After Meta Announcement, Lina Khan Urges Trump Not To Cut ‘Sweetheart Deals’ With Big Tech

Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan urged President-elect Donald Trump not to succumb to Big Tech companies’ efforts to appease him by cutting “sweetheart deals” that let companies like Meta and Amazon off with a slap on the wrist.

Khan made the remarks during an interview with CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin on Tuesday morning.

Sorkin asked Khan to respond to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon Chair Jeff Bezos, and Apple CEO Tim Cook visiting Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, as well as Amazon and Meta’s million-dollar contributions to Trump’s inauguration. And while Sorkin did not mention it, Zuckerberg also announced Tuesday that Meta would ditch fact-checkers in favor of a “community notes” system of the kind employed by X, a platform where conservatives feel more at home.

Khan characterized these outreach efforts to Trump as attempts to get a “sweetheart deal” — meaning “some type of settlement that’s cheap, that settles for pennies on the dollar and lets them escape from a liability finding in court.”

“We are set to go to trial against Facebook this spring, against Amazon in fall of 2026,” she continued. “Of course they would want a sweetheart deal, and I hope future enforcers wouldn’t give them that.”

Like other conservatives, Trump applauded Meta’s fact-checking announcement at a press conference at Mar-a-Lago on Tuesday.

“Meta, Facebook, I think they’ve come a long way. I watched it — the man was very impressive,” Trump said of Zuckerberg’s video laying out the decision.

But Trump acknowledged that the decision was likely transactional. Asked by a reporter whether the move was a response to Trump’s “threats” to the company in the past, Trump replied, “Probably.”

As chair of the FTC, Khan has restored the New Deal-era paradigm of tough antitrust enforcement that takes into account how a corporation’s market power not only affects prices but also how it affects workers, smaller businesses that depend on it and overall innovation.

This has meant particular scrutiny on the four companies typically known as Big Tech: Facebook (officially Meta), Amazon, Apple and Google (officially Alphabet).

As Khan noted, the FTC is headed to trial in its lawsuit aimed at breaking up Meta, which also owns WhatsApp and Instagram.

The FTC has also sued Amazon for using its platform to raise prices on consumers by, among other things, punishing companies that sell their products more cheaply elsewhere. The case is set to go to trial in October 2026.

Trump had raised hopes among antitrust proponents that he would continue the Biden administration’s tough line against the tech companies when the president-elect nominated Big Tech skeptics to three major antitrust enforcement roles.

The moves by Meta, Amazon and other tech giants to curry favor with an incoming president are not unique to Trump.

Following the U.S. Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021, which sought to block certification of Joe Biden’s victory over Trump, several Big Tech players took steps aimed at assuaging Democrats weighing crackdowns on the companies. Google, Meta and Microsoft temporarily halted PAC donations to federal candidates in an apparent effort to avoid supporting those who fomented the events of Jan. 6. And Meta suspended Trump from its platforms — a move it only overturned in January 2023.

Whether those efforts succeeded in softening Democrats’ stance toward Silicon Valley is a matter of debate. While House Democrats passed a package of antitrust bills in October 2022, two major bills in that package died in the Democratic Senate. At the same time, Biden’s FTC and Department of Justice have gone after Big Tech more aggressively than their predecessors.