In 2021, President Donald Trump sued Meta after his accounts were suspended in the wake of the January 6 riot. WSJ’s Rebecca Ballhaus explains why Mark Zuckerberg agreed to settle for $25 million yesterday. Further Reading: - Meta to Pay $25 Million to Settle 2021 Trump Lawsuit - Meta Ends Fact-Checking on Facebook, Instagram in Free-Speech Pitch - ABC News to Pay $15 Million to Settle Donald Trump Defamation Lawsuit Further Listening: - Corporate America's Embrace of Trump 2.0 - The End of Facebook’s Content Moderation Era Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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Weeks after Donald Trump won the election, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, flew to Florida to have dinner with the president-elect.
They're sitting on the patio at Mar-a-Lago. So, you know, other diners can see them. That was a big theme of that whole, you know, post-election, pre-inauguration period was that guests at Mar-a-Lago were just sort of seeing who the president was meeting with on any given night.
That's our colleague Rebecca Ballhaus. She says the dinner was part of efforts by Meta to court Trump.
So they're sitting on this patio, and it's a pretty small group. And, you know, by all accounts, the dinner went well. I think it went remarkably well, given that just a couple months earlier, Trump had been tweeting about how Zuckerberg should maybe go to prison. But at the end of the dinner, Trump brings up this issue of the lawsuit that he had filed against Meta in 2021.
And the signal that he's sending is this is something we need to resolve before this friendship that you're seeking can really move forward.
And yesterday, they came to a resolution. Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, agreed to pay $25 million to settle the lawsuit. What stands out to you about this settlement?
I think just the fact that Zuckerberg is settling a case from four years ago, that when Trump first filed these lawsuits, they were described by legal experts as pretty frivolous, that he's now settling it, let alone for $25 million, is pretty remarkable.
I think it shows just how far Zuckerberg and likely some of these other CEOs are willing to go to make inroads with this administration and with Trump.
Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power. I'm Kate Leinbaugh. It's Thursday, January 30th. Coming up on the show, Meta's $25 million settlement with President Trump.
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