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Donald Trump To Tech Leaders: 'No Formal Chain Of Command' Here (cnbc.com)

A confab of tech titans had a "productive" meeting with President-elect Donald Trump at Trump Tower on Wednesday, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos told CNBC, as Trump moved to mend fences with Silicon Valley before taking office in January. Apple, Alphabet, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook, Intel, Oracle, IBM, Cisco and Tesla were among the C-suite executives in attendance, with Apple CEO Tim Cook and Tesla CEO Elon Musk expected to get private briefings, according to transition staff. From the report: "We want you to keep going with the incredible innovation," Trump said. "There's no one like you in the world. ... anything we can do to help this go along, we're going to be there for you. You can call my people, call me -- it makes no difference -- we have no formal chain of command around here." At the meeting, Trump introduced billionaire Wilbur Ross, his Commerce secretary pick, and Goldman Sachs executive Gary Cohn, his choice for director of the National Economic Council. "They're going to do fair trade deals," Trump said. "They're going to make it easier for you to trade across borders, because there are a lot of restrictions, a lot of problems. If you have any ideas on that, that would be great."

6 of 488 comments (clear)

  1. Re:"Just call me, we have no chain of command" by EmeraldBot · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Trump is going to find out people are not going to "just call the president" because all of those calls get blocked by the switchboard. Trump is going to find out that casual phone calls do not happen as president, his schedule is locked down to the minute. This boiler maker atmosphere that trump seems to enjoy is going to be counter productive in an environment where decisions need to be made and then acted on and revisiting choices wastes time that needs to be used on other decisions coming in the door.

    It'll work out because it won't be him in this position, it'll be Pence. Trump's presidency will largely rise and fall by how much Pence is willing to do for him, and how much Pence covers him - if Pence gets fed up, I have a suspicion Trump won't be able to cope, and he's used to simply walking away when it gets tough and waiting for a better time. Not an option as president - however, if Pence deals with all of this, as I suspect he will because he wants his own chance in 2020, then all Trump has to do is sit in the office and spend his weekends at his Florida resort, and sign the odd paper here and there. Trump could pull off the latter very successfully, he's good at taking credit (and I don't mean that exclusively in a derogatory sense; one of Obama's biggest issues was that for many of his successes, people simply took them for granted after the fact.)

    --
    "Set a man a fire, he'll be warm for the rest of the night. Set a man afire, he'll be warm for the rest of his life."
  2. Re:heck of a choice by drinkypoo · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Trump has a long track record of running hundreds of business ventures

    ...straight into the fucking ground. STRAIGHT INTO IT.

    Why? Because these businesses are not intended to succeed as that term is allegedly measured. They are intended to fail, and transfer wealth to Trump in the process.

    Trump is a con man. It's that simple. He is perhaps the most successful simple con man in American history. He is the poster child for reinstating a massive estate tax.

    --
    "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  3. Re:Slashdot is killing itself by whipslash · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Our traffic has been growing since my company acquired Slashdot, regardless of what Alexa says. Also, reporting a direct quote from the President of the United States to tech leaders is not "partisan". Posting NYT revenue stats from the Daily Caller IS. Lastly, we do not do things around here in order to increase traffic. We cover things we think are worth covering. If you're triggered by a direct quote then perhaps you should just scroll past the story.

  4. Re:heck of a choice by sh00z · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Shuttle was finally ended in 2011. After Obama took office, he had plenty of time to reinstate it.

    Not without huge costs that the taxpaying public never would have accepted. The facility for building External Tanks had been decommissioned, the one for cleaning SRB parachutes had been repurposed, and NASA had pretty much depleted eBay as a source for obsolete electronics.

  5. Re:Slashdot is killing itself by whipslash · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Lol? He mentioned me in his comment and I responded. I also own the place, not an employee.

  6. Re:64% blame Bush by Pfhorrest · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This is why this country needs a radical left. Anarchists and socialists of every stripe, most of them as wrong as the crazies dragging the whole country down to the right for a generation, just in the opposite direction. So that people can see that there's crazy at the fringe in either direction, and find where true moderation is somewhere in between them.

    Kinda like how the existence of the Black Panthers made Martin Luther King, Jr., seem all the more reasonable. The Panthers were wrong, but they were useful, and a really crazy loud radical left would be usefully wrong in a similar way.

    --
    -Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
    "I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."