America’s largest companies haven’t tried to camouflage their efforts to win favor with a new Trump administration.
Amazon, OpenAI, Meta, Apple, and others have donated generously to Trump’s overflowing Inaugural Committee fund, and several CEOs have beelined to Mar-a-Lago to dine with the president-elect.
Still, governance experts say Meta may have taken the game to a new level this week when it added Dana White, chief executive of Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), and one of Trump’s closest friends, to its board of directors. Meta’s move may even represent a questionable new trend, they say: recruiting Trump’s political allies to keep a company aligned with the political party in office.
“I would be surprised if Meta's competitors haven't had similar conversations at the board level about adjusting to potential government scrutiny changes,” said Jason Schloetzer, an associate professor at Georgetown University McDonough School of Business. Such adjustments, he adds, could include tweaking a board’s composition, or changing lobbying or campaign contribution tactics.
But while Schloetzer also believes Meta’s board pick makes sense, others are wary of a future where board picks are politicized.
Charles Elson, founding director of the Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance at the University of Delaware, for instance, says he wouldn’t be surprised to see other companies follow suit with their board picks to “meet the demands of the current political environment.” But he discourages the practice, saying he has never asked a CEO or board member about their political attachments. “Someone's political affiliations should be irrelevant to a board appointment,” he told Fortune.
What exactly did Meta do?
UFC’s White was one of three new directors added to Meta’s expanded board this week, along with John Elkann, executive chairman of Stellantis and Ferrari, and Charlie Songhurst, a noted technology investor and former global corporate strategy leader for Microsoft. However, White’s arrival at the company has caused the biggest stir.
The CEO played a critical role in putting Trump in front of young male voters who are also loyal followers of UFC’s theatrical and violent cage fights. Indeed, few companies are as associated with what’s known as the manosphere, an online community driven by male conservative influencers who subscribe to arcane and often alarming maxims about men’s rights, are usually obsessed with men’s health and fitness, and are thought to have helped Trump win the 2024 election. Trump has made special, much-hyped appearances at UFC fights, while White and Trump have a long history. It was Trump who in 2001 gave the UFC a home at his Trump Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City, just when White was struggling to build the company. The UFC is now worth an estimated $12 billion.
Zuckerberg said in a press release about Meta’s newest board members that all three new appointees “will add a depth of expertise and perspective that will help us tackle the massive opportunities ahead with AI, wearables, and the future of human connection.” But the media has cast White’s appointment to Meta’s board as an obvious attempt to embed a Trump insider at Meta, ready to wield influence as needed over the next four years. It’s also seen as one of many moves the company has made to position itself for Trump’s return, given that the president-elect has been a vocal critic of Meta in the past.
Meta did not immediately respond to requests for comment; UFC and White declined to comment.
Could Meta have other motivations in adding Dana White to the board?
Yes. It should be said that White isn’t only a Trump associate. Zuckerberg is himself a diehard fan of mixed martial arts, a hobby that has greatly influenced his identity. But while handing out board seats to friends and celebrities was once common for corporations, over the past two decades public company boards have become increasingly professional. These days most investors insist that companies elect truly independent board members who arrive with specific skills, whether in strategy and leadership roles within the same industry, or in areas such as finance and auditing, emerging technology, or cybersecurity. White may be a successful entrepreneur, but he has little experience outside the UFC and has no other governance experience.
Meta’s dual-class shareholder voting structure, however, gives Zuckerberg control over Meta’s decisions, including its board composition. Such founder- or family-controlled boards are often more like “showpieces” for the CEO, says Elson. And that ultimately puts investors and a company’s future at risk.
Nell Minow, vice chair of ValueEdge Advisors and a corporate governance expert, similarly sees White’s directorship as a consequence of Zuckerberg’s lopsided power at the board level, where he has amassed “cheerleaders, rather than overseers.”
“This is not a normal company in terms of corporate governance,” she said. “Basically they want the access to capital of a public company and the control of a private company, and those kinds of arrangements tend to work out well for a while, but not indefinitely.”
In other words, whether White was given his directorship for political reasons or because of Zuckerberg’s fascination with the UFC, the company’s corporate governance could be at risk.
Ex-politicians sometimes join boards, so how is this different?
White’s board pick could be seen as part of a time-honored practice in corporate America of building bridges to Washington’s power brokers through board picks. Companies, particularly those in regulated industries, or that rely on government contracts, have long hired retired lawmakers and ex-military as directors, whether to help a company navigate Congress or to add to its prestige. Gerald Ford even sat on corporate boards in his post-presidential career.
Schloetzer, the Georgetown professor, argues that Meta may now be looking ahead to a future of intense government scrutiny of online activity. “Meta may believe it is facing a political environment in which appointing a director with views consistent with the prevailing winds of government agencies that can take action against the company can help mitigate these political risks,” he says.
However, political affiliations are not usually part of a company’s reasoning for choosing one lawmaker over another. Ford was not invited to become a board director because he was a Republican president and could therefore curry favor with a Republican administration, Elson notes, adding, “Companies weren’t as political then.”
How did Meta’s employees respond?
White’s new position of power at Meta triggered mixed reactions inside the company, according to investigative tech reporting site 404 Media. Some employees celebrated the news, the site found, while others pointed to yet another reason White is an unusual choice for the board. In 2022, a video surfaced of him in a physical altercation with his wife at a New Year’s Eve party in Cabo, Mexico. She can be seen slapping him and he hits her back. The couple later apologized and expressed embarrassment, and White said there was no excuse for his actions.
