The Meta CEO, however, has said he is not endorsing any candidate this year.
Donald Trump claims that he and Mark Zuckerberg have a new friendship of sorts, and that the Meta CEO has “called [him] a lot.”
According to Trump, one of the calls was “to apologize” after Meta’s AI assistant said that the assassination attempt against Trump did not happen. At the time, Trump claimed Meta and Google were attempting to rig the election by suppressing information about the shooting.
Meta blamed that on a bug and content moderation. “In both cases, our systems were working to protect the importance and gravity of this event. And while neither was the result of bias, it was unfortunate and we understand why it could leave people with that impression,” Meta said.
“Mark Zuckerberg called me — first of all, he called me a few times,” Trump said in an interview with Fox Business. “He called me after the event and he said, ‘That was really amazing, it was really brave.’ And he actually announced he’s not going to support a Democrat, because he can’t, because he respected me for what I did that day.”
Zuckerberg has not endorsed any candidates in previous elections and has not personally made any announcement regarding what candidate he intends to vote for, a point highlighted on X earlier this week by a Meta representative:
That said, in an interview last month with Bloomberg, Zuckerberg did say “Seeing Donald Trump get up after getting shot in the face and pump his fist in the air with the American flag is one of the most badass things I’ve ever seen in my life,” adding: “On some level as an American, it’s like hard to not get kind of emotional about that spirit and that fight, and I think that that’s why a lot of people like the guy.”
This comes after Trump reversed his stance on a TikTok ban because getting rid of the app would benefit Zuckerberg and Meta. “If you get rid of TikTok, Facebook and Zuckerschmuck will double their business. I don’t want Facebook, who cheated in the last Election, doing better. They are a true Enemy of the People!” Trump wrote in March.
A few phone calls later, the former president apparently feels differently. The same can’t be said for Google CEO Sundar Pichai. In his interview with Fox, Trump noted that no one from Google called him after the shooting. Pichai, however, did tweet about it. “I’m wishing President Trump a speedy recovery. I’m shocked by today’s shooting and loss of life. Political violence is intolerable and we must all come together to strongly oppose it,” he wrote.
Trump accused Google of censoring auto-complete suggestions related to the shooting. Google says the autocomplete function didn’t work for Trump queries in part because of a company safeguard that prevents autocomplete from appearing on searches involving political violence.
Peoplesmind
