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In the Age of Trump, Tech CEOs Cast Themselves As the New Statesmen (buzzfeed.com)
An anonymous reader shares an insightful story on Buzzfeed News: Mark Zuckerberg isn't running for president of the United States, but you could be forgiven for thinking otherwise. On Tuesday morning, the Facebook CEO kicked off the company's annual developers conference in San Francisco with a glancing shot at Donald Trump, followed by a reiteration of the company's oft-repeated pledge to bring the world together. Zuck's not alone. Last month Apple CEO Tim Cook led his keynote with a similar stump-speech vibe. He dove right into the company's national security and privacy fight against the FBI. Two weeks ago Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella told attendees of the company's annual Build developers conference of plans to "move our society forward," asking "profound questions" of his developers:"Is technology empowering people or is it displacing us? Is technology helping us preserve our enduring values such as privacy, or is it compromising it?" Google CEO Sundar Pichai hasn't delivered his big keynote yet (it's coming up May 18), but late last year he issued an open letter in support of Muslims after Donald Trump suggested he'd blanket-ban the religious group from entering the United States. Welcome to 2016: where tech's biggest leaders are no longer selling themselves as innovators, creative geniuses, or domineering tycoons, but as world leaders -- statesmen shaping the course of human history.According to a report from last month, several tech executives -- including Tim Cook, Elon Musk, Larry Page, and Sean Parker -- met recently to discuss how to "stop Donald Trump." Musk, however, later refuted such reports.
>> Unless the Democrats do better than anointing Hillary, his chances are pretty good
Says who? All the polling to date suggests Hillary would wipe the floor with Trump.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/us/general_election_trump_vs_clinton-5491.html
Actually they ARE doing it for financial reasons -
Zuckerberg heads up a PAC which is trying to open up more immigration and H1Bs - because, y'know, he *cares* about the people and it has nothing at all to do with getting cheaper tech labor into the states. That goes for all the tech CEOs listed here.
Trump is adamantly against that so he must be taken down.
More likely they're just terrified by the prospect of a Trump presidency for the same reason everyone else is, but instead of posting on a message board they're able to reach a far wider audience.
Much for the same reason rich people dabbling in politics is hardly new, if anything tech CEOs have been a bit unusual as they previously tried to stay out of mainstream party politics.
I stole this Sig
>> Unless the Democrats do better than anointing Hillary, his chances are pretty good
Says who? All the polling to date suggests Hillary would wipe the floor with Trump.
http://www.realclearpolitics.c...
The amusing thing about polling data is that they are so ephemeral.
Why, if we had the election in November, we could have elected Carson!
And at that same time, Nate Silver was predicting Rubio would get the nomination, because endorsements are a much better predictor than polling data, dontcha' know.
A couple of months ago polls gave Trump a 70% chance of winning the nomination, now he's a coin flip.
The problem with relying on polling data is that it makes the assumption that the election would be held right now. While that might be useful for future planning, it still has assumptions.
Not the least of which is that Trump hasn't been focusing on the general election at all, so he's been letting Clinton slide (until recently). Or that the media is lumping all polling data together, when it's well known that some polls are biased.
I read an analysis which posited a list of things that would turn the election around for Trump, and virtually *none* of them are in Clinton's direct control. Such as:
1) Another terrorist attack
2) Clinton gets indicted
3) The US *declines* to indict Clinton
4) Clinton collapses due to stress/exhaustion
5) Trump stops being provocative and gets a more presidential attitude
6) Trump makes some common-sense promises, such as to fix airport security and simplify the tax code
7) Trump starts spending money on the campaign, instead of relying on free publicity
I forget what the other three were, but they definitely weren't something Clinton could affect.
If the polling data were that accurate, we wouldn't need to have an election at all