Daily Caller News Foundation co-founder Tucker Carlson questioned Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) CEO Dana White during a Monday podcast on whether he is concerned about joining Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta board.
White, a longtime ally of President Donald Trump, announced in January that he was joining Meta’s board of directors. Carlson, on “The Tucker Carlson Show,” asked White about Zuckerberg’s apparent transformation to being aligned with Trump and whether he is worried about the Meta CEO’s alleged eccentricities.
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“I haven’t talked to Mark Zuckerberg in a while. Then all of a sudden I see him and he looks completely different,” Carlson said. “He puts you on the Meta board and he’s like, he seems like a Trump guy. What is that?”
“I think what you saw — not just Zuckerberg — I think you see all the guys from Silicon Valley now that are, you know, having dinner with Trump, showing up at the inauguration and creating a relationship with him,” White responded. “I feel like a lot of these people were, during the woke, nutty madness that we went through, you know, I guess I would call it during the COVID era, and a little before that, are also relieved that it’s over.”
Big Tech CEOs reportedly dined with Trump at Mar-a-Lago after his election victory. Google, Meta, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, OpenAI and others made sizable contributions to Trump’s inaugural fund.
“And I think a lot of people — it was very few people, there was a handful of people that actually stood up against this and weren’t afraid to face, I don’t know, whatever we might have faced during that thing,” White continued. “A lot of people got canceled. A lot of bad things happened to a lot of good people during that time. But there was a handful of people that stood up to it, and I think everybody’s relieved that it’s over.”
“Are you concerned that at your next Meta meeting, you’ll lock eyes with Mark Zuckerberg and he will steal your soul? Do you not get that alien vibe at all?” Carlson asked.
White laughed and told Carlson that he would not have joined Meta’s board if he had “felt that way about Zuckerberg.” He then told Carlson how his “relationship” with Zuckerberg developed.
The UFC CEO said Zuckerberg asked him to join Meta’s board immediately following his Republican National Convention speech.
Meta suspended Trump from its platforms Facebook and Instagram in 2021, citing “his praise for people engaged in violence at the Capitol” on Jan. 6. Facebook also had censored the New York Post’s Hunter Biden laptop story ahead of the 2020 presidential election.
Moreover, Meta suppressed alleged COVID-19 falsehoods. Following Trump’s 2024 election victory, the tech giant in January that it terminated numerous initiatives to fact-check on its platforms, according to Axios.
Carlson asked White how he would handle speech suppression as a Meta board member.
“You’ve kind of taken a stand against censorship very publicly, again and again and again. You know, Facebook is known for censorship, so probably a good thing they’re putting you on the board,” Carlson said. “Like, what’s going to happen when you’re sitting in the meeting, like, ‘We need to censor stuff we disagree with’?”
“I think that’s why I’m there. I’m not there for my technical capabilities, I can promise you that, and my — you know, what my theories on AI are and how we should, you know — I know my role there,” White asserted.
However, the UFC CEO clarified that he doesn’t believe his “role is to oppose censorship.”
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