A senior aide to presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s campaign team will attend a meeting with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg this week, which is aimed at calming fears among conservatives, a company spokesperson confirmed on Monday.
Barry Bennett, a senior adviser to the campaign, will represent the New York real estate developer during the meeting on Wednesday at Facebook’s Menlo Park, Calif., headquarters.
{mosads}Hope Hicks, a spokeswoman for the Trump campaign, didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment Monday morning.
Other confirmed attendees at the meeting include former White House press secretary Dana Perino, radio host Glenn Beck, pundit S.E. Cupp, American Enterprise Institute President Arthur Brooks and Zac Moffatt, who leads a right-leaning digital campaign firm.
Some on the right have accused Facebook of mostly inviting conservatives to the meeting who oppose Trump, a charge Bennett’s presence will undercut.
The Trump campaign’s attendance at the meeting is notable given the daylight between Zuckerberg, a supporter of immigration reform, and Trump’s hard-line position on the issue. Speaking at a conference for software developers last month, the CEO criticized the “fearful voices calling for building walls” in an apparent shot at Trump.
Trump has made the construction of a wall along the southern border a frequent part of his stump speech.
A Facebook employee also recently tried to ask Zuckerberg, as part of an internal discussion, what responsibility the company had “to help prevent President Trump in 2017.”
The larger meeting comes as Facebook grapples with allegations published on the tech website Gizmodo that editors for its trending topics section downplayed conservative content and news sources popular on the right.
The company has repeatedly said it has found “no evidence” that the allegations are true. It also released a cache of documents last week detailing how the feature is operated — a rare moment of openness for the usually secretive company.