After former US President and Republican presidential candidate Trump threatened Facebook founder Zuckerberg with "life-long imprisonment" in July this year, Zuckerberg praised Trump for being "domineering" when he was shot, and then this month he broke the news that the Biden administration had pressured him to investigate, which also triggered US public opinion. However, this did not stop Trump from "pursuing" him relentlessly.
According to the US Politico News Network on August 28 local time, in the new book "Save America" to be published next week, Trump still accused Zuckerberg of conspiring against him during the 2020 US presidential election and warned that if Zuckerberg did it again, "he would spend the rest of his life in prison." The report said that this was Trump's latest attack on Zuckerberg. The former president has repeatedly criticized the other party for interfering in the last election. At the same time, Facebook's parent company Meta has now taken measures and assured conservatives that the company will not influence the campaign of this year's election. According to reports, in the new book to be published on September 3 local time, there is an undated photo of Trump and Zuckerberg meeting in the White House. Under the photo, Trump wrote: "Zuckerberg will come to see me in the Oval Office. He will bring his very beautiful wife to the dinner and act very friendly, but behind the scenes he has been planning to install a shameful 'lock box'. This is the real conspiracy against the president."
Trump added that he was referring to the Zuckerbergs' $4.2 billion donation to election infrastructure during the 2020 U.S. presidential election, using legal loopholes to support Democratic candidates. "He told me that there is no one like Trump on Facebook, but at the same time, for some reason, he is secretly against me." Trump also wrote: "We are keeping a close eye on him, and if he does anything illegal this time, he will spend the rest of his life in jail - just like those who cheated in the 2024 presidential election." Politico News said that a spokesperson for Meta did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the latest disclosure in Trump's new book.
There is a long-standing grudge between Trump and Zuckerberg. In June 2020, when Trump was still the president of the United States, Zuckerberg said that "we are deeply shocked and disgusted by President Trump's divisive and inflammatory remarks," but at that time no action had been taken against the content posted by Trump.
On January 6, 2021, after the "Capitol Hill Riots" broke out in the United States, Trump's Facebook and Instagram accounts were banned. Zuckerberg said in a statement at the time that the company believed that "the risks of allowing the president to continue to use our services during this period are too great." It was not until February 2023 that Trump regained control of the two accounts. At that time, Trump also named Zuckerberg, saying that he cheated in the election. On July 10 this year, Trump posted on his self-created social media platform "Truth Social" that if he was re-elected as President of the United States, he would send "election fraudsters" to prison. He specifically mentioned the name of Facebook founder Zuckerberg. "Politico News Network" said that Republicans have been criticizing Facebook's parent company Meta for suppressing content that could hit Biden in the 2020 election, the most notable of which was reports about Biden's son Hunter Biden. At the time, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) warned that these reports may be part of a carefully planned election interference operation by Russia.
On August 26, local time, Zuckerberg wrote a letter to Jim Jordan, a Republican and chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, saying that he would remain politically "neutral" during this US election cycle and stop donating to local government elections to avoid being considered politically biased. He also publicly criticized Biden administration officials for "constantly" pressuring Facebook in 2021 to censor posts related to the epidemic. Zuckerberg said he "regretted" the company's succumbing to these demands.
When the US House of Representatives Judiciary Committee account X released the letter, it said: "Mark Zuckerberg admitted three things in this letter - first, the Biden-Harris administration 'pressured' Facebook to censor Americans; second, Facebook censored Americans; and third, Facebook suppressed news about Hunter Biden's laptop." According to Bloomberg, the authenticity of the letter was confirmed by Meta.