Clearly it isn’t a courageous move by CEOs to abandon the president of white supremacy right after his off-the-rails white nationalist rant, but in a symbolic move, top corporate leaders have left the executive councils, forcing the president to end the groups altogether.
According to the New York Times, Stephen A. Schwarzman, the chief executive of the Blackstone Group and a good friend of the president, called a meeting with members of Trump’s Strategic and Policy Forum to find out how to proceed given the president’s comments, which aligned peaceful protesters with a neo-Nazi hate rally.
Those with knowledge of the call noted that the decision among a dozen CEOs was to abandon the group.
Executives from the president’s manufacturing council also planned a similar call, but before that could happen, the president just did what he does best and blew the whole thing up from the inside.
According to the New York Times, it was only a matter of time before everyone Theon Greyjoy-ed off this sinking ship:
The manufacturing panel has seen a wave of defections since Monday, as business chiefs who had agreed to advise the president determined that his remarks left them with no choice but to walk away.
Two additional chief executives — Denise Morrison of Campbell Soup and Inge Thulin of 3M — had announced Wednesday morning they would resign from the manufacturing council.
“So far they haven’t done much,” Anat R. Admati, a professor of finance and economics at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, told the Times. “They had a few meetings with a bunch of fan fare, but it was more symbolic than anything else.
“He had put them in a very difficult position,” Admati added. “This has ruined his relationships with some of them.”
Read more at the New York Times.