Facebook Gave a Key Trump Ally a Preview of Its New Plans:
The day before Meta announced a slew of changes meant to mend ties with MAGA, one of the movement’s most prominent influencers, Alex Bruesewitz, hopped on a Zoom call to get a preview from the company’s new global policy chief.
Bruesewitz rose to prominence as a Gen Z “America First” bulldog on social media and became a key ally and adviser to Donald Trump in the process. He helped guide the Trump campaign’s foray into the world of bro podcasts and now runs his own firm that aims to help elect MAGA Republicans.
In an interview with POLITICO Magazine, Bruesewitz said he was asked to meet ahead of the rollout so the Meta team could “run some ideas” by him. It was the latest sign that Silicon Valley, and Meta in particular, is moving quickly to reach out to the right in the wake of Trump’s victory. Only a few days earlier, the company had announced Joel Kaplan — a former George W. Bush administration official — would lead its global policy team.
Conservatives have long complained about content moderation on social media platforms, and Mark Zuckerberg’s announcement that Meta would be dropping its fact-checking operation was cheered by conservatives, though Breusewitz said many remain distrustful of Facebook.
He also credited Elon Musk’s transformation of Twitter into X with helping to spur Zuckerberg’s shift.
“I think some of Mark Zuckerberg's right-wing arc began after Elon purchased X,” said Bruesewitz, who was speaking in his capacity as CEO of X Strategies. “Mark seems to be a guy that follows the trend.”
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
What was the relationship like with Meta for conservative influencers like you before this election?
During 2016 to 2020, I didn't even know a single human being that I could get in contact with at Meta. To their credit, they did set up this taskforce after the 2020 election to interface with conservatives more. I think that was a positive development.
But for the past four years, they still kind of censored and cracked down on a lot of conservative content. I've mostly given up on trying to grow or have a voice on Instagram or Facebook. I don’t dedicate effort to grow my presence there just because of the rules and the regulations. There's no growth incentive. It's very difficult to grow on there, I think, largely due to the suppression of political content. It’s something that I always found to be very confusing.
When you create a Facebook page or create an Instagram account you can go and decide what pages you want to follow and what pages you want to like. And over the last four years, Meta kept saying, “Well we want to deemphasize political content because our users don't want to see it.” And my pushback always was, “If they don't want to see it then why do they like or follow our pages?” And they never gave me a good answer on that.
How different was the tone and substance in this conversation compared to past outreach? What was the vibe?
Folks on the policy team that I interfaced with before weren’t in the kind of leadership position as Joel Kaplan. So that was a good step that the direct head of Facebook policy and Meta policy is now engaging with conservative leaders.
I think that dialogue is important and a lot can be solved through dialogue. I told them I believe that they still have a long way to go in rebuilding trust with the American public and also with the conservative movement. I do see some conservatives kind of cheerleading them on. I think that some are still also very cautious.
I'm excited about the moves that they've made. Dana White as a new board member is exciting. And some new additions to their communications team, my buddy Francis Brennan joined their comms team, which I think is good. But I still think there's a long way to go and only time and actions will tell if they're serious about change.
How much is this a direct response to Trump and the MAGA movement?
I think some of Mark Zuckerberg's right-wing arc began after Elon purchased X. I think Elon certainly had an influence over a lot of decisions that Mark is now making just because of how popular Elon's become.
Mark seems to be a guy that follows the trend. I hope that he also has some principles and some values. I hope this anti-censorship approach doesn't go away if Republicans in power go away.
How did the meeting come about? Was it remote?
It was via Zoom, and I'm sure we'll have continuous conversations and maybe a meeting in person coming soon. I hope that we keep having dialogue. But it came about because my friend on the policy team called me up. He said, “Hey I want you to hop on this call with Joel, and we have some announcements to make tomorrow and want to run some ideas by you.”
Given you are largely a product of the internet and social media, will you take on more of a liaison role between the White House and these platforms?
Not in a formal capacity. I need to maintain my street cred. Hypothetically if I get a contract with Meta I don’t know if I’d maintain my street cred.
I read a lot of comments mainly by our people. But one of the main themes has been: “Don't trust him. I still can't log into my Facebook account. I got banned three years ago.” I see hundreds of comments like that. That was kind of my big thing when I had a conversation with them — the need to reinstate a lot of these people who feel like they were wrongly banned.
Was Joel Kaplan amenable to that?
Yeah he was.
I'm sure there's some people who were probably banned with cause, but a lot of them were unfairly targeted and banned. Or not even banned, but their reach was completely diminished, where if you get a certain amount of strikes on your account from these biased fact checkers, then your reach got killed. And if your reach gets killed, there's no reason to use the platform.
And so I advocated for that as well as can you get your reach back? My company has probably invested hundreds of thousands of dollars into building Facebook pages over the last couple of years, and then all of a sudden we can't reach anybody. They took our money, and then we can't even reach anybody. I have 250,000 people on my personal Facebook. I post something, I get nine “likes.”
It sounds like big changes are coming for MAGA supporters who have felt disenfranchised by the platform?
I hope that they grow a spine and it seems that they are certainly singing a different tune now. I think conservatives want Facebook to be free and fair, but I don't know if they’ll believe them right away.
