Earlier today, the US President-elect Donald Trump held a meeting with a host of tech giants’ CEOs. However, for a strange reason, Jack Dorsey [the famous Twitter boss] was ‘bounced’ from attending this world-changing event.
A list of of high-profile Silicon Valley executives were present at the event: Tim Cook (Apple), Brian Krzanich (Intel), Satya Nadella (Microsoft), and Larry Page of Alphabet (Google) among others.
Trump spoke at the meeting, extending an olive branch to warring attendees and requesting that they bury their differences for America’s good.
A majority of those in attendance were staunch Hillary Clinton supporters.
The president-elect who is also a billionaire business mogul knew he was threading on dangerous grounds, but all hands must be on deck to “Make America Great Again”.
According to a report from CNBC, the CEOs at the event are worth a combined market value of over $3 trillion. Here’s the list:
Apple — $616 billion
Alphabet — $555 billion
Microsoft — $489 billion
Amazon — $366 billion
Facebook — $347 billion
Intel — $173 billion
Oracle — $167 billion
IBM — $160 billion
Cisco — $154 billion
Tesla — $32 billion
SpaceX — $15 billion
Total — $3.074 trillion
Peter Thiel, the PayPal co-founder who is a Trump supporter and now part of his transition committee, played host at the meeting.
He [Thiel] has largely been identified as the liaison between Mr President-elect and other tech leaders. .
However, a prominent CEO who was noticeably absent at the meeting in New York was Twitter boss Jack Dorsey.
Media reports have now confirmed that Dorsey’s absence was a pay-back from the US President-elect because “an emoji version of the hashtag #CrookedHillary was banned on Twitter during the presidential election campaigns.
The event’s surrounding Dorsey’s absence at the meeting is puzzling as well as daunting because Mr Trump has over 17 million followers on Twitter.
Mr president-elect has also depended heavily on the Twitter platform for his social media presence. In fact, this has been his main news channel so far.
The next US Commander-in-Chief has grudges with most of the tech giants’ CEOs, including Apple’s Tim Cook, for refusing to decrypt a terrorist’s mobile phone earlier this year.
Meanwhile, Gary Coby, director of digital advertising and fundraising for the Trump campaign, elaborated on the Trump-Dorsey rift in an article which was published last month.
Image: Jack Dorsey
According to Coby, “Dorsey personally intervened to block the Trump operation from deploying — as part of a $5 million deal between the social media company and the campaign — an emoji showing, 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.”
