J. Conrad Williams, Jr./Newsday RM / Cooper Neill/Zuffa LLC / Getty
- Donald Trump says Mark Zuckerberg told him he doesn't feel comfortable endorsing a Democrat.
- Trump told Fox News that Zuckerberg told him he was "very brave" after the assassination attempt.
- Trump added that Zuckerberg personally apologized for Meta's mistaken censoring of a Trump photo.
Former President Donald Trump says Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently told him he wouldn't endorse a Democrat in the 2024 election.
The Republican presidential nominee told Fox News' Maria Bartiromo on Friday that Zuckerberg called him after the assassination attempt, and told him he didn't feel right supporting a Democrat. Trump added that the two have spoken several times since that conversation.
"So Mark Zuckerberg called me. First of all, he called me a few times. He called me after the event and he said, 'That was really amazing, it was very brave,'" Trump told Bartiromo. "And he actually announced he's not gonna support a Democrat because he can't because he respected me for what I did that day."
Trump then said that, during the course of their conversations, Zuckerberg apologized for Facebook and Instagram censoring a photo of Trump taken in the immediate aftermath of the July 13 shooting.
A Meta spokesperson, Dani Lever, acknowledged the mistaken censoring in a post on X. "This was an error," Lever wrote. "This fact check was initially applied to a doctored photo showing the secret service agents smiling, and in some cases our systems incorrectly applied that fact check to the real photo. This has been fixed and we apologize for the mistake."
A spokesperson for Meta declined to comment on any conversation between Trump and Zuckerberg, but did not dispute that they talked. The spokesperson also referred Business Insider to Zuckerberg's statement last month that he wouldn't be endorsing any presidential candidate this year. Zuckerberg hasn't endorsed a candidate in recent elections, including 2016 and 2020.
Trump had also accused Google of censoring content about him because when users searched "assassination attempt,"his name did not auto-populate into the search query.
Trump told Bartiromo that Google never called him to apologize.
"Google has been very bad," Trump told Bartiromo. "They've been very irresponsible and I have a feeling that Google is going to be close to shut down because I don't think Congress is going to take it. I really don't think so. Google has to be careful."
In a post on Truth Social on Tuesday, Trump alleged that Google had made it "virtually impossible to find pictures or anything about this heinous act."
He continued: "Here we go again, another attempt at RIGGING THE ELECTION!!! GO AFTER META AND GOOGLE. LET THEM KNOW WE ARE ALL WISE TO THEM, WILL BE MUCH TOUGHER THIS TIME."
Google responded to the accusations in a post on X, writing that its internal system "wasn't providing predictions for queries about the assassination attempt" because it has "built-in protections related to political violence," which were out of date.