Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was not able to make time in his schedule yet again to meet with President Trump during a gathering of Silicon Valley titans.
Mr. Trump hosted his second meeting since December with the biggest names in the tech industry, and both times Mr. Zuckerberg was a no-show. News of his repeated absence comes as the White House kicked off “technology week” by discussing policy with Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Apple CEO Tim Cook and roughly 20 other business giants.
Also absent from the event was Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg.
“Sandberg’s absence makes sense given that the biggest advertising festival in the world, Cannes Lions, is currently underway in the south of France,” Business Insider noted Monday. “But Zuckerberg’s absence is more notable, especially given that he also skipped Trump’s last meeting with tech executives in December.”
A spokesman for the company told BI that a scheduling conflict was to blame.
Others on hand for the event include:
- Ajay Banga, CEO of MasterCard
- Safra Catz, Co-Chief Executive of Oracle
- Brian Krzanich, CEO of Intel
- Shantanu Narayen, CEO of Adobe
Ginni Rometty, CEO of IBM - Peter Thiel, Founders Fund
White House senior adviser Jared Kushner said before the meeting that the president’s plan is to “unleash the creativity of the private sector to provide citizen services in a way that has never happened before,” Reuters reported.
• Douglas Ernst can be reached at dernst@washingtontimes.com.
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