In a Fox Business clip going viral on X, Donald Trump says that Meta CEO, election meddler, and censorship lover Mark Zuckerberg actually called him to apologize for Meta’s recent embarrassing censorship of photos and information about the attempted assassination of Trump.
Trump made his statements on Fox Business about Mark Zuckerberg, who is the CEO of Meta, which owns Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, and Threads. Zuckerberg “called me a few times,” Trump told Maria Bartiromo, claiming the Big Tech CEO called Trump “very brave” and apologized for Meta’s scandalous censorship about the assassination attempt. In fact, Trump made the startling claim that Zuckerberg said he wouldn’t support a Democrat. Now if only we could rely on Zuckerberg’s honesty.
In the clip, Trump said Zuckerberg “called me after the [assassination attempt], and he said ‘that was really amazing, it was very 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.” Trump claimed this was “a normal response.” He added, “But I was called by Mark Zuckerberg yesterday, or the day before, on this same subject, and he actually apologized, he said they made a mistake, etc., etc. and they’re correcting the mistake. Google, nobody called from Google.”
Trump says Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg called him after the assassination attempt, said he won't be supporting a Democrat and apologized for censoring photos of him with his fist raised:pic.twitter.com/XaKBntAtWk
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) August 2, 2024
Google Search also made headlines for apparently suppressing information about the assassination attempt on Trump.
For Our VIPs: Trump Says Meta and Google Are Trying to Rig the Election. Here’s What He Means.
Trump pointed out to Bartiromo that Big Tech actions are important because viewers see a show like hers, or any other political show, not just on the network but in clips all over the internet.
“They take clips of your show that you’re doing right now with me, and if I do a good job, they’re going to vote for me ... Because it’s not just on Fox,” Trump emphasized.
“You have a product,” he said, and therefore it matters that “Google has been very bad, they’ve been very irresponsible, and I have a feeling that Google is going to be close to shutdown because I don’t think Congress is going to take it. I really don’t think so. Google has to be careful.”
But after bashing Google, Trump — who was previously banned on Meta platforms in 2021 — said he believed Zuckerberg had been honest with him and was no longer meddling in elections as he used to do: “Now, I will say this, I believe Mark Zuckerberg. He called me… he called me a lot. … And I think they’ve fixed it, and he’s not doing what he did four years ago with the $500 million, I don’t believe.”
According to entries in MRC’s CensorTrack, Facebook and Instagram censored genuine and iconic images of the attempted assassination, imposing filters and adding labels claiming “Altered photo/video.” MRC Free Speech America reported back in April that Facebook had interfered no fewer than 39 times in elections since 2008 (disclosure: I contribute to MRC). Meta spokesperson Dani Lever subsequently posted that the filter and warning were originally applied to an altered photo but were “incorrectly” applied to real photos too.
In another (possibly intentional) flub up, Meta AI was denying the reality of an assassination attempt on Trump days after the shooting, as I found when prompting the AI chatbot on July 16. The New York Post reported similar results on July 29, when Meta AI claimed, “There was no real assassination attempt on Donald Trump” and labeled the event “fictional.”
A Meta spokesperson has since admitted that the artificial intelligence had not been updated correctly. It is interesting to note that, while Meta has claimed this was a mistake of not having the most up-to-date information about the assassination attempt, the Post reported that MetaAI was much quicker in having updated information on VP Kamala Harris’s campaign.
In the above clip, Trump was referring to the infamous $400 million+ of “Zuckerbucks” that Zuckerberg lavished on counties for election activities, both to fund and to influence elections. The Washington Post just reported that Zuckerberg is providing such funding this election cycle but on a much smaller scale, totaling “less than 1 percent of what [was] spent in 2020.” As I noted above, it is not clear whether Zuckerberg and his fellow Meta executives have truly repented of their many years of election interference, particularly in targeting Trump, or if Zuckerberg is just covering his bases in case of a Trump victory or more bad press.
Editor’s Note: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that the interview with Trump took place on Fox News. We apologize to our readers for this error.
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