Twitter CEO is totally fine with not having met Donald Trump, really
President Donald Trump is fairly vocal on Twitter. You could say he's a power user, and he's been one for quite some time.
But Jack Dorsey, a cofounder and CEO of Twitter, has yet to take an in-person meeting with President Trump, according to an interview published Wednesday by Steven Levy, editor of Backchannel.
"Have you personally met Trump?" Levy asked.
"No," Dorsey replied simply.
When asked how that could be so, especially given how he is not only CEO of Twitter but also CEO of payments company Square, Dorsey replied, "I don’t know. You’d have to ask them why not."
Dorsey's absence at the roundtable meeting Trump held with top leaders in Silicon Valley made headlines last year. Some people on Twitter speculated it was because Twitter stopped the Trump campaign from making an anti-Hillary Clinton emoji during the election.
But that was never confirmed.
Dorsey has not been particularly vocal about his political leanings and did not throw obvious support to presidential candidates during the election season. But his ideological leanings are rather obvious — if you take a quick perusal through his Twitter likes and through who he follows. He also has a public relationship with Deray Mckesson and the #BlackLivesMatter movement.
Earlier this year, Twitter employees (along with Dorsey and executive chairman Omid Kordestani) donated more than $1.5 million to the American Civil Liberties Union to help fight President Trump's immigration ban.
Does taking a meeting with President Trump even matter? It seems that Dorsey isn't too worried about it. His response to Levy on whether or not he would attend, even if invited, extolled on the exact purpose of Dorsey's company.
"We don’t have to be invited to these things to show our stances and to participate. We can take action and we can make statements about what we believe, and where we think the government is doing the right thing according to our beliefs, and where we disagree. That doesn’t require an invite or a roundtable to do that — that’s part of the power of our platform," he said.
Topics X/Twitter Donald Trump Politics
Kerry Flynn is a business reporter for Mashable covering the tech industry. She previously reported on social media companies, mobile apps and startups for International Business Times. She has also written for The Huffington Post, Forbes and Money magazine. Kerry studied environmental science and economics at Harvard College, where she led The Harvard Crimson's metro news and design teams and played mellophone in the Band. When not listening to startup pitches, she runs half-marathons, plays with puppies and pretends to like craft beer.
