Corporate America has a message for Donald Trump: We believe what you believe. In the months since the Republican's election victory, Big Business has been working frenetically to erase any evidence of "woke" or un-Trumpy tendencies. Diversity, equity, and inclusion departments have been axed; climate-change groups have been abandoned; and anything bearing a trans flag has been shredded. Executives who once spouted progressive pablum are now talking like MAGA true believers. Just hours after killing his company's DEI programs and fact-check systems last week, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg appeared on Joe Rogan's podcast to bemoan how society has become "emasculated." It's a positive that America is returning to a culture that "celebrates the aggression a bit more," said Zuckerberg. "Masculine energy is good." He flexed his own masculine energy a few days later, announcing a 5 percent cut to Meta's workforce.
Some liberal Meta employees were stunned by this pivot. "What happened to the company I joined all those years ago?" one wrote on an internal message board. "Wow, we really capitulated on a lot of our supposed values," another posted. Yet you can't capitulate on values you never really held. Zuckerberg has long preached the merits of a connected world, yet is currently building a 5,000-square-foot underground bunker at his estate in Hawaii — complete with blast-proof doors and its own energy and food supplies — to keep that world out. In a 2017 speech to Harvard graduates, he dinged then-President Trump by railing against isolationists who would slow "the flow of knowledge, trade, and immigration." On Jan. 20, he sat on the dais at Trump’s second inauguration and applauded as the new president extolled tariffs and migrant crackdowns. As a surfer, Zuckerberg knows how to read the water and can see the political tide has turned in the Right's favor. But should it shift against Trump in the next few years, you can be sure the Meta CEO will be furiously paddling away, positioning himself for the next big wave.
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
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.
-
Political cartoons for January 11Cartoons Sunday’s political cartoons include green energy, a simple plan, and more
-
The launch of the world’s first weight-loss pillSpeed Read Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly have been racing to release the first GLP-1 pill
-
Maduro’s capture: two hours that shook the worldTalking Point Evoking memories of the US assault on Panama in 1989, the manoeuvre is being described as the fastest regime change in history
-
Is social media over?Today’s Big Question We may look back on 2025 as the moment social media jumped the shark
-
Data centers could soon be orbiting in spaceUnder the radar The AI revolution is going cosmic
-
AI griefbots create a computerized afterlifeUnder the Radar Some say the machines help people mourn; others are skeptical
-
Metaverse: Zuckerberg quits his virtual obsessionFeature The tech mogul’s vision for virtual worlds inhabited by millions of users was clearly a flop
-
Separating the real from the fake: tips for spotting AI slopThe Week Recommends Advanced AI may have made slop videos harder to spot, but experts say it’s still possible to detect them
-
Blackouts: Why the internet keeps breakingfeature Cloudflare was the latest in a string of outages
-
Has Google burst the Nvidia bubble?Today’s Big Question The world’s most valuable company faces a challenge from Google, as companies eye up ‘more specialised’ and ‘less power-hungry’ alternatives
-
X update unveils foreign MAGA boostersSpeed Read The accounts were located in Russia and Nigeria, among other countries
