When Elon Musk bought Twitter in 2022, he laid off thousands of employees, stopped paying rent and auctioned off coffee makers and office chairs in hopes of a big turnaround. Now the world’s richest man has brought the same slash-and-burn strategy to the federal government.
Forget saving the planet.
“It isn’t working,” said Ross Gerber, a minority stock holder at X who has written down his stake to zero and expects Musk to fail in Washington, too. “The federal government is going to eat him up and spit him out.” Long before fighting diversity, equity and inclusion efforts became a centerpiece of Trump’s third presidential campaign, Musk eliminated Twitter’s DEI initiatives and the people administering them.
“Talk about shooting yourself in the foot,” said ad consultant Tom Hespos of Abydos Media, who told his clients at that point to avoid even posting on X because it could damage their brand. “That is probably the worst comment he could have made.”Unilever, Mars, CVS Health and several other companies that had dropped Twitter, accusing them of engaging in an “illegal boycott.
“If that is the way decision making is being made for the federal government, I’m very concerned about the finances of the federal government,” she said.. Landlords of the social media company’s headquarters in San Francisco as well as its British offices took the company to court for “All this is of dubious legality, and that’s before you get to the civil service protections,” Bagley said, referring to federal workforce rules preventing layoffs for political purposes. “You’re going to see a lot of bombast and rhetoric, but I suspect it’s going to yield fewer things on the ground.”
Donald Trump Diversity Equity And Inclusion San Francisco District Of Columbia Labor General News Ross Gerber Race And Ethnicity X Corp. Nicholas Bagley Emily Horne Unilever Plc Theodora Skeadas Politics CVS Health Corp. Business Shannon Liss-Riordan Washington News Nestl SA Tom Hespos Colgate-Palmolive Co. Technology Washington News Race And Ethnicity
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