WASHINGTON — Former President Donald Trump failed to impress everyone in a room of top corporate CEOs at the Business Roundtable’s quarterly meeting on Thursday, multiple attendees told CNBC.
“Trump doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” said one person who was at the event and interviewed by a CEO, who also said Trump hadn’t explained how he planned to implement his policy proposals, the person said.
Several CEOs said: [Trump] It was so meandering I couldn’t hold a straight thought. [and] “The situation was falling apart,” CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin reported on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Friday.
Among the topics on which Trump offered few details were ways to cut taxes and ease corporate regulations, according to two other people at the meeting who spoke to CNBC.
The meeting attendees and those who spoke with them were granted anonymity in order to speak freely about the private event.
The same CEOs who were shocked by Trump’s lack of focus “came into the meeting behaving like Trump supporters, or thinking they might be leaning in that direction,” Sorkin reported.
“These people are actually [Trump but] “I actually left the room with less liking for him,” Sorkin said.
“President Trump was warmly welcomed by everyone in the room and praised for his policy proposals on deregulation and tax cuts,” said Steven Thune, communications director for the Trump campaign.
Trump’s energy was also noticeably subdued during the meeting, according to two people who were in the room: Two attendees told CNBC that there was never any significant applause while Trump was speaking.
This was in contrast to Trump’s meeting with House Republicans on Capitol Hill earlier in the day, where attendees told CNBC that Trump was animated, spoke enthusiastically and drew multiple rounds of applause during separate meetings with House and Senate Republicans on Thursday.
Chang said Trump erupted in applause during the question-and-answer session at the conference, and “attendees praised President Trump for his deregulation and tax cut policies.”
Trump’s low-key demeanor at the Business Roundtable event may have been intentional, one attendee told CNBC, as Trump wanted the CEO meeting to be “more like a business meeting than a speech,” the person said.
“At one point, he was talking about his plan to cut the corporate tax rate from 21 percent to 20 percent, and he was asked why he chose 20 percent,” Sorkin said Friday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “And he said, ‘Well, it’s a fraction.'”
“That alone had a lot of CEOs shaking their heads,” Sorkin reported.
In 2023, the corporate tax rate will be Donated approximately $420 billion According to the Congressional Budget Office, this amount would be added to federal revenues.
Over the past three years, Wall Street has resented President Joe Biden’s aggressive antitrust enforcement, drug price caps and progressive tax policies.
