Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan urged President-elect Donald Trump not to succumb to Big Tech companies’ efforts to appease him by cutting “sweetheart deals” that let companies like Meta and Amazon off with a slap on the wrist.
Khan made the remarks during an interview with CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin on Tuesday morning.
Sorkin asked Khan to respond to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon Chair Jeff Bezos, and Apple CEO Tim Cook visiting Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, as well as Amazon and Meta’s million-dollar contributions to Trump’s inauguration. And while Sorkin did not mention it, Zuckerberg also announced Tuesday that Meta would ditch fact-checkers in favor of a “community notes” system of the kind employed by X, a platform where conservatives feel more at home.
Khan characterized these outreach efforts to Trump as attempts to get a “sweetheart deal” — meaning “some type of settlement that’s cheap, that settles for pennies on the dollar and lets them escape from a liability finding in court.”
“We are set to go to trial against Facebook this spring, against Amazon in fall of 2026,” she continued. “Of course they would want a sweetheart deal, and I hope future enforcers wouldn’t give them that.”
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