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Howard Schultz Told Starbucks Workers Trump Is Creating Economic ‘Chaos’

Thinking about Trump’s America. Photo: Jason Redmond/AFP/Getty Images

Since the 2016 election, Starbucks’s executive chairman Howard Schultz has warned that Americans must “recognize the threat of tyranny” now looming in their country, been revealed as Hillary Clinton’s erstwhile Labor secretary pick, and pledged to hire 10,000 refugees in response to the White House’s January travel ban. He’s not the biggest Donald Trump fan, in other words. In case you need more proof, though, here’s a new leaked video of Schultz telling the company’s business leadership team that as president, Trump is proving himself to be a source of “episodic chaos every single day.”

The footage from a February 17 meeting, according to Business Insider, which got its hands on the video. Schultz was still CEO at the time, and the America he paints under Trump doesn’t come off sounding so great: “The world is screwed up. People are unsettled,” he says, looking fairly worked up. “There is a tremendous amount of pressure and anxiety in America … We have a president that is creating episodic chaos every single day, and that is no doubt affecting consumer behavior.”

In a statement, Starbucks confirmed that Schultz did make the comments during a private meeting in Seattle, but also points out their chief romantic also saw this as the latest opportunity for the coffee chain to step in and save America. “[It’s] important to understand the full context for this comment,” the rep wrote, “as Howard also said: ‘We have an antidote. We always have. And that’s the sense of community, the third place, and the environment that we create around family.’”

Howard Schultz Says Trump Is Creating Economic ‘Chaos’