Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

After Schwarzman Discusses Disbanding Council, Trump Does It For Him

President Donald Trump announced in a tweet on Wednesday that he was shuttering two of his business advisory councils after numerous CEOs on those bodies resigned due to their opposition to the president’s continued comparisons between white supremacist marchers and counter-protesters in Charlottesville, Va.

“Rather than putting pressure on the businesspeople of the Manufacturing Council & Strategy & Policy Forum, I am ending both. Thank you all!” Trump’s personal account posted.

Stephen Schwarzman, CEO of the investment firm the Blackstone Group, was the chairman of the president’s Strategic and Policy Form and had been described by The New York Times as “one of Mr. Trump’s closest confidants in the business community.” But after Trump’s remarks on Tuesday doubling down on his original, much-maligned Charlottesville reaction, Schwarzman held a conference call of CEOs to discuss either ending the group or having more CEOs engage in a mass resignation.

A similar call for members of the American Manufacturing Council was reportedly going to take place Wednesday afternoon, the Times reported.

Already, eight CEOs on that group had resigned due to Trump’s controversial statements, including directors of Merck, Intel, Under Armour, 3M, Campbell Soup and the AFL-CIO union federation.

Contact Aiden Pink at [email protected] or on Twitter, @aidenpink.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.