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WASHINGTON: Only a few of America’s CEOs have made public statements about President Donald Trump’s refusal to accept his electoral defeat, but privately, many are alarmed and talking about what collective action would be necessary if they see an imminent threat to democracy.
On November 6, more than two dozen CEOs of major US corporations participated in a video conference to discuss what to do if Trump refuses to leave office or takes other steps to stay in power beyond the scheduled inauguration for the January 20 from former Vice President Joe Biden. .
On Saturday, Biden was declared the winner of the election by The Associated Press and other news organizations.
READ: ‘No Evidence’ of Lost or Changed Votes – US Election Officials
During the conference, which lasted more than an hour, the CEOs agreed that Trump had the right to file legal challenges alleging election fraud.
But if Trump tries to undo the legal process or disrupt a peaceful transition to Biden, CEOs discussed making public statements and pressuring Republican lawmakers in their states to try to redirect Electoral College votes from Biden to Trump, said the professor of Yale Administration Jeffrey Sonnenfeld. who called the meeting.
“Everyone is fine with me taking an appeal to court, to a judicial process. They didn’t want to deny him that. But that doesn’t stop the transition, ”Sonnenfeld said. “They said if that makes people feel better, it doesn’t hurt to let that work.”
On Saturday, the day after the video meeting, the Business Roundtable, a group representing America’s most powerful companies including Walmart, Apple, Starbucks and General Electric, released a statement congratulating Biden and his running mate, Kamala. Harris. It largely mirrored the conversation from Friday’s video meeting, saying the group respects Trump’s right to seek accounts and request investigations where evidence exists.
“There is no indication that any of these change the outcome,” the group’s statement said.
The executives who participated in the video conference are from Fortune 500 financial, retail, media and manufacturing companies, Sonnenfeld said. But he did not identify them because they attended the meeting on the condition that their names were kept confidential. Sonnenfeld speaks frequently with CEOs and arranges meetings for them to discuss pressing issues.
Richard Pildes, a constitutional law professor at New York University who spoke at the meeting via video, confirmed Sonnenfeld’s account, as did an executive who attended but did not want to be named because he did not want to violate the basic rules of the meeting.
CEOs agreed they had seen no evidence of widespread voter fraud, as Trump has argued. Sonnenfeld invited Yale University historian Timothy Snyder, author of “On Tyranny,” to address the group. After hearing Snyder discuss the history of democracies dying after elections and the possibility of Republican lawmakers changing the Electoral College result, many voiced alarm at the president’s conduct. Sonnenfeld said.
There is no evidence of widespread fraud in the 2020 elections. In fact, election officials from both political parties have publicly stated that the election went well and international observers confirmed that there were no serious irregularities.
The problems that the Trump campaign and its allies have pointed out are typical of all elections: problems with signatures, secret envelopes and postage marks on ballots sent by mail, as well as the possibility that a small number of ballots are incorrectly issued or lost. With Biden leading Trump by wide margins in key states on the battlefield, none of those issues would affect the outcome of the election.
The Trump campaign has also launched legal challenges complaining that election observers were unable to analyze the voting process. Many of those challenges have been dismissed by the judges.
Trump has described them as illegitimate mailed votes received and counted after Election Day, although that is explicitly allowed in about 20 states. He has falsely charged that campaign watchers were prevented from seeing the vote count when Biden surpassed it in Pennsylvania.
The CEOs decided to wait for the vote certification on Nov. 20 in Georgia before meeting to decide their next moves. The action could include threats to stop donations to political action committees or even corporate relocations, Sonnenfeld said.
He spoke with six or seven CEOs Wednesday who said that if there were “seditious riots” at Trump’s rallies or more mass layoffs like Trump’s ousting of Defense Secretary Mark Esper and other Pentagon officials, they want to meet again to talk. about acting faster as individuals. Sonnenfeld said.
“They thought it could have a devastating effect on markets, on public confidence in the process,” and they would act “to make sure Republican elected officials do their job and then be patriotic and respect the process,” Sonnenfeld said.
The CEOs were not concerned about retaliation against their businesses, but emphasized acting together. They referred to a quote from Benjamin Franklin at the signing of the Declaration of Independence: “Yes, we must, indeed, all be together, or surely we will all hang up separately,” according to Sonnenfeld.
But most individual CEOs have been silent about Trump’s conduct. Juleanna Glover, CEO of media strategy firm RidgelyWalsh, said no CEO speaking at this time could stop Trump’s legal challenges.
“They are trying to be effective moral leaders,” Glover said. “It is a calculation of whether saying something now can be an effective tool to improve a situation.”
The time may come for CEOs to speak out, but most assume that Trump’s legal challenges and threats are just theater and that the power shift will take place without incident, Glover said.
Still, several CEOs have urged Trump to acknowledge he’s lost, give in to Biden, and end any political uncertainties.
“The votes have been counted and the president should honor the result,” said Ryan Gellert, CEO of outdoor clothing company Patagonia, which has been outspoken in favor of progressive causes such as protecting the environment.
Cornell University economist Eswar Prasad, a former International Monetary Fund official, said Trump’s stubbornness creates risks for the economy by “generating an extraordinary degree of uncertainty that, if it lasts much longer, will act as a drag on what it is, at best, an incipient and fickle economic recovery ”.
