{"id":274485,"date":"2026-01-31T23:19:13","date_gmt":"2026-01-31T23:19:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/274485\/"},"modified":"2026-01-31T23:19:13","modified_gmt":"2026-01-31T23:19:13","slug":"speaking-up-or-just-playing-it-safe-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/274485\/","title":{"rendered":"speaking up, or just playing it safe? \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s much talk about corporate America finally finding its voice under Donald Trump<\/a>, following criticism of the killing of Alex Pretti by Immigration and Customs Enforcement<\/a> (Ice) agents in Minneapolis<\/a>. Such talk is overstated. <\/p>\n

Yes, more than 60 Minnesota CEOs signed a joint letter urging \u201can immediate de-escalation of tensions\u201d after the shooting. Yes, Apple\u2019s Tim Cook is \u201cheartbroken\u201d by Pretti\u2019s death, Anthropic\u2019s Dario Amodei is concerned about \u201cpreserving democratic values and rights at home\u201d, and OpenAI\u2019s Sam Altman is criticising Ice for going \u201ctoo far\u201d and urging transparent investigations.<\/p>\n

In general, however, what looks like a newfound willingness to speak out is mostly carefully hedged, consequence-free speech. <\/p>\n

Cook, who attended a private White House screening of an Amazon documentary about Melania Trump, made sure to refer to having a \u201cgood conversation\u201d with the president. Altman went further, telling staff that \u201cPresident Trump is a very strong leader\u201d and would hopefully \u201crise to this moment\u201d.<\/p>\n

It is striking when set against Altman\u2019s language in 2016, when he described Trump as \u201cerratic, abusive\u201d, as an \u201cunprecedented\u201d threat to America, and a \u201creal threat to the safety of women, minorities and immigrants\u201d.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s easy to complain about corporate cowardice today, but one sees why executives and analysts are intimidated. Economic historian Adam Tooze, who recently interviewed US commerce secretary Howard Lutnick at Davos, described the Maga presence as feeling like his body was \u201cabsorbing a heavy hit\u201d, akin to being caught in an \u201cabusive dynamic\u201d.<\/p>\n

ExxonMobil CEO Darren Woods learned the cost of plain speaking when he recently described Venezuela as \u201cuninvestable\u201d, prompting Trump to threaten retaliation.<\/p>\n

Similarly, when Deutsche Bank analyst George Saravelos suggested European holdings of US assets gave Europe potential leverage, US treasury secretary Scott Bessent complained about \u201cfake news\u201d and how Deutsche Bank\u2019s CEO had called to say it \u201cdoes not stand by that analyst\u201d.<\/p>\n

Corporate leaders will probably continue to play it safe, saying enough to try to reassure staff, but not enough to risk retaliation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There\u2019s much talk about corporate America finally finding its voice under Donald Trump, following criticism of the killing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":274486,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[3673,936,72,4682,969,92716,61,60,1682,7689,23579],"class_list":{"0":"post-274485","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-anthropic","9":"tag-apple","10":"tag-business","11":"tag-deutsche-bank","12":"tag-donald-trump","13":"tag-exxonmobil","14":"tag-ie","15":"tag-ireland","16":"tag-openai","17":"tag-sam-altman","18":"tag-tim-cook"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274485","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=274485"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274485\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/274486"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=274485"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=274485"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=274485"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}