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AFL-CIO president leaves Trump advisory board

by Sylvan Lane - 08/15/17 6:04 PM ET

The president of the AFL-CIO stepped down from a council advising the White House on Tuesday, hours after President Trump reiterated that both sides were to blame for deadly violence in Charlottesville, Va., where white supremacist groups rallied over the weekend.

“President Trump’s remarks today repudiate his forced remarks yesterday about the KKK and neo-Nazis,” AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said in a statement.

He announced that both he and AFL-CIO leader Thea Lee would step down from Trump’s Manufacturing Advisory Board.

{mosads}”We must resign on behalf of America’s working people, who reject all notions of legitimacy of these bigoted groups.”

Trumka said earlier Tuesday he was still considering whether to leave the advisory board after Trump condemned racism as “evil.”

But Trump’s blame of the “alt-left” for charging white supremacist and neo-Nazi protestors prompted Trumka and Lee to leave the board.

Trump on Tuesday warned CEOs on his several advisory panels that they could be easily replaced for expressing their political views, following the departure of three business chiefs from a manufacturing board on Monday.

“For every CEO that drops out of the Manufacturing Council, I have many to take their place,” Trump tweeted. “Grandstanders should not have gone on. JOBS!”

Four CEOs left Trump’s American Manufacturing Council following his widely criticized response to violence this weekend in Charlottesville, Va., where white nationalists and neo-Nazis held a large rally and fought with counterprotesters, leading to the death of one counterprotester.

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AFL-CIO president leaves Trump advisory board

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