Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg met with President-elect Donald Trump at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida on Wednesday afternoon.
“It’s an important time for the future of American Innovation,” a spokesperson for Meta, the Facebook parent company Zuckerberg runs, said in a statement to HuffPost. “Mark was grateful for the invitation to join President Trump for dinner and the opportunity to meet with members of his team about the incoming Administration.”
It’s unclear what the pair spoke about, but The New York Times, citing people familiar with the meeting, said that Zuckerberg initiated their talk.
Trump’s relationship with Meta was rocky for years after the company banned him from Facebook and Instagram following the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol. At the time, the social media network said Trump’s role in the events of Jan. 6 posed a risk too great “to allow the President to continue to use our service.” That ban ended in 2023.
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Trump said last month he now likes Zuckerberg “much better” than he has in the past, as he believed the billionaire was “staying out of the election.”
Zuckerberg declined to endorse any candidate in the 2024 presidential race, but began working to repair his relationship with Trump over the summer. In an interview with Bloomberg in July, he said Trump’s reaction to being shot at ― raising a fist in the air and calling on supporters to “fight” ― was “badass.”
“Congratulations to President Trump on a decisive victory,” he wrote on Threads, Meta’s alternative to Twitter, shortly after the election. “We have great opportunities ahead of us as a country. Looking forward to working with you and your administration.”