Why Zuckerberg’s Trump Love-In Proves He’s Anything But Macho Man

Donald Trump, Mark Zukerberg gif
Illustration by Eric Faison/The Daily Beast/Getty Images/Reuters

Tech multi-billionaire and aspiring macho man Mark Zuckerberg blew an opportunity to prove himself a stand-up guy during his three hour interview on the January 10 episode of the Joe Rogan Experience podcast.

The Meta CEO sounded manly enough as he chatted with Rogan about martial arts and masculine energy and hunting feral pigs on his Hawaii ranch. The test came when the topic turned to social media and free speech and President-elect Donald Trump.

“Trump was famously kicked off Twitter,” Rogan said at this point. “That was a huge issue like after January 6. They removed at the time the sitting president. It was kind of crazy to remove that person from social media because you have decided he incited a riot.”

This was the moment a stand-up guy—or stand-up anyone—would have said, “President Trump was not kicked off just Twitter. I kicked him off both Facebook and Instagram that same day for two years. And whether or not you believe he incited the attack on the Capitol, he did little to stop it as 174 police officers were injured.”

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Instead, Zuckerberg said nothing at all as the discussion moved on to other manly concerns.

Zuckerberg’s newly added muscles and the thickening neck that caught Rogan’s attention were only part of his effort at transformation.

Now the new Zuckerberg is now one of a half-dozen multi-billionaire “honored guests” invited to be seated along with the Trump family and former presidents during the Inaugural ceremony at the same temple of democracy the rioters stormed four years ago.

An early public signal of Zuckerberg’s impending change had come in July after Trump was shot. Trump is a TV guy before he is anything else and he was not going to let the Secret Service agents who threw themselves atop him to then just hustle him off the stage. That would have moved him out of news camera range as well as any more possible bullets.

Zuckerberg praised Trump during an interview with Bloomberg in July 2024. / YouTube/BloombergOriginals
Zuckerberg praised Trump during an interview with Bloomberg in July 2024. / YouTube/BloombergOriginals

Trump instead rose and raised his right hand in a fist to create an image that could not have been more powerful if it had been composed by Hollywood’s best. The elevation of the stage resulted in a camera angle that made Trump look more heroic and the full tableau more iconic. His ear was bloodied and there were bright red rivulets on his defiant face. An outsized American flag was suspended behind him. He gave a cry as if in defiance of the dark forces he had often told his supporters that he was facing on their behalf.

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“Fight! Fight! Fight!”

Zuckerberg was grabbed by Trump’s macho as he had never been by MAGA.

“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 badass things I’ve ever seen in my life,” Zuckerberg said in a Bloomberg TV interview at Meta’s main office in Menlo Park, California.

Zuckerberg added, “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.”

But Zuckerberg’s “badass” declaration was eclipsed by Elon Musk when Trump returned to the scene of the shooting in October. Musk strode the stage in a black MAGA hat that distinguished him from all the followers wearing red ones. He upstaged Trump himself as he leapt with upraised arms in jubilation. He called for everybody to go all in from Trump.

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“The true test of someone’s character is how they behave under fire,” Musk said. “We had one president who couldn’t climb a flight of stairs and another who was fist pumping after getting shot.”

He went on, “America is the home of the brave, and there’s no truer test than courage under fire, so who do you want representing America?”

Musk became known as “the first buddy” and joined in calls with foreign leaders and moved into a cottage at Mar-a-Lago, where he felt free to just walk in and sit down at the dinner table as Amazon’s Jeff Bezos made a post-election pilgrimage there. Zuckerbeg was not about to be left out and the third richest man in the world set out to become a number one suck-up.

As The New York Times tells it, Zuckerberg remained suspect in MAGA world.

From Left, Elon Musk, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew, Amazon Founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, will all attend Donald Trump's inauguration on January 20th, 2025 as honored guests. / Getty Images
From Left, Elon Musk, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew, Amazon Founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, will all attend Donald Trump's inauguration on January 20th, 2025 as honored guests. / Getty Images

A Trump book, Save America, released in September had called Facebook an “enemy of the people” and threatened “ZUCKERBUCKS” with life in prison for an electoral “ PLOT AGAINST THE PRESIDENT.”

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He underwent a kind of vetting at Mar-a-Lago by top Trump aide Stpehen Miller. The Times says Zuckerberg blamed Meta COO Sheryl Sandberg for the company’s DEI policies, which he was now ending. Zuckerberg subsequently posted a denial, dismissing the report as “bogus.” Sandberg posted an affirmation of their continuing friendship.

Miller is set to be the Trump administration’s lead person on mass deportations, and Zuckerberg could have proved himself a true stand-up bad ass if he had seized the meeting as an opportunity to advocate for undocumented students such as one he described during a commencement speech at Harvard in 2017.

Zuckerberg had dropped out of Harvard, but returned there in the wake of his bigger than big success to receive an honorary doctor of laws degree and address the graduating class. He recounted teaching a middle school class on entrepreneurship at Boys and Girls Club in Menlo Park at the urging of his wife, Precilla Chan.

“I taught them lessons on product development and marketing, and they taught me what it’s like feeling targeted for your race and having a family member in prison,” Zuckerberg told the commencement crowd. “I shared stories from my time in school, and they shared their hope of one day going to college too.”

He said that for the past five years, he had been having dinner with those kids every month. One of them had thrown him and Pricilla their first baby shower.

“And next year they’re going to college,” he reported. “Every one of them. First in their families.”

He spoke of one student in particular.

“One day after class I was talking to them about college, and one of my top students raised his hand and said he wasn’t sure he could go because he’s undocumented. He didn’t know if they’d let him in.”

Zuckerberg said he had taken the student out to breakfast for his birthday in 2016.

“I wanted to get him a present, so I asked him and he started talking about students he saw struggling and said. ‘You know, I’d really just like a book on social justice,’” Zuckerberg recalled. “I was blown away. Here’s a young guy who has every reason to be cynical. He didn’t know if the country he calls home — the only one he’s known — would deny him his dream of going to college. But he wasn’t feeling sorry for himself. He wasn’t even thinking of himself. He has a greater sense of purpose, and he’s going to bring people along with him.”

Zuckerberg continued, “It says something about our current situation that I can’t even say his name because I don’t want to put him at risk. But if a high school senior who doesn’t know what the future holds can do his part to move the world forward, then we owe it to the world to do our part too.”

But nine years after he said that, Zuckerberg was now sucking up to Miller.

And, on Monday, he will be an honored guest at the inauguration of a president who has called immigrants “vermin.” He will be co-hosting a black tie post Inauguration celebration.

The ease and completeness of Zuckerberg’s apparent transformation suggest that he simply becomes what best suits him in the particular circumstances. Imagine if he were enough of a stand-up guy to have told Miller and Trump about the kid who wanted a book on social justice. He might have added that his wife’s family were migrants, Chinese-Vietnamese “boat people” and that she was the first person in her family to attend college and was now a pediatrician.

But to have stood up would have risked Trump’s fury and cost Zuckerberg the invite to the inauguration along with any chance for further Trump favors. And it would have required something that drives human energy of whatever gender. This quality is at the heart of Mi Shebeirach, a prayer that Zuckerberg recited to the Harvard crowd, saying he sings it to his daughter when he is tucking her into bed and thinking of her future.

“May the source of strength, who blessed the ones before us, help us find the courage to make our lives a blessing.”