TRUMP AS PRESIDENT/TRUMP PEOPLE: “Walmart’s chief executive has issued a strong rebuke of President Trump’s response to the protests that turned violent in Charlottesville, Va., saying the president ‘missed a critical opportunity to help bring our country together.’
The criticism came in a statement that the retailer’s chief executive, Doug McMillon, emailed to employees Monday [8-14-17] evening, which was reviewed by The New York Times. The statement was later posted on a company website.
‘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,’ he wrote.
Mr. McMillon’s statement came amid a backlash against the president for what critics viewed as a tepid initial response to violence at last weekend’s rally of white supremacists and right-wing extremists, which left one counterprotester dead. On Monday, the chief executives of Merck, Under Armour and Intel said that they would step down from a presidential advisory council for manufacturing.
On Tuesday, a fourth executive, Scott Paul, president of an organization called the Alliance for American Manufacturing, announced via Twitter that he would resign from the presidential council because ‘it’s the right thing for me to do.’ “
-Rachel Abrams and Michael Corkery, “Walmart’s C.E.O. Joins Group to Rebuke Trump Over Charlottesville,” The New York Times online, Aug. 15, 2017