Trump Business Panels Shut Down After CEOs Quit, Including Head Of Campbell Soup
CAMDEN, NJ (CBS) -- President Trump pulled the plug on a pair of business-oriented advisory panels after several corporate CEOs resigned in light of the controversial comments from the President in the wake of last weekend's racial clash in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Among them, the head of a major South Jersey company.
Campbell Soup released a statement on Monday, when the rash of resignations from Mister Trump's Manufacturing Jobs Initiative began. While they came down strongly against bigotry, CEO Denise Morrison remained on the panel.
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That changed after Tuesday's comments from the President. She says "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."
With that she resigned from the panel, but vowed to support continuing efforts to spur economic growth.
Morrison, through a spokesman, declined an opportunity to explain her decision further.
Within minutes after her announcement, the White House tweeted the end of that panel and a second on strategy and planning.
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Rutgers-Camden Business Professor Oscar Holmes believes Morrison made the right choice, particularly from a corporate standpoint.
"It seems like this, perhaps, was the last straw in terms that she, perhaps, felt she could not justify continuing to stay on without doing damage to the Campbell Soup brand," Holmes told KYW Newsradio.
And in the end, he suggests it was a company's image that drove many CEO's to throw in the towel, prompting the White House to put those advisory groups out of business.
Can the President make improvements to economic policy going forward, given his divisive commentary?
"This doesn't help his case," Holmes added. "It again, just sends another signal as many Americans at this point feel that he's incompetent for this particular job."
Holmes points to the President's own statements suggesting that being President was a lot more difficult that he had imagined.
