Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: You might have noticed that lately Mark Zuckerberg has been
Speaker 2: going through a bit of a rebrand. The Meta CEO
Speaker 2: has been sporting a new look, gold chains, grown out hair,
Speaker 2: and custom black T shirts with Greek and Latin phrases.
Speaker 2: He's appeared on so called Manisphere podcasts hosted by MAGA
Speaker 2: friendly comedians like Theo Vonn and Joe Rogan.
Speaker 1: Just I think a lot of a corporate world is
Speaker 1: like pretty culturally neutered, And.
Speaker 2: I just think that Suckerberg on rogan Show back in January,
Speaker 2: talking about martial arts, bow hunting and what he sees
Speaker 2: as corporate America's backlash to masculinity, the.
Speaker 1: Kind of masculine energy I think is good. Yeah, obviously,
Speaker 1: you know society has plenty of that, but I think
Speaker 1: corporate culture was really like trying to get away from it.
Speaker 2: Zuckerberg's newly conservative talking points.
Speaker 1: I think having a culture that celebrates the aggression a
Speaker 1: bit more has its own merits that are really positive.
Speaker 2: And embrace of MAGA has led to changes at Meta too.
Speaker 2: Since January, Meta has added Ultimate Fighting Championship CEO and
Speaker 2: prominent Trump ally Dana White, to its board of directors.
Speaker 2: It's also rolled back diversity efforts, weakend hate speech policies,
Speaker 2: disbanded its civil rights team, and eliminated its outside fact
Speaker 2: checking system. For outside observers, it's felt like a dramatic shift,
Speaker 2: and according to Bloomberg Meta reporter Riley Griffin, it's felt
Speaker 2: that way for some people inside Meta too. Zuckerberg declined
Speaker 2: to be interviewed for the story, but Riley and our
Speaker 2: colleague Bloomberg reporter Kurt Wagner have spoken to more than
Speaker 2: thirty current and former Meta employeesout Zuckerberg's changing approach to politics,
Speaker 2: plus a dozen government officials who engaged with Meta during
Speaker 2: three presidential administrations. Many of their sources asked for anonymity
Speaker 2: out of fear of retribution. Riley and Kurt learned that
Speaker 2: these tensions came to a head at an internal meeting
Speaker 2: of Meta's senior leadership in January.
Speaker 3: Some of these senior leaders were frustrated.
Speaker 2: Zuckerberg faced questions about those policy changes and exactly what
Speaker 2: he meant when he spoke about masculine energy on Joe
Speaker 2: Rogan's podcast.
Speaker 3: He acknowledged that maybe masculine was not the right use
Speaker 3: of words but he said that corporate culture had become
Speaker 3: less aggressive and should get a little bit more aggressive
Speaker 3: and competitive. And as for the other questions about content,
Speaker 3: policy changes and fact checking, he was unapologetic. He didn't
Speaker 3: want to relitigate these decisions, and from everyone we speak
Speaker 3: to that remains true.
Speaker 2: I'm Sarah Holder, and this is the big take from
Speaker 2: Bloomberg News Today. On the show the political evolution of
Speaker 2: Mark Zuckerberg, what he hopes to gain from getting closer
Speaker 2: to Trump, what he has to show for it, and
Speaker 2: how his MAGA leanings are already changing meta. Bloomberg's Riley
Speaker 2: Griffin says that to understand Mark Zuckerberg's shift to the right,
Speaker 2: you have to go back nearly two decades to the
Speaker 2: Obama administration.
Speaker 3: He and Obama would have dinners, they took calls with
Speaker 3: each other. President Obama even participated in a Facebook town hall.
Speaker 3: There was a light touch approach to technology, a lot
Speaker 3: of optimism and very little regulation, and in the wake
Speaker 3: of the twenty sixteen election, all that changed.
Speaker 2: Facebook was thrust into the center of a global scandal
Speaker 2: around the role the social network played in spreading political
Speaker 2: misinformation and how it may have influenced the outcome of
Speaker 2: the election.
Speaker 3: In the immediate aftermath of the election, we saw Zuckerberg
Speaker 3: experience shock and confusion around the outcome. He at the
Speaker 3: time said that it was a crazy, quote unquote idea
Speaker 3: that misinformation had influenced the election outcome. But we also
Speaker 3: start to see the company make amends, if you will.
Speaker 3: They shore up fact checking efforts, they focus on election integrity.
Speaker 3: He also actually went on a nationwide tour he was
Speaker 3: trying to understand the electorate. So it was a period
Speaker 3: of processing but also the beginning of immense backlash for
Speaker 3: a company that had until this time had a pretty
Speaker 3: productive relationship to Washington and especially the Democratic Party.
Speaker 2: Zuckerberg appeared before Congress and said his company hadn't done
Speaker 2: enough to prevent its platform from being used for harm.
Speaker 4: And that goes for fake news, for foreign interference in elections,
Speaker 4: and hate speech, as well as developers and data privacy.
Speaker 4: We didn't take a broad enough view of our responsibility
Speaker 4: and that was a big mistake, and it was my
Speaker 4: mistake and I'm sorry.
Speaker 2: Meanwhile, his company tried to build inroads with the new administration.
Speaker 2: Joel Kaplan, a former GOP strategist who's now Meta's chief
Speaker 2: Global affairs officer was focused on ensuring Zuckerberg had connections
Speaker 2: in Trump's orbit. Joel Kaplan had been discussing with Mark
Speaker 2: Zuckerberg the benefits of a Republican administration that was business
Speaker 2: friendly and a conservative Supreme Court, and this strategy, folks
Speaker 2: inside the company told me, came to be known as
Speaker 2: the Clarence Thomas strategy. The idea here being that any
Speaker 2: major existential threat to Facebook would ultimately rise to the
Speaker 2: Supreme Court, and so the company didn't want to alienate
Speaker 2: conservative justices who would be essentially making those key decisions.
Speaker 2: But the criticism was still unrelenting, and it came from
Speaker 2: all Sidesberg's apology tour didn't persuade Democrats that he could
Speaker 2: be trusted to lead a social media empire that had
Speaker 2: grown to have billions of users, and the content moderation
Speaker 2: efforts he put in place after the twenty sixteen election
Speaker 2: angered Trump and his allies, who increasingly complained about what
Speaker 2: they saw as an anti conservative bias on Facebook. Then
Speaker 2: came the pandemic.
Speaker 3: I was actually a COVID reporter at the time, and
Speaker 3: remember those early days when we were writing a lot
Speaker 3: about misinformation, conspiracy, theories were really proliferating on the platform.
Speaker 2: This was all happening in the months leading up to
Speaker 2: the twenty twenty election, as unfounded concerns about election integrity
Speaker 2: were swirling online. The Stop the Steel movement was already
Speaker 2: cropping up, and the Biden campaign was really frustrated that
Speaker 2: they felt Facebook wasn't taking that seriously. After Biden one,
Speaker 2: the misinformation and division on Facebook just picked up steep.
Speaker 3: And ultimately we saw January sixth emerge.
Speaker 2: And within twenty four hours of rioters storming the capital,
Speaker 2: Facebook took action.
Speaker 5: For the first time ever. Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram suspended
Speaker 5: President Trump's Twitter accounts yesterday and now Mark Zuckerberg is
Speaker 5: staying in a post that quote, we believe the risks
Speaker 5: of allowing the president to continue to use our service
Speaker 5: during this period are simply too great.
Speaker 2: Facebook felt it was taking a strong approach to countering
Speaker 2: misinformation around the election and also around COVID and vaccines,
Speaker 2: but it wasn't enough for Democrats.
Speaker 3: Congressional probes ultimately revealed correspondence between the White House and
Speaker 3: then Facebook that show there was a lot of skepticism
Speaker 3: from the White House as to how effective that was
Speaker 3: and whether they were being run around. In one email
Speaker 3: from a White House staffer, the subject line was titled,
Speaker 3: you are hiding the ball and speaking with a lot
Speaker 3: of folks in Washington, including in the Biden administration, I've
Speaker 3: learned that President Biden privately with his aides would call
Speaker 3: Zuckerberg little towerp and he also used a term that
Speaker 3: replaced the Z in Zuckerberg with an F.
Speaker 2: A spokesperson for Biden's office declined to comment for the story.
Speaker 2: Riley says these long simmering tensions reached a boiling point
Speaker 2: in July of twenty twenty one.
Speaker 3: What happened on that Friday afternoon as President Biden was
Speaker 3: walking to board his helicopter to Camp David Was, a
Speaker 3: reporter shouted a question and asked about mis information, and Biden,
Speaker 3: you know, walked towards the reporter.
Speaker 6: And said, we're killing people.
Speaker 4: I mean it really, well, Look.
Speaker 2: The only pandemic we have is among the unvaccinator and
Speaker 2: that's and they're killing people.
Speaker 3: They're killing people, And that kind of comment is not
Speaker 3: a normal thing for a president to allege a major
Speaker 3: US company is doing, but that was how the president felt.
Speaker 3: It was a moment of candor and having that out
Speaker 3: in the open was a big pr crisis for the company.
Speaker 3: Many people pulled all nighters. They were in touch with
Speaker 3: the White House. We've reviewed messages between Mark Zuckerberg and
Speaker 3: Cheryl Sandberg and others at the company. They felt that
Speaker 3: it was disingenuous, It didn't encompass the kind of work
Speaker 3: that they'd been doing on COVID. It was one of
Speaker 3: those moments where this tension really spilled into the public
Speaker 3: and showed how bad things had gotten between the administration
Speaker 3: and the company during this time. Did that one moment
Speaker 3: help lead us to Zuckerberg's magnification today? My reporting suggests so.
Speaker 3: It's an important moment. It's a pivotal moment, but it's
Speaker 3: one of many moments you can look to that I
Speaker 3: think create a snowball effect. According to the people we've
Speaker 3: spoken with, have increasingly pushed Mark Zuckerberg in this direction.
Speaker 2: By twenty twenty four, with Trump's third campaign in full swing,
Speaker 2: Zuckerberg dropped a big hint about his new political allegiances.
Speaker 2: In July of that year, days after Trump survived an
Speaker 2: assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, Zuckerberg spoke with Bloomberg's Emily.
Speaker 6: Chang, Yeah, I mean seeing Donald Trumpet get up after
Speaker 6: getting shot in the face and pump his fist in
Speaker 6: the air with the American flag is one of the
Speaker 6: most badass things I've ever seen in my life.
Speaker 2: After the break, Zuckerberg doubles down. Since Donald Trump's reelection,
Speaker 2: Bloomberg Meta reporter Riley Griffin says Mark Zuckerberg has put
Speaker 2: a lot of effort into getting on the administration's good side.
Speaker 2: Made a one million dollar donation to the Inauguration Fund.
Speaker 2: The night Trump was sworn in, Zuckerberg co hosted a
Speaker 2: black tie reception in the president's honor. In March, he
Speaker 2: acquired a twenty three million dollar mansion steps away from
Speaker 2: the Vice president's residence, and Riley says flight records for
Speaker 2: Zuckerberg's private jet show he's been making monthly trips to Washington.
Speaker 2: Meta has said Zuckerberg has traveled to Washington to discuss
Speaker 2: AI and American technology leadership, and Zuckerberg has said that
Speaker 2: any American company should try to have a productive relationship
Speaker 2: with whoever is running the government. Why is Zuckerberg doing
Speaker 2: all this? Why align with Trump? What's in it for him?
Speaker 3: This is the question we've posed to people for months now.
Speaker 3: We wanted to understand that too, because Mark Zuckerberg is
Speaker 3: a man who had supported diversity initiatives, who'd supported immigration reform,
Speaker 3: election integrity. What was happening here in terms of in
Speaker 3: about face. What we've learned learned from the dozens of
Speaker 3: people we've spoken with is that Mark Zuckerberg is not
Speaker 3: a man with one specific political ideology or very specific
Speaker 3: values when it comes to politics or left or right.
Speaker 3: What's emerged instead, Sarah is a portrait of a man
Speaker 3: who is focused on self preservation and dominance and ensuring
Speaker 3: his company is in the best position possible.
Speaker 2: And there was potentially another influence at play from another
Speaker 2: tech ceo who'd recently undergone a major political makeover.
Speaker 3: Through our reporting and speaking with more than fifty people,
Speaker 3: we've heard a term quite often, and this is Elon envy.
Speaker 2: Many sources inside of Meta have described a kind of
Speaker 2: envy that Mark Zuckerberg had for Elon Musk, feeling that
Speaker 2: he had not faced the same kind of political scrutiny
Speaker 2: that he was subject to, Feeling that he was able
Speaker 2: to layoff employees from X without real consequence. Elon was
Speaker 2: moving fast and breaking things and not suffering the same
Speaker 2: kind of consequences that Mark Zuckerberg was feeling. And this
Speaker 2: is when we see Zuckerberg move away from policies that
Speaker 2: have infuriated Trump for years, like Meta's fact checking program.
Speaker 2: Like we mentioned, Meta also broke up its civil rights
Speaker 2: team and rolled back hate speech policies.
Speaker 3: They rolled back diversity programs at Meta, also at the
Speaker 3: Chan Zuckerberg initiative. They also reached a settlement, a twenty
Speaker 3: five million dollar settlement with Trump over the removal and
Speaker 3: suspension of him from the platforms in the wake of
Speaker 3: January sixth. A lot of that money is going to
Speaker 3: Trump's library. But I think the question stands do these
Speaker 3: moves put him in the best position possible?
Speaker 2: And that's a really good question, Rilly, and it's one
Speaker 2: that I think a lot of people are wondering too, Like,
Speaker 2: if he's making this big shift, what does he have
Speaker 2: to show for it?
Speaker 3: I would say, speaking with folks in the MAGA movement,
Speaker 3: including one Trump advisor, there's still a lot of distrust
Speaker 3: from MAGA, from people who have seen different postures towards
Speaker 3: Trump over the years created a lot of distrust for
Speaker 3: Mark Zuckerberg, and I think some people are still holding
Speaker 3: on to that. Trump as well, has over the years
Speaker 3: suggested Mark Zuckerberg is a bit two faced. He called
Speaker 3: him an ass kisser many a time.
Speaker 2: Riley says that so far from a policy perspective, there
Speaker 2: isn't much evidence any of this is working out to
Speaker 2: Zuckerberg's advantage, at least not yet. Take Trump's stance on TikTok,
Speaker 2: for instance, TikTok is a key competitor to Meta.
Speaker 3: There have been questions about whether it would be allowed
Speaker 3: to remain in the United States, so on that ground,
Speaker 3: we haven't necessarily seen him act in a way that
Speaker 3: would benefit Meta.
Speaker 2: Meta is also currently facing an antitrust suit from the
Speaker 2: Federal Trade Commission, which threatens to break up Zuckerberg's one
Speaker 2: point six trillion dollar business by forcing him to split
Speaker 2: off Instagram and WhatsApp. Mark Zuckerberg, in the weeks before
Speaker 2: that trial lobbied essentially both the President, the administration, and
Speaker 2: the FTC chair himself to try to reach a settlement
Speaker 2: before it went to trial.
Speaker 3: That didn't work. We saw Mark Zuckerberg take the stand
Speaker 3: in April, and we will hopefully in coming weeks get
Speaker 3: a better sense of the outcome, but that went despite
Speaker 3: Mark Zuckerberg's please.
Speaker 2: Even if Suckerberg's realignment hasn't won him political favors, Riley
Speaker 2: says it has succeeded in opening up a channel to
Speaker 2: the president.
Speaker 3: This is something he'd lost over the Biden years and
Speaker 3: has now regained. For example, Mark Zuckerberg met with Vice
Speaker 3: President j d Vance in advance of an AI summit
Speaker 3: in Paris, and when Jade Vance spoke before European leaders,
Speaker 3: he really hammered home a lot of the ideas that
Speaker 3: Mark Zuckerberg had presented to him just days prior. So
Speaker 3: that's the kind of soft influence we're tracking, a White
Speaker 3: House spokesperson said in an email. The Trump quote takes
Speaker 3: meetings with many CEOs who are eager to participate in
Speaker 3: the Trump economy. In the meantime, Riley says Meta's new
Speaker 3: policies are having a clear impact on its platforms. I've
Speaker 3: spoken with several activist groups and groups that represent transfolk women,
Speaker 3: the LGBTQ community, more broadly, Jewish people, and again and again,
Speaker 3: folks are trying to assess whether hate speech is on
Speaker 3: the rise. One organization said they anticipate millions more, hundreds
Speaker 3: of millions more pieces of content that would have otherwise
Speaker 3: been removed to now remain on the platform due to
Speaker 3: these policy shifts.
Speaker 2: Even Meta's own independent oversight board, which was created to
Speaker 2: weigh in on complicated content moderation decisions, was concerned by
Speaker 2: how quickly the changes were made and announced. In late April,
Speaker 2: it advised the company to assess and report on the
Speaker 2: potential harm of the new policies. Meta said it would
Speaker 2: respond to the recommendation within sixty days. In a statement
Speaker 2: to Bloomberg, Meta said, quote, while we will still address
Speaker 2: content that violates our policies, we are focused on reducing
Speaker 2: mistakes and over enforcement of our rules unquote.
Speaker 3: Is this how it always works.
Speaker 2: When political tides turn that business leaders try to cozy
Speaker 2: up to whoever they think is best positioned to help
Speaker 2: their companies, whatever the stated values of that politician. What's
Speaker 2: different about Trump?
Speaker 3: I think what's notable about Trump, and really what makes
Speaker 3: him different from Biden before him, is a willingness to
Speaker 3: negotiate with people he formerly saw as an enemy. This
Speaker 3: is a president who's been quite aggressive and on the
Speaker 3: attack against Zuckerberg in the past, and now we see
Speaker 3: a willingness to meet with him in mar A Lago
Speaker 3: and in the West Wing. And so I think that
Speaker 3: dealmaking that detaches itself from history is a part of
Speaker 3: what makes Trump so notable. But we find that Zuckerberg
Speaker 3: offers a pretty revealing test case for that kind of
Speaker 3: negotiation strategy. This is a CEO who has gone well
Speaker 3: beyond many of his peers in making overtures and comments
Speaker 3: in support of the President, calling him badass, you know,
Speaker 3: on tape with us. So I think we still have
Speaker 3: to wait and see what this looks like.
Speaker 2: While this may all serve Zuckerberg and Meta while Trump's
Speaker 2: in office, it raises serious questions about his longer term strategy.
Speaker 3: In speaking with people familiar with the company and its
Speaker 3: deliberations around It's Trump's strategy, we've learned that Meta is
Speaker 3: working on a plan to try to gain Democrats' support
Speaker 3: in the case that they win power in Washington, be
Speaker 3: it a new administration or even in congressional races that
Speaker 3: are upcoming.
Speaker 2: But Riley says, given Zuckerberg's history, the Democratic Party might
Speaker 2: be harder to win over if he tries to pivot
Speaker 2: himself and his company again. Someday.
Speaker 3: This is a guy who is always evolving and adapting
Speaker 3: to the situation at hand, and I think we've found
Speaker 3: it's no different when it comes to politics.
Speaker 2: This is the Big Take from Bloomberg News. I'm Sarah Holder.
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