• Meta's Nick Clegg said Elon Musk could try to become a "political puppet master" in Trump's administration.
• Musk will jointly lead the new Department of Government Efficiency and has become a close Trump advisor.
• Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg wants an "active role" in conversations about technology and AI, Clegg said.

Elon Musk could try to become a "political puppet master" during the second Trump presidency, Meta's global affairs chief said.

Nick Clegg, a former UK deputy prime minister who is now one of Mark Zuckerberg's key lieutenants at Meta and has played a key role in the company's censorship policies, made the comments on the BBC News podcast "Political Thinking."

Asked if Musk was "a threat to democracy," Clegg said that the X owner is "obviously now playing an outsize role in both the election and now the formation of the new US administration."

Musk could either choose to be an "avid and well-heeled supporter" of the president-elect, or a "political puppet master, going well beyond Trump, deciding who the next Republican candidate should be and the one after that," Clegg said.

The latter path would be "quite different to the general tradition of American democracy," he said.

After donating tens of millions to the Trump campaign and making several star appearances at rallies, Musk has cemented his role as a close advisor to the president-elect. The SpaceX founder was announced as the co-leader of a newly created Department of Government Efficiency, known as DOGE.

The close relationship has raised concerns about potential conflicts of interest, the level of influence Musk could have on politics, and how his multiple businesses might benefit.

Earlier this week, Clegg said that Zuckerberg — Meta's CEO and longtime Musk rival — is seeking a more prominent role in political conversations.

"Mark is very keen to play an active role in the debates that any administration needs to have about maintaining America's leadership in the technological sphere" and "particularly the pivotal role that AI will play," Clegg said.

Having greater involvement in government debates would also bring Zuckerberg closer together with Musk and Trump.

Musk's libertarian stance on censorship and social media has put him at odds with Zuckerberg. The two billionaires have also disagreed over open-source AI models and SpaceX, and even challenged each other to a cage fight.

Trump has also been a critic of Zuckerberg, particularly following the Meta CEO's decision to indefinitely suspend the then president from Facebook following the January 6 Capitol insurrection. Trump previously threatened to imprison Zuckerberg if he won the 2024 election.

Zuckerberg was quick to congratulate Trump following his election victory, and in November, the two had a Thanksgiving eve dinner at the president-elect's Mar-a-Lago resort.

• Mark Zuckerberg and President-elect Donald Trump have had a rocky relationship.
• Still, a Meta exec said Zuckerberg was "keen to play an active role" in tech-policy conversations.
• The exec didn't say what the two discussed at a dinner but described talks as "fairly high level."

Elon Musk already has Donald Trump's ear on policy discussions — and it sounds like Mark Zuckerberg wants in on that too.

"Mark is very keen to play an active role in the debates that any administration needs to have about maintaining America's leadership in the technological sphere" and "particularly the pivotal role that AI will play," Meta's president of global affairs, Nick Clegg, told journalists during a call on Monday, The Verge reported.

Zuckerberg and Trump have sparred before. But they've been in contact recently, meeting for dinner last week at Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate.

Clegg declined to share details of their talks but said that "the conversations at this stage are clearly fairly high level."

Zuckerberg and Trump met on several occasions during Trump's presidency. Trump has been highly critical of Facebook and Zuckerberg over the years, going so far as to say he'd jail Zuckerberg if reelected.

Facebook suspended Trump's account in 2021 over his comments during the Capitol riot; Zuckerberg said at the time that "the risks of allowing the President to continue to use our service during this period are simply too great." Two years later, the company reinstated Trump's Facebook and Instagram accounts.

Unlike Musk, Zuckerberg didn't endorse a presidential candidate this year. In an interview, the Meta CEO said Trump's reaction to being shot at a Pennsylvania rally this summer was "badass."

In his call with reporters, Clegg also discussed Meta's moderation efforts — over which the social-media company has faced criticism from both sides of the aisle — saying the company "overdid it a bit" during the COVID-19 pandemic.

"We know that when enforcing our policies, our error rates are still too high, which gets in the way of the free expression that we set out to enable," he said. "Too often harmless content gets taken down or restricted and too many people get penalized unfairly."