Day 210: Trump Pretends to End Councils; Members Ditched Him First

Donald Trump has often touted his Manufacturing Council and his Strategic and Policy Forum. He has proclaimed that he is getting advice from some of the nation’s smartest and most successful people. However, since Trump’s remarks on multiple occasions that gave cover to white supremacists and neo-Nazis, membership in those groups dropped quickly. Public backlash flipped onto the executives’ companies, leaving them in the position of tacitly approving Trump’s words and remaining in place as advisers or dropping out.

After a defection, Trump would occasionally lash out.

Suddenly, just over 24 hours after that tweet, Trump sent another.

Considering the endless list of executives he claimed to have, the decision to abruptly end both groups seemed curious. However, the answer should have been obvious.

On a 45-minute conference call that started around 11:30 a.m. ET Wednesday, members of the President’s Strategic and Policy Forum decided to dissolve the group.

Blackstone Group LP chief Stephen A. Schwarzman, who organized the conference call, called the White House and spoke with Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump’s son-in-law and a presidential adviser, to give him the news, according to a person familiar with the call. Around the same time, the manufacturing council also had a call and decided to disband.

Minutes later, Trump tweeted that he was ending both groups.

Trump wanted it to look like his decision, and that he was doing a favor to business leaders by releasing them from their responsibility. But, in reality, Trump is the high school kid who gets dumped only to tell everyone the next day that he was the dumper.

210 days in, 1252 to go

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