Trump Blocked Twitter CEO from Tech Meeting Over Crooked Hillary Emoji

Posted on December 14, 2016

Donald Trump held a meeting in Trump Tower today with executives from major tech companies. Those attending the meeting included Tim Cook from Apple, Jeff Bezos from Amazon, Elon Musk from Tesla, Sheryl Sanberg from Facebook, Satya Nadella from Microsoft and Eric Schmidt and Larry Page from Alphabet. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey did not attend apparently because he was blocked from the meeting.

Politico is reporting that the Trump Team did not want Dorsey to attend because of an emoji deal that Twitter blocked during the 2016 election campaign. Trump wanted to buy the #CrookedHillary haghtag. They also wanted a Crooked Hillary emoji that would appear showing "small bags of money being given away or stolen." Trump wanted this hashtag and emoji despite the fact that Hillary has never been charged with any crime. She was exonerated by the FBI over her use of a private email server while Secretary of State.

Details about what the hashtag would have looked like can be found here on Medium. Politico says Dorsey personally intervened to shut down the #CrookedHillary hashtag buy. As as result Dorsey was bounced from the Trump Tower meeting. The tech meeting at Trump Tower was set-up by Peter Thiel, Trump's sole tech advisor. Politico says RCN spokesman Sean Spicer is the one who made the call to refuse an invitation to Dorsey or other Twitter executives.

The tech industry has major concerns about what a Trump administration will do. Encryption and net neutrality are among the major issues. The Trump transition team and Twitter did not comment on the Politico story.