Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg called former president Donald Trump’s reaction to getting shot “badass,” although he declined to endorse him in an interview with Bloomberg released Friday.
Bloomberg’s Emily Chang asked Zuckerberg about the upcoming elections during an interview at Meta headquarters. Zuckerberg said Meta would continue to dial back political content in people’s feeds because, he said, users say they don’t want to see it.
Zuckerberg also said he wouldn’t be taking an active role in the election personally or endorsing any candidate.
But he did have some praise for Trump in the wake of the recent attempt on his life:
“On a personal note, 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. And I think, look: 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.”
The feelings are apparently not mutual.
A little over a week ago, Trump wrote on Truth Social that he’d like to send Zuckerberg to prison if elected. On July 9, he wrote:
All I can say is that if I’m elected President, we will pursue Election Fraudsters at levels never seen before, 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!
Just a few days ago, in a different interview with Bloomberg, Trump also reiterated his beef with Zuckerberg. When talking about the need to regulate Big Tech, he said:
Now that I’m thinking about it, I’m for TikTok because you need competition. If you don’t have TikTok, you have Facebook and Instagram, and that’s, you know, that’s Zuckerberg.
Personally, I wouldn’t read a political slant behind Zuckerberg’s “badass” statement. The more notable thing he said was reiterating Meta’s stance on limiting political content in people’s feeds on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads. The fact that users apparently don’t want to see political content is very convenient for Meta, which would very much like to avoid scrutiny for its role in politics.
“The main thing that I hear from people is that they actually want to see less political content on our services because they come to our services to connect with people,” Zuckerberg said in the Bloomberg interview.
It’s also extremely unlikely that Zuckerberg will pull an Elon Musk — claiming not to endorse a candidate and then suddenly going all-in, as Musk did with Trump.
There are also lots of people who don’t like Trump but thought that the image of him with his fist in the air had the stirring quality of the slow-mo walk in the movie “Armageddon.” It’s an opinion that seems in line with the tastes of someone who recently made a video of themselves wakeboarding in a tux with a beer and flag: less about the substance and more about the aesthetics.
Speaking of aesthetics, Zuckerberg also committed to his new look by wearing a gold chain during the Bloomberg interview.
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