Howard Schultz Sees Shortcomings in Both U.S. Political Parties
Howard Schultz Sees Shortcomings in Both U.S. Political Parties
(Bloomberg) -- Former Starbucks Corp. Chief Executive Officer Howard Schultz -- who may be considering a presidential run in 2020 -- says both Democrats and Republicans are falling short when it comes to working effectively for Americans.
“We’re living at a most fragile time,” Schultz told CBS News’ “60 Minutes” in an excerpt of an interview scheduled to be broadcast on Sunday night.
President Donald Trump is “not qualified” to lead the country, he said. And “both parties are consistently not doing what’s necessary on behalf of the American people and are engaged, every single day, in revenge politics.”
Schultz, who helped Starbucks grow from 11 stores to more than 28,000 in 77 countries, has not said whether he is running for the White House in 2020. Some of his advisers have been exploring a possible independent candidacy, the Washington Post reported earlier this month.
Schultz, chairman emeritus and largest individual shareholder of Starbucks, weighed jumping into the 2016 presidential race, according to the New York Times, but ultimately concluded that Hillary Clinton would win the Democratic nomination. He endorsed Clinton and took thinly veiled shots at Trump during the campaign.
He has waded into thorny social issues and lamented the divisiveness in the U.S. even as he led a restaurant company with 14,000 locations across the U.S.
When he stepped down from his executive positions last year, he said in a memo that he was “thinking about a range of options for myself, from philanthropy to public service, but I’m a long way from knowing what the future holds.”
To contact the reporter on this story: Kim Chipman in Chicago at kchipman@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Derek Wallbank at dwallbank@bloomberg.net, John Harney, John McCluskey
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