Facebook’s parent company Meta is doubling down on its rightward shift, with a flurry of recent moves from the company reflecting a desire to be seen as more welcoming to conservatives.
The latest sign: Meta has hired Henry Rodgers, chief national correspondent for The Daily Caller, for a policy role. After working for eight years at the news site co-founded by Tucker Carlson, the firebrand conservative broadcaster, Rodgers’ new job at Meta will entail helping shape the company’s public policy. “Excited for this new chapter,” Rodgers tweeted on X. “DC friends, I will be seeing you all soon.”
This hire will, of course, be seen through the lens of Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s adjusted and now-cordial relationship with President Trump and with Trump’s MAGA allies. In a sign of how Zuckerberg is clearly in his DGAF era when it comes to politics, for example, he’s also recently defended the company cutting ties with its fact-checking apparatus (something that had long raised the ire of conservatives). “Meta’s platforms are built to be places where people can express themselves freely,” the company said in a news release about the announcement.
“That can be messy. On platforms where billions of people can have a voice, all the good, bad and ugly is on display. But that’s free expression.”
Meanwhile, Meta also just added one of Trump’s longtime friends, UFC president and CEO Dana White, to its board of directors. Worth noting about that news, Meta proactively reached out to White about the board seat — which is quite the 180, considering that Facebook once banned Trump entirely from its family of apps. And then there’s the fact Zuckerberg was also rubbing shoulders with his fellow tech titans for Trump’s inauguration last month, the president whose reaction to getting shot last year Zuck has described as “badass.”
Meta, which contributed $1 million to Trump’s inauguration, also recently ended its diversity programs. All of which is to say: Long story short, it’s not just Zuckerberg that got a much-hyped tech bro glow up — it seems that Meta itself is getting one, too.
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