Inside the White House Dinner: Zuckerberg’s Candid Moment with Trump

On September 4th, President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump hosted a dinner at the White House for prominent figures in technology. The guest list included Tim Cook of Apple, Satya Nadella and Bill Gates of Microsoft, Sundar Pichai of Google, Sam Altman of OpenAI, Alexandr Wang of Scale AI, and Mark Zuckerberg of Meta. The dinner featured several impromptu instances, including Zuckerberg’s compliment to Gates about Trump’s vaccine record. A particular moment arose when Zuckerberg was asked about the state of free speech in Britain. Unprepared, Zuckerberg responded with, “Sorry, I wasn’t ready,” a statement that was broadcast live. President Trump found the remark amusing, repeating it to Melania. The US President then quipped that the exchange marked the beginning of Zuckerberg’s political future, which Zuckerberg denied. X owner Elon Musk, who was invited, was unable to attend.