This whole thing just seems like an employee misinterpreted a phrase by the CEO and instead of apologizing for publicly calling him out based on the mistaken in

This whole thing just seems like an employee misinterpreted a phrase by the CEO and instead of apologizing for publicly calling him out based on the mistaken interpretation doubled down so he could feel self-righteous about his original decision. If you google "silence as consent" the top results are filled with the parliamentary interpretation and given the context it's obvious that's what the CEO meant. The employee assumed the worst rather than the simplest explanation and made a fool of himself in the process. His heart was in the right place, at least, and had the CEO actually made a joke about rape during a quarterly meeting, calling the CEO out on it may have been a courageous decision that could have changed a toxic company culture. That wasn't the case though and he just threw away his job for nothing.