Zuck Takes on Trump

Just a few days after insisting he wouldn’t run for president in 2020, Mark Zuckerberg has gone and done something political. This time, in a post to his personal Facebook page Friday, the CEO has taken issue with President Trump’s recent executive orders cracking down on immigration. He even said: “I’m concerned about the impact of the recent executive orders signed by President Trump.”

What to make of it? The post itself is diplomatic and largely anecdotal, and reads a little bit like something Hillary Clinton would write. But the issues Zuckerberg is writing about are not new to him. He’s been lobbying to reform immigration and encouraging immigrants to compete for American jobs since he founded the FWD.us lobbying group in 2013. It would very much behoove his company to make those changes happen. But it is also just the human thing to do. Regardless of whether Zuckerberg was motivated to speak out by business interests or politics, Trump’s attitude toward immigrants is seeded in fear and anger. Zuckerberg’s direct response to Trump is beneficial for both Facebook, his political career, and his more general campaign to come across as a sensitive human. It also sets a tone for the next four years: Will he insist on responding to each and every one of the president’s policy decisions via Facebook post? Or is this just a battle that he’s carefully picked? We have four whole years to find out.