Weeks after Donald Trump won the election, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of META, flew to Florida to have dinner with the president-elect.

They're sitting on the patio at Mar-Lago, so, you know, other diners can see them.

That was a big theme of that whole, you know, post-election pre-inaguration period

was that guests at Mar-a-Lago were just sort of seeing who the president was meeting with on any given night.

That's our colleague Rebecca Ballhouse.

She says the dinner was part of efforts by META to court Trump.

So they're sitting on this patio, and it's a pretty small group.

And, you know, by all accounts, the dinner went well.

I think it went remarkably well, given that just a couple months earlier,

Trump had been tweeting about how Zuckerberg should maybe go to prison.

But at the end of the dinner, Trump brings up this issue of the lawsuit that he had filed against META in 2021. And the signal that he's sending is this is something we need to resolve before this friendship that you're seeking can really move forward. And yesterday, they came to a resolution.

Mehta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, agreed to pay $25 million to settle the lawsuit.

What stands out to you about this settlement?

I think just the fact that Zuckerberg is settling a case from four years ago that when Trump

first filed these lawsuits, they were described by legal experts as pretty frivolous,

that he's now settling it, let alone for $25 million,

is pretty remarkable.

I think it shows just how far Zuckerberg

and likely some of these other CEOs

are willing to go to make inroads with this administration

and with Trump.

Welcome to The Journal. Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power.

...