Mark Zuckerberg used his young daughter to ingratiate himself to Trump: book

A new book by New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan reveals that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg sent President Donald Trump a fawning text containing a letter from one of his young daughters after the 2024 election, in an attempt to ingratiate himself. Trump mocked Zuckerberg and other tech leaders for their efforts to win his favor, showing off the text to guests at Mar-a-Lago.

Getting your Trinity Audio //trinityaudio.ai player ready...Following Donald Trump’s victory in the 2024 election, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg was so eager to make friends with the incoming president that he apparently enlisted one of his young daughters in the effort, according to a new book by New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan. Shortly after Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan dined at Mar-a-Lago on the eve of Thanksgiving 2024, https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c87x98q8y08o the Silicon Valley billionaire sent Trump a “fawning” text, according the book, “Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump,” portions of which were described this week in the New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/18/us/politics/trump-regime-change-book-haberman-swan.html and Wired magazine. https://www.wired.com/story/trump-mocked-mark-zuckerberg-and-jeff-bezos-by-showing-off-fawning-texts/ Trump showed off the text to guests at Mar-a-Lago, according to the book. The text showed a photo of a “letter to the president,” which was written by one of Zuckerberg’s three daughters, the oldest of whom would have been 8 or 9 at the time, Wired reported. The letter from the daughter said she eagerly awaited “the golden age of America,” according to the book, as Wired and the New York Times reported. The “golden age” slogan was often repeated by Trump and his MAGA supporters on the 2024 campaign trail, the Daily Beast added. https://www.thedailybeast.com/zuckerbergs-sick-scheme-to-get-his-kids-to-grovel-to-trump-exposed/ Zuckerberg and Chan’s daughters, Maxima, August, and Aurelia, are now 10, 8 and 3. https://people.com/parents/all-about-mark-zuckerberg-and-priscilla-chan-children/ Zuckerberg is typically private about his children and covers their faces with emojis in photos posted on social media, according to the Daily Beast, which reached out to Zuckerberg for a comment but did not get a response. Apparently, Zuckerberg’s attempt to use his daughter’s letter did little to immediately soften Trump’s attitude towards him, according to the book, which is set to be released Tuesday. The 484-page book shows Trump frequently mocking Zuckerberg and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos as they attempted to win his favor, years after both billionaire tech CEOs sometimes used their media companies — Facebook, Instagram and the Washington Post, respectively — to stand up to him during his first administration. For his part, Zuckerberg barred Trump from Facebook and Instagram after the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021. But when he and his wife were Trump’s dinner guests at Mar-a-Lago in November 2024, the incoming president welcomed them by playing the national anthem over the speakers, according to the book. But, “It soon became clear that this was no ordinary rendition, but one by a group of detained January 6 rioters known as the J6 Prison Choir,” as Wired said. The book also said that Trump reveled in the ways that Zuckerberg and other tech leaders, who had once scorned him, were now “kissing my expletive ,” according to the New York Times. “They hated me,” Trump told Elon Musk, the tech mogul who enthusiastically endorsed Trump in the 2024 election. Trump added to Musk, “And look at them now.” “First-class groveling,” replied Musk, whose embrace of Trump’s leadership won him a brief stint in his administration, co-leading the Department of Government Efficiency DOGE to slash federal spending. It wasn’t clear from reports about the book what Trump thinks of Zuckerberg now. The Meta CEO and his wife enjoyed prominent seats https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jan/20/trump-inauguration-tech-executives at Trump’s inauguration in the Capitol Rotunda. They were in the same row as Bezos and his then-fiancée Lauren Sánchez, as well as Musk, Apple CEO Tim Cook and Google CEO Sundar Pichai. Zuckerberg and other Silicon Valley CEOs also dined at the White House in 2025, and Zuckerberg turned up at Trump’s 80th birthday party last weekend, sitting cage-side at the UFC Freedom 250 fights staged on the White House lawn. The book also alleges that Bezos tried to curry favor with Trump ahead of his inauguration — notably by denigrating executives who work at his newspaper, The Washington Post, the New York Times reported. The Post’s coverage of Trump had long irritated him — at least until Bezos ordered the editorial page editors to kill their endorsement of Kamala Harris, weeks before the election. In December 2024, Bezos and Sánchez made their trip to Mar-a-Lago to dine with the newly elected president. At the dinner, Bezos described the Post, which he bought in 2013, as one of his worst financial investments, according to the book. “The people there are terrible,” Bezos said of the news organization’s business side, according to the book. “They don’t listen. My other companies, they listen.”