E-scooter startup Lime blacklists all Trump-related businesses

The bandwagon continues to crowd as more businesses distance themselves from the MAGA mob, with one of the leading e-transport rental companies adding its name to the list. In a company-wide email yesterday, Lime's CEO announced the electric scooter lender wouldn't support anything associated with the Trump or Kushner families, going so far as to remove the Trump hotel chain from its list of approved corporate travel accommodations. Good on Lime, we guess.

A deadly insurrectionist protest within the halls of the U.S. Capitol is certainly a dramatic and worthy reason to publicly denounce a quasi-fascist regime desperately attempting to cling to power, but it still begs the (rhetorical) question: What took everyone so damn long?

Subject line: Do the Right Thing — In an internal email titled "Do the Right Thing" first obtained by TechCrunch, Lime CEO Wayne Ting explained the reasoning behind the company's decisions. "While some startups have argued that companies should never be political, we have always understood that the work we do here at Lime is inherently political,” wrote Ting in the email. “We are speaking out and standing up for what we believe is right because that is the right thing to do. And we are looking for ways to ensure our actions — and dollars — don’t support those who are complicit in this attack on our democracy."

In addition to barring any dealings with corporations related to both Trump and Kushner, Lime promised to never make political contributions to any politician, particularly singling out elected officials like Ted Cruz and Noah Hawley who still objected to last week's Electoral College vote certification even after the riot. "While we have not made political donations to date, we are committing now to never support any elected official who voted to challenge the certification of the results of the Electoral College," Ting added.

Four years' worth of equally valid reasons — While any blow to the pockets of Trump and his sycophants is undisputedly a good thing, many corporations' public displays of condemnation still ring hollow. Last week's pseudo-coup was theatrical, horrifying, and disgraceful... just like almost everything the Trump and his administration has said or done over the past four years. Nobody — and we mean nobody — has ever possessed a convincing reason to enable this political era. Unfortunately, companies like Lime, Twitter, Facebook, and Salesforce severing relations with Team Trump speaks more to the powerful, profit-driven nihilism underlying most corporate decisions' than it does to any sense of moral compass.