Twitter Cut Out of Trump Tech Meeting Over Failed Emoji Deal, Says Report (politico.com)

According to Politico, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey was "bounced" from Wednesday's meeting between tech executives and President-elect Donald Trump in retribution for refusing during the campaign to allow an emoji version of the hashtag #CrookedHillary. Trump's adviser Sean Spicer denied the report, saying "the conference table was only so big." Politico reports: Twitter was one of the few major U.S. tech companies not represented at Wednesday afternoon's Trump Tower meeting attended by, among others, Apple's Tim Cook, Amazon's Jeff Bezos, Facebook's Sheryl Sandberg, and Tesla's Elon Musk -- an omission all the more striking because of Trump's heavy dependence on the Twitter platform. Trump's campaign also made a $5 million deal with Twitter before the election, in which the campaign committed "to spending a certain amount on advertising and in exchange receive discounts, perks, and custom solutions," the campaign's director of digital advertising and fund raising, Gary Coby, wrote in a Medium post last month. So the campaign objected when the company refused to allow the anti-Clinton emoji. Coby wrote that Dorsey personally intervened to block the Trump operation from deploying the emoji, which would have shown, in various renderings, small bags of money being given away or stolen. That emoji would have been offered to users as a replacement for the hashtag #CrookedHillary, a preferred Trump insult for his Democratic opponent. Spicer also objected to the company's refusal, telling the Washington Examiner in October that "while Twitter claims to be a venue that promotes the free exchange of ideas, it's clear that it's leadership's left wing ideology literally trumps that." POLITICO's source said Spicer, who's also the Republican National Committee spokesman, was the one who made the call to refuse an invitation to Dorsey or other Twitter executives to Wednesday's meeting.

Comments

Am I in a goddamn cyberpunk novel?

[Anonymous Coward]

I mean, with all these goddamn meetings happening in goddamn Trump Tower, am I the only one thinking that it's like a goddamn prolog to a bad cyberpunk-dystopia novel?
"I remember the rise of the megacorps... when all the govs and corps started funneling through the Trumps. If you were anyone, if you wanted anything, you went through those doors, up that golden elevator, and would plead your case to the Trump himself..."

I don't have anything of substance to this particular conversation, but Jesus Harold CHRIST, am I the only one who gets creeped the hell out by constanly reading about the future of our country marching through the goddamn Trump Tower?

Re:Am I in a goddamn cyberpunk novel?

[LinuxInDallas]

President elect has meetings at his home and you feel what? What location would you prefer, Disneyland?

Re:Am I in a goddamn cyberpunk novel?

[Dutch Gun]

He's not in the White House yet, and Trump Tower is his home and center of operations. Where else would you like him to meet with people?

Re: Am I in a goddamn cyberpunk novel?

[zuki]

What happened with 'draining the swamp' ? Well, no one bothered to ask what he was going to replace that swamp water with after he was done with the draining part. That it could turn out to be hydrochloric acid or some equally toxic substance like 'Essence Of Vindicate' shouldn't really be surprising to anyone except those who forgot to ask this critical follow-up question.

Re:Am I in a goddamn cyberpunk novel?

[Jeremi]

I'd prefer the President not line up the CEO of every large company in the land to come by and personally kiss his ass. It looks too much like thinly veiled coercion.

Re:Am I in a goddamn cyberpunk novel?

[KeensMustard]

The problem (as many have noted), is the casual intermixing of his business empire, which he has refused to put at arms length and his role as president. These roles are inevitable conflict, and once he takes the oath of office he will be violating the constitution.

As noted in the link, examples of his conflicts of interest include:

1. His daughter Ivanka was present in a meeting with Shinzo Abe. She is looking to close a deal with a Japanese clothing giant whose largest shareholder is the state-owned Development Bank of Japan.

2. He accepted a phone call from the President of Taiwan. It turns out he is planning to build a luxury hotel in Taiwan. Is his position on Taiwan and the One China Policy influenced by his financial stake in this deal?

A cynical observer might say he is using the presidency as a vehicle to advance his business empire, and out of the other proferred explanation this one best matches his seemingly bizarre behaviour.

Re:Am I in a goddamn cyberpunk novel?

[Maxo-Texas]

Yes you are correct. It's frightening. Silence equals consent.

Key thing for me was the instant flip on views towards russia by "conservatives".

We have a huge block of pro-authoritarian voters. I think they want a "human god on earth" and it's literally "ukase rex" .. i.e. whatever he says is good by definition. So if he says to fire people in violation of federal law, it's good. If he says to kill people, it's good.

But it's not good- it's actually 1938 germany damn scary...

We studied WHY the "good " germans went along with hitler and it's the same thing. They wanted a strong leader and were willing to go along with anything he wanted as long as he was a strong leader. Many of Trumps supporters show the same reason for liking trump. He's strong. Not that he tells the truth. Not that he follows the law.

http://www.christianpost.com/n...

"In a recent column for Politico, MacWilliams reported that in December he did a national poll of 1,800 voters to explain the support for Trump.

"Running a standard statistical analysis, I found that education, income, gender, age, ideology, and religiosity [b]had no significant bearing[/b] on a Republican voter's preferred candidate," wrote MacWilliams.

"Only two of the variables I looked at were statistically significant: [b]authoritarianism, followed by fear of terrorism,[/b] though the former was far more significant than the latter."

Mark Leary, professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at Duke University, told The Christian Post that traits which define authoritarian personality include "rigid adherence to traditional values; the tendency to condemn, reject, and punish people who violate those values; and having a submissive, uncritical attitude toward powerful authorities who support and defend one's values and views."
[b]
A Certain Set of Characteristics[/b]

[b]Authoritarian Personality Theory came from a project to better understand how the Nazis came to power during the 1930s and were able to commit mass atrocity.[/b]

Theodore Adorno et. al. published the first major work in 1950, titled The Authoritarian Personality, and championed the survey known as the California F-Scale, the letter f standing for Fascist.

The F-Scale was a series of questions that determined how authoritarian a person's thinking was, with an interviewee answering how much they agreed or disagreed with certain value statements.

According to one online version of the test*, statements posed to interviewees included, "Obedience and respect for authority are the most important virtues children should learn", "If people would talk less and work more, everybody would be better off", "Every person should have complete faith in some supernatural power whose decisions he obeys without question", and "An insult to our honor should always be punished."

Thousands of peer-reviewed articles and studies on the Authoritarian Personality have been published over the past six decades.
"

Re:Am I in a goddamn cyberpunk novel?

[Pfhorrest]

Probably the primary ideological idea of fascism is a rejection of capitalism and unearned income, and demands for a "fair" redistribution of wealth

Where the hell are you getting that shit from? The core concept of fascism is state capitalism: the collusion of the state and business capital, with the state picking winners and propping up monolithic leaders of different industries, eliminating fair competition, etc, in the process, all "for the good" of the nation as some top-down unified whole, but with equality no part of the equation -- there are big winners and big losers, but the state picks who is who. Mussolini, who coined the term, said himself that it might better have been called corporatism.

The rejection of unearned income (which, not free markets, is the defining characteristic of capitalism), and the aim of a fairer distribution of wealth, is not fascism but socialism (which, mind you, need not be statist; there is such a thing as libertarian socialism, or free market socialism). It sounds to me like you just think those words mean the same thing, because in your mind socialism = statism and statism = fascism, when in reality statism vs libertarianism and capitalism vs socialism are orthogonal issues, and fascism is the corner of the resultant grid where statism meets capitalism, the worst of both worlds. Neither state socialism nor libertarian capitalism are its opposite; libertarian socialism is.

Re:Am I in a goddamn cyberpunk novel?

[uohcicds]

Yeah, you DO know what that quote is, don't ya? Here's a clue: "There she lusted after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of horses." As sigs go, that's pretty stellar :)

Re:Am I in a goddamn cyberpunk novel?

[judoguy]

It is abundantly clear that you don't know what fascism is. Maybe this will help.

Fascism is perhaps too strong a word to describe Trump's ideology. But authoritarianism sure does seem to fit.

Perhaps it's you that doesn't understand Fascisim. I suggest a well written and researched book instead of Wikipedia.

"Stronger together!" is classic Fascism. "I'm with her!" is classic cult of personality associated with Fascism.

Re:Am I in a goddamn cyberpunk novel?

[Verdatum]

Ya know, calling anyone who doesn't see things the way you do a "fucking idiot" is a rather ineffective way to get your point across.

Wow, and just think...

[Kargan]

Some of us were worried that Trump was going to be petty, and seek revenge against those who he felt wronged him in the past, especially during the campaign.

Whew, sure glad to see that's not the case!

Re:Wow, and just think...

[postbigbang]

The roster of suck-ups at the meeting is somehwat harrowing. The photos of the expressions on their faces are priceless.

And to those that didn't make it there-- your integrity is intact. No slime, no foul, no tainted deals that will drain your legal dept dry in four years.

Who was missing at the table? People. Labor. The schmucks that do the actual work, like you and I. Larry Ellison? Gates? Zuck? Kravitz? Nope, not there either.

There is the 0.5%, the next 0.5% (some present at the meeting, especially those with outer space plans), and the 99% (us) were, um, kinda missing.

What facts do they base that on?

[Xenographic]

That's a fascinating article, actually. Why don't we look at the evidence they present to support their claims?

Two senior officials with direct access to the information say new intelligence shows that Putin personally directed how hacked material from Democrats was leaked and otherwise used. The intelligence came from diplomatic sources and spies working for U.S. allies, the officials said.

So... they have anonymous people who are reporting rumors that they won't attach their names to. And there are other insiders saying the complete opposite. Lovely. Why don't they put out some actual, hard proof? Or prosecute someone? Maybe more of those banking restrictions they place on particular individuals? Oh, right.

The FBI and other agencies don't fully endorse that view, but few officials would dispute that the Russian operation was intended to harm Clinton's candidacy by leaking embarrassing emails about Democrats.

So the FBI is willing to put their name on this saying it's not true, but the anonymous people with rumors are going to say our allies gossiped about this? And NBC simply labels this as a "Russian operation" despite failing to present any evidence of that. We already discussed just yesterday how Podesta fell for a simple phishing scam, but presumably here they're talking about the DNC leaks, which Wikileaks says came from a DNC insider. You can read all about the bad jouranlism behind this conclusion if you wish. They're simply laundering anonymous rumors with no factual basis and referencing each other's stories that have no factual basis. The emperor has no clothes.

You know it's bad when my own Slashdot comments scooped the NYT on that Podesta email story by weeks and given that I provided more actual, verifiable sources than their article. Seriously, if you can't even beat Slashdot comments by some random guy on the internet, maybe it's time to give it up, guys? You don't even bother to link to the actual sources lest someone do a real investigation, what a pathetic joke.

Back on topic, let's not forget that they brought up the 17 intelligence agencies again. Would it kill you guys to actually name them? It's also misleading, because it comes from the directors (political appointees), specifically it was the: "Joint Statement from the Department of Homeland Security and Office of the Director of National Intelligence on Election Security "

The latest intelligence said to show Putin's involvement goes much further than the information the U.S. was relying on in October, when all 17 intelligence agencies signed onto a statement attributing the Democratic National Committee hack to Russia.

I love how they don't bother to link to the actual statement lest someone actually read what it said. It's not based on anything of substance as anyone can read. They essentially say this is totally something Russia would like to do. Also, we've seen random probes from Russia. Which everyone who has a network has seen all the time (same for China, incidentally), making it utterly meaningless. Everyone with an SSH server has seen this kind of crap and Slashdot has reported many such stories in the past, like this one. A nice quote from the comments in that story sums it up: "If you truly expect no traffic from those places, dropping China, Brasil and Russia from ever reaching your ssh port is a great idea."

Let's also not forget that the DHS was

Re:Boogyjman

[Anonymous Coward]

Those liberals keep complaining about the electoral college.

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/266035509162303492?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/266038556504494082?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/266034630820507648?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/266034630820507648?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

And claiming the election was rigged in polling places and the media.

https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/787699930718695425?lang=en

And questioning the legitimacy of the president.

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/137559273394802690?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/203568571148800001?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/207495823750205440?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/207875027008368640?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/207897542971752448?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/207907352412831744?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/225258011894104065?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/225620165138726912?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/225622462770061312?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/226019096460918784?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/226317290239582208?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/227504536317734912?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/232572505238433794?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/240116141446537216?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/240117754970132480?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/240442968379629569?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/240811658786783232?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/246272201710518272?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/252850650784882688?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/262557984817823744?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/262955491309805568?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/313730158869741568?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/315236584020643840?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/331898523119415296?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/351505671851737089?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/366514186664153089?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/370646948081975296?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/370646987227414529?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/536653754029047808?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

Re:He's literally not

[Phydeaux314]

Okay, I normally like to stay out of these discussions so I can moderate instead, but this is ridiculous.

1. First, unless you want to start a mercantilism-esque trade war, "make Mexico pay for it" isn't really feasible. Second, more people are going to Mexico from the US than are coming to the US from Mexico. Building a wall would be a rather pointless waste of resources. See http://www.pewresearch.org/fac...

2. Catch-and-release was used because it costs a great deal of money to imprison, house, try, and deport illegal immigrants. You need to do due process to avoid violating the constitution. In America, you're innocent until proven guilty - and that applies to people suspected of being in the country illegally. You cannot strip the rights of somebody because you *think* they don't have them, otherwise those rights are meaningless. If you want to end catch-and-release entirely, be prepared to spend a lot more money on law enforcement and the INS.

3. There are constitutional reasons why you can't compel the state law enforcement to do things. Also, DACA/DAPA (which is what I assume you mean when you refer to "Obama's deadly policies") didn't allow criminals to stay; if you had any serious convictions (any felony, any serious misdemeanor, or 3 misdemeanors of any kind) you weren't eligible.

4. Again: Constitutional issue. We preserve the right of law enforcement agencies to enforce laws as they see fit; "sanctuary city" is simply an extension of that. Sanctuary cities aren't "safe havens" for illegal immigrants. They're simply cities where the *local* law enforcement will not assist with matters that consist only of immigration status violations. The federal government is welcome to conduct their own operations, as is its right.

5. Sure, you can revoke DACA/DAPA - but be specific, it wasn't amnesty, it was an executive order to provide a temporary stay of enforcement. Amnesty is a different word that has a very different meaning.

6. We... already do? Visas aren't issued blindly, and their requirements are based on nation of origin. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

7. This is a concern only with a few nations (mostly in the middle east) and I actually agree.

8. This would cost tens if not hundreds of billions of dollars to set up and operate. We're not Israel; we don't have a single major point of air entry and a few heavily controlled land entry points. It would also not be terribly useful, because unless you're willing to track people once inside the country (and that opens up a whoooole different can of worms) it's not going to do a whole lot. You know person with X biometric data entered the country, great. Now what? They've moved and dropped off the radar. Good luck catching them.

9. The only way to make it not attractive to work here is to lower how much American companies pay, and I for one do not approve of dragging our standard of living down into the mud in order to accomplish that. You can punish companies more harshly for using illegal immigrants as labor, but making it objectively less attractive to work here isn't really feasible.

10. Which historic norms? Immigration's been pretty steady for the last twenty five years, give or take, so immigration as a function of population size has actually *dropped.*

America's problems (well, most of them) aren't because of immigrants. The real issues facing American workers stem from the ruination of unions in the 90s, the increased automation of the last 50+ years, and the willingness of other countries to not offer high standards of living for workers. The problem isn't going away, and blaming immigrants for it isn't going to fix the issue - especially when we have a ticking time bomb in the form of driverless trucking no more than a decade away.

Trucking employs about 1.8 million people, and contributes about

Re:He's literally not

[mnemotronic]

Donald J. Trump’s 10 Point Plan to Put America First

1. Begin working on an impenetrable physical wall on the southern border, on day one. Mexico will pay for the wall.

"Fixed fortifications are monuments to the stupidity of man" -- General George S. Patton.

2. End catch-and-release. Under a Trump administration, anyone who illegally crosses the border will be detained until they are removed out of our country.

Good plan that; retaining illegals until they can be sent to any other country. Like Canada. The one with the impenetrable wall.

3. Move criminal aliens out day one, in joint operations with local, state, and federal law enforcement. We will terminate the Obama administration’s deadly, non-enforcement policies that allow thousands of criminal aliens to freely roam our streets.

In 8 years Dubya deported 2 million. In 7 years (so far) the "Deporter In Chief" has sent 2.5 million illegals packing.

4. End sanctuary cities.

Any details on this? Publically humiliating the mayors via tweets? Air strikes? Threatening to build (or not build) a Trump property?

5. Immediately terminate President Obama’s two illegal executive amnesties. All immigration laws will be enforced – we will triple the number of ICE agents. Anyone who enters the U.S. illegally is subject to deportation. That is what it means to have laws and to have a country.

Obama got carried away. DACA and DAPA were/are a bad call. A lawyer should have know better.
I can't wait until Americans get a shot at the 18 million jobs that those 5 million jobs illegals will leave behind. I just can't wait to see Joe Plumber in the fields at 4 am picking cabbage for $3/hour, then off to hang drywall or put on roofs in 110 degree heat for $4.50/hr. Let's make American heart attacks great again! All kidding aside, do you have any idea of the kinds of jobs that illegals hold, what they get paid and their working conditions? They are basically hostages working for sub-minimal wages under daily threat of deportation from employers.

6. Suspend the issuance of visas to any place where adequate screening cannot occur, until proven and effective vetting mechanisms can be put into place.

I'ld like to see it at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Trump's squeeze this week (Melanija Knavs) is a foreign national. Citizenship is not transferable by relation (see item # 5 above).

7. Ensure that other countries take their people back when we order them deported.

"Hello, Mexico? We got some cooks and roofers up here. Come get these guys. Wadda mean there's an impenetrable wall? Who's goddam idea was that? Hello? Hello??"

8. Ensure that a biometric entry-exit visa tracking system is fully implemented at all land, air, and sea ports.

"Biometric data processed. Re-entry into the United States is refused. Your records indicate a defect in the APOE4 gene associated with Mild Cognitive Impariment. We apologize for the inconvenience Mr. Trump, Donald"

9. Turn off the jobs and benefits magnet. Many immigrants come to the U.S. illegally in search of jobs, even though federal law prohibits the employment of illegal immigrants.

"Mr Trump, here's the latest revision of the Ten Point Plan. As requested, all items are just re-wordings of the same idea. As you said, our supporters won't be able to figure that out."

10. Reform legal immigration to serve the best interests of America and its workers, keeping immigration levels within historic norms.

Interesting. All those millions of illegals slipping into the country up until now become "the historic norm".

Re:He's literally not

[Darinbob]

As an innocent bystander (not republic/democrat/conservative/liberal), it's weird to hear people accuse others of being liberals merely because they're pointing out that they don't like Trump and his unrealistic stance. Every single person I know who voted for Trump does NOT like Trump, they just treated him as the slightly more tolerable candidate. So when I see someone pointing to Trump as the greatest candidate ever and that person is smart enough to use a computer, I can only imagine that they just keep repeating that as a mantra in order to keep from going into a deep depression.

The Republican leadership does NOT like Trump either, are they all liberal stooges? Yes some might claim that but if they believe it then they're in serious need of some vacation time with round the clock care. Everyone on the left or right is pandering to Trump as the next President, that does not mean they like him or agree with him, it's just basic common sense.

I agree that Trump is being much more toned down after the election. However the people he's listening to are not necessarily doing this. For a man claiming to be of the people he's nominating a cabinet full of the elitist of elites, and that's certainly due to the people whispering in his ear. So I don't think he'll flake on this as he seems to be nominating everyone his handlers tell him to. His fanbase don't seem to think this, they start off bashing the elites but then seem happy that these same elites are being nominated. My guess is that the people pulling the strings are going to be surprised when they let their guard down and he starts moving on his own. I honestly think Trump never planned on winning at all and he's winging it with the help of a lot of whispers in his ear. While Trump does seem to be backing down from campaign rhetoric I don't think he's showing that with his cabinet picks. He seems more like acting like a prominent CEO and letting others do the work of running things while he gets the publicity.

In other words, there's a whole lot of unpredictability going on. Will he just do what he's told or will he occasionally exert some free will? Too hard to predict. That's why there's a stream of people visiting his throne in Trump Tower, they need to pander to the unpredictable. People who are convinced with certainty about what Trump will do in office are deluding themselves.

Apple and Amazon are each 60X the size of Twitter

[raymorris]

Twitter is worth $13 billion. Amazon $372 billion, Apple $624 billion. President-elect Trump can spend that time talking to a company that employs 3,500 people and shrinking (Twitter), 116,000 (Apple), or 230,000 and growing (Amazon).

If I were becoming president and I could spend a day talking with someone who hired 80,000 new people last year (plus 100,000 temps), I think I's focus on them for the day rather than Twitter, whose recent "major layoff" was 330 people or so. Amazon hired more people *last month* than Twitter has in it's entire history.

Re:He's literally not

[Darinbob]

From my perspective growing up in a farming area in Calilfornia, the biggest employers of undocumented workers are also very conservative and Republican. These farmers wanting cheap workers are not elitist liberals by any means. They just want cheap labor. Unions who are typically branded as liberal these days are the ones who want to get rid of undocumented workers who drive down wages. For some bizarre reason this turned into a left vs right issue, but that's how everything works in the US because we're not smart enough to understand anything more nuanced than two political stances. There are jobs that American citizens and green card holders really don't want to take if they have a choice. If you want to get rid of undocumented workers I think the smart approach would be to reduce welfare subsidies for able bodied workers.

Re:He's literally not

[dehachel12]

>We won.
Are you a billionaire ? No? than you have lost.

Re:It seems like an exaggerated story

[uohcicds]

Looking at the pictures, no one looked delighted to be there. Tim Cook in particular looked like he been asked to eat week-old dog shit, to be frank. Attendance is a necssary evil, like your mother making you take cod liver oil to "keep you regular" when you were a kid These could be the opening shots in a long and messy few years, as tech companies rub up against a thin-skinned and authoritarian lower order primate. But hey, he's a smart guy. Who needs intelligence briefings, eh? Not like that dumb Obama guy. Sad!

Re:It seems like an exaggerated story

[iserlohn]

Trump *is* appeasing the terminally offended. They are the Trump supporters.

Re:It seems like an exaggerated story

[gtall]

You aren't giving Trump the respect deserving of a Sgt. Bilko. From Trump's perspective, anything these companies do to increase employment in the U.S. will now be claimed by Trump as his win, and anything they do that he doesn't like he'll claim as breaking their "agreement" with him, regardless of whether there is an agreement or not. His followers will blindly believe what he tells them.

The CEOs were stupid to feed the troll, they'll now get screwed by him whenever it suits him.

Re:He's literally not

[AmiMoJo]

it's weird to hear people accuse others of being liberals

That's how it works in all extreme ideologies. You are either with us or against us. Part of the system or an enemy of it. Everything is black and white.

Re:He's literally not

[hey!]

For some bizarre reason this turned into a left vs right issue, but that's how everything works in the US because we're not smart enough to understand anything more nuanced than two political stances.

The important thing to remember about parties in the US system is that they don't actually represent consistent ideological positions; that's largely a convenient fiction. Ideology tends to divide people along fine distinctions, which works in a parliamentary system because a small party can join a governing coalition. In fact small parties often play kingmaker and wield a great deal of power. In the American system being a small party like the Greens means you get nothing. Ever.

In the US we have to build our cross-ideological coalition within the parties, which requires a lot of creative rationalization and, to put it bluntly, emotional manipulation. That's why the Democrats have trade unionists and minorities on one hand, and the Republicans have evangelicals and the Log Cabin Republicans on the other. These groups have little intrinsic motivation to support each other, except that's the only way to get a share of power.

This means that to understand a party you cant just go by the pictures they paint of themselves (never a good idea with any group); you need to look at their history. And that explains those Republican ranchers and their undocumented workers. From Reconstruction until the 1960s the Republican party was regional party that represented Northern and later Western business interests. The in 1964 Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act. That very year arch-segregationist Strom Thurmond switched parties from Democrat to Republican, and the Republicans for the first time ever gained a foothold in the South and a nation-wide scope that has allowed them to dominate the House of Representatives since the early 90s.

A Democratic hyperpartisan will tell you the post-Nixon Republicans embraced racism, but really what they did was smarter: they embraced nativism. Nativism had considerable appeal to racists while being more acceptable to traditional Republicans. However this also conflicted with business interests (especially agricultural ones), so the Republican party adopted a regime of hard rhetoric and and harsh but deliberately ineffective measures. If you don't believe me, check out this graph of undocumented Mexicans in the US and note the transition from the Bush era to the Obama era. Obama actually stepped up deportations pretty much from the get go, particularly of criminals.

At the same time the adoption of nativism by the Republicans makes the Democrats' job easier. While from a strict trade-unionist position undocumented workers are a bad thing, in practical terms the impacts aren't in jobs where there is a strong union, because the union prevents employers from paying low wages to non-union workers.