Trump disbands 2 White House business councils amid CEO criticism

SHARE Trump disbands 2 White House business councils amid CEO criticism
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President Donald Trump Nicholas Kamm/ AFP photo / Getty Images

President Donald Trump says he’s ending a pair of White House advisory councils that were staffed by corporate chief executives.

CEOs have been resigning since Saturday, when Trump blamed both sides for the weekend violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, between white supremacists and counterprotesters. The resignation accelerated after Trump on Tuesday again blamed “both sides.”

Trump says on Twitter that “rather than putting pressure on the businesspeople of the Manufacturing Council & Strategy & Policy Forum, I am ending both. Thank you all!”

Earlier in the day, the CEO of Campbell Soup resigned from the White House jobs panel over Trump’s comments.

Campbell CEO Denise Morrison said on Wednesday in a company release: “Racism and murder are unequivocally reprehensible and are not morally equivalent to anything else that happened in Charlottesville. I believe the president should have been — and still needs to be — unambiguous on that point.”

Trump suggested in remarks Tuesday that the white supremacists and counterprotesters were both blameworthy for violence that erupted this weekend in Virginia.

Morrison is the seventh person to resign from two major advisory panels this week following Trump’s comments.

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