Zuckerberg hires Clinton pollster, totally not running for president
Those rumors are getting harder and harder to quell.
There have been rumors circulating about whether Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Facebook, is planning a presidential run in 2020. After all, he decided he wanted to "personally hear more of [the] voices" that use Facebook and embarked on a 50-state tour of the US for 2017. Now, news that Zuckerberg has hired Joel Benenson, a Democratic pollster who served as a top adviser to President Obama and chief strategist during Hillary Clinton's campaign, has reinvigorated those rumors.
Is Zuckerberg actually running for office though? As Politico points out, all the talk is just that: talk. Benenson's company will be doing research for the Zuckerbergs' philanthropy organization Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. It's possible (even likely) that this move is simply a push to move the organization's work and influence into political spheres.
It's also possible that some of these political moves are because Zuckerberg acknowledges that Facebook played a crucial role in the 2016 elections. From proliferation of fake news to the repeated censorship of journalists, it's hard to deny that the social network played a vital role in bringing us to where the country is today.
Still, those presidency rumors are getting increasingly difficult for Zuckerberg to quash; he's made quite a few key hires in the last few months, rejected atheism and, oh yeah, there's that strange fifty-state tour I mentioned before. It's not clear exactly what Zuckerberg is up to, but we'll keep an eye on how this all shakes out.
