Zuckerberg's Shift to the 'Center'

That was a beautiful drive right off the tee, straight down the middle of the fairway. Zuckerberg has a great lie there. With a decent chip shot, he should be able to walk away from this hole with at least par, if not a birdie.

In case you have not heard, Mark Zuckerberg, the head of the social media behemoth Meta, has seen the light. He is apparently a libertarian now — or, at least, a "classical liberal." That makes sense; we're all classical liberals now.

As the Post Millennial noted, Zuckerberg undoubtedly raised a few eyebrows among the progressive elite when he referred to Trump's reaction to the first assassination attempt as "bada**." To give Zuck credit, yes, it was "bada**." There are also reports that he called Trump twice this summer, and Trump claimed that Zuckerberg said that there was no way he could vote Democrat at this point. Meta repudiated that statement, but Zuckerberg has not cozied up to Team Kamala. 

Earlier this year, he sheepishly admitted caving to the FBI and the Biden administration to suppress the Hunter Biden laptop story and information during COVID-19. Of his social media efforts, he told Congress, "I know that some people believe this work benefited one party over the other. My goal is to be neutral and not play a role one way or another — or to even appear to be playing a role.”

Whatever he may have told Trump, Zuckerberg is not endorsing any candidate this time out. 

The scales may have fallen from Zuckerberg's eyes — there is no way of knowing — but he also wants to mend fences with conservatives, which will likely not be easy to do. The National Pulse reports that to that end, Zuckerberg has hired the ostensibly conservative consultant Brian Baker to help bridge the gap.

According to the Pulse, Baker is an establishment Republican, which most would colloquially refer to as a RINO. 

Baker has a long history in Republican establishment politics in Washington, D.C., serving as the political money man for the billionaire Ricketts family out of Nebraska for over a decade. Former Nebraska Governor Pete Ricketts (R) currently sits in the U.S. Senate as one of the state’s two Republican senators. The family also owns the Chicago Cubs professional baseball franchise.

 Additionally, Baker—a Chicago, Illinois native—heads Ending Spending, Inc., a nonprofit group that engages in electioneering. In 2017, Ending Spending, Inc. paid Baker $3 million.

Baker was a member of one of the first classes of Never-Trump Republicans, dating back to before 2016. However, as the tide began to turn, he would go on to create a super PAC dedicated to crafting anti-Clinton campaign ads.

So why the change of heart? Well, Meta likes ad revenue, and a nation full of broke people won't generate much of that. Should conservatives regain control of the government, there is always the chance that social media giants may suddenly find themselves in the uncomfortable position of being accountable for past behavior. Or perhaps Zuckerberg really has done some soul-searching and has seen the errors of his ways.

Even if any or all of that is true, Donald Trump's election is by no means a foregone conclusion, and Zuckerberg knows that there will always be other gods to appease on the Left and in Big Business and Big Government. So the optics may be better if he is seen sauntering toward the middle of the road rather than heading straight for it. 

Of course, anyone in Big Government, Big Tech, Big Business, or Big Anything has the luxury of writing down par every time they walk off the green, even when they double-bogey.