Trump Disbands Manufacturing Council After Several CEO Resignations

NEW YORK (AP) — 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!”

The CEO of Campbell Soup is resigning from a White House jobs panel over comments about racism made by President Donald Trump.

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 said the president’s comments triggered her resignation from the manufacturing jobs panel.

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

The chief executive of Minnesota-based 3M also resigned from the president’s Manufacturing Jobs Initiative panel.