McCain to Zuckerberg: You’re a ‘national hero’ in Egypt, Tunisia

“I called him once after I came back and told him that he’s a national hero and they wanted him to come and visit,” McCain told reporters at a breakfast sponsored by The Christian Science Monitor. “They want him to come to Egypt and Tunisia, these young people do.”
 
McCain met one of the young leaders of the Egyptian opposition who said he could summon a crowd of 200,000 people to a square in Cairo within two hours over his BlackBerry.
 
McCain said the role social networking technology played in the popular uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia has made government officials in China, Russia and other countries nervous.
 
“It’s not an accident that the Chinese are doing everything they can to make sure that information is withheld from their people,” McCain said. “That shows, I think, the sense of danger they feel and the appreciation of the impact of social networking.”
 
McCain noted he has 1.7 million followers on his Twitter account and that he used it to call for former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak to step down.
 
“That got me a lot of criticism,” McCain said. “But I was able to immediately reach 1.7 million people and a press release would have taken a long period of time.”
 
McCain and Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) visited Egypt, Tunisia, Jordan, Lebanon, Israel and Morocco during the weeklong Senate recess in March.