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Donald Trump has claimed that Mark Zuckerberg told him in a phone call shortly after the assassination attempt of the former president that there’s “no way I can vote for a Democrat”.
Trump told New York Magazine that the Meta CEO called him after he was shot in the ear at a July 13 campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
“Mark Zuckerberg called up and said, ‘I’ve never supported a Republican before, but there’s no way I can vote for a Democrat in this election,’” Trump told the magazine. “He’s a guy that, his parents, everybody was always Democrat. He said, ‘I will never vote for the people running against you after watching what you did.’”
Zuckerberg has previously spoken about the attempted assassination of Trump.
“Seeing Donald Trump get up after getting shot in the face and pump his fist in the air with the American flag is one of the most badass things I’ve ever seen in my life,” Zuckerberg told Bloomberg, a week after the Butler rally.
“On some level as an American, it’s like hard to not get kind of emotional about that spirit and that fight, and I think that that’s why a lot of people like the guy,” he continued.
Zuckerberg has not publicly endorsed a candidate in the 2024 presidential election. He told Bloomberg in July that he’s “not planning” to get involved in the election in any way.
“As Mark has said publicly, he’s not endorsing anybody in this race and has not communicated to anybody how he intends to vote,” a Meta spokesperson told New York Magazine.
A Meta spokesperson had no further comment when contacted by The Independent.
Trump’s comments on Zuckerberg come just days after Politico reported that the former president threatened to imprison the tech mogul.
“He told me there was nobody like Trump on Facebook. But at the same time, and for whatever reason, steered it against me,” Trump wrote, according to an excerpt of Trump’s upcoming book, Save America, reviewed by Politico.
“We are watching him closely, and if he does anything illegal this time he will spend the rest of his life in prison — as will others who cheat in the 2024 Presidential Election.”
Trump has repeatedly spread the false claim that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him, and that President Joe Biden did not legitimately win.
Trump has also falsely claimed that Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan swayed the election after they donated $400 million to local election offices in 2020 to help them grapple with disruptions from the pandemic.
“Mark Zuckerberg, in my opinion, a criminal, is allowed to spend over $400 million and therefore able to change the course of a Presidential Election, and nothing happens to Facebook,” Trump said, back in 2021.
Trump also baselessly accused his own former administration officials of pressuring Meta to suppress posts about Hunter Biden’s laptop.
“Zuckerberg admits that the White House pushed to SUPPRESS HUNTER BIDEN LAPTOP STORY (& much more!),” Trump wrote on Truth Social last month.
“IN OTHER WORDS, THE 2020 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION WAS RIGGED,” he continued.
Trump was referring to a letter sent by Zuckerberg to the House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan. Zuckerberg admitted in the letter that in 2021, the Biden administration “pressured” Meta to censor certain COVID-19 content.
Zuckerberg also said that Meta “temporarily demoted” a New York Post story about Hunter Biden’s laptop in 2020 —when Trump was president — after the FBI warned the story could be part of a Russian disinformation campaign.
However, Zuckerberg did not at any point state that the White House pressured Meta to demote the story, as Trump falsely claimed.
