The Yale Chief Executive Leadership Institute’s CEO forum gathers top political leaders with Fortune 500 CEOs for a Chatham House rules discussion where direct quotes are off the record. In Washington DC this week at the 155th gathering, as clouds swirled around the Capitol building just steps away, senators from both parties and some top Trump administration officials joined us. They had to face down the near unanimous verdict from over 100 top business leaders, representing some of the world’s largest companies and most iconic brands:
Trump’s policies aren’t working.
These opinions were all about business results, by the way: the reasoning was independent of personal politics or industry sector, it always came back to the bottom line.
From my perspective as a corporate drone - during the last Trump presidency, we went against some Trump policies and had literal screeching MAGA monkeys try to cancel us. It was a shitshow within the company as we went from a “Everyone has the right to speak freely” to a “No politics in chat” rule. People were getting death threats.
It’s ridiculous and frustrating.
This has to be vague for privacy reasons but I am aware of a similar incident where a medium sized org was targeted. There were all kinds of threats and harassment for a few weeks, including some in person on site where employees feared for their safety. The police and FBI were involved and investigating but I don’t think anyone responsible was prosecuted for actions during this incident.