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CEOs Who Cut White House Ties After Charlottesville Just Dined With Trump

Companies didn’t respond to questions asking if executives’ views of Trump have changed.

President Trump is having dinner Tuesday night with five CEOs who distanced themselves from the White House after his response to last year’s violent white-supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. CNBC reports the companies executives who are attending the dinner—from PepsiCo, Boeing, International Paper, Johnson & Johnson, and accounting giant Ernst & Young—did not respond to questions asking if their leadership’s view of Trump changed since the rally last year. At the time, Trump said both the white supremacists and protesters were to blame for the violence that left one person dead—causing CEOs to cut ties from the White House en masse and put out statements denouncing the rally. Councils like the Strategic and Policy Forum and Manufacturing Advisory Council subsequently dissolved. PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi wrote that she was “heartbroken” by the violence at Charlottesville, and Ernst & Young CEO Mark Weinberger called the rally “deplorable.” The rally’s second edition, Unite the Right 2, will take place next week in front of the White House.