Mark Zuckerberg Grovels for Dissing Sheryl Sandberg to Trump

Sheryl Sandberg and Mark Zuckerberg
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Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg hit back amid reports that he blamed former COO Sheryl Sandberg for the company’s “culture” issues during a meeting with President-elect Donald Trump.

Zuckerberg, who seemed to cement his MAGA turn with a rollback of Meta’s content regulation policy, is reported to have thrown Sandberg under the bus over the company’s “inclusivity initiative,” reported the New York Post.

In an effort to counter the reports, Zuckerberg took some time to lay praise on Sandberg in a Friday post on Threads.

This was Zuckerberg and Sandberg attending the exclusive Allen & Company conference in Sun Valley in 2021, the year before she left her executive role at Meta. / Kevin Dietsch / Getty Images
This was Zuckerberg and Sandberg attending the exclusive Allen & Company conference in Sun Valley in 2021, the year before she left her executive role at Meta. / Kevin Dietsch / Getty Images

“Sheryl did amazing work at Meta and will forever be a legend in the industry. She built one of the greatest businesses of all time and taught me much of what I know,” said Zuckerberg, responding to a Threads user who shared an article about Sandberg raising him “like a parent” did not “age well.”

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Zuckerberg called claims that he blamed Sandberg “bogus.”

He wrote, “I answered a question about where the phrase ‘bring your whole self to work’ came from, and now there’s a whole bogus narrative saying I blamed Sheryl for a bunch of stuff that I never did and never will :shrug:”

Sandberg responded under his post with a “thank you, @zuck.”

She added, “I will always be grateful for the many years we spent building a great business together — and for your friendship that got me through some of the hardest times of my life and continues to this day.”

Sandberg stepped down from her COO role in 2022, followed by an exit from the Meta board in 2024.

A former Democratic aide turned Silicon Valley executive, she became best known for championing female leadership, including writing Lean In. Since leaving Facebook she has avoided commenting on Zuckerberg and has so far said nothing about his embrace of MAGA and Trump.

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Zuckerberg’s turn to the right has included dining with Trump at Mar-a-Lago, where he reportedly threw his former number two under the bus, scheduling a party for him in D.C., donating to his inauguration and accepting an invitation to be on the dais with Trump.

He also ousted Nick Clegg, the left-leaning former British deputy prime minister who had been Meta’s president of global affairs, in favor of Joe Kaplan, a Republican operative who had advised President George W. Bush. Kaplan was best known previously for sitting behind his friend Brett Kavanaugh during his contentious Senate confirmation hearing for the Supreme Court.

Zuckerberg has since ended fact-checking on Meta’s platforms, which include Facebook, Instagram and Threads, and said that he will allow “civic content”—news and political post—to be prioritized again. In the wake of the 2020 election, he had moved the platforms, over which he effectively has sole control thanks to Meta’s ownership structure, away from political content and stepped up fact-checking.

His cancelation of fact-checking was intended to please Trump. It was announced on Fox News' Fox and Friends, which the president-elect watches religiously, and included an attack on fact-checkers for being “biased.” Zuckerberg’s rapid conversion to MAGA has not been entirely embraced by some of Trump’s fans. Among those expressing skepticism have been Laura Loomer, the conspiracy theorist Trump super-fan, who posted on X, “Stop groveling to tech billionaires. Zuckerberg hasn’t provided any evidence at all that he has changed.”