The Daily Populous Friday August 30th, 2024 night edition
Authored by rollingstone.com and submitted by rollingstone

Donald Trump wrote a book, and true to form, it contains some deeply unbalanced textual musings.

According to Politico, the coffee-table book — titled Saving America — accuses Mark Zuckerberg of plotting to usurp the 2020 election in favor of President Joe Biden, and warns that the CEO will “spend the rest of his life in prison” if he crosses Trump again.

The book, which will be released next week, features a photo of Zuckerberg and Trump during an undated meeting in the White House. According to Politico, in the caption under the photo Trump claims that Zuckerberg “would come to the Oval Office to see me. He would bring his very nice wife to dinners, be as nice as anyone could be, while always plotting to install shameful Lock Boxes in a true PLOT AGAINST THE PRESIDENT.”

“We are watching him closely,” Trump adds, “and if he does anything illegal this time he will spend the rest of his life in prison — as will others who cheat in the 2024 Presidential Election.”

The former president is referring to a conspiracy theory spread in the aftermath of the 2020 election that Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, had used a $350 million investment in the Center for Tech and Civic Life — a Chicago-based nonprofit helping provide election administration resources to thousands of precincts during the Covid-19 pandemic — to help rig the election against him.

In a June 2021 interview with Fox Business, Trump falsely claimed that he “won the election,” that Democrats “cheated,” and that “Facebook and [CEO Mark] Zuckerberg, with the $500 million worth of phony lockboxes that he put on, some of them had 96 percent Biden votes in them — 96 percent!”

The claim was bogus then, and it’s bogus today — but almost four years after the fact Trump is still using it to sow doubt about the 2020 election.

Zuckerberg himself has been attempting to placate angry Republicans who have targeted Meta and its companies over their content moderation policies in a series of Congressional investigations. Editor’s picks

Earlier this week, the Facebook founder wrote a letter to the House Judiciary Committee — one of the most powerful committees in Congress that is currently controlled by Trumpist Republicans — in which he blamed the Biden administration for Covid-era social media policies restricting the spread of misinformation related to the virus, and expressed regret for the company’s role in the 2020 Hunter Biden laptop scandal.

“In 2021, senior officials from the Biden Administration, including the White House, repeatedly pressured our teams for months to censor certain Covid-19 content, including humor and satire, and expressed a lot of frustration with our teams when we didn’t agree,” Zuckerberg wrote. Trending ‘It Ends With Us’ Crew Members Say Justin Baldoni and Blake Lively’s Creative Differences Were Not a Secret on Set Trump Threatens to Jail Mark Zuckerberg for Life Trump Goes Full Fascist in Truth Social Posting Spree Why Isn't Anyone Asking Trump About Mark Robinson?

“In a separate situation, the FBI warned us about a potential Russian disinformation operation about the Biden family and Burisma in the lead-up to the 2020 election,” he added. “It’s since been made clear that the reporting was not Russian disinformation, and in retrospect, we shouldn’t have demoted the story. We’ve changed our policies and processes to make sure this doesn’t happen again.”

While Zuckerburg can grovel for the forgiveness of House Republicans, it clearly won’t stop Trump from continuing to use him as a scapegoat in his election conspiracies — especially if he once again loses in November.

cluelessminer on August 29th, 2024 at 13:58 UTC »

Zuck: I tried supporting Trump but he hates me. And Musk won't fight me.

baka-tari on August 29th, 2024 at 13:58 UTC »

How about Elon? He seems to be using his platform to interfere with an election as well …

Significant_Farm8695 on August 29th, 2024 at 13:53 UTC »

Funny how Zuckerberg was bitching about Biden putting pressure on him for Covid misinformation on Facebook a few days ago, then this happens.