As business leaders flee Donald Trump's manufacturing advisory council en masse over his weak Charlottesville response,?? ?? ?? another panel of business advisors has completely imploded.
The president's Strategic and Policy Forum, a group that includes leaders of major corporations like Walmart, General Motors, and Pepsi, has agreed to disband in light of the backlash to Trump's comments, CNBC first reported.
The president himself confirmed the news shortly afterward, claiming that he would also shut down the manufacturing council to save the remaining members the trouble of resigning.
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Mashable has contacted various members of the council and will update this story when we hear back.
The decisions come after widespread public backlash to Trump's equivocal statements on violence at a white supremacist rally over the weekend. The president followed his initial tepid response on Saturday with a harsher but more stilted explicit condemnation of specific hate groups on Monday, but then backed down in a ranting impromptu press conference on Tuesday in which he again claimed "both sides" were to blame.
Walmart, the biggest retailer in the world and one of the largest companies on the council, had already issued one of the strongest rebukes to Trump on Tuesday.
"As we watched the events and the response from President Trump over the weekend, we too felt that he missed a critical opportunity to help bring our country together by unequivocally rejecting the appalling actions of white supremacists," Walmart CEO Doug McMillon wrote in a statement.
The rest of the council released a joint statement on Wednesday in which they said the "debate over forum participation has become a distraction" from the group's stated mission.
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Presidential advisory posts like these are supposed to be a mostly ceremonial affair, but like everything associated with the Trump administration, they've become a flashpoint of controversy as the president's term has gone off the rails.
Up until Wednesday, the backlash had mostly centered on Trump's manufacturing council, where Merck CEO Ken Frazier first kicked off the wave of resignations. But as that boycott gained momentum, the Strategic and Policy Forum reportedly held a conference call Wednesday morning to discuss the group's future.
The New York Timesreports that nine of the twelve leaders on that call said they would resign if it wasn't disbanded.
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Following Trump's tweet, a few more business leaders rushed to make their individual concerns with the now-defunct councils known, including United chairman and CEO Greg Hayes and Johnson & Johnson chairman and CEO Alex Gorsky.
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Disney CEO Bob Iger and Tesla CEO Elon Musk previously left the council in protest of the administration's decision to pull out of the Paris climate agreement earlier this year.
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This story is developing.
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