Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, has donated $1 million (£786,000) to President-elect Donald Trump’s inaugural fund.
Big tech boss Mark Zuckerberg dined with Trump at the president’s Mar-a-Lago resort in November, aiming to mend relations between himself, his company and Trump after the election. .
Trump has previously been highly critical of Zuckerberg and Facebook, calling the platform “anti-Trump” in 2017.
Mehta is not believed to have made similar contributions to President Joe Biden’s 2020 inaugural fund or to President Trump’s previous inaugural fund in 2016.
The company confirmed to multiple distributors on Wednesday a $1 million donation to the startup fund.
The inauguration fund is used to pay for events and activities when a new president takes office, but some believe it is an attempt to curry favor with the new administration.
The donation was confirmed by the BBC’s US media partner CBS on Wednesday and was first reported by the Wall Street Journal.
The BBC has contacted Mehta for comment.
Trump will be inaugurated as the 47th President of the United States on January 20th.
Trump and Zuckerberg’s relationship has historically been far less cordial.
This is especially relevant when Facebook and Instagram suspended the former president’s accounts in 2021 after he said he praised those who committed the violence at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. worsened.
Since then, President Trump has waged a war of words against meth, calling Facebook an “enemy of the people” in March.
He said the law banning TikTok in the U.S. would give Facebook an unfair advantage unless parent company ByteDance sells it.
Zuckerberg wrote to Republican lawmakers in August that he regretted bowing to pressure from the Biden administration to “censor” some content on Facebook and Instagram during the coronavirus pandemic. said.
Trump wrote in a book published in September that Zuckerberg would “spend the rest of his life in prison” if he tried to interfere in the 2024 election.
However, the president-elect appears to have softened his stance since then.
He said on a podcast in October that he was “good” that Zuckerberg was “not running” and thanked him for personally calling him after the assassination attempt.
Still, Zuckerberg is no closer to Trump than fellow tech titan Elon Musk.
The owner of Tesla and X has been called Trump’s “first buddy” because of his large donations to his campaign.
Musk was appointed to head the new Department of Government Efficiency (Doge).
There was no such closeness between Mr. Musk and Mr. Zuckerberg, but the once-contentious feud between them now appears to have ended.
