A major antitrust trial against Meta that kicked off on Monday — with CEO Mark Zuckerberg taking the stand — is a test of how much tech giants can get out of the MAGA embrace that swept across the industry in the wake of President Trump’s return to the White House.
While the trial is years in the making — the Federal Trade Commission launched the lawsuit in 2020 — there was speculation about whether the company could score a settlement.
Zuckerberg after all, has made striking moves to the right — even beyond his personal physical makeover. Meta donated $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund, and Zuckerberg was one of the several tech CEOs at Trump’s inauguration with a coveted space in the Capitol rotunda. Dana White, the president and CEO of the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) who endorsed Trump in 2024, was added to Meta’s board earlier this year.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Zuckerberg was personally lobbying Trump and White House officials to settle the matter rather than go to trial.
But while Apple CEO Tim Cook — another one of the tech CEOs to attend Trump’s inauguration — got a win over the weekend with the Trump administration announcing that smartphones would be (perhaps only temporarily) exempt from the latest round of tariffs, Zuckerberg did not get good news ahead of the trial date.
The case centers on the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) argument that Meta broke antitrust laws when it acquired Instagram in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014. The initial suit was dismissed, but then reworked under the Biden administration and his FTC Chair Lina Khan.
Meta argues that “the FTC’s weak lawsuit against Meta ignores reality,” and that it has “gerrymandered a fictitious market in which Facebook and Instagram compete only with Snapchat and an app called MeWe.”
The case also challenges the general instinct on the right to get out of the way of business — putting the burden on the FTC to publicly explain how the case against Meta fits into Trump’s vision of a “golden age” of deregulation.
Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo — a favorite of Trump’s — said in an interview with FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson on Monday that Meta made a “good point” by arguing that the case, brought up a decade after the FTC first reviewed the acquisitions, “sends the message that no deal is ever truly final.”
Ferguson, noting that “President Trump began this suit in 2020,” referenced the company’s actions nearly five years ago — without getting into specifics — that brought the bad blood between the social media giant and the right to a boiling point. And he aimed to calm any fears about more regulatory actions.
“I think it’s really important that we don’t over-regulate. I think that’s been one of President Trump’s principle objectives, that the private sector drives our growth… But I think 2020 revealed Meta is different, and companies with that much power can affect so many parts of our lives — not just our economic lives, our political lives and our social lives,” Ferguson said.
Conservatives had long complained about alleged bias on Meta’s social platforms, but a series of moves in 2020 and after severely worsened its perception on the right — including the decision to reduce the influence of the New York Post’s Hunter Biden laptop story, content moderation about COVID-19, and the millions of “Zuckerbucks” from the CEO to an organization that aimed to increase COVID-era election infrastructure. Trump wrote in his 2024 book that Zuckerberg had “steered” Facebook against him and would “spend the rest of his life in prison” if he did “anything illegal this time.”
Zuckerberg, for his part, has publicly expressed regret about many of those moves. He told the House Judiciary Committee last year that he should have been more outspoken about “government pressure” to “censor” content in 2021; that it “shouldn’t have demoted” the Hunter Biden laptop story; and that he did not plan to make contributions to support election infrastructure in 2024. The company also ended its independent fact-checking program and paid Trump $25 million to settle a lawsuit over its suspension of Trump after the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot.
Monday’s trial proceeding, though, may show that getting a seat at the inauguration table does not erase the long MAGA memories.
Further reading: Trump FTC faces first major test with Meta trial, from my colleague Julia Shapiro…. Mark Zuckerberg takes the stand at Meta trial.
I’m Emily Brooks, House leadership reporter at The Hill, here with a weekly look at the influences and debates on the right in Washington. Tell me what’s on your radar: [email protected]
TAX AVERSION AND ROCKEFELLER REPUBLICANS: Comments from a couple of Republicans — to include House Freedom Caucus Chair Andy Harris (R-Md.) — expressing openness to the idea of raising taxes on millionaires have set off a scramble on the right to shut down the idea.
Americans for Tax Reform,famous for its pledge that it gets elected officials to sign saying they will oppose raising taxes, published a roundup of conservatives opposing the idea. Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), for instance, said on Fox News over the weekend that he was not a fan of that idea.
Grover Norquist, the president of Americans for Tax Reform who has made a career out of calling for lower taxes, said in a press conference last week that he had talked to Harris and that the congressman’s position was more nuanced than headlines suggested. But Norquist also tore into the populist instincts popping up on the right in wake of the comments.
“These are called Rockefeller Republicans, but they call themselves the ‘new right.’ I think they’re too young to understand, yes, we lived through this. That was called Rockefeller Republicanism, that’s what we beat with Reagan okay?” Norquist said, referring to the moderates and liberals within the Republican party in the mid-20th century like former Vice President Nelson Rockefeller.
“They go, ‘No, let’s give the unions more power over the workers and put them in charge there, and we’ll raise taxes and spend money on things we want, not that the Democrats want.’ And that will be Rockefeller Republicanism,” Norquist said.
Norquist has helped slashing taxes become integral to the Republican Party brand. But Harris and other fiscal hawks are showing the Tea Party instinct to decrease deficits — or at least not increase them — is emerging as a conflicting core value.
In response to former Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.)dinging the prospect of raising taxes, fellow Freedom Caucus member Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) cheekily altered Gingrich’s own phrasing on X to say that any “additional tax cuts without commensurate spending cuts” would “be madness and would defeat the bill.”
Further reading:
REPUBLICANS BACK UP SHAPIRO: A wave of Republican lawmakers are condemning political violence after an arsonist who set fire to the Pennsylvania governor’s mansion — while Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro and his family were inside.
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) — who has direct experience with political violence, having been shot in the 2017 congressional baseball shooting — said: “I’m praying for Governor Shapiro and his family — and hope the heroes in PA law enforcement bring those responsible to justice.” Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) called the attack “deeply disturbing.” Johnson called it “inexcusable” and “evil.”
The reason? Political violence in recent years is unsettlingly bipartisan. As the Associated Press details, other recent outbursts include attacks on Tesla properties, a New Mexico Republican Party headquarters being torched, assassination attempts against Trump, former Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) husband being bludgeoned by an intruder with a hammer, and the Jan. 6 Capitol attack.
THREE MORE THINGS…
1. Comedian Bill Maher detailed a dinner he had with Trump a few weeks ago, set up by Trump-supporting musician Kid Rock. Maher said he “didn’t go MAGA” — but that isn’t stopping those on the right from praising him for the engagement, and others on the left, like Keith Olbermann, from criticizing him for selling out. Washington Post columnist Josh Rogin criticized Maher directly on his show: “You were a prop in that PR stunt.”
2. Robert Doar, president of the American Enterprise Institute, in a conversation with Politico’s Rachel Bade last week, had some very nicely-phrased way of calling out Republicans who refuse to criticize Trump’s tariffs: “It has been a fact that in efforts to support the president support the president who leads their party, Republicans in the House and Senate have been reluctant to stand up for policies and principles that they had had in the past.”
3. Vice President Vance fumbled hard when he attempted to handle the CFP championship trophy when the Ohio State football team visited the White House on Monday.
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