Roughly a dozen leaders of Silicon Valley, from Apple CEO Tim Cook to Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, will assemble at Trump Tower in New York this week. But it’s still unclear what kind of punishment US president-elect Donald Trump has in store for his disloyal subjects.
US president-elect Donald Trump (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
Recode is reporting that Reince Priebus and Peter Thiel personally sent out the invitations to about 12 or so Silicon Valley leaders for a meeting scheduled for this coming Wednesday. But according to Recode, leaders of the tech industry have been less than enthusiastic about the meeting.
Despite confirmation that people like Alphabet’s Larry Page will attend, we don’t yet know if others who were invited will show up. It’s not yet mandatory to meet with the president-elect if a private citizen chooses to decline the invitation.
If history is any guide, the meeting could be pretty awkward. When Trump previously summoned the heads of media, Trump chewed them out in what some people who were present described as a “fucking firing squad”.
“I hate your network, everyone at CNN is a liar and you should be ashamed,” Trump reportedly told Jeff Zucker, head of CNN.
Trump has repeatedly hit Apple for making products overseas and even floated a boycott of Apple products during his campaign. But he has been spotted “using” Apple computers on occasion.
As Recode points out, the list of leaders who haven’t gotten an invitation are perhaps as notable as those who have. The top execs at Netflix, Salesforce, Slack and Dropbox have not been invited. But leaders from Microsoft, IBM and Oracle have been. Those that have been invited are more deeply ingrained in the military-industrial complex and already have lucrative defence contracts. Others, like Uber CEO Travis Kalanick, were invited but will be out of the country.
“Look, this is obviously a circus,” one anonymous person close to the situation told Recode. “Everyone in tech just wants to be invisible right now when it comes to this administration, but has to participate since we have done it before.”
It could not be confirmed by press time whether Trump plans to grab Tim Cook by the wrists and tell him to stop hitting himself.
[Recode]