Mark Zuckerberg has donated $1 million to President-elect Donald Trump’s inaugural fund, the Wall Street Journal reports. A Meta spokesperson confirmed the donation but declined to provide an additional comment.
The donation comes as Zuckerberg visited Trump at Mar-a-Lago in November. Neither Zuckerberg nor Meta donated to Trump’s 2017 inaugural fund.
Stephen Miller, who has been appointed deputy chief of staff for Trump’s incoming administration, told Fox News following the meeting that Zuckerberg “has been very clear about his desire to be a supporter of and a participant in this change that we’re seeing all around America, all around the world with this reform movement that Donald Trump is leading.”
While Miller noted that Zuckerberg “has his own interests,” the tech CEO has made it clear “that he wants to support the national renewal of America under President Trump’s leadership.”
Following the July 13 assassination attempt on Trump, Zuckerberg said, according to Bloomberg, “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.”
Earlier this year, Zuckerberg admitted that the White House pressured the social media platform to censor Americans. He also explained that the FBI “warned” Facebook about a “potential Russian disinformation operation about the Biden family and Burisma in the lead up to the 2020 election,” adding that in “retrospect, we shouldn’t have demoted the story.”
Zuckerberg then addressed his contributions to the 2020 election cycle. “The idea here was to make sure local election jurisdictions across the country had the resources they needed to help people vote safely during a global pandemic,” he wrote. While the contributions were “designed to be non-partisan,” he noted that “some people believe this work benefited one party over the other.”
“My goal is to be neutral and not play a role one way or another — or to even appear to be playing a role,” he explained. “So I don’t plan on making a similar contribution this cycle.”
Billionaire Jeff Bezos has also suggested that he supports Trump, saying he feels “very optimistic” about the upcoming administration.
“I’m actually very optimistic this time around,” he said. “He seems to have a lot of energy around reducing regulation. And my point of view, if I can help him do that, I’m going to help him because we do have too much regulation in this country. This country is so set up to grow.”
