Mark Zuckerberg has been caught in an awkward situation when attending a fancy dinner with President Donald Trump at the White House. It seems like only yesterday that tech giants, including Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Sundar Pichai, and Elon Musk, attended President Trump's inauguration, and as Silicon Valley seems to bow down, the tech-savvy POTUS has continued to reshape the industry.
While it's true that Mark Zuckerberg and Donald Trump have something of a checkered past, thanks to the latter being banned from Facebook, the pair seems to have put their differences aside.
Trup held a lavish dinner at the White House, with an impressive tech guest list that included Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, OpenAI's Sam Altman, and Trump BFF, Tim Cook.
Zuckerberg reiterated that those in attendance were going to make "huge investments" to "build out data centers and infrastructure to power the next wave of innovation."
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This includes his own 'mammoth' data center, which is supposedly large enough to cover the entirety of Manhattan.
Just days after Vladimir Putin was heard discussing his own immortality, Zuckerberg might be left a little red-faced, as a hot mic moment caught a conversation we don't think we were meant to hear. After Apple had pledged to spend $600 billion to build big in America, Trump turned to Zuckerberg and asked: "How much are you spending, would you say, over the next few years?"
With the Meta overlord caught off-guard, he stumbled: "Oh gosh, um, I mean, I think it's probably going to be something like, at least $600 billion through '28 in the US, yeah."
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With Trump admitting, "That's a lot, that's a lot," the rest of the conversation was accidentally caught on the hot mic.
A flustered Zuckerberg was caught saying: "I'm sorry I wasn't ready...I wasn't sure what number you wanted to go with."
The implication is that the numbers being thrown around were somewhat for show, with others in replies to the viral moment mocking the tech boss.
One person chuckled: "Sir, I forgot which bullsh*t number you wanted me to give, that I am in no way obligated to actually meet. But I'll say whatever to make you happy.
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"Ah what a time to be alive, when everyone just strokes the ego of the most fragile leader our nation has ever had."
Another added: "I have absolutely no trust in Zuckerberg, period."
A third said: "It's a f**king clown show 🤡🤡🤡
Still, Zuckerberg took to Threads in an attempt to explain the snafu, concluding: "If AI progress keeps accelerating, it's quite possible we'll invest even more than this. I had briefed the President that we're planning to invest $600B+ in the US through '28 and a significantly higher number through the end of the decade."
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Despite Zuckerberg's explanation, some have accused the social media mogul of 'working for' President Trump.