Trump says business executives should be 'fired for incompetence' if they don't support him
Former President Donald Trump on Tuesday said that business executives and shareholder representatives should "be 100% behind" him or face termination.
“Business Executives and Shareholder Representatives should be 100% behind Donald Trump! Anybody that’s not should be FIRED for incompetence!," the former president wrote in a post on his social media website, Truth Social.
His post referred to an article from The Wall Street Journal on Monday comparing corporate tax rates between the Biden and Trump administrations. In another post, Trump quoted the article as saying, "Corporations won tax cuts during Trump’s first term, and they would benefit if he wins again."
A spokesperson for Trump and a Biden campaign spokesperson did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Tuesday.
Trump attempted to court business executives in a roundtable meeting in Washington, D.C., last week but several of the CEOs in the room told CNBC that they were underwhelmed by Trump's "meandering" policy proposals. Two people in the room said Trump offered few details on his plans to cut corporate taxes and regulations.
Biden has repeatedly pointed to Trump's appetite for cutting taxes for the wealthy on the campaign trail.
“If Trump gets elected, he’ll cut taxes for him and his rich friends at the expense of working families. We can’t let that happen,” Biden wrote on X last week.
In response to Trump's, Truth Social post, Biden campaign spokesperson James Singer said, “We know Donald likes pretending to fire people on TV, but the American people already fired him for having the worst jobs record since Herbert Hoover. The choice in 2024 is between Joe Biden who is lowering costs for working families and white collar crook Donald Trump, who will do nothing but return us to the mess he left us with by giving handouts to rich people like himself on the backs of the middle class.”
Biden also ramped up his effort to end Trump's tax breaks in a recent budget and a memo Thursday by top Biden economic adviser Lael Brainard that previewed Biden’s vision for raking in new revenue that included raising the corporate tax from 21% to 28%, imposing a 25% minimum income tax on billionaires, raising the marginal tax rates on the highest incomes from 37% to 39.6% and increasing taxes on capital gains for the very wealthy.
Zoë Richards
Zoë Richards is the evening politics reporter for NBC News.