One of the most interesting reactions to the first assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump was from Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
He said things that were clearly off the liberal reservation, including saying Trump standing up and pumping his fist in the air after getting shot in the face was “badass.”
Mark Zuckerberg said that Donald Trump’s immediate reaction after being shot was “badass” and inspiring — without endorsing the former president.
The Meta CEO spoke exclusively to @emilychangtv on The Circuit https://t.co/Y1s1HmhotX pic.twitter.com/DQI10NHzhq
— Bloomberg (@business) July 19, 2024
READ MORE: Mark Zuckerberg’s Unexpected Reaction to Trump Assassination Attempt
I thought that showed an interesting evolution, although I also wondered if he was just covering his butt, given that Trump may very well be coming into office and maybe he wanted to get on his good side. He also said he would not be getting involved in politics as he had in the past.
Now, there’s more information on internal issues at Meta that indicate that evolution might be real. That would be a pretty stunning thing if true.
Zuckerberg was complaining in June about the “blowback” from the “politically touchy aspects of his philanthropic efforts.” That’s one way to phrase it.
And he regretted hiring employees at his philanthropy who tried to push him further to the left on some causes.
In short — he was over it.
The report said his philanthropy had stopped supporting anything that could be viewed as partisan, and he’s “tamped down employee activism at Meta.”
He has also spoken to President Trump in one-on-one telephone calls twice over the summer, these people said, a move that some have characterized as an attempt to repair a long-strained relationship between the two men.
“The political environment, I think I didn’t have much sophistication around, and I think I just fundamentally misdiagnosed the problem,” Mr. Zuckerberg said during a recent interview at a live podcast event in San Francisco.
He also revealed more to Congress in testimony about the Biden administration “pressuring” him to censor in relation to COVID. He said he would not repeat the political contributions he made in 2020 that led to such concern because it made him look not “neutral.” He has said he regrets those contributions.
The New York Times cites the movement of Elon Musk and Zuckerberg as part of a larger shift in Silicon Valley. I’ve seen that myself on X, with other tech entrepreneurs, over the last few months in particular, waking up after they see things like the video of what Trump actually said that blows up the “fine people” hoax. They’re seeing things like the radical leftism over Gaza. And they’re seeing things like Biden’s cognitive issues and seeing what the Democrats did in response. You can see the evolution in real time.
This is a fascinating paragraph. If this is true, he’s abandoned the Democrats because they’re too far left, like Musk did.
Privately, Mr. Zuckerberg now considers his personal politics to be more like libertarianism or “classical liberalism,” according to people who have spoken to him recently. That includes a hostility to regulation that restricts business, an embrace of free markets and globalism and an openness to social-justice reforms — but only if it stops short of what he considers far-left progressivism. And Mr. Zuckerberg and his wife, Dr. Priscilla Chan, have been privately aghast about what they see as a rise of antisemitism on college campuses, including at their alma mater, Harvard.
Now, there’s still a bit of a question since he says “globalism” if he’s rejecting far-left progressivism. He may not realize one is part of the other yet and need more evolution. But if the rest is true, he’s already at odds with the Democrats in thought.
Mr. Zuckerberg and Dr. Chan were caught off guard by activism at their philanthropy, according to people close to them. After the protests over the police killing of George Floyd in 2020, a C.Z.I. employee asked Mr. Zuckerberg during a staff meeting to resign from Facebook or the initiative because of his unwillingness at the time to moderate comments from Mr. Trump.
The incident, and others like it, upset Mr. Zuckerberg, the people said, pushing him away from the foundation’s progressive political work. He came to view one of the three central divisions at the initiative — the Justice and Opportunity team — as a distraction from the organization’s overall work and a poor reflection of his bipartisan point-of-view, the people said.
In 2021, Mr. Zuckerberg and Ms. Chan decided to end the group’s internal political work and instead fund two bipartisan groups working on those issues. Many of its 30 or so employees who focused on politics resigned, were reassigned or were sent to those two groups.
So he basically whacked all the social justice section that was getting up in his face and making things political.
Zuckerberg is also supposedly cutting down on politics within Meta with a new internal policy.
It forbade employees from raising in the workplace issues such as abortion, racial justice movements and wars. Andrew Bosworth, Meta’s chief technology officer, championed the policy and was supported by Mr. Zuckerberg, two people familiar with the matter said.
While he says he’s not getting involved in politics, what’s interesting is he is reaching out to Trump and other Republicans to try to repair relationships. He’s told Trump he has “no plans to make similar donations” to those he made in 2020. He also called Trump during the RNC, saying he was “praying” for him after the first assassination attempt. He also called Trump and personally apologized after Meta wrongly took down images of the assassination attempt that were circulating, and people were concerned about censorship.
If true, it sounds like the evolution is in process, and he’s already far down the road, brought to reality by the radical left. That’s often how it is — when you thought it was one thing, and then you face the reality in your own experience. Now, he’s seeing the problems of the progressive left because it’s affected him personally.
He’s going to have to go a long way for people to believe there’s a true conversion happening here. Still, one would have to think that’s bad news for the Democrats if he’s taking his marbles and his millions and no longer playing the game.
