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 who was in the room, according to a person who heard the chief executive’s speech. The CEO also said Trump had not explained how he planned to implement his policy proposals, this person said.
Several CEOs said this [Trump] was noticeably wandering and couldn’t think clearly [and] was all over the map,” CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin reported Friday on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”
According to two other people in the room who spoke to CNBC, topics on which Trump offered few details included how he would cut taxes and restrict business regulations.
Attendees and people who spoke to them were granted anonymity to speak freely about the private event.
The same CEOs who noticed Trump’s lack of focus “went into the meeting as Trump supporters or thought they might lean that way,” Sorkin reported.
“These were people who I think were actually predisposed to it [Trump but] “I actually left the room less disposed,” Sorkin said.
“President Trump received a warm welcome from everyone in the room and praised his policy proposals on deregulation and tax cuts,” said Steven Cheung, communications director for the Trump presidential campaign.
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Trump’s energy at the meeting was also noticeably muted, according to two people in attendance. At no point in his speech was there any noticeable applause for Trump, two participants told CNBC.
This contrasted with Trump’s meeting earlier in the day with House Republicans on Capitol Hill. Attendees at that meeting told CNBC that the former president was lively and engaging, and that Trump received several rounds of applause during separate meetings with House and Senate Republicans on Thursday.
Cheung said there was applause for Trump during the meeting’s question-and-answer session, “where participants praised President Trump for his deregulation and tax cutting agenda.”
Trump’s reserved energy at the Business Roundtable event may have been intentional, one attendee told CNBC. Trump wanted the CEO meeting to be “more of 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 left some CEOs shaking their heads,” Sorkin reported.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, corporate taxes contributed about $420 billion to federal revenues in 2023.
Wall Street has suffered over the past three years from President Joe Biden’s aggressive antitrust enforcement, drug price caps and progressive tax policies.
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2024-06-14 20:27:51
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