In 2017, Silicon Valley rebuked Trump’s travel ban. Today, it has reversed course and is bending over backwards with displays of deference to Trump
On 28 January 2017, I rushed to the San Francisco international airport (SFO). Like elsewhere in the US that night, demonstrations were growing against a travel ban Donald Trump had issued against visitors from seven Muslim-majority countries. The night was chillier than normal, and I had not brought an adequate jacket. Luckily, the train to the airport was warm, full to the brim with jittery, talkative protesters. The airport itself was a rowdy scene: cabs and Ubers stalled as angry protesters blocked the roads, meters still running; demonstrators in hijabs prayed on their protest signs in baggage claim as others shouted at any arriving flyer coming for their luggage. Trump was the most outrageous man in America then, his election a shock to a wide swath of the world.
After a few hours, whispers of a $150bn face floated through the crowd: Sergey Brin, creator and co-founder of Google, was there. At the time, he was the president of Google’s parent company Alphabet, which also owns YouTube. The effect was thrilling: one of the richest and most powerful men in the world was registering his discontent with Trump by bodily joining a protest against him. Brin, a native of Moscow who arrived in the US at the age of six, said he came to SFO that night “because I’m a refugee”. It was a personal rebuke of Trump, the consummate nativist.
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