There is so much…sh*t flooding the zone of late, it’s hard to grok it all. But when the CEO of one of the richest and most morally questionable companies in tech’s history leverages his access to lobby the President of the United States, and it’s just yet another WTF headline, well, it bears comment.
Mark Zuckerberg, the third richest man in the world, visited President Trump, the 700th richest man in the world. His goal? To get the President to call off Meta’s impending antitrust trial, one that could go very poorly for the company, both because of the evidence and testimony such a trial would bring the public light, and because one of the possible remedies would be breaking up Meta entirely.
Now, in a normal world, we could trust that the President of the United States would never take a meeting with the CEO of a company facing a major antitrust action. The optics alone would kill such a request, and in the times Before Trump, optics mattered. But optics no longer matter. Trump is happy to take any meeting that might be to his advantage. He’s running the country like a mafia boss who demands his cut. A muscle racket, I believe it’s called.
Which raises a new set of questions. What might Zuckerberg give Trump to get him to kill the DOJ trial? Well, let’s start with the fact that anyone can pay off our President by quietly directing a chunk of change towards the President’s meme coin. Investing, say, $50 million in the shit coin, which can’t be traced, would prop the President’s net worth up nicely and drive profits and fees into the family business.
$50 million is a day’s interest for Zuckerberg, and would be well worth it to spare his company a disemboweling, should the DOJ force Meta to sell WhatsApp or Instagram. Then again, perhaps Zuckerberg would worry that someone might find out about his investment, and those optics might actually matter to him. So he might look for another way to pay tribute to the Mob Boss.
How might that happen? I can imagine a few ways. He could give Trump preferred access to Meta’s advertising systems, which the President and his political and business partners use to influence poll numbers, raise money, and sell Trump-branded everything. If the country’s most respected law firms have already offered Trump tens of million in free legal services, where’s the harm in doing the same with Meta’s advertising services, after all?
Beyond that, he could offer Trump access to Meta’s “god view” – the data the company has on individuals and audiences around the world. These are Meta’s crown jewels, of course, but when the jewels are already on chopping block….
I could go on, but I think I’ve made my point. If you trust Trump and Zuckerberg to behave morally and within what used to be understood as the law, well, I have a bridge in Brooklyn I’d like to sell you.
Truth is, there’s more political value for Trump in keeping the trial moving forward – and he’s already flush with the bribes and graft he’s extracted to date. I’d wager Meta’s trial will go forward, and the President has cut a deal with Zuckerberg that insures Meta will remain intact. At what price? We’ll never know.
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Well put. It’s hard to fathom how a trend of ultra authoritarianism so perfectly came to align with modern technology-media businesses. Apple’s Jobs was a different time, a different meme: When personal computers met the post-60s milieu.
Wow—this really cuts through the noise. It’s wild how something so significant can feel like just another headline in the chaos. The idea of Zuck personally lobbying Trump to avoid antitrust fallout is both unsurprising and deeply unsettling. Power, influence, and the blurring of public and private interests—it’s a lot to unpack, and it definitely deserves more attention than it’s getting.