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CEOs at Trump meeting: He was ‘sinking’
WASHINGTON – Former President donald trump failed to impress everyone in a room full of top CEOs at the Business Roundtable’s quarterly meeting on Thursday, several attendees told CNBC.
“Trump doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” said a CEO in the room, according to a person who heard the executive speak. The CEO also said Trump did not explain how he planned to carry out any of his policy proposals, this person said.
Several CEOs “said that [Trump] was remarkably winding, could not maintain a straight thought [and] it was all over the map,” CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin reported Friday on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”
Among the topics on which Trump offered few details was how he would lower taxes and reduce business regulations, according to two other people in the room who spoke to CNBC.
Meeting participants and people who spoke to them were given anonymity to speak freely about the private event.
The same CEOs who were impressed by Trump’s lack of focus “entered the meeting supporting Trump or thinking they might be leaning in that direction,” Sorkin reported.
“These were people who I think might have been really predisposed to [Trump but] in fact, he left the room less predisposed” to it, Sorkin said.
“President Trump was warmly welcomed by everyone in attendance and was praised for his policy proposals on deregulation and tax cuts,” said Steven Cheung, communications director for Trump’s presidential campaign.
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Trump’s energy at the meeting was also noticeably subdued, according to two people in the room. At no point during his remarks was there any noticeable applause for Trump, two attendees told CNBC.
This contrasted with Trump’s attitude meeting earlier in the day with House Republicans at the Capitol. Attendees at that meeting told CNBC that the former president was excited and engaged and that Trump received several rounds of applause in separate meetings on Thursday with House and Senate Republicans.
Cheung said there was applause for Trump during the question-and-answer portion of the meeting, “where attendees praised President Trump for his deregulation and tax cut agenda.”
Trump’s low-key energy at the Business Roundtable event could have been deliberate, one attendee told CNBC. Trump had I wanted the CEO meeting be “more like a business meeting than a speech,” the person said.
“At one point, he discussed his plan to reduce the corporate tax rate from 21% to 20% … and was asked why he chose 20%,” Sorkin said Friday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “And he said, ‘Well, it’s a round number.'”
“That alone made a lot of CEOs shake their heads,” Sorkin reported.
In 2023, corporate income tax contributed approximately US$420 billion to federal revenues, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
Wall Street has bristled over the past three years under President Joe Biden’s aggressiveness. antitrust enforcementpharmaceutical price limits and progressive fiscal policy.