Some data about corporate support for DJT

Here’s some data.

https://yale.app.box.com/s/caegd9h9titzh03h7jb3cj045vdemtyk

also cited by Axios

https://www.axios.com/2024/06/25/trump-ceo-low-support-republicans

The NYT June 23, 2024 (not paywalled):

Recent headlines suggest that our nation’s business leaders are embracing the presidential candidate Donald Trump. His campaign would have you believe that our nation’s top chief executives are returning to support Mr. Trump for president, touting declarations of support from some prominent financiers like Steve Schwarzman and David Sacks.

That is far from the truth. They didn’t flock to him before, and they certainly aren’t flocking to him now. Mr. Trump continues to suffer from the lowest level of corporate support in the history of the Republican Party.

I know this because I work with roughly 1,000 chief executives a year, running a school for them, which I started 35 years ago, and I speak with business leaders almost every day. Our surveys show that 60 to 70 percent of them are registered Republicans.

The reality is that the top corporate leaders working today, like many Americans, aren’t entirely comfortable with either Mr. Trump or President Biden. But they largely like — or at least can tolerate — one of them. They truly fear the other.

MSN: 

While Sonnenfield said that Trump has yet to get the support of Fortune 500 companies, there is also a possibility of top bankers in the country showing their support instead, including Steve Schwarzman of Blackstone.

Moreover, many CEOs still greatly oppose choosing Biden, primarily due to the administration’s antitrust policies and support for stronger capital gains taxes. However, many CEOs are still optimistic about supporting Biden in the next run.

"Nobody’s saying that the Biden policies are perfect, and there are some problems. But they are dwarfed by the pernicious threat to inflation, economic stability, and, most importantly, democracy presented by the prospective Trump presidency," Sonnenfield told Fortune in a separate interview.

Market Watch:

Not one S&P 500 CEO is donating to Donald Trump

Published: Nov. 8, 2023 at 7:00 a.m. ET

Among the 2024 Republican presidential hopefuls, Tim Scott, Nikki Haley and Chris Christie score the most contributions from CEOs of S&P 500 companies

In my assessment, the amounts that those CEOs are donating to non-Trump candidates is piddly. Does that data really represent all the cash, e.g., dark money PACs we know nothing about? In view of their wealth, why do any of those CEOs bother with those pipsqueak donations? This data makes zero sense to me. None at all.

Despite my deep suspicions, the data above indicates that CEOs of the 500 biggest corporations do not support DJT. But what about CEOs and major executives of mainstream media? Also what about those corporations acting as legal entities called human beings? A CEO can support one candidate, while the CEO’s corporation quietly, secretly supports another. If major executives generally do not support DJT, then why does the MSM treat the less corrupt, pro-democracy Biden far worse than the far worse kleptocratic, anti-democracy candidate DJT? What the hell is going on here?

Regarding predictability

For everyone who knows that they know what they are doing, consider some commentary on research indicating that most experts, pundits, politicians, propagandists and blowhards usually do not know what they are talking about when they make predictions about how things will turn out if we do things their way:

“The core function of political belief systems is not prediction; it is to promote the comforting illusion of predictability. .... Human performance suffers because we are, deep down, deterministic thinkers with an aversion to probabilistic strategies that accept the inevitability of error. We insist on looking for order in random sequences.”

Or this:

A “defining feature of intuitive judgment is its insensitivity to the quality of the evidence on which the judgment is based. It has to be that way. System 1 can only do its job of delivering strong conclusions at lightning speed if it never pauses to wonder whether the evidence at hand is flawed or inadequate, or if there is better evidence elsewhere. . . . . we are creative confabulators hardwired to invent stories that impose coherence on the world.”[1]

Most superforecasters shared 15 traits including (i) cautiousness based on an innate knowledge that little or nothing was certain, (ii) being reflective, i.e., introspective and self-critical, (iii) being comfortable with numbers and probabilities, and (iv) being pragmatic and not wedded to any particular agenda or ideology. Unlike political ideologues, they were pragmatic and did not try to “squeeze complex problems into the preferred cause-effect templates [or treat] what did not fit as irrelevant distractions.”

What we face are two complex choices with unpredictable outcomes. Get rid of Joe, replace him with a better candidate and take our chances. Stick with Joe and take our chances. I am not a superforecaster. I do not know what the best option is.

Footnote:

1. And that is why in a debate with very limited time, when one person ignores honest debate and simply lies, slanders and crackpots, it is impossible for their opponent to formulate and deliver responses in a couple of minutes. The only way to at least partly respond well to a cheating liar in a debate like that is to plan for the lies and formulate short responses in advance.

In Biden’s debate preparation, he was not prepared to face a lying, slandering crackpot like DJT. He should have been prepared, but in my opinion he was not. If my opinion is correct, the failure is on the people who did Biden’s debate prep, maybe on Biden himself too.