Corporate America Condemns Capitol Attack, Distances Itself From Trump

Corporate America is parting with its CEO president -- carefully.

Four years after Donald Trump swept into the White House, cowing executives and shaking markets with tweet storms and tantrums, corporations that applauded when he cut taxes and red tape are struggling to come to grips with the havoc that's now followed.

After Trump incited a mob of loyalists to storm the Capitol Wednesday, prominent business figures swiftly condemned the violence -- without mentioning the president by name. Only one major business group, the National Association of Manufacturers, singled him out. Even as the Trump administration comes to its chaotic end, with calls for the president to be immediately removed from office, the business world is stepping delicately.

When Trump arrived in Washington, he could sway a company with a tweet. Now Facebook has suspended his account, possibly for the duration of his presidency, while Twitter put him on a 12-hour ban and warned it could take more permanent steps. Shopify, the Canadian company behind many e-commerce sites, said Thursday that it had closed two online stores that sell red MAGA hats and other Trump paraphernalia.

“That’s how quickly the worm turns,” said Davia Temin, founder of New York City crisis consultancy Temin and Co. “One needs to make a distinction between Trump the president, who you may or may not have made any comments about over the last four years, and the sedition, the attack on the Capitol that happened yesterday afternoon.”

Even now, few of the responses challenge Trump directly. The National Association of Manufacturers, which is typically seen as supportive of Republican policies, urged Trump’s cabinet to consider ousting him using their authority of the 25th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which allows such action when a president is deemed unfit to serve. Ice cream maker Ben & Jerry’s Homemade Inc. blasted Trump in an eight-part tweet, summing it up with a call for him to resign or for the government to remove him.

But most of the condemnation was more generically focused on “elected officials” for their role in perpetuating the position that the election was fraudulent and encouraging the anger that boiled over into the deadly storming of the center of the U.S. government. Like the powerful, evil wizard Voldemort in a Harry Potter book, Trump was the protagonist who was not named.

“Today marks a sad and shameful chapter in our nation’s history,” Apple Inc. CEO Tim Cook said in a Wednesday tweet. ‘Those responsible for this insurrection should be held to account, and we must complete the transition to President-elect Biden’s administration. It’s especially when they are challenged that our ideals matter most.”

The CEOs of International Business Machines Corp., Coca-Cola Co., Pfizer Inc., Dell Technologies Inc., Cisco Systems Inc., United Parcel Service Inc., and General Motors Co. made similar statements forcefully condemning the events without mentioning any politicians by name. The Business Roundtable, which is exclusively open to CEOs, blamed the violence on “elected officials’ perpetuation of the fiction of a fraudulent 2020 presidential election.”

"We condemn the actions of those who were incited to storm the Capitol last night," Stanley Black & Decker Inc. CEO Jim Loree said in a statement Thursday, without saying who did the inciting. "We believe that those who have chosen to illegally threaten the operation of our government should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law."

The heads of Wall Street’s biggest firms, from JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Blackstone Group Inc. to Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and BlackRock Inc., also called for an end to the violence. So did the CEO of Palantir Technologies Inc., which includes Trump supporter Peter Thiel among its founders.

It’s a tough situation for companies, which even as they have become comfortable taking positions on social issues, are less conditioned to direct involvement in a U.S. presidential election, said Fred Foulkes, a management professor at the Boston University Questrom School of Business.

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