Coca-Cola panders to Trump’s love of Diet Coke. Is this a new era of CEO vice signaling?

After years of receiving backlash for progressive messaging, heads of companies from Facebook to Boeing may be ready to go in the opposite direction.

It was far from the usual Coke and a smile. The Coke was diet for one thing, and there were two smiles involved. One of them belonged to Donald Trump, seemingly the world’s foremost Diet Coke lover, and the other to James Quincey, CEO and chairman of Coca-Cola, who presented the returning president with a commemorative Diet Coke bottle on Tuesday night.