> "Hiring an exec who supported Trump's travel ban" is purely a political issue.
Yes it is. And that issue is that the person did something in a previous job which many employees found repugnant.
But the trust issue, is that the employees also don't trust that Google has the integrity to hire someone who did that, without understanding the whys of it. Or being sensitive to both their existing and new employee on the issue.
If I were in Google management, and I had the trust of the people I managed, I could explain to them the reasoning that went into the hire; The skills that came with the candidate, the business need, the qualities of the candidate. And the sensitivity around their previous job choices and how they made those choices (most people do what the boss tells them to do) and what was expected of them at a place like Google. And the people who trusted me would expect me to hold the new hire to those standards and to fire them if they didn't live up to them. I would be able to lean on that trust and say, "Hey, we need to give this guy a chance to prove he can do the right thing and we and he both understand he is held to a higher standard here."
Folks I managed wouldn't trust me if they had found out that I had allowed a sexual harasser to work for me after I knew that they had a problem. That is because they would lose trust in me saying that I would hold people to a certain standard.
That is the difference in a "only if you get caught" situational morality play. Someone with principles and integrity will take the necessary action, even if it is painful, even when they could "get away with it because nobody else knows."
It is a good litmus test. That test being to evaluate how you respond to people who do the right thing even when no one is looking, and to people who do the right thing only after the need to do it comes to light through some other path. In my experience, I trust people who do the right thing even if no one is watching way more than I trust the opportunists.