ECONOMY/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT/TRUMP PEOPLE: “Gary Cohn, the White House’s economic policy director, said the Trump administration must do more to condemn hate groups and he did not defend President Donald Trump’s response to violence at a white-nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Va., two weeks ago.
Mr. Cohn said he had come under ‘enormous pressure both to resign and to remain in my current position’ but that he was ‘reluctant’ to leave his post out of a patriotic duty. He addressed the Charlottesville controversy in an interview with the Financial Times published Friday [8-25-17].
Mr. Trump faced an intense backlash, including criticism from members of his own party, for what elected officials and business leaders said was a failure to provide moral leadership. After two days of clashes that culminated with a driver mowing down a crowd of counterprotesters, killing one woman, Mr. Trump initially blamed violence ‘on many sides.’
A few days later the president more explicitly condemned extremist groups. The next day, Mr. Cohn stood beside Mr. Trump at a news conference in New York in which Mr. Trump’s defense of his initial comments seemed to walk back the more explicit condemnation. At the news conference, Mr. Trump said there had been ‘very fine people on both sides’ of the rally organized by white nationalists.”
-Nick Timiraos, “Cohn Says Trump Administration Must Do More to Condemn Hate Groups,” The Wall Street Journal online, Aug. 25, 2017 09:31am