On November 13, President-elect Donald Trump announced a plan to appoint Stephen K. Bannon as White House Chief of Strategy and Special Advisor to the President.

Mr. Bannon was formerly in charge of the website Breitbart.com. Under Mr. Bannon’s direction, Breitbart published statements that reflect disdain and disrespect for many Americans, including women, religious, ethnic, and racial minorities, LGBTQ people, and other groups. Headlines published under Mr. Bannon’s leadership include:

• “Hoist it High and Proud: The Confederate Flag Proclaims A Glorious Heritage”
• “Would You Rather Your Child Had Feminism or Cancer?”
• “Birth Control Makes Women Unattractive and Crazy”
• “Bill Kristol: Republican Spoiler, Renegade Jew”
• “Political Correctness Protects Muslim Rape Culture”
• "Suck it Up Buttercups: Dangerous Faggot Tour Returns to Colleges in September”
• “Trannies Whine About Hilarious Bruce Jenner Billboard” and
• "There’s No Hiring Bias Against Women in Tech: They Just Suck at Interviews.”

Additionally, in a 2011 radio interview, Mr. Bannon himself called certain female elected officials “a bunch of dykes.”

These kinds of statements do not reflect American values of mutual respect, shared dignity, and equality. Mr. Trump has said he wishes be a President for all Americans. If Mr. Bannon becomes the White House Chief of Strategy, it will undermine the message that the President must send that all individuals deserve to be treated with respect and dignity.

A number of major U.S. corporations have direct ties to Donald Trump’s transition team. They are the leading clients of the lobbyists—Michael Catanzaro of CGCN, J. Steven Hart of Williams & Jensen, and Martin Whitmer of Whitmer & Worrall—in charge of Mr. Trump’s transition team. Companies with ties to the Trump transition team include:

Entertainment and media
Comcast
21st Century Fox
Loews

Technology
Microsoft
PayPal/Venmo

Transportation
United Airlines, Inc.
Virgin America

Food and beverage
The Coca-Cola Company

Banks and financial services companies
MasterCard
Prudential
KPMG
Deloitte

Health care and pharmaceutical companies
Pfizer
Thermo Fisher Scientific

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Through this petition, we ask these companies to publicly urge President-elect Trump to reconsider his appointment of Mr. Bannon as a member of the White House staff.

Letters like the sample letter below will be sent, along with a list of the petition’s signatories, to each of the above companies and non-profits.

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Mr. Satya Nadella
Chief Executive Officer
Microsoft Corporation

Dear Mr. Nadella,

In keeping with its strong record of upstanding corporate citizenship, we are writing to request that Microsoft join the chorus of responsible private sector actors by rising in opposition to the appointment of Stephen K. Bannon as Chief Strategist to President-elect Donald Trump.

On November 13, Mr. Trump announced his intention to appoint Mr. Bannon as Chief of Strategy and Special Advisor to the President, a taxpayer-funded role that would elevate Mr. Bannon to a position of significant influence and power. Mr. Bannon’s past statements and actions have shown that he is manifestly unsuited to hold this influential role in our national government. His statements reflect disdain and disrespect for many Americans, including women, religious, ethnic, and racial minorities, LGBTQ people, and other groups. We believe that Microsoft’s corporate values align with our shared human values—namely, that all individuals deserve to be treated with respect and dignity, particularly when one assumes the public trust of national leadership.

From 2012 through 2016, Mr. Bannon was Executive Chairman of the website Breitbart.com. Under Mr. Bannon’s leadership, Breitbart published articles under headlines that included:

“Hoist it High and Proud: The Confederate Flag Proclaims A Glorious Heritage”
“Would You Rather Your Child Had Feminism or Cancer?”
“Birth Control Makes Women Unattractive and Crazy”
“Bill Kristol: Republican Spoiler, Renegade Jew”
“Political Correctness Protects Muslim Rape Culture”
"Suck it Up Buttercups: Dangerous Faggot Tour Returns to Colleges in September”
“Trannies Whine About Hilarious Bruce Jenner Billboard” and
”There’s No Hiring Bias Against Women in Tech: They Just Suck at Interviews.”

In addition, Mr. Bannon’s own statements fail to reflect the values of Microsoft or of the American people. For example, in a 2011 radio interview, Mr. Bannon quipped that, unlike women elected officials from the Democratic Party, conservative women are not “a bunch of dykes that came from the Seven Sisters schools.”

These types of statements and slurs would have no place at Microsoft, and they certainly have no place in our government. While Mr. Bannon is free to speak his mind and express himself in his private life—including speaking in ways that reflect disrespect for his fellow Americans—those who serve the public must be held to a higher standard of common decency.

Microsoft’s public statement of business conduct reminds us that, “like people, companies have values.” We, the undersigned, know that Mr. Bannon’s statements do not reflect Microsoft’s values, those of its employees and customers, or those of the American people.

Microsoft has never shirked its responsibility to take a stand when clear wrongs have emerged in our public sector, as when the company stood in principled opposition to the controversial 2012 Stop Online Piracy Act. Not only as a leading American corporate voice, but also as the signature client of the CGCN Group—the firm whose principal, Mike Catanzaro, now serves as a leading advisor on the Trump transition team—Microsoft holds the influence and credibility necessary to stand up for its own values and the values of our nation at this important moment in our civic history. We would therefore ask you to exercise those values by publicly urging President-elect Trump to reconsider his appointment of Mr. Bannon as a member of the White House staff.

Sincerely,