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Sarah Jackson
- Former president Donald Trump and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg have a tumultuous relationship.
- Trump has threatened to imprison Zuckerberg if re-elected, and Zuckerberg has denounced his remarks around January 6.
- Here's a look at the timeline of Trump and Zuckerberg's rivalry.
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Donald Trump and Mark Zuckerberg have had a fraught relationship.
As the former US president and the head of one of country's largest companies, respectively, Trump and Zuckerberg are no strangers to each other.
Most recently, Zuckerberg said Trump's reaction to being shot at a Pennsylvania rally was "badass" but declined to endorse a presidential candidate this election cycle. Trump, on the other hand, has said he'd imprison Zuckerberg if re-elected.
How did we get here?
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Here's a look at their tumultuous relationship over the years.
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Trump and Zuckerberg have met on multiple occasions.
Nice meeting with Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook in the Oval Office today.
Posted by Donald J. Trump onThursday, September 19, 2019
They had a previously unannounced meeting at the White House in September 2019.
"Mark is in Washington, D.C., meeting with policymakers to hear their concerns and talk about future internet regulation. He also had a good, constructive meeting with President Trump at the White House today," a Meta spokesperson said at the time.
"Nice meeting with Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook in the Oval Office today," Trump said of their meeting.
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Trump and Zuckerberg met again the following month.
Trump, Zuckerberg, and Peter Thiel had a secret dinner in October 2019.
Thiel, who cofounded PayPal and Palantir, was the first outside investor in Facebook; he was a vocal supporter of Trump in the 2016 presidential election.
"We talked about a number of things that were on his mind, and some of the topics that you read about in the news around our work," Zuckerberg said of the dinner in an interview with "CBS This Morning."
Zuckerberg was in DC to testify before Congress about Facebook's cryptocurrency, Libra.
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Trump has said he would've banned Facebook while president, but Zuckerberg "kept calling" him.
In 2021, Trump praised Nigeria for banning Twitter.
"More COUNTRIES should ban Twitter and Facebook for not allowing free and open speech — all voices should be heard," Trump said in a statement at the time.
"Perhaps I should have done it while I was President," he added. "But Zuckerberg kept calling me and coming to the White House for dinner telling me how great I was."
Nigeria lifted its ban on Twitter after seven months.
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Trump has lambasted Zuckerberg for indefinitely suspending his Facebook account after his remarks contributing to the January 6 Capitol insurrection.
In 2021, Meta "indefinitely" suspended Trump's accounts following the January 6 Capitol riots, citing "use of our platform to incite violent insurrection against a democratically elected government."
"His decision to use his platform to condone rather than condemn the actions of his supporters at the Capitol building has rightly disturbed people in the US and around the world," Zuckerberg wrote in a post at the time. "We removed these statements yesterday because we judged that their effect -- and likely their intent -- would be to provoke further violence."
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Meta in 2023 reinstated Trump's Facebook and Instagram accounts.
In the time since the suspension, Facebook's Oversight Board examined the decision.
Eventually, Meta decided to reinstate Trump's account.
It did so while putting "new guardrails in place to deter repeat offenses," including bigger penalties for any violations of Meta's rules.
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As of July 2024, the company has lifted its final restrictions on Trump's account in the run-up to the November presidential election.
In July, Meta removed the additional guardrails that remained in place on Trump's Facebook and Instagram accounts following their reinstatement.
"In assessing our responsibility to allow political expression, we believe that the American people should be able to hear from the nominees for President on the same basis," Meta said in a statement at the time. "As a result, former President Trump, as the nominee of the Republican Party, will no longer be subject to the heightened suspension penalties."
Meta added that it would "review accounts subject to this protocol on a periodic basis to determine whether heightened suspension penalties for Community Standards violations remain appropriate."
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Trump has expressed interest in suing Facebook.
"We should be suing Google and Facebook and all that," he said in a June 2019 interview with Fox Business. "Which, perhaps we will."
Trump made the remarks in the context of fines the European Union has levied against big tech firms like Google for breaching the bloc's antitrust rules.
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In 2021, Trump did just that.
Trump filed suit against Facebook, Google, Twitter, and the companies' respective CEOs in July 2021, alleging they unlawfully censor him and other conservatives.
In May 2022, Trump's lawsuit against Twitter was dismissed.
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So far in 2024, Zuckerberg has said Trump's reaction to being shot at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, was "badass."
Zuckerberg talked about the former president in an interview with Bloomberg.
"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," Zuckerberg told Bloomberg of the attempted Trump assassination. "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."
But the Meta CEO said he wasn't planning to endorse any candidate for president this election cycle.
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Now, Trump has threatened to imprison Zuckerberg if he's elected in November.
Trump says, if elected, he'll "pursue Election Fraudsters" and they "will be sent to prison for long periods of time."
"We already know who you are. DON'T DO IT! ZUCKERBUCKS, be careful!" Trump wrote on Truth Social this month.
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Trump has seemingly changed his mind on a TikTok ban, seemingly because of how it would likely benefit Meta.
While in office, Trump signed an executive order to ban TikTok, which President Biden revoked upon taking office after Trump.
Trump now views a TikTok ban differently.
"Now that I'm thinking about it, I'm for TikTok because you need competition," Trump told Bloomberg Businessweek this month. "If you don't have TikTok, you have Facebook and Instagram, and that's, you know, that's Zuckerberg."
In March, he made similar comments in an interview on CNBC's "Squawk Box" and referred to Facebook as "an enemy of the people."
"There's a lot of good and there's a lot of bad with TikTok," he said. "But the thing I don't like is that without TikTok, you can make Facebook bigger. And I consider Facebook to be an enemy of the people."
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