Is Facebook and Meta Founder Mark Zuckerberg a Trump Supporter?

In the early 2000's, the tech boom was just getting started. Tech giants like Jeff Bezos, Steve Jobs, and others were rising to corporate supremacy on the backs of their technological inventions and the country's growing hunger for connectivity and instant gratification.

Enter: Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook. It started as a humble social media app targeted at college students, and grew into a mega-corporation and one of the most popular social media platforms in human history. Although, to be fair, human history that encompasses social media isn't particularly extensive yet.

There was a time when Zuckerberg talked about issues he cared deeply about, including immigration, social justice, and democracy.

However, Washington raked him over the coals and turned the once eager advocate into a hardened and seasoned tech mogul. With President-elect Donald Trump's second term on the horizon, Zuckerberg is shaking things up at Facebook's parent company Meta in a way that has people asking: Is Mark Zuckerberg a Trump supporter?

There was a time when the question would have almost been laughable. Zuckerberg once championed liberal causes, openly writing op-eds that encouraged people to consider social justice causes and supporting philanthropic endeavors.

Then Congress pulled him into Washington D.C. and grilled him mercilessly about Facebook and his role in fact-checking, along with social media's larger role in civic responsibility.

Now, Zuckerberg seems jaded. Or perhaps strategic. A series of changes announced for Facebook seems to suggest that Zuckerberg is aligning with Trump's view on social media and espousing his disdain for fact-checking and the over-policing of opinions shared online. So does that mean he's a Trump supporter?

On the one hand, Zuckerberg met with President-elect Trump late in 2024 and donated $1 million to the once and future president's inaugural fund.

On the other hand, Zuckerberg has always been a strategist. With Trump previously going after companies like X (formerly known as Twitter) and TikTok for what he calls suppressing free speech and endangering national security, Zuckerberg could well be buying goodwill by embracing Trump's beliefs and policies, at least in public.

It's hard to imagine a world where someone who so strongly champions social justice causes suddenly supports Trump, who mocks social justice warriors, but stranger things have happened.

Whether or not he personally supports Trump, Zuckerberg is clearly making friends with the incoming president. Whether it's strategy or shared ideology is anyone's guess.

While Trump is gearing up for a second term, Zuckerberg is overhauling policies at Meta and Facebook strategies.

In a video shared to social media, Zuckerberg explained to followers that they would be ending fact-checking and getting back to what he called Facebook's roots of free expression. This language mirrors some language used by Trump and his cohort.

Additionally, Zuckerberg recently brought a staunch Trump supporter into the fold. UFC head Dana White, an outspoken Trump supporter, has joined Meta's Board of Directors, which could be seen as either a rubber stamp of Trump's policies, or perhaps a conciliatory gesture silently imploring Trump to look away from Facebook and leave the platform alone as he tackles his next four years in office.

In public, Trump and Zuckerberg have had a somewhat contentious relationship ever since Facebook banned Trump from the platform following the Capitol riot of Jan. 6, 2021. But after Zuckerberg's meeting at Trump's Mar-a-Lago and other conciliatory gestures, it would seem that the two are at least on better terms if not good ones.