Fourth CEO quits Trump council amid rally backlash
Executives ‘not taking their job seriously,’ president says at a news conference
WASHINGTON— Four CEOs quit Donald Trump’s American Manufacturing Council over his response to a deadly rally of white supremacists in Charlottesville — and that was before the president renewed the controversy Tuesday by furiously reverting to his original position that the counterprotesters share the blame for the violence.
“What about the alt-left that came charging at the, as you say, the altright?” Trump said at a news conference in New York on Tuesday afternoon. “Do they have any semblance of guilt?”
After that, AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka joined the CEOs of Merck, Under Armour, Intel and the Alliance for American Manufacturing in leaving the council.
“We cannot sit on a council for a president who tolerates bigotry and domestic terrorism,” Trumka said in a statement. “President Trump’s remarks today repudiate his forced remarks yesterday about the KKK and neo-Nazis. We must resign on behalf of America’s working people, who reject all notion of legitimacy of those bigoted groups.”
Trump has been widely criticized for his failure to immediately and forcefully condemn the white supremacists and neo-Nazis who rallied in Charlottesville on Saturday to protest against the removal of a Confederate statue. Counterprotesters also demonstrated.
While both Democrats and Republicans swiftly rejected violence perpetrated by white supremacists that left one woman dead, Trump said Saturday that “many sides” were to blame. On Sunday, the White House released an unattributed statement saying that “of course” the president rejected hate groups.
Merck CEO Kenneth Frazier announced Monday that he was leaving Trump’s council to “take a stand against intolerance and extremism.” Within minutes, Trump attacked Frazier, who is African-American, for his decision and what the president called Merck’s “ripoff drug prices.”
Later Monday, Trump caved to political pressure and, reading from prepared remarks, condemned “the KKK, neo-Nazis, white supremacists and other hate groups.” But those comments weren’t enough for Under Armour CEO Kevin Plank and Intel CEO Brian Krzanich, who announced they would also be abandoning Trump’s council, created in January to advise the president on increasing jobs in the manufacturing sector.
Trump did not attack those executives by name as he had with Frazier, but said on Twitter Tuesday morning that those leaving the White House group were “grandstanding” and that he had many other people who would participate on the council in their place.
Just moments after that Trump tweet on Tuesday, Alliance for American Manufacturing CEO Scott Paul tweeted his resignation, saying it was “the right thing for me to do.” Wal-Mart CEO Doug McMillon joined the chorus, saying in a note Monday to employees: “(We) too felt that he missed a critical opportunity to help bring our country together by unequivocally rejecting the appalling actions of white supremacists.”
But McMillon, whose business has customers on all sides of the political spectrum, plans to stay on a separate Trump advisory panel and said the president’s followup remarks on Monday that named white supremacists were a step in the right direction.