Corporate CEOs urgently sounded the alarm about Trump’s attempted ‘coup d'état’ after 2020’s election: report

For decades, Reagan Republicans promoted themselves as the "pro-business party." But former President Donald Trump and his MAGA movement have pushed a pseudo-populist message, dramatically cutting taxes for large corporations while railing against big tech and "woke capitalism." And according to Time's Molly Ball, corporate CEOs panicked when, after the 2020 election, Trump refused to accept the election results and attempted a coup d'état or golpe de estado.

One of the people who sounded the alarm, Ball reports in an article published on November 1, was Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, a well-known business professor at the Yale School of Management.

According to Ball, "The CEOs of leading media, financial, pharmaceutical, retail and consulting firms all wanted to talk…. For decades, Sonnenfeld has been bringing business leaders together for well-attended seminars on the challenges of leadership, earning a reputation as a 'CEO whisperer.' A committed capitalist and self-described centrist, he has informally advised presidents of both parties and spoke at Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell's wedding."

Ball goes on to say that a "group of 45 CEOs" got together during a conference call on November 6 — a group that, according to Ball, "represented nearly one-third of Fortune's 100 largest companies: Walmart and Cowen Inc., Johnson & Johnson and Comcast, Blackstone Group and American Airlines."

"Disney's Bob Iger rolled out of bed at 4 a.m. Pacific time to join, accompanied by a large mug of coffee," Ball reports. "Sonnenfeld, who promised the participants confidentiality, declined to disclose or confirm their names. But Time spoke with more than a dozen people on the call, who confirmed their and others' participation."

Timothy Snyder, a Sonnenfeld colleague at Yale and author of the book "On Tyranny," participated in the call and discussed it with Time — which was, according to Ball, was something he "never previously discussed" with the media.

Snyder told Time, "I went through it point by point, in a methodical way. Historically speaking, democracies are usually overthrown from the inside, and it is very common for an election to be the trigger for a head of state or government to declare some kind of emergency in which the normal rules do not apply. This is a pattern we know, and the name for this is a coup d'état…. If you are going to defeat a coup, you have to move right away. The timing and the clarity of response are very, very important."