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Two more of the CEOs involved in business advisory councils with the Trump administration have severed ties over Trump's refusal to immediately disavow the white supremacist Nazis responsible for the attack on Charlottesville. Kenneth Frazier, chairman and CEO of Merck, was the first to quit Trump, for which he was rewarded with a Twitter attack from Trump, who was willing to disavow the CEO but waited until much later in the day to finally condemn white supremacist violence in tepid terms.
Soon after, Kevin Plank, the CEO of Under Armour and Intel CEO Brian Krzanich also quit, with the latter making the most direct statement against Trump: "We should honor—not attack—those who have stood up for equality and other cherished American values. I hope this will change, and I remain willing to serve when it does. … I resigned because I want to make progress, while many in Washington seem more concerned with attacking anyone who disagrees with them."
The three join entrepreneur and Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who quit in June over Trump's withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement. But that leaves a whole bunch of CEOs on both his tech and manufacturing business councils who are either still onboard or haven't yet commented.
- Tim Cook, Apple
- Michael Dell, founder of Dell Technologies
- Ginni Rometty, chairwoman, president and CEO of IBM
- Chuck Robbins, Cisco
- Safra Catz, Oracle
- Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook
- Andrew Liveris, Dow Chemical Company
- Bill Brown, Harris Corporation
- John Ferriola, Nucor Corporation
- Jeff Fettig, Whirlpool Corporation
- Alex Gorsky, Johnson & Johnson
- Greg Hayes, United Technologies Corp.
- Marillyn Hewson, Lockheed Martin
- Jeff Immelt, General Electric
- Jim Kamsickas, Dana Inc.
- Rich Kyle, The Timken Company
- Richard Trumka, AFL-CIO
- Thea Lee, AFL-CIO
- Denise Morrison, Campbell Soup Company
- Dennis Muilenburg, Boeing
- Doug Oberhelman, formerly Caterpillar
Scott Paul, Alliance for American Manufacturing
- Michael Polk, Newell Brands
- Mark Sutton, International Paper
- Inge Thulin, 3M
- Wendell Weeks, Corning
- Stephen Schwarzman, Blackstone
In addition to all of them, there's a raft of CEOs on his Strategic and Policy Forum, from PepsiCo, General Motors, JPMorgan, and Walmart and including Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase.
That's a hell of a message they're sending to their customers, their employees, their shareholders.