(L-R) Priscilla Chan, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Lauren Sanchez, businessman Jeff Bezos, Sundar Pichai, and businessman Elon Musk, among other dignitaries, attend Donald Trump's inauguration as the next President.
Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, senior associate dean of the School of Management at Yale, sent a strong message to corporations about upcoming accountability.
Sonnefeld spoke to MS NOW host Stephanie Ruhle on Monday about nationwide anger toward corporations.
"Do you think corporate America, the corporate leaders that you speak with every day, are taking notice or in some way taking action around public sentiment really turning on the wealthiest of the wealthy?" she asked. "This administration, Donald Trump, will say, 'We don't have an affordability problem; that's made up.' That's absolutely not the case. And people across this country are frustrated and angry. Are business leaders are starting to pay attention?"
She pointed to the income inequality protests in France and wondered if Americans were willing to rise up too.
Sonnenfeld explained that over 60 major businesses in Minnesota came together to fight back against ICE after the protesters were shot in Minneapolis.
"When there is a line that's crossed, they will respond," he said. "And they did in 2020. We got 100 major business leaders to come out and say that these elections were fair and free, and they were the ones who canonized it and certified it before anybody when Trump said the elections were rigged."
He thinks that business leaders are prepared but that it must be a specific kind of business leaders. He cited the Business Roundtable, a group of CEOs of America's leading companies, who he said are useless.
"Forgive me for saying this," he prefaced.
Ruhle interrupted, "Not forgiving you. Just say it."
"They're cowards," Sonnenfeld said of the Business Roundtable. "However, amazingly, the historically very conservative National Association of Manufacturers, which is, you know, over 2000 businesses — there are only 200 in the business roundtable. [It's] easy to organize them. They don't stand by each other. They all get attacked. Jamie Dimon gets attacked by banks, you know, of course, JP Morgan, the CEOs of Walmart and Coca-Cola. These iconic companies get attacked because they're not standing by each other. But the National Association of Manufacturers uses collective action to protect each other and push back on trade issues," explained Sonnefeld.
It prompted Ruhle to note that small businesses don't have the power to lobby Congress or make major gifts like gold phones and private jets that they can give the White House to get a trade exemption.
"It's 95 percent of the business leaders. They are. But certainly the oligarchs are the ones we have seen have done these Faustian deals, and they pay the price for it," Sonnenfeld added.
Ruhle said that "in a quid pro quo presidency," they can offer something to him. "Small businesses can't," she added.
That's why he urged collective action and called on business leaders and clergy to speak out.
Ruhle then asked if all the corporations that wrote big checks for Trump's ballroom are ready to face Congress because investigations are coming.
Sonnenfeld agreed that they're worried.
"And some of these deals that look pretty dirty — are very worried people who've been tied in with family members. That's a whole other show. But I think that we can see that a great reporter for this network has come out with a list of all these dirty deals, and we're going to see that people are going to be held accountable," he closed.
