In October, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg made national headlines when he visited Washington, D.C., to testify before Congress about Facebook’s new cryptocurrency, Libra. Having faced scandal after scandal during the past few years, this visit to Capitol Hill was contentious, with progressive Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.) and Katie Porter (Calif.) in particular grilling the Facebook boss about his website’s practices. But it turns out that Zuckerberg’s appearance before the House wasn’t the only stop he made while in the nation’s capital: NBC News reported late Wednesday that Zuckerberg had a private dinner with President Trump during his October visit.
Also at the dinner was Peter Thiel, a multi-billionaire Silicon Valley entrepreneur, Republican donor — and, oh yeah, Facebook board member. Thiel, like Facebook, has a fraught relationship with the media; Zuckerberg spent part of his October testimony explaining his resistance to fact-checking political advertisements on his platform, even as the spread of false information on Facebook faces increased scrutiny.
While the White House did not comment on the dinner, Facebook did. “As is normal for a CEO of a major U.S. company, Mark accepted an invitation to have dinner with the president and first lady at the White House,” a company spokesman wrote in an email to NBC News.
View the complete November 21 article by Seamus Kirst on the Mic.com website here.