How do we just in a few months go from pariah to Donald Trump to respected interlocutor? By having a Joel Kaplan around him, quite simply! Mark Zuckerberg has experienced it himself. A few weeks before the inauguration of the new American president, the boss of Meta convenes a cenacle of a dozen executives in charge of public policies and the communication of the group around him. A very unusual event, a sign that the time is serious. Among the chiefs, Kevin Martin, in charge of American policy, David Ginsberg, communications manager, and the famous Joel Kaplan, close to the administration … Trump.
Arrived in the Meta group at the dawn of the 2010s, this former advisor to George W. Bush, at the broad shoulders, has an attentive ear of Mark Zuckerberg “like no one else,” assures a relative of Joel Kaplan to our colleagues from Financial Times. It was he who would have encouraged him, when he was still vice-president of Meta international affairs, to start a “Trump all” turn. Filigrane: Exit moderation and fact-checking, make way for total freedom of expression on the X model.
This desire does not date from the repurchase of Twitter by Elon Musk. In the past, Joel Kaplan had stood against the moderating inclinations within Group Meta. As in 2016 for example, when he defended the maintenance of Facebook groups accused of spreading false information. Four years later, it was he who would have dissuaded Mark Zuckerberg to order the abolition of an incendiary publication of Donald Trump in which the White House tenant threatened to send the army to watch demonstrators.
In Meta, “the most republican” of all
Some weave a link between his tendency to defend a freedom of radical expression and his republican partisan affinities. From the early 1990s, this graduate, major promotion, of the Harvard law faculty joined the Grand Old Party. After having served as an artillery officer in the body of the American navies, he became the legal assistant of judge Antonin Scalia, reputed to be among the most conservative of the Supreme Court, before occupying from 2006 to 2009 the post of deputy chief of cabinet under the chairmanship of George W. Bush. Within Meta, which he joined in 2011, he was not perceived as “the best of all”, but more as “the most republican”, formulates the Washington Post.
The native of Weston, a opulent city of Massachusetts, would not only be republican, but also a fervent support of the current president. “He considers Trump as a bulwark against European regulations which, according to him, penalize American companies”, teaches us the Financial Times. In mid-December, Joel Kaplan publishes on Threads-the latestborn of the Meta galaxy-a photo with the vice-president elected JD Vance on the New York Stock Exchange flanked by a message: “I am honored to have found President Trump and the next vice-president JD Vance on the New York Stock Exchange today”.
The architect of the Trump-Meta rapprochement
A proximity that Meta intends to use to warm up her relations with the “Maga” ecosystem (Make America Great Again). In recent years, Donald Trump has had many times sticked to Mark Zuckerberg. The first had notably accused the second of conspired against him during the 2020 presidential election. No later in July, Donald Trump had taken part in the Facebook founder – “Zuckerbucks (sic) be careful!” – Assuring that he was ready to “send all electoral fraudsters to prison”. But a few days later, Meta raised restrictions on the billionaire Facebook and Instagram accounts at the orange wick …
Again, Joel Kaplan’s shadow hovers above this rehabilitation. After the assassination of the republican candidate, the fifties feels the wind turning in favor of Donald Trump and then made the appeasement of relations between Meta and the republican candidate a strategic priority. This possibility, associated with the continual threats of Donald Trump against companies that would support the opposing camp, suddenly gives weight to the alerts of Joel Kaplan. A former Meta executive sums up the Financial Times : “There are the official rules and there is the rule Joel. And Joel wins each time”.
This is how six months later, he was propelled at the head of the Department of International Affairs. At the same time, Mark Zuckerberg acts on the end of Fact-Checking on the group’s social networks. For the New York Timesno doubt: “Joel Kaplan played a key role in the announcement on content moderation.” In an interview with Fox News in early March, Joel Kaplan defends Mark Zuckerberg’s decision – not to say his: “We had a program to verify facts by third parties, who was well intentioned at the start, but which proved to be very subject to partisan political bias” and enthuses the idea of ”working with President Trump”.
“Lobby Baby, lobby”
If Joel Kaplan has moulted in the private sector for fifteen years, the fifties skillfully navigate in the waters of the American administration. His quality as an old senior-functionaries earned him a perfect understanding of the cogs of political power. His well -supplied address book allows him, among other things, to “help Mark Zuckerberg to lead a charm offensive behind closed doors to republican legislators”, instructs Democrat Senator Elizabeth Warren, at the end of 2019 on Twitter (now X).
Since the arrival of Joel Kaplan in Meta in 2011, the lobbying expenses of the company have also exploded. In 8 years, more than $ 71 million has been devoted to Facebook lobbying activities, “almost 100 times what he spent before Kaplan’s arrival,” said Elizabeth Warren. Five years later, the sums allocated to lobbying continued to progress. In 2024, they reached $ 24.4 million against $ 12.62 million in 2018, and 1.35 million in 2011, according to data from Statist.
In his quarterlyFacebook’s parent company declares to enclose these money on bills relating to children’s safety, the re-authorization of the law on foreign intelligence monitoring (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act), or on encryption, underwater cables, taxes and political advertisements. In the first half of 2024, Meta injected sums almost twice as much in Apple, Google and Microsoft for its lobbying activities: 5.4 million for Meta against $ 2 to 3 million for the others. With Joel Kaplan at the head of international affairs, the Meta mantra could be: “Lobby Baby, lobby“.