Nick Clegg rejects claim Facebook influence led to 2016 Trump election win
Meta’s former head of communications, and former deputy UK prime minister, Nick Clegg hits back at claims that Facebook led an effort to secure Donald Trump an election win in 2016.
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In brief…
- Nick Clegg tells The News Agents there is “no evidence” that social media alone can influence people to vote for any candidate in an election.
- Clegg says it is “patronising” to assume this is the case.
- He adds that his decision to remove Donald Trump still “haunts” him today, but does not feel disappointed to see Mark Zuckerberg align closely with the president since his second election win in 2014.
Nick Clegg, former vice-president of global affairs and communications at Meta, and deputy prime minister under David Cameron's Conservatives and Liberal Democrats coalition government, has rejected claims that Facebook had undue influence on Donald Trump's 2016 election win.
The claims were first made in 2020 by a former Facebook executive in an internal memo, claiming Trump won his first presidency after implementing "the single best digital ad campaign I've ever seen from any advertiser".
These claims were also supported by Facebook whistleblower Sarah Wynne-Williams, who told The News Agents in March 2025 that the company played a "major role" in Trump's victory, and had staff members teaching his campaign team "every trick they knew".
Meta denied all claims made by Wynne-Williams, and won an emergency court ruling to prevent her book, Careless People, being promoted or distributed days after it was published.
Clegg tells Emily Maitlis that he does not believe Facebook could single-handedly exert such political pressure.
"There's no evidence that scrolling on a social media app changes who you vote for," Clegg says.
The former politician joined Meta in 2018, two years after Trump came to power for the first time.
"The leading proponent of using social media in American politics was Barack Obama," he adds.
"My understanding is that all social media companies at the time wanted to make sure all the politicians who want to use social media to communicate with voters know how it works."
He says it is "patronising" to assume that what people consume on social media, passively, "entirely determines" how they think or how they vote.
He says it only plays one part in our decision making processes.
"There's very little evidence to suggest that is the case because, guess what? Thankfully, we're much more complicated creatures than that.
"How we think, how we feel, how we vote, depends on a whole range of issues."
He admits, however, that there are still problems with social media, and says this is what drove him to introduce new regulations and guidelines while working at Meta.
"I'm not giving social media a clean bill of health at all," Clegg says.
"I wouldn't have changed the whole company's stance on regulation from being implacably against regulation to embracing it.
"Of course, content on social media can be harmful, which is why you need rules."
One of Clegg's actions was to remove Donald Trump from Facebook, due to posts made following the January 6 insurrection in Washington.
He says the decision troubled him then, and it troubles him now, due to the exertion of power from a social media company.
Trump’s account was reinstated in February 2023.
In May 2025, Mark Zuckerberg removed all fact-checkers from Facebook, replacing them with an X-style 'community notes' system, where users were responsible for flagging misinformation.
Clegg denies feeling like his work at Facebook was "for naught" when this took place, highlighting that he was just one of many Silicon Valley tech execs to attend.
The News Agents said at the time that this was directly influenced by Trump, and Zuckerberg's fear of being "left behind" while X owner Elon Musk held such power within the US administration at the time.