Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg horrified staffers with Joe Rogan chat, transformation into ‘MAGA Mark': report
Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg's public embrace of President Trump and his apparent transformation into 'MAGA Mark' has horrified staffers and executives at the social media giant, according to a report.
Zuckerberg triggered a wave of internal backlash at the Facebook and Instagram parent company following a controversial appearance on the 'Joe Rogan Experience' podcast in January — in which the burgeoning MMA competitor said Corporate America had been 'culturally neutered' and workplaces needed more 'masculine energy,' according to the Financial Times.
Just days after the controversial comments, a handful of executives worked up the courage to speak out at a leadership meeting at the company's Menlo Park, Calif., headquarters, the FT reported.
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5 Mark Zuckerberg's public embrace of masculinity reportedly triggered a wave of internal backlash at Meta, according to a report.
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5 Zuckerberg made the comments during a January 2025 appearance on the 'Joe Rogan Experience' podcast.
PowerfulJRE/YouTube
5 Zuckerberg's conversation with Rogan reportedly left Meta staffers in 'horror' and 'grieving.'
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'He basically said: 'If you don't like it, tough sh-t',' one person with knowledge of the conversation told FT.
Zuckerberg, who as of Friday had the world's second highest net worth with a fortune valued by Bloomberg Billionaires Index at $245 billion, had also praised mixed-martial arts as a means of male bonding and asserted that aggression in men can be a force for good.
'There's this crazy thing about wrestling,' he told Rogan, a former MMA commentator.
'It's like, if you get into a fight with someone at work, you're probably going to get fired. But if you train in MMA, you can roll hard with someone and you're both better friends afterward.'
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'In a lot of the corporate world, I think there's this bias where you think that aggression or intensity is inherently bad,' Zuckerberg went on. 'But it's not. I actually think it's useful. You want to be able to channel that energy.'
Zuckerberg's transformation from Silicon Valley liberal to a Trump-friendly public figure has become a defining narrative of his leadership.
Once viewed as a quiet, hoodie-wearing technocrat, he began to appear shirtless in MMA training videos, sported gold chains, flaunted expensive watches and made regular appearances on podcasts with predominantly male, anti-woke audiences.
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The Rogan interview added to a growing list of moves that critics view as aligning Zuckerberg — and the company — with right-wing politics. His public praise for Trump and the rollback of content moderation teams have only fueled those concerns, according to the report.
5 Zuckerberg has transformed his public image from tech nerd to an MMA-loving alpha male.
Mark Zuckerberg/Instagram
But those who know Zuckerberg intimately told FT that the Meta boss is simply showing the public a side of him that they have long been familiar with only in private.
'When he was 19 years old, I think he had an idea in his head of what a CEO was supposed to be like and he was trying to be that, especially in public,' Meta's chief technology officer Andrew Bosworth, told FT, adding that people are now seeing the 'authentic' Zuckerberg.
'The public is seeing him more how we have, internally, since the beginning,' Bosworth said.
A Meta spokesperson declined to comment.
Zuckerberg's newly revealed persona is gaining attention at a time when he has set his company on a war footing in the ultra-competitive race to gain market share in artificial intelligence.
Last week, Meta acquired the start-up Scale AI for $14.3 billion — a deal that gives Zuckerberg's company a 49% non-voting stake as part of its push to close the gap with OpenAI and Google in the AI arms race.
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5 Zuckerberg and other Silicon Valley bigwigs including Jeff Bezos (third from left), Google CEO Sundar Pichai (second from left) and Tesla CEO Elon Musk (far left) have sought to curry favor with President Trump.
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The deal secures Meta access to Scale's infrastructure and talent, including its founder Alexandr Wang, who now leads Meta's new 'superintelligence' unit.
This move has triggered backlash from rivals, with OpenAI and Google cutting ties with Scale over conflict-of-interest concerns.
While Meta is betting big — planning to spend $65 billion annually on AI by 2025 — the strategy carries risks including mounting costs, regulatory scrutiny and difficulty retaining top engineers.
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