American bada--.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has lauded former President Trump’s reaction to being shot at on Saturday, labeling the Republican nominee as a "bada--" after he got to his feet and clenched his fist immediately after the assassination attempt.
Zuckerberg, 40, who has often faced the ire of the 45th President over how he operates Facebook and Instagram, said Trump’s resoluteness after coming so close to death helps explain his appeal to voters.
"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 bada-- things I’ve ever seen in my life," Zuckerberg said Thursday during an interview at the company’s headquarters in Menlo Park, California, according to Bloomberg.
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"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."
Trump was shot at by a lone gunman – identified as 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks – at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday, with a bullet striking his ear. One victim, Corey Comperatore, was fatally shot while two other victims, 57-year-old David Dutch of New Kensington, Pennsylvania, and 74-year-old James Copenhaver of Moon Township, Pennsylvania, were wounded. Both are now in stable condition.
While Zuckerberg heaped praise on Trump, he declined to endorse him, unlike X owner Elon Musk who has come round to the former president and pledged to donate about $45 million per month to a super PAC backing the GOP nominee. Silicon Valley leaders Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz are also warming to the former president.
Zuckerberg also declined to President Joe Biden, should he be the Democratic nominee, adding that he is "not planning" to be involved in the election in any way.
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That’s a dramatic shift from the 2020 election, when Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan poured about $400 million to two nonprofit organizations to help various government election offices across the country with work and equipment including ballot drop boxes, voting equipment, additional manpower and public education campaigns on new voting methods. Democrats defended the money as necessary to conduct the election safely during the COVID-19 pandemic, while Republicans noted most of the grants targeted Democrat-leaning districts.
Meta has also changed users' algorithm settings to the default position of limiting political content as the company seeks to have less influence on elections.
"The main thing that I hear from people is that they actually want to see less political content on our services because they come to our services to connect with people," Zuckerberg said in the interview.
"Meta is already recommending less political content to its users, he added. "I think you’re going to see our services play less of a role in this election than they have in the past."
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Zuckerberg was speaking during a discussion about the future of AI and social media, Bloomberg reports.
META suspended Trump from both Facebook and Instagram for two years in the wake of the January 6, 2021, Capitol riots, accusing the then president of undermining the peaceful transition of power. He’s since been reinstated. Trump was also booted from X, then known as Twitter, resulting in Trump starting his own social media application, Truth Social.
While Trump pushed for a ban on the Chinese-owned video app, TikTok, while president, he has since changed his tune, arguing that a ban would double Meta’s business.
