Donald Trump’s inaugural fund is getting almost $150 million. Here are some of its donors
Meta (META) CEO Mark Zuckerberg likes to rock the boat every now and then. Earlier in December, he and his company became the first to reveal their plans to donate $1 million to the president-elect’s inauguration committee.
The tech giant didn’t donate to Trump’s 2017 inaugural fund or Joe Biden’s in 2021. But this time, Zuckerberg has a healthy appreciation — and possibly some fear — of Trump and his power.
He’s made a series of inroads to Trump this year, writing in August that he regretted not pushing back against calls from federal officials to remove COVID-19 related posts from Facebook and Instagram, calling Trump “badass” after an assassination attempt, and declining to endorse a presidential candidate.
Zuckerberg also visited Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida in November. Following the meeting, Meta said in a statement that Zuckerberg was “grateful” for the invitation and that “[i]t’s an important time for the future of American innovation.”
In December, Nick Clegg, Meta’s president of global affairs, said Zuckerberg hopes to play “an active role in the debates that any administration needs to have about maintaining America’s leadership in the technological sphere.”
Zuckerberg’s relationship with Trump went from warm to strictly professional over the course of the first Trump administration after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, when Facebook suspended the then-president for inciting the riot.
Trump said in a statement that June: “Next time I’m in the White House there will be no more dinners, at his request, with Mark Zuckerberg and his wife. It will be all business!” In a book published in September, Trump said the CEO would “spend the rest of his life in prison” if he plotted against him.
