was spent.
“My goal is to be neutral and not play a role one way or the other, or even appear to play one,” Zuckerberg said this year. “So I don’t plan to make a similar contribution this cycle.”
Speculation about the Facebook founder’s quiet politics has been rife for more than a decade, including a 2013 essay in The centrist-leaning liberal magazine The Atlantic, which asked whether Zuckerberg was a “Secret Republican?‘
Above, Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan at a UFC event
Above, Trump welcomes Zuckerberg in the Oval Office of the White House on September 19, 2019.
The article referred to a fundraiser for then-Republican New Jersey Governor Chris Christie that appears to have been primarily tied to Zuckerberg’s charitable efforts to reform education in Newark, New Jersey.
That initiative also saw Zuckerberg praise the city’s Democratic mayor and now NJ. Senator Cory Booker.
A long-standing interest in educational charities also motivated the Facebook founder’s most openly partisan event, hosting a town hall with then-President Obama in 2011.
“I think the race to the top that you’ve done is one of the most important and underappreciated things that your administration has done,” Zuckerberg told Obama, in a rare appearance in which the tech mogul wore a suit and tie.
Good governance groups that monitor big money in politics have long pointed out that Zuckerberg gives money to both Republican and Democratic candidates.
Zuckerberg (center), with his wife Priscilla Chan enjoying a UFC fight with Trump fan and UFC president Dana White during the UFC Fight Night event on October 1, 2022 in Las Vegas
Above, UFC President Dana White delivers remarks during the final day of the Republican National Convention (RNC) at Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on July 18, 2024.
During the 2014 midterm elections, for example, Zuckerberg donated to Sen. Booker (D-NJ), Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), then-House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), then-House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), then-Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), and then-Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL).
While his charitable work through the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, which he runs with his wife Priscilla Chan, has donated more to progressive and left-leaning causes, this has not stopped the CEO from protecting conservative views on Facebook.
According to one The Wall Street Journal Zuckerberg reportedly lectured Facebook’s liberal staff on the need to appreciate that the site’s user base has conservative tendencies.
He then went so far as to defend decisions not to remove posts made by Trump that Facebook’s own content moderators said violated Facebook’s rules.
The policy alienated Democratic leaders, some of whom, like former Obama administration official David Plouffe, had worked for the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.
Tim Sparapani, a technology lawyer who served as Facebook’s first director of public policy, had his own take on the ideological undertone beneath Zuckerberg’s reserved demeanor.
“He was completely apolitical,” Sparapani said of Zuckerberg during those early years. “His political views had to be brought to light.”