The Daily Signal - Charles Gasparino: Exposing the Cost of Corporate Wokeness

Episode Date: August 6, 2024

When Charles Gasparino set out to report on Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse, he had no idea he was about to uncover a much larger story: the radical transformation of American business. Gasparino, a veteran financial journalist at Fox Business, initially focused on the bank's poor risk management. But he soon stumbled upon something more troublesome—an unhealthy fixation on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) policies.  This misplaced focus, Gasparino argues, played a significant role in the bank's ultimate demise. As he dug deeper, a troubling pattern emerged. Silicon Valley Bank wasn't an isolated case—it was just the beginning. From Disney’s controversial policies under Bob Chapek to BlackRock CEO Larry Fink's aggressive push for ESG standards, Gasparino found that wokeness had infiltrated boardrooms across America. Gasparino traced this trend back to the summer of 2020, when corporations reacted strongly to the George Floyd protests, exemplified by J.P. Morgan’s CEO, Jamie Dimon, famously taking a knee. Through extensive interviews and research, Gasparino documented how corporations eagerly embraced woke ideas, only to face harsh financial realities. His new book "Go Woke, Go Broke: The Inside Story of the Radicalization of Corporate America" offers a stark warning to CEOs who might be tempted to follow this path. On today's episode of "The Daily Signal Podcast," Gasparino explains that when businesses stray from their core mission—maximizing shareholder value—it's a losing proposition. Listen as we explore how woke ideology reshaped corporate America and what can be done about it. Enjoy the show! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It's week three of Canadian tires early Black Friday sales. These prices won't go lower this year. Maybe too long. Freezing. Save up to 50% November 20th to 27th. Conditions apply, details online. This is the Daily Single Podcast for Tuesday, August 6th. I'm Virginia Allen.

Charles Gasparino is a financial reporter. After the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, Charles began looking in to some of the financial investments that such institutions were making. How are they prioritizing their resources? That journey ultimately resulted in the book. book, Go Woke, Go Broke, the inside story of the radicalization of corporate America. The Daily Signal's Rob Bluey sits down with Charles on today's show to discuss the book and to warn financial institutions from following suit to institutions like Silicon Valley Bank.

Stay tuned for their conversation after this. This is Rob Bluey from The Daily Signal. In today's media landscape, it's more important than ever to have a trusted source of news and conservative commentary. That's why we are asking for your support. Your donation helps us continue our mission of delivering accurate, factual reporting on the issues that matter most to you. Whether it's $5 or $500, every contribution makes a difference. Visit dailysignal.com slash donate to help us keep Americans informed and fight for conservative values.

The Daily Signal is your voice for the truth. Charles Gasparino is a veteran Fox business financial journalist and New York Times bestselling author and he joins The Daily Signal today on the day that his new book is out in print. It's called Go Woke, Go Broke, the inside story of the radicalization of corporate America. Charlie, thanks so much for being with us. Thank you for having me. Well, what prompted you to tackle this topic? You've been in the business world for a long time covering corporate executives and what's

going on in the corporate world. What really prompted you to take an inside perspective as to what's happening behind the scenes? Well, it was kind of interesting because I'm a financial reporter. I write a lot about stocks. I write a lot about corporations. I write a lot about M&A. I do also write about the confluence of politics and corporate America politics and Wall Street. What was interesting is I was covering the Silicon Valley Bank implosion. So this is how it really began. We should point out that Silicon Valley Bank is like three pages in this book, which is like a 300 page, 250, 300 page book. So it started with that. And it started with me covering this implosion of this bank, you know, horrible risk management, people didn't know what was going on.

And on top of that, there was this degree that management was engaged in, you know, some weird social stuff that you didn't, you wouldn't think a bank would be, you know, obsessing about. lots of DEI, diversity, equity, inclusion, ESG stuff, you know, stuff that you can make a good case that, you know, diverted management's attention to the balance sheet. So on top of that, the regulator of the bank, because the bank is located in Silicon Valley, is the San Francisco Fed, which, you know, literally, you know, started embracing, you know, every progressive Fed in the world, you know, the, you know, the, you know, the, you know, the, you know, the, you know, the, you know, the, you know, the. head of the San Francisco Fed was talking positively about Black Lives Matter. And I started covering this, you know, as part of the story. Then I had, of course, an aggressive agent who came to me and said, you should write a book about Silicon Valley Bank being too woke.

Maybe that's imploring. And then when we started putting pen to paper, we realized that this is a much bigger story. And literally when that started happening, you had the Dillamolvaney fracas at at Budweiser where, you know, the company went out, and this is an iconic beer brand that, you know, stands from Middle America, you know, generally, you know, dads and football players and, you know, cowboys and hard hats went and, you know, basically went out and hired a trans activist as a, as a spokesperson, so to speak, an influencer. That happened.

Then you had something happened at Target where, you. You know, not, they just didn't, didn't, you know, celebrate, you know, gay Pride Month. They went out and they did, you know, they basically did stuff that involved children, where children's clothing, gay pride clothing, was mixed in with tuck friendly bathing suits for men who were not fully transitioned to women. And it was just one woke hit after another. Then there was the whole controversy over ESG and BlackRock. and Larry Fink being at the center of this, you know, huge controversy,

whether woke policy should be used to impose investing standards on big asset managers that would go and basically force companies, the invested companies, to abide by these standards. And then we realized that we had a much bigger book and sort of a sweep, so to speak, of what's going on here, including Disney. You know, Disney figures large in this. This was around the time when Bob Chappek was, you know, battling Ron DeSantis over the, over a law. You know, this is where it kind of got me.

You know, personally, I have no problem with same-sex kissing scenes in cartoons. A lot of parents do, you know. But I noticed what was odd about Disney is that, you know, the voters of Florida put in Ron DeSantis. They put in a pretty conservative. legislature, they put these people in that stand for certain things. They did not want to teach sex ed to kids. And they passed a law that said that. You cannot teach toddlers, you know, you can't teach certain types. You can't teach sexual intercourse essentially to toddlers. I mean, let's be clear here. And Disney fought back against that, against the will of the people

of Florida. And I was like, you know, since when does a company get like that? involved. You know, they're supposed to be selling other stuff. And it kind of opened up a whole sort of window into what kind of company Disney is, how woke it is. And I went through all this stuff, so to speak. I found out about their hiring standards. I read their annual reports. It was the funniest thing. They graded their annual reports. They graded all their executives on the annual reports based on these various metrics and including some woke metrics. And the CEO at the time, Bob Chepec failed, I think, the diversity metric because he's a white guy. So I was like, you know, and so I did that and I, you know, and then I unspooled the whole

Dillam-Movaney thing. I tried to figure out, you know, how does this happen? It can't be just be one marketing executive that had the bright idea. Oh, let's bring a trans activist in. It was more than that. It was like the company was going hogwile from the top. Anizer Bush is the parent company Budweiser. but it's really run by these guys, these sort of Brazilian and Belgian hedge fund type guys that run something known as A.B. InBev, and they're very big on woke corporate policies. And so I followed it down to try to find the root causes. And I tried to write it like a narrative.

You know, I spent a lot of time interviewing Larry Fink. And then what I did was after building it up, trying to get to the root causes of how this happened, and I go through it pretty systematically. The beginnings of stakeholder capitalism, how that manifested itself into ESG and other things. The end of the book is how woke is breaking, and that's the last chapter about how this thing started the fall apart and why. It's not totally dead, obviously.

We know it's not dead. But these companies are doing 180s. It was funny, you know, at the end of the book, there's this great scene. So I talk about one of the parts of the book is the summer of 2020. When all these big companies, you know, after the George Floyd killing, you know, just went totally nuts on wokeness, right? You know, they were having town halls and this, DEI became writ large. Jamie Diamond was photographed taking a knee during that summer while he visited a branch in upstate New York, the town of Mount Kisco. And, you know, we all asked at the time, I remember because I asked, too, you know, is he taking a need for Blacker Lives Matter?

And they were like, well, we're not commenting. Believe what you want. So they let it stand that he was taking a knee for Black Lives. All right, you can go back. I looked at this. So when I ran my stuff by JP Morgan and we get to the end, I said, you know, I'm bringing this up about, you know, Jamie taking a knee that you guys wouldn't deny. He goes, oh, no, Jamie wasn't taking a knee for Black Lives Matter. He's a 100% All-American guy. He was taking a need because he needed to fit in the photo. And so I said, you got to read the end of the book. So it talks about this. It's like this is now the retreat from Lucas because as much as you see like what's going on right now with the Kamala Harris campaign, white guys for Kamala,

you know, white women for Kamala, trying to be very intersectional about voting in the presidential election. I think it's pretty fair to say that corporate American went there and they found out it was a money loser. And now they're trying to unwind it. Even Larry Think, who made a ton of money on ESG, is unwinding ESG from the ethos of BlackRock. And BlackRock is the largest money management firm. And we get into how that happened. And I get into a lot of it by talking to Larry Think. And by the way, Larry being very honest about it.

I mean, he was very honest. It was fascinating. It was revelatory because he's a smart guy. I've known that guy for years. I've seen his career, and I try to get into it. How does someone go from a middle of the road bond trader, which is what he was? A really smart guy. He creates a great business to this guy that for a time was the sort of paragon of woke capitalism.

And then back away from it. And I think the book kind of provides that journey. And I think it's instructional, let's just say, for CEOs that want to go there. Well, your book does tell those incredible stories. Thank you for sharing so many examples with our audience. I mean, it's just incredible to think about how things have evolved over the course of the past few decades, from a point where businesses and corporations were interested in maximizing shareholder value to now it seems like they were catering to left-wing activists who had a certain social agenda that they were pushing. You seem optimistic, though, Charlie.

So tell me why is it that you think that woke is crumbling and maybe we're turning a page on this era? Yeah, I am optimistic, but it's, you know, it's never, you know, remember, this stuff is kind of embedded into the corporate ethos ecosystem. So it's, you know, you're not going to get it out totally. But I'm optimistic because I think most Americans just can't stand it. You know, the best comics right now, the most non-woke comics in the world, David Chappelle and Bill Burr and, uh, yeah, and listen, these, these folks might vote for Kamala Harris. I don't know. I mean, I don't know exactly where they come out in the political spectrum, but they're free things. thinkers, right? Joe Rogan, free thinker. And they, they are not woke. And I think, you know,

it doesn't really sell, you know, you know, throwing politics in people's faces while they want to drink a beer or see a movie. It's just like it's, it's a downer and people are rebellions. Again, I, and I say this in the book, you know, if I went into a target and I saw a tuck friendly mannequin there in this whole display for pride with children's clothing, I probably wouldn't care. That's me. But a lot of people with their kids do care, you know, and they deserve to care. And they rebelled. And it's kind of that rebellion that is the reason why Target changed its tune this year.

That's at the end of the book. We talk about this. Why Budweiser is now the Bud Light was the number one selling beer pre-Dillam-Milvania. it's now the third highest selling beer why Disney is trying to de-wokify its programming. I mean, I can go down the list, why Larry Fink won't say the words, the letters, ESG anymore. And I could go on and on. And I tried to make it a quick read and I read that it was with anecdotes. And I also tried to, you know, find, like, where was the starting point?

And, you know, that's kind of interesting. Like, old bad ideas, like stuff like ESG and wholeness, you know, you find it at the U.S. or you find it at Davos, I go through this. And then as it starts percolating in that sort of ecosystem that CEOs pay attention to, Davos is the World Economic Forum. The UN is the UN, as you know, you started to see the change. And one of the big sort of inflection points was when Jamie Diamond, one of the great CEOs of all time, was head of the business roundtable. And he went from, and he basically defenestrated Milton Friedman. Milton Friedman came the great economists.

I mean, and I go through this, you know, came up with this concept known as shareholder capitalism. You know, you care about the shareholder. Everything else takes care of itself. And CEO, stay out of politics because you suck at it anyway, right? Which is obviously, one thing we've learned, that is true. And then, you know, Jamie went from there, defenestrating Milton Friedman and embraced what's known as stakeholder capitalism, where you're, you know, citizens of the world and you've got to care about all this stuff. And that kind of opened the door for a lot of this stuff.

And I get into that. Well, and just to take a sidetrack here, I see Jamie Diamond's name being mentioned as a possible Treasury Secretary in the Trump, you know, in a next Trump administration. Not going to happen, okay. I mean, you know, I wrote about this. This is funny. I, you know, I recently wrote a column in the post that said, you know, everybody thinks that Trump really wants Jamie Diamond because Trump, like, blurted it out.

Donald Trump said, if I'm elected, you know, yes, I'd certainly consider him. But the real guy he's close to is Larry Fink, and it just shows you how good, Larry Fink was Donald Trump's money manager at one time. And I get into that in the book. They do have a bond. And Larry's not as liberal, but, you know, what made him go this progressive round is what fascinated me. Because I know the guy in his heart is not this Elizabeth Warren loving, you know, AOC accolite. He's a moderate. Yeah, so I want to ask you about that because obviously, as you've pointed out in your,

research has shown, these companies that, and you've just given us many examples, by the way, Budweiser being a, Bud Light being a perfect case study. So these companies have obviously lost some revenue as a result of going woke. But what was it, why did they feel that pressure then from the left-wing activists or those individuals who are pushing a social justice agenda to go down this path in the first place? Well, there's never only one reason, right? I mean, there was a social movement that moved people towards some of this stuff. Part of it was, you know, if you understand how investing works, money management firms like BlackRock, like Vanguard, who have a lot of sway over corporate decision making, by the way,

because they own the stocks of the companies that they, you know, they own, they own every major company, right? So if you're Disney, you're owned by BlackRock, Larry Fink and his policies become a huge thing. Vanguard and its policies become a huge thing. And as stakeholder capitalism replaced shareholder capitalism, as ESG became embraced, and ESG became embraced, not just because of stakeholder capitalists, because a lot of these big asset management firms manage money of big blue state pension funds who are run by progressives, and they wanted ESG. This thing started taking off. And they started getting ingrained in the corporate culture because the asset managers demanded it. It was kind of a, you know, a woke circle jerk. I think I might have mentioned at some

point, which is kind of what it is. And then you had outside influences on it, too, that tried to feast off of this. You had the proxy advisors that began advising companies on how to meet ESG metrics. You had outside activist groups that sort of graded companies on their embrace of woke capitalism, like the Human Rights Campaign and the Center for American Politics. And, you know, it's very interesting to know that when Bob Chepeck, when he's fighting for to save his job, remember he got replaced amid that whole blowup with, right after the blowup with the Santhas, he got replaced. And it wasn't just a blowup with the Santhas and the Santhas ultimately winning that caused

that. I mean, he was not a very good CEO. And the book gets into a lot of that. In doing the 180, remember at first he said, I'm staying out of this Florida mess, you know, let the people Florida decide. Then he got into it after pressure from left-wing activist groups. One of the first things he said, he goes, listen, Disney is not an anti-gay company. We have a perfect score from the human rights campaign.

So that just shows you how much these sort of left-wing activist groups play in this whole ecosystem. Now, do they still play the same role today? I don't think it's as obvious. It's definitely not as big of a role. I mean, there's a lot of things that happen that the last chapter unpacked. one of the things that happened, you know, if you, you know, October 6th was a tragedy on so many levels what happened in Gaza. That exposed a lot about woke capitalism because what happened was after that happened, after that, that, that, the heinous crime against, against innocence

happened in, you know, in that caboots. Colleges erupted. And see, like, Wall Street CEOs witnessed the place they just threw, you know, $50 million to condone anti-Semitism. And that was another state to the heart of low capitalism because then what they, what they started doing, these CEOs started demanding change at the university level, which is inculcating kids into some of these bizarre, progressive ideologies that are getting, that's getting translated into, you know, workforce of some of these companies and and also these these these CEOs became much more tuned to woke capitalism you know you don't hear bill act bill act for most of his career was not a

social sort of a right-wingish social justice guy he was it was an investor who was left the center i think is fair to say not anymore so i think that's some of the stuff like how this thing how the evolution is the counterattack or the counter revolution is occurring. And that's the last chapter of the book. So let me ask you about some of the action that we've seen legislatively, particularly at the state level. You've had state financial officers or state treasurers put in place policies that try to limit state investments in certain companies like this. Is that having an effect? And what are other steps that you would recommend that the American people can push back? on corporate leaders when it comes to embracing some of these ideas that are really out of step with the rest of America? Yes, I think, well, first off, we should point out that Elon Musk,

and this is in the last chapter two, is put another stake through the heart of woke capitalism by buying Twitter and opening it up to, and basically opening up its past practices as a company that was obsessed with left-wing group think and censorship, quite frankly, to something different. And so that's, that, that was another nail in the coffin of low capitalism. Yes, laws are being passed. What was interesting is like in the, if you understand sort of demographically what's going on, and I bring this in the book. Now, for years, the big state pension funds were in New York and California and Illinois.

And they kind of like, their corporate policies were very woke. And they demanded some of that stuff out of people, out of companies that want to manage their gazillions of dollars. So you could see that pressure being put on people like Larry think. And I talk about that in the book, how Brad Lander, the controller of New York City, which controls $23 billion in money, had a big argument with Larry think about trying to get them to divest from fossil fuels. It's an anecdote in the book. But the demographic shift that's going on right now because high taxes, high crime, you know, you name it in places like California, New York, and Illinois is driving people out of those states to the Sunbelt. The Sunbelt states are now

growing. Their pension funds are growing. And guess what? They are becoming more powerful. And so the tail can wag the dog a little differently now. So you had Tennessee, you had, I mean, I go through the list, Florida, and all Texas, going after BlackRock and any woke, any any woke asset manager, if you, you know, if you want to do business with us and we're big states now, with a lot of money, with big economies, you want to do business with us, drop the woke. Yeah. No, and it certainly seems that some of these individuals, these state treasurers are financial officers who typically wouldn't be making headlines. They operate behind the scenes are now, you know, aspiring for higher office. I think of Riley Moore and West Virginia.

as being one notable example who's running for the House of Representatives. Let me ask you this. You know, you've done all of this research. You've talked to a lot of corporate insiders. There's been, obviously, individuals like the Disney example, where there were consequences. But are there still holdouts? Are there still holdouts in corporate America who are so committed to this radicalization that they're just unwilling to go along with what the American people see as an unnecessary insertion of politics into

I think the holdouts are more nichey, and that's kind of where they should be. I mean, like, Ben and Jerry's. If you want a virtue signal when you eat ice cream, you buy Ben and Jerry's, right? And I don't think, I don't have a problem with that. It's a niche product or Nike, right? If you want to fly your freak flag high with Nike, you know, which has a message, I think most people don't care. You know, I think when these big companies that control so much of the, are politically

and social, our culture start engaging in this is where you get, you know, listen if I don't like Ben and Jerry's I can buy Haggadoss, you know what I'm saying? It's hard to like, if you're a working class person, you know, Target is probably the place you got, because it has

good, it has cheaper goods. But what was interesting is that even so, you know, that enraged so many people that they stopped going. And so the power of the purse did you know, this was capitalism writ large.

You know, we're not going to give you our money. So I think my guess is that the sort of big, sort of broad, you know, sort of national brands that go there are in trouble over it. And you can see each one of them backing out. And I think if this is going to exist, it's going to exist, you know, and it's sort of most flagrant form. I mean, it was flagrantly embraced by everybody. Now it's flagrantly embraced by a niche, I think, is one of the way.

of the things that's going on. It's not totally gone away. I mean, Target still at Pride Month, although you barely registered because you didn't like, it wasn't that sort of, I mean, they, you know, they toned it down or whatever you want to put it. Yeah, certainly did seem like they did. I mean, I'm one of those former Target customers who hasn't said foot in the store in years as a result of their policies. Charlie, tell us about where our audience can get a copy of the book, some of the other things that you have going on, and how they can follow your work more closely. Well, follow me on Twitter. You'll see all the arguments I get into with people. It's funny, like, I'm a type of guy, just so you know, I'm not like, you know, Gavin Newsom despised a call I wrote about

DEI and Kamala Harris. He said some very not nice things about me, even though Joe Biden came out and said DEI is at the top of my administration, including the vice president. Do you remember that? It's funny. I piss off everybody. Then Donald Trump, three, two weeks later, attacked me as a never-trumper because I, you know, had the cajones to argue with Andy Putzner, somebody that worked for him about, you know, some of the problems I find in the Trump economy. So, you know, I'm kind of a misanthroat, I guess is the best way to put it. And my columns in the New York Post, my writing, my tweets reflect that. And this book, although I try to be journalistic, and I think that's part of the reason. why I piss off everybody on both sides of the aisle, because I think if you're going to be intellectually honest and journalistic, not everybody's going to like you. I'm definitely not woke, though. If you're not woke, you will like this book. I refresh my stuff on Twitter, on Instagram, on Facebook, on Fox Business.

In the New York Post, I write a lot for the New York Post. I have a newsletter, which you can sign up. It's free. It's called On the Money. You can get it delivered right into your email. You just sign up and the newsletter gets delivered. A lot of it's about Wall Street. Some of it's about politics.

Hopefully you can make some money from it. And I write a Sunday column for The Post as well. And I write books. I personally appreciate how accessible you are on social media and the fact that you do, pay attention to what your readers and viewers are writing about and your responses to them. So whether it's the governor of California

or maybe the former future president of the United States, there's certainly, you're always in the mix. That's for sure. I guess that's right. It's hard. It's not that easy because I'm a type of guy that doesn't like being the story, and then all of a sudden I find myself the story. Well, today, the day that your book comes out, you should be the story.

Again, the book is called Go Woke, Go Broke, the inside story of the radicalization of corporate America. You can buy it wherever books are sold. We'll be sure to include a link on the Daily Signal and in the show notes for this podcast. Charlie Gasperino, thanks so much for spending time with The Daily Signal. My pleasure. It was great. Thank you. With that, that's going to do it for today's show. Thanks so much for joining us here on the Daily Signal podcast. If you haven't had the chance, make sure that you check out our afternoon shows, what we call Top News. We bring you the headlines

of the day. These are the pieces of news that you need to know to stay informed on what's happening in our world. And be sure to hit that subscribe button so you never miss out on new shows from the Daily Signal podcast. Have a great rest of your Tuesday. We'll see you back here around 5 o'clock for Top News. Daily Signal podcast is made possible because of listeners like you. Executive producers are Rob Louie and Katrina Trinko. Hosts are Virginia Allen, Brian Gottstein, Tyler O'Neill, Mary Margaret O'Ollahan, and Elizabeth Mitchell. Sound design by Lauren Evans, Mark Geinney, John Pop, and Joseph Von Spakovsky. To learn more or support our work, please visit DailySignal.com.