Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg met with President-elect Donald Trump before removing misinformation guardrails and fact-checks, Oklahoma GOP Senator Markwayne Mullin claimed on Thursday.
In an interview with right-wing commentator Benny Johnson, the senator said Meta’s announcement that it would ditch independent fact-checkers in favor of an X-style community notes system came just a day after a visit with Trump, fueling accusations that Zuckerberg made the changes to appease the incoming administration.
“Mark met with President Trump the day before he announced that they were going to change the way that they do uhh, censorship, essentially,” Mullin told Johnson. “The big announcement that he made the other day, President Trump, and spoke about that, and Mark had been down to see the president several times already.”
The fact-check change came alongside a set of sweeping policy and staffing refreshes at Meta, including the appointment of Trump ally Joel Kaplan to helm the Facebook parent company's policy department. NBC News reports that the company also changed its hate speech rules on the platform, now allowing users to call LGBTQ+ people mentally ill.
The Oklahoma senator claimed he hears from Zuckerberg regularly, alleging the Meta CEO and martial arts enthusiast texted him “a couple of times” to ask about sparring together.
“The guy’s got into jujitsu real heavy. He wants me to come down there and roll with him,” Mullin said, adding the CEO has “changed” his ways towards the GOP. “He wants to train – He actually wants to get in the cage and fight. He said, ‘I’d love for you to come down and spar if we can.’”
Zuckerberg isn’t the only figure seeking Trump’s blessing, Mullin said.
Mullin characterized Barack Obama's chummy attitude toward Trump at Jimmy Carter’s funeral on Thursday showed the former president was “kissing the ring," adding that Obama “recognizes” Trump as the most popular politician in the country.
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