Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta donates $1m to Trump fund

Meta has donated $1m (£786,000) to a inauguration fund for Donald Trump, in another sign of the tech giant’s boss, Mark Zuckerberg, attempting to build bridges with the president-elect.

Trump has previously been highly critical of Mr Zuckerberg and Facebook – which Meta owns – calling the platform “anti-Trump” in 2017.

But the pair dined at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in November, a meeting Mr Zuckerberg afterwards described himself as “grateful” for.

Inauguration funds are used to pay for events and activities when a new president takes office – some consider them an attempt to curry favour with a new administration.

Meta – which also owns Instagram and WhatsApp – is not believed to have made similar donations to President Joe Biden’s inaugural fund in 2020 or Trump’s previous such fund in 2016.

The donation was confirmed by CBS, the BBC’s US media partner, on Wednesday, and was first reported by the Wall Street Journal.

The BBC has approached Meta for comment.

Trump will be sworn in as the 47th US president on 20 January.

Relations between Trump and Mr Zuckerberg have historically been far less cordial.

They particularly soured when Facebook and Instagram suspended the former president’s accounts in 2021, after they said he praised those engaged in violence at the Capitol on 6 January.

Since then, Trump has waged a war of words against Meta – calling Facebook an “enemy of the people” in March.

He said a law that would see TikTok banned in the US unless sold off by its parent company ByteDance would unfairly benefit Facebook.

In August, Mr Zuckerberg told Republican lawmakers in a letter that he regretted bowing to pressure from the Biden administration to “censor” some Facebook and Instagram content during the coronavirus pandemic.

Trump wrote in a book published in September that Mr Zuckerberg would “spend the rest of his life in prison” if he tried to intervene in the 2024 election.

But the president-elect appears to have since softened his position.

He told a podcast in October it was “nice” Mr Zuckerberg was “staying out of the election”, and thanked him for a personal phone call after he faced an assassination attempt.

Still, Mr Zuckerberg remains far less close to Trump than fellow tech titan Elon Musk.

The Tesla and X owner has been dubbed Trump’s “First Buddy” because of his extensive donations to his election campaign.

That has led to Mr Musk being placed in charge of a new Department of Government Efficiency (Doge).

There has been no such rapprochement between Mr Musk and Mr Zuckerberg – although the cage fight between them that was once mooted now appears to be off.