- CB: We are talking about a guy who likes belittling people. He really is a bully. Look, everyone I talk to, the tech guys, who went to that first meeting, well, you saw what they looked like. They didn’t want to be there. And the people I talked to kinda said that. “I feel like I gotta do it.” I think the argument is it’s hard. The problem is with this guy in particular.
When I wrote my emails to our employees that did make me feel better in the sense that 1,000 people wrote back to me with moving stories about how personal this is for them, and what I was surprised by after both emails was the number of people the number of employees of an American tech company that feel vulnerable.
Can I take an assignment in the US? Am I going to be treated right? The handful saying “My family is questioning why I would work for an American company.” There’s another side to the fiduciary responsibility thing. In a business like ours where the majority of our employees are outside the US, a bunch of stuff like this is not good for our business in any way.
Richard Branson's anecdote corroborates CB's view. Some years ago, Mr Trump invited me to lunch for a one-to-one meeting at his apartment in Manhattan. We had not met before and I accepted. Even before the starters arrived he began telling me about how he had asked a number of people for help after his latest bankruptcy and how five of them were unwilling to help. He told me he was going to spend the rest of his life destroying these five people.