President, Uber chief are on self- destructive path
It’s been a bad week for brozillas. Our two most famous Neanderthal disrupters, one on each coast, have been in a race to see who can flame out more quickly — and insensibly.
Arrogance. Chaos. Childish pique. Gauche verbal blunders. Deceptions. Unacceptable behavior toward women. A bunker paranoia at the top, with staffers below scheming to undercut one another.
Even though one embodies the tech economy and the other is celebrating coal mining and curtailing globalization, Travis Kalanick and Donald Trump displayed similar traits as they rose to power, ignoring boundaries and smashing institutional structures.
The 40-year-old ridesharing king and the 71-year-old Twitter president luxuriated in their mostly white, male cocoons and always seemed to have a spoken or unspoken “or else” tagged onto their requests.
Just as Trump rated women on a 1-10 scale and bragged about grabbing their private parts, Kalanick referred to his company as “Boob-er” because he boasted that it allowed him to attract more women. Uber had marketing in France touting “hot chick” drivers, and Kalanick gave his “Uberettos” tips on how to drink and have sex at a company retreat in Miami.
As Time’s cover story, “Uber Fail,” points out, “Uber was born into conflict.” So was Donald Trump’s jeering, “I’d like to punch him in the face” presidential campaign. The utter inability of the two bullying chief executives to stop brawling with rivals and lawmakers and blaming the media led to existential crises in San Francisco and Washington.
“When you have a value system that is in some ways a benefit to you in the early days, when you’re charging really hard, it can turn into a tragic flaw,” Stephen Beck, founder of consulting firm cg42, told Time about Kalanick. “’Run fast, break things, and we can pick up the pieces later’ is OK until it’s not OK.”
Tarnished by a blog by former Uber engineer Susan Fowler about sexual harassment and a companycommissioned investigation by former Attorney General Eric Holder, Kalanick was forced to take a leave.
At the meeting to go over the Holder report, Uber board member David Bonderman joked that putting a second woman on the board would ensure a lot more gabbing. Then he had to resign.
In an email to employees, Kalanick said he will work on developing Travis 2.0.
Neither Kalanick nor Trump are imploding because they considered themselves unworthy impostors. On the contrary, they seemed to be so unaware of their self-destructive tendencies that they saw no need to curb them or put more adults in the inner circle.
Trump has no intention of working on a Donald 2.0. His paranoia about the Deep State seems to be feeding the Deep State’s ability to corral him. His angry and reckless tweets have time and again led to self-incrimination.
After a brief flirtation with being classy, as he reacted to the grisly shootout at the congressional baseball game practice here Wednesday, Trump returned to form early Thursday morning, tweeting: “They made up a phony collusion with the Russians story, found zero proof, so now they go for obstruction of justice on the phony story. Nice.”
On Friday morning, apparently referring to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, Trump bleated: “I am being investigated for firing the FBI Director by the man who told me to fire the FBI Director! Witch Hunt.” Not bothering to keep track of his lies, the president reverted to his earlier cover story about firing Comey because of Rosenstein’s memo rather than what he subsequently admitted: that he had the Russia investigation on his mind.
It seems to have just occurred to Trump that Mueller is building a topflight team of investigators. Turns out Mueller is the one building infrastructure: He has hired 13 lawyers and plans to bring on more. (And Trump’s personal lawyer has hired a lawyer, too.)
If you investigate Donald Trump with a dream team, nightmares are bound to follow. Remember how a failed Clinton real estate deal led to Monica Lewinsky?
It doesn’t take a Brostradamus to predict that, even for the most driven bros, there is some stuff you can’t brazen out.