Second Penn Stater steps away from Trump council
Another Nittany Lion has distanced himself from Donald Trump.
On Tuesday, Scott Paul announced he was leaving the president’s coterie of business leaders.
“I’m resigning from the Manufacturing Jobs Initiative because it’s the right thing to do,” Paul tweeted.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">I'm resigning from the Manufacturing Jobs Initiative because it's the right thing for me to do.</p>— Scott Paul (@ScottPaulAAM) <a href="https://twitter.com/ScottPaulAAM/status/897482381275283456">August 15, 2017</a></blockquote>
<script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Paul is the president of the Alliance for American Manufacturing, a lobbying group focused on promoting American manufacturing and creating new private-sector jobs. He is also a member of the board of visitors for the Penn State Department of Political Science.
Paul attended Penn State from 1985-89 and earned bachelor degrees in foreign service and international politics. He did his graduate work at Georgetown, according to his bio on the AAM website.
He is the fourth executive to step away from Trump’s American Manufacturing Council, following the president’s failure to immediately condemn the white nationalist activity that ended in death and injury in Charlottesville, Va., on Saturday.
Merck CEO and former Penn State trustee Kenneth Frazier started the exodus Monday when he announced his resignation, saying the display of bigotry and hatred was “counter to the American ideal that all people are created equal.”
Intel CEO Brian Krzanich and Under Armour CEO Kevin Plank followed suit later Monday. Trump did make a statement that day, condemning hate groups like the Ku Klux Klan and white nationalists, two days after his initial statements that there was hatred on “all sides.”
Trump on Tuesday seemed to revert to his original statement, after a press conference at Trump Tower and a series of tweets, saying the “alt-left” also bears some responsibility for the Charlottesville violence.
One other business leader previously left the group in protest. Elon Musk, of Tesla, left in opposition to Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris climate accords.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">For every CEO that drops out of the Manufacturing Council, I have many to take their place. Grandstanders should not have gone on. JOBS!</p>— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/897478270442143744">August 15, 2017</a></blockquote>
<script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
The president, who answered Frazier’s resignation with a tweet Monday, answered on Twitter again Tuesday, saying “For ever CEO that drops out of the Manufacturing Council, I have many to take their place. Grandstanders should not have gone on. JOBS!”
This story was originally published August 15, 2017 at 4:54 PM with the headline "Second Penn Stater steps away from Trump council."