NEW YORK (AP) — Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, said it has donated $1 million to President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration fund.
The donation comes just weeks after Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg met Trump privately at Mar-a-Lago. A Meta spokesperson confirmed the offer on Thursday. The news was first reported by The Wall Street Journal.
Stephen Miller, who has been named deputy chief of staff for Trump’s second term, has said Zuckerberg, like other business leaders, wants to support Trump’s economic plans. The tech CEO has tried to change the perception of his company on the right after a rocky relationship with Trump.
Trump was kicked off Facebook following the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol. The company reinstated its account in early 2023.
During the 2024 campaign, Zuckerberg did not endorse a candidate for president but has expressed a more positive attitude toward Trump. Earlier this year, he praised Trump’s response to his first assassination attempt.
Yet Trump had continued to publicly attack Zuckerberg during the campaign. In July, he posted a message on his own social network Truth Social threatening to send election fraudsters to jail in part by mentioning a nickname he used for Meta’s CEO. “ZUCKERBUCKS, be careful!” Trump wrote.
Traditionally, corporations make up a large portion of donors at presidential inaugurations, with an exception in 2009, when then-President-elect Barack Obama declined to accept corporate donations. Before his second inauguration in 2013, he changed course.
Facebook did not donate to either Biden’s 2021 inauguration or Trump’s 2017 inauguration.
Google donated $285,000 each to Trump’s first inauguration and Biden’s inauguration, according to Federal Election Commission records. Inaugural committees are required to disclose the source of their fundraising, but not how they spend the money. Microsoft gave $1 million to Obama’s second inauguration, but only $500,000 to Trump in 2017 and Biden in 2021.
