Business chiefs dump double-talking Trump
THE mother of the young woman mowed down while protesting against a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville urged mourners at a memorial service on Wednesday to “make my child’s death worthwhile” by confronting injustice the way she did. DONALD Trump has disbanded two high-profile business advisory councils as a parade of chief executives, prominent Republicans and US ally Britain rebuked the US President for his comments on the Virginia rally violence.
The American Manufacturing Council and Strategic and Policy Forum were moving to disband when Trump announced their termination on Twitter after several chief executives quit following the President’s assertion that there
“They tried to kill my child to shut her up. Well, guess what? You just magnified her,” said Susan Bro, receiving a standing ovation from the hundreds who packed a downtown theatre to remember 32-year-old Heather Heyer. Ms Heyer’s death on Saturday — and President Donald Trump’s insistence that “both sides” was fault on both side of Tuesday’s Charlottesville violence.
The Strategic and Policy Forum was headed by Blackstone Group chief executive Stephen Schwarzman, a close Trump ally in the business world.
Schwarzman organised a call on Wednesday for member executives to voice concerns after Trump’s comments, and an overwhelming majority backed disbanding the council, two sources said.
Schwarzman then called Trump to tell him about the decision to disband, and the bear responsibility for the violence — continued to reverberate across the country, triggering fury among many Americans and soul-searching about the state of race relations in the US.
Ms Heyer was eulogised as a woman with a powerful sense of fairness. The mourners applauded as President subsequently announced he was the one pulling the plug on the panels.
Prominent business figures heaped scorn on Trump on Wednesday.
“Racism and murder are unequivocally reprehensible and not morally equivalent to anything else that happened in Charlottesville,” Campbell Soup’s Denise Morrison said.
JPMorgan Chase & Co chief executive Jamie Dimon, a member of one of the panels, said he strongly disagreed with Trump’s reaction to the events in Charlottesville, adding in a
her mother urged them to channel their anger into “righteous action.”
State troopers were stationed on the surrounding streets, but the white nationalists who had vowed to show up were nowhere to be seen. statement that “racism, intolerance and violence are always wrong” and “fanning divisiveness is not the answer”.
Trump said on Twitter, “Rather than putting pressure on the businesspeople of the Manufacturing Council & Strategy & Policy Forum, I am ending both.”
Among the few public figures to have backed Trump through the controversy over his response were Vice-President Mike Pence, former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke and Richard Spencer, the head of a white nationalist group.
Trump was rebuked by a string of Republicans including Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, Ohio Governor John Kasich, Senator Lindsey Graham and former US presidents George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush.
McConnell said “messages of hate and bigotry” from white supremacists, the Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazis should not be welcome in the US.
US share prices came under pressure as the demise of the Trump business panels added to investor worries about the White House.