Trump calls out Facebook as the ‘True Enemy of the People’ amid TikTok ban debate

As a bill proposing a ban on TikTok in the United States unless its Chinese parent company ByteDance divests its ownership makes its way through the Senate, presumptive 2024 Republican nominee Donald Trump has shifted focus to rival company Facebook, calling attention to the potential dangers it poses.

In a statement, Trump declared, “TikTok is less of a danger to the USA than Meta (Facebook!), which is a true enemy of the people. They spent $500,000,000 against me and our great Republican party, ‘lockboxes’ and all, and should never have been allowed to do that. TikTok didn’t.”

The former president drew comparisons between Facebook and his political rival, stating, “Like crooked Joe Biden, Facebook is a great threat to democracy, and it will only get bigger and stronger if TikTok is taken out.” He further suggested that both companies should face scrutiny and called for restrictions on the money allowed to be spent on politics and “lockboxes” by Meta/Facebook.

Trump’s comments come amidst mounting concerns over Facebook’s alleged involvement in election interference. In 2022, a state-appointed special council to the Wisconsin Assembly found that grant funds provided by Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, to the Center for Tech and Civic Life, which then offered nearly $9 million to five Wisconsin counties, violated the state’s election code’s prohibition on bribery.

These counties, dubbed the “Zuckerberg 5” in a report by the Office of Special Counsel, allegedly used the funds to operate Democratic get-out-the-vote efforts and pay for legally unauthorized ballot drop boxes. The report noted that Wisconsin law only allows electors to hand-deliver or personally mail their ballots unless explicitly authorized to use an agent.

Zuckerberg was also revealed to have donated millions to the US Alliance for Election Excellence, which gave $2 million to a Georgia election board despite a ban on such funding after the 2020 election, the Post Millennial reported.

Furthermore, in 2022, Meta was fined $25 million for violating Washington state’s campaign finance laws 822 times between 2019 and 2021. The company had previously stated it would stop selling political ads in the state in response to a separate lawsuit in 2018 but was found to have continued doing so.