Trump says CEOs leaving manufacturing council ‘not taking their jobs seriously’
The CEOs abandoning President Trump’s manufacturing advisory council over his response to racially motivated violence in Charlottesville, Va., are leaving “because they’re not taking their jobs seriously as it pertains to this country,” Trump said Tuesday.
“They’re leaving out of embarrassment because they’re making their products outside, and I’ve been lecturing them,” Trump said, once again singling out Merck CEO Ken Frazier. “I want manufacturing brought back to this country so that American workers can benefit.”
The resignations began after Trump did not directly denounce neo-Nazi groups in his response to the Charlottesville clashes Saturday. Instead, Trump blamed violence on “many sides,” which some business leaders saw as inadequate.
But after directly condemning white supremacists and other hate groups Monday, Trump returned to blaming counterprotesters Tuesday, saying some of them were “troublemakers” and “bad people.”
After his press conference, another member of his council — Richard Trumka, president of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations — announced he would step down.
“I cannot sit on a council for a president that tolerates bigotry and domestic terrorism; I resign, effective immediately,” tweeted Trumka, becoming the fifth member of the council to resign over Trump’s response to Charlottesville.
Trump’s comments to reporters at Trump Tower in New York followed a Tuesday morning tweet in which he blasted the executives as “grandstanders.”
Trump concluded the tweet with an exclamation: “JOBS!”
Just as he did so, Scott Paul, president of the Alliance for American Manufacturing, announced over Twitter he would step down.
“I’m resigning from the Manufacturing Jobs Initiative because it’s the right thing for me to do,” Paul tweeted.