“We care deeply about diversity,” wrote Facebook Inc.’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg (above) in what is believed to be an internal Facebook post to employees. Zuckerberg was addressing criticism aimed at Facebook for its board member, Peter Thiel’s $1.25 million donation to Republican candidate Donald Trump.

The donation caused a stir of grievance in what seems to be a very much anti-Trump Silicon Valley. Shortly after the donation, Project Include, an organization that espouses diversity in Silicon Valley, said it was severing its relationship with Y Combinator, the startup incubator in which Thiel is a part-time partner.

Ellen Pao, co-founder of Project Include, said that support of Trump was in “direct conflict” with the organization’s ethos and goals. Lambasting one of America’s most controversial presidential candidates she wrote in a Medium article, “His attacks on black, Mexican, Asian, Muslim and Jewish people, on women, and on others are more than just political speech; fueled by hate and encouraging violence, they make each of us feel unsafe.”

Pao’s colleague at Project Include, Slack engineer Erica Baker, tweeted that she was cutting ties with “anyone who is supporting this man who is an existential threat to me.”

@sama that’s why i cut ties. anyone who is supporting this man who is an existential threat to me and mine is not someone who cares about me

— EricaJoy (@EricaJoy) Oct. 17

‘Dangerous path’

Sam Altman, president of Y Combinator, fired back, stating that a zero-tolerance attitude towards Trump was in itself the opposite of embracing diversity. Altman, who wrote in a blog post that he is endorsing Hillary Clinton, and that his only two Trump supporting friends are Thiel and his grandma, said that in spite of Trump’s threat to women, minorities and immigrants, firing Thiel would be “a dangerous path to start down.”

Political diversity, said Altman “is critical to health of a democratic and pluralistic society.  We shouldn’t start purging people for supporting the wrong political candidate. That’s not how things are done in this country.” Altman alludes to German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche and his famous aphorism: “Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster.”

This is more or less the stance that Zuckerberg takes in his post to his Facebook staff. “We can’t create a culture that says it cares about diversity and then excludes almost half the country because they back a political candidate,” wrote Zuckerberg.

He then shows some support of Trump by stating that not everything he says engenders racism, sexism or xenophobia, and that perhaps voters for Trump support him on the grounds of tax policies and a smaller government.

Both Altman and Zuckerberg’s opinions on diversity have come under fire, with some critics saying support of Trump is just unacceptable. Other critics claimed that their brand of diversity only served to show how undeveloped their ideas are outside of “apps and org charts.” Zuckerberg walks a fine line. Earlier this year, Facebook was accused of blocking certain trending news supporting a more conservative ideology.