Top aide mulled quitting after Trump’s response
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s top economic adviser sharply denounced the president’s response to the racial violence in Charlottesville, saying in an interview that he felt “compelled” to speak out. Gary Cohn, who is Jewish, was so upset by Trump’s comments that he wrote a letter of resignation but never submitted it.
“Citizens standing up for equality and freedom can never be equated with white supremacists, neo-Nazis, and the KKK,” Cohn told The Financial Times in an interview published Friday. “I believe this administration can and must do better in consistently and unequivocally condemning these groups and do everything we can to heal the deep divisions that exist in our communities.”
It was an extraordinary public rebuke of the president by a senior adviser, and came just as Cohn will be a key figure in the administration’s fall push for sweeping tax reforms. It also played out as Cohn emerged as a candidate to replace Janet Yellen as chairman of the Federal Reserve when her term ends in February.
Cohn told associates he expressed his unhappiness to Trump in a conversation a week ago at the president’s New Jersey golf club and considered stepping down, according to a person familiar with the conversations but not authorized to speak publicly about private talks. Two people familiar with his thinking said he’d written a resignation letter but then pocketed it.
“As a Jewish American, I will not allow neo-Nazis ranting ‘Jews will not replace us’ to cause this Jew to leave his job,” Cohn said in the Financial Times interview.
Cohn said he had come under “enormous pressure” both to resign and to remain in his position with the administration. He told the Financial Times.