Mark Zuckerberg claims he's 'probably been the most outspoken CEO in the country' against Trump

In leaked audio recordings from internal Facebook meetings obtained by The Verge, founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg can be heard attempting to juggle the calls from his generally liberal-leaning employees to take a harder line against the Trump administration and complaints about censorship of posts from the site's more conservative user base.

Zuckerberg's comments weren't too far off from those he's made publicly, and he maintained his belief that Facebook has to "take into account that there are different views on different things, and that if someone disagrees with a view, that doesn't necessarily mean that they're hateful or have bad intent."

In one recording, Facebook's chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg can be heard echoing this sentiment to the company's incoming interns, telling them "what we do is really try not to take a point of view" and explaining that she doesn't let her own "very strong point of view on this president ... enter into my judgments when I'm doing policy changes."

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

At the same time, Zuckerberg, at one company Q&A session in July, addressed employees' concerns that he might be too soft on Trump. "I think I've probably been the most outspoken CEO in the country against — on the many things that I disagree with this president on," he said, citing his disapproval of Trump's stances on immigration and climate change, as well as his "divisive and inflammatory rhetoric, that I've called disgusting." Read more at The Verge.