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\n A version of this story appeared in CNN Business\u2019 Nightcap newsletter. To get it in your inbox, sign up for free <\/em>here<\/em><\/a>.\n<\/p>\n \n The corporate cavalry isn\u2019t coming.\n <\/p>\n \n Over the weekend, business leaders offered a mix of responses after federal agents shot Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, revealing yet again how one of America\u2019s most powerful cohorts is \u2014 publicly, at least \u2014 carrying on with business as usual. Most executives said nothing. A few said a little<\/a>. And a handful went ahead with a private VIP screening of the First Lady\u2019s documentary at the White House.\n <\/p>\n \n The few who said a little included the heads of more than 60 Minnesota-based businesses who posted an open letter Sunday<\/a> referring obliquely to \u201cthe recent challenges facing our state.\u201d Without referring to Pretti or Renee Nicole Good by name, they said those challenges \u201chave created widespread disruption and tragic loss of life.\u201d The businesses called for an \u201cimmediate deescalation of tensions.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n Outside of Minnesota, some of the most powerful executives on the planet aren\u2019t just doing business as usual \u2014 they\u2019re actively supporting the president, even as public opinion shifts<\/a> firmly against the administration.\n <\/p>\n \n On Saturday, hours after federal agents killed Pretti, a group of CEOs opted to spend Saturday night at a private White House screening of the Amazon MGM Studios-produced \u201cMelania\u201d documentary<\/a> about the first lady. They included, according to The Hollywood Reporter<\/a>: Apple\u2019s Tim Cook, Amazon\u2019s Andy Jassy, AMD\u2019s Lisa Su, Zoom\u2019s Eric Yuan, and the New York Stock Exchange\u2019s Lynn Martin.\n <\/p>\n \n None of those executives responded to CNN\u2019s request for comment Monday. The White House declined to comment.\n <\/p>\n \n First Lady Melania Trump posted a photo from the event on X<\/a> Sunday, stating she was \u201cdeeply humbled to have been surrounded by an inspiring room of friends, family, and cultural iconoclasts\u201d ahead of the film\u2019s global release this Friday.\n <\/p>\n \n Of course, those \u201ciconoclasts\u201d seem to find themselves increasingly out of step with their customer base of the American buying public.\n <\/p>\n \n It\u2019s not Cook\u2019s or any other CEO\u2019s job to solve all of America\u2019s problems. They have a duty to make decisions based on the best interest of shareholders \u2014 and certainly, staying on Trump\u2019s good side is one way to ensure business keeps running smoothly. Titans of industry have to do what they have to do. But putting on a tux and celebrating with an administration that is rapidly falling out of step with the global public \u2014 which their shareholders are members of \u2014 is different from staying silent.\n <\/p>\n \n Many CEOs use the principles of liberalism when it suits them and ignore them when it doesn\u2019t. Just look at Tim Cook\u2019s bio on X, where he quotes MLK as saying \u201cLife\u2019s most persistent and urgent question is: \u2018What are you doing for others?\u2019\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n But we\u2019ll come back to the quote later.\n <\/p>\n \n Trump is not nearly as popular as he was when he took office a year ago. But that\u2019s not stopping many CEOs from continuing to publicly support, or at least tread lightly with, the president, even with his administration\u2019s increasingly hostile behavior toward seemingly anyone who isn\u2019t offering full-throated support of everything it does. That includes deploying ICE in Minnesota, attempting to take over Greenland, publicly insulting NATO allies at Davos, launching a criminal investigation into the Federal Reserve chair and attempting to strong-arm American businesses<\/a> into exploiting Venezuela\u2019s oil assets.\n <\/p>\n \n CNN polling found that 51% of Americans believe the ICE agent who killed Renee Good<\/a> acted inappropriately and reflected \u201cbigger problems with the way ICE is operating.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n Deadly force against American civilians, as my colleague Aaron Blake notes<\/a>, is hard for everyday folks to tune out. And as public outrage grows, it\u2019s getting harder to make sense of Corporate America\u2019s collective shrug.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cWhy have \u2018F-you\u2019 money if you\u2019re not going to speak up and use it?\u201d asked author and former investment banker William D. Cohan on the Pivot podcast earlier this month, after an ICE agent shot and killed Renee Good.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cI\u2019m sure they all have their very good reasons, on a micro basis, for why they\u2019re doing it \u2014 \u2018got to protect my customers, got to protect my employees,\u2019\u201d Cohan told me Monday. \u201cThey don\u2019t want to be a nail that sticks up that this guy will beat down with his hammer.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n But a united front could, at the very least, isolate Trump, Cohan said. \u201cThings like that have to be tried \u2014 it\u2019s existential.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n And that\u2019s what makes things like Cook\u2019s MLK quote ring a little hollow. Especially because Martin Luther King, Jr., appears to have never actually said it. <\/a>\n <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n A version of this story appeared in CNN Business\u2019 Nightcap newsletter. To get it in your inbox, sign up for free here. New York \u00a0\u2014\u00a0 The corporate cavalry isn\u2019t coming. Over the weekend, business leaders offered a mix of responses after federal agents shot Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, revealing yet again how one of America\u2019s … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18414,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18413","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/CEOs-attended-a-private-screening-of-\u2018Melania-on-the-day.JPG","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18413","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18413"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18413\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18415,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18413\/revisions\/18415"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/18414"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18413"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18413"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18413"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n New York<\/span>
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