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Former President Donald Trump claimed that after he survived an assassination attempt in July, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg called him and said he would not vote for a Democrat in the 2024 election — a claim that Meta is contesting.
Speaking to New York Magazine, Trump said, “Mark Zuckerberg called up and said, ‘I’ve never supported a Republican before, but there’s no way I can vote for a Democrat in this election.”
“He’s a guy that, his parents, everybody was always Democrat,” Trump added.
Zuckerberg allegedly told the Republican presidential nominee: “I will never vote for the people running against you after watching what you did.”
In a statement to New York Magazine, Meta didn’t deny that the conversation occurred but contested Trump’s account of what happened.
“As Mark has said publicly, he’s not endorsing anybody in this race and has not communicated to anybody how he intends to vote,” a spokesperson told the magazine. Meta did not immediately return a request for comment from Quartz.
The former president and Zuckerberg have a complicated history.
Trump wrote in a coffee-table book published on Sept. 3 called Saving America that Zuckerberg plotted against him in the 2020 election. He also said the CEO would “spend the rest of his life in prison” if he did it again, according to Politico. He has previously called Facebook “the enemy of the people.”
But when Trump was shot in the ear at a July rally, Zuckerberg praised the former president’s reaction of standing up and raising his fist.
“Seeing Donald Trump get up after getting shot in the face and pump his fist in the air with the American flag is one of the most badass things I’ve ever seen in my life,” he told Bloomberg. “On some level as an American, it’s like hard to not get kind of emotional about that spirit and that fight, and I think that that’s why a lot of people like the guy.”
Still, in the same interview, Zuckerberg said he would not endorse a candidate and did not have any plans to get involved in the election, including through donations.