(Bloomberg) — Donald Trump said Meta Platforms Inc. CEO Mark Zuckerberg called him several times in recent weeks, including after the former U.S. president faced an assassination attempt in mid-July.
Bloomberg’s Most Read
After a bullet hit his ear, Trump was photographed with his fist in the air, telling supporters to “fight.”
“He said, ‘That was really amazing, that was really brave,’” Trump said during an interview with Fox Business on Friday, adding that Zuckerberg “respected me for what I did that day.”
Trump said Meta’s CEO told him he wouldn’t support a Democrat in the election because of that respect. Zuckerberg has said publicly that he would not support any presidential candidate and has avoided making public endorsements in recent elections. However, he called Trump’s reaction to the assassination attempt “tough” during an interview with Bloomberg in mid-July.
Trump said Zuckerberg called him again this week to apologize for the way a photo of the assassination attempt was handled by Meta’s automated moderation systems. A photo of Trump with his fist raised in the air was incorrectly attached to a fact-checking label this week after other versions of that photo were manipulated to show Secret Service agents standing next to him smiling. Meta automatically added a fact-checking label to the doctored version of the photo, but the automated systems also added the label to the original in error.
“Given the similarities between the doctored photo and the original image – which are only subtly (though importantly) different – our systems incorrectly applied this fact check to the real photo as well,” wrote Meta vice president of global policy Joel Kaplan , in a statement. blog post this week. “Our teams worked to quickly correct this error.”
Zuckerberg “actually apologized — he said they made a mistake,” Trump said of the phone conversations. “I believe in Mark Zuckerberg. He called me a lot.
In a post on X, formerly Twitter, after Trump’s interview, spokesman Andy Stone reiterated Zuckerberg’s stance. “Mark has already made public the fact that he is not endorsing any of the candidates, just as he did not in previous elections.” The company did not comment further.
The interactions between Meta’s chief executive and the former president are notable given the history between the two men. Meta banned Trump from Facebook and Instagram for two years, saying his posts could lead to violence following the Jan. 6, 2021, riots at the Capitol in DC. Meanwhile, Trump called Facebook the “enemy of the people” and insinuated that he would try to arrest Zuckerberg if he was elected president again for being an “election fraudster.”
Bloomberg Businessweek Most Read
©2024 Bloomberg LP
