Trump Uses Meta Letter to Resurrect His Election Fraud Conspiracy
Donald Trump seemed immensely pleased Tuesday after Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote to Congress claiming that the Biden administration had pressured him to censor disinformation about the Covid-19 pandemic.
In a letter to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, Zuckerberg wrote that the Biden administration had “repeatedly pressured” Meta to remove “certain Covid-19 content, including humor and satire.”
“I believe that the government pressure was wrong, and I regret that we were not more outspoken about it,” Zuckerberg wrote. While Meta’s platform Facebook has been all but taken over by outlandish A.I. content and fake news, Zuckerberg lamented that he had not allowed misinformation endangering public health to run rampant, as well.
“I feel strongly that we should not compromise our content standards due to pressure from any Administration in either direction,” he said. “And we are ready to push back if something like this happens again.”
Zuckerberg also wrote that he regretted temporarily “demoting” the 2020 New York Post story about Hunter Biden’s laptop while waiting for fact-checkers to assess the validity of the story. He said the FBI had previously warned Meta about a potential Russian disinformation campaign against the Biden family involving Burisma, a Ukrainian oil company for which Hunter Biden worked.
“It’s since been made clear that the reporting was not Russian disinformation and we should not have demoted the story,” Zuckerberg wrote. He noted that Meta had changed its protocols and would no longer demote content in the U.S. while waiting for it to be fact-checked—touting how easy he had made it for disinformation to propagate on his sites.
Zuckerberg also tried to distance himself from the $350 million in grants he and his wife had provided for election administrators struggling to adapt to pandemic-era election restrictions in 2020.
“I know that some believe this work benefited one party over the other,” Zuckerberg wrote, even though the FEC had ruled that it did not. “My goal is to be neutral and not play a role one way or another—or even appear to be playing a role. So I don’t plan on making a similar contribution this cycle.”
For someone whose stated goal is to be neutral, Zuckerberg’s letter sure made Trump happy.
“This is what everyone’s been waiting for—THE 2020 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION WAS RIGGED!” Trump wrote in a jubilant post on Truth Social. Beneath his post, he reshared a post from his lawyer, Alina Habba, who claimed the Biden administration was “gagging our media and censoring America.”
In another post on Truth Social, Trump wrote, “Zuckerberg admits that the White House pushed to SUPPRESS HUNTER BIDEN LAPTOP STORY (& much more!). IN OTHER WORDS, THE 2020 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION WAS RIGGED.”
Crucially, Zuckerberg did not claim that the Biden administration had forced him to remove, or even demote the story about Hunter Biden’s laptop.
