Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has gotten himself absolutely lambasted online after he appeared to be caught deferring to Donald Trump on his own company’s spending estimates.
The clip in question comes from a White House tech event hosted Thursday, at which the president turned to Zuckerberg and asked how much the social media tycoon is planning on investing in U.S. artificial intelligence infrastructure.
“How much are you spending, would you say, over the next few years?” Trump said to the Meta chief.
“Oh, gosh… I mean, I think it’s probably going to be something like, I don’t know, at least $600 billion through ‘28 in the U.S.,” Zuckerberg responded, apparently flustered by the question.
A few moments later, during a break in the dinner, a hot mic picked Zuckerberg up telling Trump: “I’m sorry, I was ready to do our… I wasn’t sure what number you wanted to go with.”
The tech tycoon’s deference to the president, and the relatively friendly tenor of their exchanges since Trump’s second inauguration earlier this year, marks a seismic shift in their relationship, with Trump saying of Zuckerberg as recently as August 2024: “We are watching him closely, and if he does anything illegal this time he will spend the rest of his life in prison.”
Trump’s comments then appeared to have been in reference to allegations, long-touted by MAGA supporters and political figures on the far right, that Facebook and other Meta-owned platforms were conspiring to mute conservative voices via their content-moderation initiatives.
As part of his thaw in relations with the Republican president, Zuckerberg has since effectively stripped his companies of in-house moderation controls, opting instead for the “community notes” model trialled by Elon Musk on X.
Thursday’s Oval Office exchange didn’t go unnoticed. It’s embarrassing how far Tech Billionaires will go to suck up to Trump,” Democratic Congresswoman Mary Gay Scanlon posted to X. “Now they are just making up numbers while screwing over the American People.”
Veteran freelance journalist Paul Farhi also jumped on the bandwagon. “As June 30, Meta’s assets were valued at $295 billion. So $600 billion presupposes borrowing more than twice its book value. For *one year* of capital investment,” he wrote. “It’s about the most ludicrous statement the CEO of a publicly traded company can make.”
