What does this have to do with living in a free country? This isn’t the US government arresting someone because they’re pro-life. It’s a private company firing someone who disrupted their business interests. Pretty sure the US government is still one of the most fierce protectors of free speech and natural rights among developed nations last time I checked.

Your qualm is with cultural intolerance for conservative ideas. Which I agree is valid. But yeah, sorry, if you’re running a business and can’t understand that your business partners will be potentially offended by your own political statements, you deserve to get fired. Let’s not pretend this was some no-name engineer at a tech company in SV who got canned because they expressed a normal political opinion and their coworkers “just didn’t like it”. He’s the CEO and is the ultimate ambassador of the company and has a responsibility to read the room. Would you expect BMW or Mercedes to keep their CEOs if they made political statements about the human rights abuses and economic sabotage conducted by China? Let’s be real.

Do I sympathize with him that he freely spoke his mind and was inherently punished for it? Yes, in principle. But he’s a complete idiot for thinking he can do so without consequences in his position. There are always going to be cultural factors intwined in economics and sometimes they are not fair, but that’s the way the world has always worked.