Facebook CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg will appear on Fox News on Friday for an interview amid calls from Democrats for his platform to pull ads created by the Trump campaign targeting former Vice President Joe Biden.
Fox News representatives confirmed in a press release Wednesday evening that the Facebook CEO would make his first appearance on the network, where he is expected to address criticism of Facebook’s policy allowing politicians to run ads on the platform that are found to be misleading.
{mosads}Zuckerberg and Facebook have been the targets of a barrage of criticism over the policy, which came into question this month after President Trump released an advertisement accusing Biden, without evidence, of using his office to improperly pressure Ukrainian officials to drop an investigation of a Ukrainian gas company where Biden’s son served on the board.
He will be interviewed by Fox’s Dana Perino, and the interview will air during her 2 p.m. show, “The Daily Briefing,” according to the release.
Biden’s fellow 2020 contender Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) in recent days unveiled ads aimed at Zuckerberg himself, claiming falsely that Zuckerberg had endorsed Trump for reelection as a means of drawing attention to the company’s policy of allowing false claims made by politicians.
“Breaking news: Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook just endorsed Donald Trump for re-election,” Warren’s ad states. “You’re probably shocked, and you might be thinking, ‘how could this possibly be true?’ Well, it’s not. (Sorry.)”
“But what Zuckerberg *has* done is given Donald Trump free rein to lie on his platform — and then to pay Facebook gobs of money to push out their lies to American voters,” the ad continues.
A Facebook spokesperson responded to Warren in a statement to The Hill on Saturday, claiming that the company “believes political speech should be protected.”
“If Senator Warren wants to say things she knows to be untrue, we believe Facebook should not be in the position of censoring that speech,” the spokesperson said.