The nation’s top business leaders continued to distance themselves from President Trump on Thursday as the CEOs of Apple, Facebook and Starbucks were the latest to reject his defense of white supremacists and the hatred they displayed at a weekend rally in Virginia.
Tim Cook, Apple’s chief executive, rebuked Trump for saying “both sides” were to blame for the deadly violence as white nationalists, members of the KKK and neo-Nazis clashed with counter protesters in Charlottesville.
“I disagree with the president and others who believe that there is a moral equivalence between white supremacists and Nazis, and those who oppose them by standing up for human rights,” Cook wrote in an email Wednesday night to company workers. “Equating the two runs counter to our ideals as Americans.”
He also announced he would donate $1 million each to the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League, who he said were striving to “rid our country of hate.”
Apple will donate $2 for every $1 employees donate to a number of human rights groups through the end of next month, he said, adding that customers will be able to donate to the Southern Poverty Law Center through iTunes.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the days since the rally violence in Charlotresville “have been hard to process” and left many wondering “where this hate comes from.”
“As a Jew, it’s something I’ve wondered much of my life. It’s a disgrace that we still need to say that neo-Nazis and white supremacists are wrong – as if this is somehow not obvious,” he wrote on Facebook late Wednesday.
He didn’t mention Trump by name in the posting but decried the culture of hate espoused by those groups.
“We may not be able to solve every problem, but we all have a responsibility to do what we can. I believe we can do something about the parts of our culture that teach a person to hate someone else,” he wrote on Facebook, which has already removed a number of white supremacist Facebook Groups.
Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz denounced the hate and the violence and declared: “I know we are better than this.”
“What we witnessed this past weekend is against every sense of what is right,” Schultz told employees, according to CNN Money. “My fear is not only that this behavior is being given permission and license, but its conduct is being normalized to the point where people are no longer hiding their face.”
Schultz said he was speaking as “an American, as a Jew, as a parent, as a grandparent,” the web site reported, and passed around a rock he had from a visit to the Auschwitz concentration camp 17 years ago.
Eva Moskowitz, the CEO of the Success Academy Charter Schools, said education can play a role in the fight against hate.
“One of our greatest weapons in fighting the kinds of injustice, violence and moral confusion we have seen over the past few days is ensuring that we have schools where our children are safe not only physically, but also emotionally and morally, and are taught the values to which we aspire.” she wrote on Twitter on Thursday.
Their comments come after the nation’s corporate leaders staged a mass exodus from two of the president’s advisory councils following Trump’s remarks.
One woman was killed when a car plowed through a group of people protesting the pro-white demonstration.
As the CEOs announced on Wednesday they would abandon the panels, Trump tweeted out that he was ditching them.
”Rather than putting pressure on the businesspeople of the Manufacturing Council & Strategy & Policy Forum, I am ending both. Thank you all!,” Trump wrote.