![]() Its effects are evident in Washington, where Big Business’s longtime alliance with the Republican Party is foundering. ![]() To Sonnenfeld, the effort-much of which has not been previously reported-underlined a generational shift taking place in the collective civic attitudes of the CEO class. CEOs wanted to speak out about this, and Jeff gave us a way to do that.” “Talking about this, it kind of transformed from the realm of politics to the realm of civic duty. “This was an event which violated those rituals of America and created a visceral reaction,” Nick Pinchuk, CEO of the Kenosha, Wis.–based toolmaker Snap-on, tells TIME. So in the ensuing weeks, the professor called the executives together again and again, to address Trump’s attempt to interfere with Georgia’s vote count and the Jan. But Trump’s effort to overturn the election persisted. ![]() Sonnenfeld thought the hastily convened “Business Leaders for National Unity,” as he’d grandly dubbed the 7 a.m. “The timing and the clarity of response are very, very important.” “If you are going to defeat a coup, you have to move right away,” he says. And business leaders, he noted, have been among the most important groups in determining whether such attempts succeeded in other countries. This is a pattern we know, and the name for this is a coup d’état.” What was crucial, Snyder said, was for civil society to respond quickly and clearly. “Historically speaking, democracies are usually overthrown from the inside, and it is very common for an election to be the trigger for a head of state or government to declare some kind of emergency in which the normal rules do not apply. “I went through it point by point, in a methodical way,” recalls Snyder, who has never previously discussed the episode. What they were witnessing, he said, was the beginning of a coup attempt. The meeting began with a presentation from Sonnenfeld’s Yale colleague Timothy Snyder, the prominent historian of authoritarianism and author of On Tyranny. (Sonnenfeld, who promised the participants confidentiality, declined to disclose or confirm their names, but TIME spoke with more than a dozen people on the call, who confirmed their and others’ participation.) Pacific time to join, accompanied by a large mug of coffee. Disney’s Bob Iger rolled out of bed at 4 a.m. 6, represented nearly one-third of Fortune’s 100 largest companies: Walmart and Cowen Inc., Johnson & Johnson and Comcast, Blackstone Group and American Airlines. The group of 45 CEOs who assembled less than 12 hours later, at 7 a.m.
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