- Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff made jokes about ICE during a keynote at an employee event.
- The company posted a recording of the keynote without Benioff’s ICE remarks.
- The comments drew criticism from many employees, including executives.
A recording of Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff’s keynote this week was posted on the company’s internal site, and his jokes about Immigration and Customs Enforcement weren’t included, according to internal messages and an excerpt of the video viewed by Business Insider.
“The recording of Marc’s CKO keynote is posted,” one employee wrote in a message on the company’s internal Slack, referring to the “Company Kickoff” event for employees. “Anyone going to watch it to see the ICE ‘jokes’ will discover they have been edited out of the recording.”
An excerpt of the recording viewed by Business Insider appears to show a jump cut during the introduction of Benioff’s speech, where the frame switches to a view of the audience, and then Benioff appears on the opposite side of the stage.
Several employees who heard the remarks told Business Insider that Benioff asked people in the audience to stand if they came from outside the US, and then apparently joked that ICE agents were in the back room. Benioff also complained about Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl performance, the people said.
Salesforce hasn’t responded to multiple requests about Benioff’s comments and did not immediately respond to a request for comment for this story.
Salesforce executives, including Slack’s new general manager, addressed Benioff’s jokes. Slack general manager Rob Seaman wrote in an internal Slack message viewed by Business Insider: “I cannot defend or explain them. They do not align with my personal values and I know this to be the case for many of you as well.”
Some Salesforce employees said they received an email asking them to explain their absence from the event following Benioff’s remarks.
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