What’s up with Mark Zuckerberg speaking to Trump on the phone twice this summer?

The New York Times and Mark Zuckerberg would have us believe that Zuckerberg is “done with politics.” But is that true?

The Times on Tuesday published an article about Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg that reads as if it was written by Zuckerberg himself. After spending late 2016 and much of 2017 defending his company against attacks from all sides — regarding its sale of our personal data, as well as allowing the Russians to manipulate our elections in part through Facebook — and then spending much of the next few years defending it against Republican attacks on Facebook’s liberal bias, you can see why Zuckerberg would want the world to think he’s politically agnostic.

“According to more than a dozen friends, advisers and executives familiar with his thinking, he has preferred to wash his hands of it,” the Times wrote.

Looking back on his former self over the past decade, Zuckerberg recently said, “I think I was not very adept at understanding the political climate and I fundamentally misdiagnosed the problem.”

But hasn’t Zuckerberg, who in his younger years advocated for things like a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, made a predictable slide toward the center or right with his politics as he’s gotten older and richer? That’s essentially what Mother Jones suggests in a counter-story headlined “Mark Zuckerberg Isn’t Done With Politics. His Politics Have Just Changed.”

According to The Times, Zuckerberg had two phone conversations with Donald Trump this summer. Mother Jones notes, “There’s not much more political than a nice phone call with a man who tried to stage a coup.”

Zuckerberg has also backed away from an earlier effort to invest in election integrity efforts — a clear concession to Trump and Republicans who would rather the country remain suspicious of all elections so they can keep winning them. And he’s apparently been calling himself a “libertarian” lately, which ties him closer to the more sinister Elon Musk, who himself has decided to go all-in on Trump this year, for better or for worse.

Zuckerberg clearly wants to stay out of the conversation and wants Meta to no longer be the target of anti-monopoly investigations and the like.

“Mark and his colleagues are probably looking at the risks of political involvement and deciding that neutrality is the safer option until this election is over,” former Facebook employee Nu Wexler, now a director at a political consulting firm, told the Times.

But what’s neutral about talking to Donald Trump and waxing lyrical in an interview about how “cool” Trump was to raise his fist in the air and show his strength to the crowd in Pennsylvania after he was nearly shot in July?

“It’s obviously a very important and historic election,” Zuckerberg said in the same Bloomberg interview, when asked about the upcoming election. But he quickly pivoted to Meta’s role in the election.

“The number one thing I hear from people is that they actually want to see less political content on our services… So I think you’ll see our services play less of a role in this election than we have in the past,” Zuckerberg said. “I also plan to… not play a significant role in this election… And that means we’re not endorsing either candidate,” he added.

Okay, so Trump attempted a coup, got banned from Facebook for two years, and now you’re too worried about the backlash to support his rival in an election so he might not run again? And you think he’s pretty cool tough Now? Please.

Previously: Mark Zuckerberg has a very strange statue made of his wife

Top image: Mark Zuckerberg testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee in the Dirksen Senate Office Building on January 31, 2024 in Washington, DC. The committee heard testimony from the heads of the largest tech companies about the dangers of child sexual exploitation on social media. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)