The crowd at former President Donald Trump’s Saturday rally in Perry, Georgia, chanted “Lock him up!” in reaction to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg reportedly having given Georgia officials $45 million to fund election-related activities, which may have “significantly affected” the elections in Georgia.
“Georgia officials also took $45 million dollars from Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg to fund election-related activities,” Trump said at his rally, to which the crowd responded with chants of “Lock him up!”
PERRY, GA – SEPTEMBER 25: Former President Donald Trump speaks at a rally on September 25, 2021 in Perry, Georgia. Republican Senate candidate Herschel Walker, Georgia Secretary of State candidate Rep. Jody Hice (R-GA), and Georgia Lieutenant Gubernatorial candidate State Sen. Burt Jones (R-GA) also appeared as guests at the rally. (Photo by Sean Rayford/Getty Images)
Trump was citing a June Fox News report, which stated that the election outcomes in Georgia — for both the November 2020 election and the state’s Senate runoffs in January 2021 — “may have been significantly affected by a total of $45 million” from Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan.
MOUNTAIN VIEW, CALIFORNIA – NOVEMBER 03: (L-R) Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg attend the 2020 Breakthrough Prize Red Carpet at NASA Ames Research Center on November 03, 2019 in Mountain View, California. (Photo by Ian Tuttle/Getty Images for Breakthrough Prize )
Zuckerberg and Chan reportedly gave $350 million to the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL), which distributed the grants to 48 states and Washington, D.C. for election administration ahead of the November 2020 election.
For the November 2020 general election, $31 million went to Georgia, “where Joe Biden narrowly won the state’s 16 electoral votes, beating then-President Trump by fewer than 12,000 votes,” Fox News reports.
The report added that “the center also gave $14.5 million to Georgia counties for the state’s two January runoff elections, where Democrats won both to flip the U.S. Senate majority to Democrats.”
“Well, they should be looking at that. What is that all about?” Trump said at his rally on Saturday. “Over 90 percent of this funding, they say, for the November election was given to Democrat areas of the state, and used to boost Democrat voter turnout. What’s that all about?”
“You know they have a limit of like $5,200, [and] he’s given millions and millions of dollars to different states, not only Georgia,” the former president added.
An estimated 20,000 people attended Saturday’s Trump rally in central Houston County, Georgia.
You can follow Alana Mastrangelo on Facebook and Twitter at @ARmastrangelo, and on Instagram.