Mark Zuckerberg Applauds Trump’s ‘Badass’ Response To Assassination Attempt

Mark Zuckerberg has praised former President Donald Trump’s reaction to his attempted assassination at a Pennsylvania rally last weekend.

The Meta CEO ― in a recent interview with Bloomberg’s Emily Chang ― recalled seeing the Republican presidential nominee get up after he was shot before pumping his right fist in the air, moments seen in widely-shared photos from the shooting that killed one rally attendee.

Zuckerberg described the Trump rally scene, which featured an American flag waving in the sky, as “one of the most badass things” he’s seen in his life.

“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,” Zuckerberg said.

The Meta CEO, who once criticised Trump over his executive order on immigration back in 2017, hasn’t endorsed the Republican nominee or President Joe Biden as they look to win a second White House term in November.

“I’ve done some stuff personally in the past, I’m not planning on doing that this time,” said Zuckerberg, who noted that he’s not looking to back a presidential candidate in the election.

Zuckerberg’s remarks arrive after fellow multi-billionaire and the richest person in the world Elon Musk endorsed Trump following his assassination attempt.

Musk has reportedly pledged to donate $45 million a month to America PAC, a political action committee working to elect Trump.

Zuckerberg, elsewhere in his interview with Chang, claimed users on Meta’s platforms “actually want” to see less political content and they hope to use the sites to “connect with people.”

Meta’s Instagram announced earlier this year that the platform wouldn’t “proactively recommend” political content from accounts users don’t follow.

“I think you’re going to see our services play less of a role in this election than they have in the past,” Zuckerberg said.

Trump — whose Facebook and Instagram accounts were suspended in the wake of the Jan. 6, 2021 attack before being reinstated last year — has referred to Facebook as the “enemy of the people” and seemingly warned Zuckerberg he’d send him to prison if he were to return to the Oval Office.

Trump, in comments on TikTok, recently told Bloomberg Businessweek that he’s against banning the Chinese-owned platform as “you need competition” before blasting Facebook and Instagram.

“That’s, you know, that’s Zuckerberg,” the former president said.

Biden, too, claimed he’s “never been a big Zuckerberg fan” back in 2020 and referred to the Meta CEO at the time as “a real problem.”

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Elon Musk Aims Below The Belt With Latest Mark Zuckerberg Attack

The swell of enthusiasm around the new app Threads seems to be too much for Elon Musk.

The CEO of Twitter has been lashing out at fellow tech mogul Mark Zuckerberg since the release of Meta’s micro-blogging app last Tuesday, but he truly aimed below the belt when he challenged his rival to “a literal dick-measuring contest” on Sunday night.

Musk’s proposition followed a crass jab he tweeted hours earlier, “Zuck is a cuck” ― short for “cuckold”, which has become a go-to insult for the right-wing set.

Twitter owner Elon Musk attends the Viva Technology conference in Paris on June 16.
Twitter owner Elon Musk attends the Viva Technology conference in Paris on June 16.

Chesnot via Getty Images

The embattled tech CEO has already threatened to sue Meta over Threads, which TechCrunch reports hit 100 million users by Monday morning, just five days after its launch.

Twitter currently has around 250 million active users, but data from internet services company Cloudflare seems to show traffic has been steadily declining since the start of 2023, following Musk’s purchase of the app for $44 billion last fall.

Musk’s feud with Zuckerberg took a decidedly personal turn last month after he challenged the Facebook founder to a cage match. In a surprising twist, the usually mild Zuckerberg tweeted back at Musk, writing, “Send me location.”

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg speaks at the Paley Center in New York on Oct. 25, 2019.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg speaks at the Paley Center in New York on Oct. 25, 2019.

via Associated Press

Zuckerberg has pitched Threads as a more welcoming alternative to Twitter and its quarrelsome culture.

“The goal is to keep it friendly as it expands,” he wrote on Threads last week. “I think it’s possible and will ultimately be the key to its success. That’s one reason why Twitter never succeeded as much as I think it should have, and we want to do it differently.”

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