Just before Trump takes office, Meta is replacing its top policy exec with a prominent Republican

By Clare Duffy, CNN

New York (CNN) — Meta’s top policy executive, Nick Clegg, is stepping down from the post just as President-elect Donald Trump is set to take office. His replacement: one of the company’s most prominent Republicans.

Clegg, the former UK deputy prime minister, joined the company in 2018 and was elevated to president of global affairs in 2022. He will hand the reins to his No. 2, Joel Kaplan, a longtime policy executive with deep Republican ties.

“As a new year begins, I have come to the view that this is the right time for me to move on from my role,” Clegg said in a Facebook post Thursday, adding that the company he joined, then known as Facebook, was “very different to what it is today.” Clegg said he will remain at Meta for a “few months” to support Kaplan’s takeover before leaving the company, but the leadership transition is effective immediately.

The public affairs chief has become one of Meta’s most important jobs — Clegg helped the company navigate everything from concerns about its products risks to young people to crackdowns on the platform by the Russian government at the outset of its war in Ukraine, often distancing CEO Mark Zuckerberg from more public scrutiny over such issues. Kaplan’s rise comes as Zuckerberg has sought to cozy up to Trump before he retakes the White House this month.

Kaplan held several key roles, including deputy chief of staff for policy, in President George W. Bush’s White House before joining Meta in 2011 — he once also took heat for attending the Senate confirmation hearing of his friend and former colleague Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. And he may be better poised than his predecessor to help the company navigate a Republican-controlled White House and Congress.

“Joel is quite clearly the right person for the right job at the right time — ideally placed to shape the company’s strategy as societal and political expectations around technology continue to evolve,” Clegg said in his post.

In a comment on Clegg’s post, Zuckerberg said he’s “grateful for everything you’ve done for Meta and the world these past seven years… you’ve made an important impact advancing Meta’s voice and values around the world, as well as our vision for AI and the metaverse.” He added: “I’m excited for Joel to step into this role given his deep experience and insight leading our policy work for years to come.”

Kaplan’s current role as vice president of global policy will be filled by Kevin Martin, a former chairman of the US Federal Communications Commission under Bush who joined the company in 2015.

Meta has said Zuckerberg wants to take an “active role” in tech policy conversations with the incoming Trump administration. Like other CEOs, Zuckerberg met with Trump at the president-elect’s Mar-a-Lago resort following the election and Meta donated $1 million to his inaugural fund.

In recent years, Meta has rolled back some election-related content moderation efforts, such as allowing users to post claims of voter fraud and political ads that question the outcome of the 2020 election — a move welcomed by Republicans who had accused the company of “censoring” conservative voices. In a letter to the House Judiciary Committee over the summer, Zuckerberg also stated that the Biden administration had “pressured” Meta to “censor” content during the pandemic, a statement that was quickly used by Trump to once again promote the false claim that the 2020 election was stolen.

For Zuckerberg and Meta, improving what has a rocky relationship with Trump may be crucial. In a book released this summer, Trump accused the Meta chief of “plotting” against him and threatened Zuckerberg with “life in prison” if he did “anything illegal” during the election.

The Biden administration has hardly been friendly to Big Tech, with several major antitrust lawsuits waged against Meta’s peers, including Google, Apple and Amazon. Trump’s administration is expected to weigh in on key tech issues, too, like whether and how to regulate artificial intelligence and how to handle the ongoing antitrust cases, including against Meta.

The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2025 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.