Steve Bannon, a former adviser to President-elect Trump, went after Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg in a Monday episode of his “Bannon’s War Room” podcast.
“Zuckerberg can’t be trusted, at all,” Bannon said on his show, in a clip highlighted by Mediaite. “He came in the Oval Office … when I was there. … I went absolutely bonkers, but he still got to the Oval Office.”
“And later, he put up $450 million of his own money to steal the 2020 election,” Bannon added. “To steal the 2020 election. These guys are supplicants now, because President Trump is coming in with the American people [having] his back.”
Bannon’s comments follow another swipe he took at Zuckerberg’s fellow tech mogul Elon Musk, who has been recently close with Trump himself. In a recent interview with Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, Bannon referred to Musk as “a truly evil guy, a very bad guy.”
“I will have Elon Musk run out of here by Inauguration Day,” Bannon said. “He is a truly evil guy, a very bad guy. I made it my personal thing to take this guy down.”
Last week, Meta announced a series of changes to its policies on content moderation that featured getting rid of its fact-checking program, in what Zuckerberg called an attempt to embrace free speech.
“We’re going to get back to our roots and focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our policies and restoring free expression on our platforms,” Zuckerberg said in a video posted last week.
The Meta CEO referenced the recent election as an important force behind his company’s decision and criticized “governments and legacy media” as driving the company to “censor more and more.”
Zuckerberg also said on a recent episode of Joe Rogan’s podcast that Biden administration officials would “scream” and “curse” at his employees when they did not go along with the government’s takedown requests on pandemic-related content.
On his show Monday, Bannon said the “only thing” Zuckerberg and corporations can be “counted on is to look after their own self-interest.”
“That’s it,” he added. “Anything outside of that, you’re fooling yourself.”
The Hill has reached out to Meta for comment.
