In 2021, President Donald Trump sued Meta after his accounts were suspended in the wake of the January 6 riot. WSJ’s Rebecca Ballhaus explains why Mark Zuckerberg agreed to settle for $25 million yesterday. Further Reading: - Meta to Pay $25 Million to Settle 2021 Trump Lawsuit - Meta Ends Fact-Checking on Facebook, Instagram in Free-Speech Pitch - ABC News to Pay $15 Million to Settle Donald Trump Defamation Lawsuit Further Listening: - Corporate America's Embrace of Trump 2.0 - The End of Facebook’s Content Moderation Era Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: What led to Trump's lawsuit against Meta?
Chapter 2: How did Zuckerberg's dinner with Trump influence the settlement?
That's our colleague Rebecca Ballhaus. She says the dinner was part of efforts by Meta to court Trump.
So they're sitting on this patio, and it's a pretty small group. And, you know, by all accounts, the dinner went well. I think it went remarkably well, given that just a couple months earlier, Trump had been tweeting about how Zuckerberg should maybe go to prison. But at the end of the dinner, Trump brings up this issue of the lawsuit that he had filed against Meta in 2021.
And the signal that he's sending is this is something we need to resolve before this friendship that you're seeking can really move forward.
And yesterday, they came to a resolution. Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, agreed to pay $25 million to settle the lawsuit. What stands out to you about this settlement?
Chapter 3: What were the key points of the $25 million settlement?
I think just the fact that Zuckerberg is settling a case from four years ago, that when Trump first filed these lawsuits, they were described by legal experts as pretty frivolous, that he's now settling it, let alone for $25 million, is pretty remarkable.
I think it shows just how far Zuckerberg and likely some of these other CEOs are willing to go to make inroads with this administration and with Trump.
Chapter 4: Why did Zuckerberg settle a seemingly frivolous lawsuit?
Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power. I'm Kate Leinbaugh. It's Thursday, January 30th. Coming up on the show, Meta's $25 million settlement with President Trump.
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The roots of the Trump lawsuit against Meta go back to the January 6th Capitol attack. In the days after, tech companies took action against Trump.
— YouTube is the latest media platform to block President Trump.
— Twitter permanently shut down his personal account, breaking off his connection to nearly 90 million followers.
— Former President Donald Trump will remain suspended on Facebook and Instagram. That decision coming this morning from Facebook's oversight board.
— The reason the companies gave for the suspensions was that Trump had used his accounts to rally his supporters.
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Chapter 5: What was Trump's legal strategy against social media platforms?
The way it's been described to us is that really this was a way to sort of give Trump something to focus on that would be more on the offensive. We spoke to one of his lawyers who told him that we have to find a way to change your posture, to put you on the attack.
And in some ways, it sounds like these lawsuits were a way to kind of cheer Trump up and give him something to focus on that wasn't just all these investigations into his behavior as president.
And did that strategy go beyond these cases? Like, were there other lawsuits that his legal team brought? Yeah.
So at the time, I think it was just those three. But certainly in the years since then, he's filed a number of lawsuits. He sued Bob Woodward and Simon & Schuster for publishing tapes of interviews with him. Just recently, he sued the Iowa pollster who predicted that Iowa would go blue in the election. So, you know, he's long been a very prolific filer of lawsuits.
All right. So getting back to this meta case, at the time, how did the company respond to the lawsuit? They pushed back.
They sought to have it dismissed. And in 2022, they have a bit of a win because the parallel lawsuit that Trump had filed against Twitter gets dismissed by a judge.
Trump appealed that dismissal, but it had repercussions for his other lawsuits.
What happens next is sort of a domino effect where a federal judge then stays the Facebook case pending the outcome of Trump's appeal of the Twitter case. And a similar thing happens with his lawsuit against YouTube, too. So at that point, it kind of looks like there's not going to be too much activity here. These lawsuits could really peter out.
But in the fall of 2023, Trump's lawyers try and revive the Mehta lawsuit, and they ask the judge to lift the stay in the case and say that new evidence has come to light and they'd like to file a second amended complaint.
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Chapter 6: How did Meta initially respond to Trump's lawsuit?
And so I think they really wanted to sort of reset relationships with the government.
A few weeks after that dinner, there was some big news in a separate case Trump had brought against a media company.
Chapter 7: What happened after the dismissal of Trump's Twitter lawsuit?
ABC News will now contribute $15 million to President-elect Trump's library and foundation. This will settle a lawsuit Trump filed against the network and anchor George Stephanopoulos.
So ABC last year settled this defamation lawsuit that Trump had brought against the network for $15 million. And that number and the fact that they settled, I think, really stuns legal experts who worry about the precedent that this sets. For, you know, Trump loves to say he'll sue media companies. He sometimes follows through.
And I think legal experts say that having this precedent of he can get $15 million out of a lawsuit is only going to sort of encourage that and could possibly have alarming consequences.
Do you know whether that settlement impacted the meta situation?
No, I don't know. And what's also pretty interesting is that Trump's lawyers seem to have taken a lesson from the ABC settlement. And we found actually a letter that they filed in another case, the lawsuit that Trump had filed against Bob Woodward and his publisher, where his lawyers attached a copy of the ABC settlement. and essentially said, you should think about following ABC's lead.
So it's clear that these are not accidents. This is a deliberate approach that Trump's lawyers are taking in this moment where they feel like there's going to be more opportunity here.
Then on January 10th, Zuckerberg went to Mar-a-Lago to hash out an agreement with Trump's team.
And it's this pretty wild scene that was described to us where he's sitting there for a full day of mediation with Trump's lawyers. But Trump is sort of in and out of the room. We know that he leaves at some point to go get sentenced in the hush money case in New York, which he appears for virtually.
He also comes back into the room at some point in full golf attire and a hat and says that he's just played a round of golf. So, you know, I don't think it's a stretch to say that Trump is likely enjoying this dynamic of, we know he's loving having all these CEOs come down to Mar-a-Lago to meet with him after sort of shunning him for many years.
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Chapter 8: How did the lawsuit revival attempt unfold in 2023?
Democrats on the Hill and Trump's critics are saying, you know, that this is essentially a bribe, that this is a settlement they didn't need to pay and that they're paying to get in with Trump. Senator Warren said it looks like a bribe and a signal to every company that corruption is the name of the game.
Has the White House responded to that? The White House has not. And what has Meta said about the settlement?
Meta has said nothing so far. They confirmed the reporting. Mark Zuckerberg, in the earnings call that Meta had on Wednesday, talked about trying to reset government relations.
This is also going to be a big year for redefining our relationship with governments. We now have a U.S. administration that is proud of our leading companies, prioritizes American technology winning. So...
What have your sources told you about what this settlement says in terms of Meta's relationship with the administration?
Well, I think if you go back to what a source told us was the message Trump was conveying, which is that if we're going to have this friendship going forward, if you want to be brought into the tent, we need to resolve this matter. I think it's hard to imagine that Meta didn't feel like we've gone to all this effort to try and rebuild relationships here.
how can we now let this lawsuit get in the way of all the work that we've put into this? They had donated to the inauguration. They threw this party for the inauguration. They've made these trips down to Mar-a-Lago. You know, Zuckerberg had even hired someone back in 2021 to try and improve his relationships with Republicans overall. So this has been a years-long effort to try and
reset relationships here. And I think they must have felt like we can't let this lawsuit ruin it all.
What does this say about the relationship between big tech and media companies with Trump?
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