Trump says Facebook is a 'true enemy of the people’ over election interference, urges restrictions on political spending

As a bill that would see TikTok banned in the US if the Chinese parent company Bytedance doesn’t sell moves its way through the Senate, 2024 presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump called attention to rival company Facebook and the dangers it poses.

"TikTok is less of a danger to the USA than Meta (Facebook!), which is a true enemy of the people," Trump wrote.

"They spent $500,000,000 against me and our great Republican part, "lockboxes" and all, and should never have been allowed to do that. TikTok didn’t. 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 added, "do them both? - and restrict the money allowed to be spent on politics, and lockboxes, by Meta/Facebook!"

In 2022, a state-appointed special council to the Wisconsin Assembly found that grant funds provided directly to five counties in the state violated the state's election code's prohibition of bribery.

Mark Zuckerberg and wife Pricilla Chan reportedly gave funding to the Center for Ted and Civic Life that allowed the center to offer nearly $9 million to Milwaukee, Madison, Racine, Kenosha and Green Bay counties.

These counties, dubbed the "Zuckerberg 5" in a report released by the Office of Special Counsel, used this money to operate Democratic get-out-the-vote efforts, with grants paying for illegal drop boxes.

The report noted that these ballot boxes were legally unauthorized under Wisconsin law, and that the law allows electors to hand deliver to personally mail their ballot, unless the law explicitly authorizes an agent to act on their behalf.

"The use of drop boxes, as described in the Memos, is not permitted under Wisconsin law unless the drop box is staffed by the clerk and located at the office of the clerk or a properly designated alternate site under Wis. Stat. § 6.855," the report stated.

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

Also in 2022, Meta was fined $25 million for violating Washington state’s campaign finance laws, with the parent company being found to have violated the state’s political disclosure law 822 separate times between 2019 and 2021. 

The state’s election transparency laws, which have been in place since 1972, require ad sellers to "disclose the names and addresses of political buys, the targets of such ads and, the total number of viewers of each ad.” The judge found that Meta had intentionally violated the standards.

In 2018 in response to a separate lawsuit, the company said it would stop selling political ads in the state. Meta was found to have continued selling.