Clinging on the plane?
Ex-Siemens boss starts scolding politicians on Twitter
02/04/2022, 07:45 am
Together with politicians on the plane to Munich: The former Siemens boss Kaeser does not like the behavior of some MPs and blasphemes on Twitter. The scolding of politicians becomes a boomerang for the controversial manager.
Former Siemens boss Joe Kaeser commented on politicians on Twitter and subsequently triggered a shitstorm. Kaeser criticized the behavior of several MPs during a flight from Berlin to Munich. “I’m sitting on the plane to Munich in the middle of the MPs, who are audibly happy about the weekend … and are also exchanging internals across the aisle,” Kaeser wrote on Twitter. Some of the deputies had CSU ribbons. Among the politicians was one “who used to write flat columns in tabloid magazines.”
The deputies are likely to be CSU politicians who took part in the party conference in Berlin. Kaeser’s scolding went even further. “Roughly figuring out how many of these I’m funding with my income tax…” he wrote. “Don’t know if this money couldn’t be better spent. For higher salaries for nurses, police officers … and many people who are REALLY there for the citizens every day.”
The 64-year-old didn’t have to wait long for the echo. Ironically, the FDP politician Thomas Sattelberger, whom he indirectly addressed countered Kaeser’s Twitter rage: “What was flatter, your bow to Trump and Putin or my essays in ManagerMagazine may be judged by others. But I refuse to make the dishonorable claim that I had exchanged internals. The CSU members may have done that, I sat in silence in my seat.”
Sattelberger was alluding to Kaeser’s inglorious past as Siemens boss. A visit to Vladimir Putin immediately after the annexation of Crimea in 2014 drew criticism from Kaeser. In 2018 he congratulated the then US President Donald Trump on his implementation of the controversial corporate tax reform and announced that he wanted to manufacture Siemens turbines in the USA. In view of the production sites in Germany, this statement drew criticism from employees and trade unions.