WASHINGTON \u2014 Former President Donald Trump failed to impress everyone in a room full of top CEOs Thursday at the Business Roundtable\u2019s quarterly meeting, multiple attendees told CNBC.<\/p>\n
\u201cTrump doesn\u2019t know what he\u2019s talking about,\u201d said one CEO who was in the room, according to a person who heard the executive speaking. The CEO also said Trump did not explain how he planned to accomplish any of his policy proposals, that person said.<\/p>\n
Several CEOs \u201csaid that [Trump] was remarkably meandering, could not keep a straight thought [and] was all over the map,\u201d CNBC\u2019s Andrew Ross Sorkin reported Friday on \u201cSquawk Box.\u201d<\/p>\n
A spokesman for the Trump campaign did not reply to a request for comment from CNBC on the CEOs\u2019 remarks.<\/p>\n
Among the topics on which Trump offered scant details were how he would reduce taxes and cut back on business regulations, according to two other people in the room who spoke to CNBC.<\/p>\n
Meeting attendees and people who spoke with them were granted anonymity in order to speak freely about the private event.<\/p>\n
The same CEOs who were struck by Trump\u2019s lack of focus \u201cwalked into the meeting being Trump supporter-ish or thinking that they might be leaning that direction,\u201d Sorkin reported.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese were people who I think might have been actually predisposed to [Trump, but] actually walked out of the room less predisposed\u201d to him, Sorkin said.<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s energy in the meeting was also noticeably subdued, according to two people who were in the room. At no time during his remarks was there any noticeable applause for Trump, two attendees told CNBC.<\/p>\n
This was in contrast to Trump\u2019s meeting earlier in the day with House Republicans on Capitol Hill. Attendees at that meeting told CNBC that the former president was animated and engaged and that Trump received several rounds of applause in separate meetings Thursday with both House and Senate Republicans.<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s low-key energy at the Business Roundtable event could have been deliberate, one attendee told CNBC. Trump had wanted the CEO meeting to be \u201cmore like a business meeting than a speech,\u201d the person said.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt one point he discussed his plan to bring the corporate tax rate down from 21% to 20% … and was asked about why he had chosen 20%,\u201d Sorkin said Friday on MSNBC\u2019s \u201cMorning Joe.\u201d \u201cAnd he said, \u2018Well, it\u2019s a round number.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat unto itself had a number of CEOs shaking their heads,\u201d Sorkin reported.<\/p>\n
In 2023, corporate income taxes contributed approximately $420 billion to federal revenues, according to the Congressional Budget Office.<\/p>\n
Wall Street has bristled over the past three years under President Joe Biden\u2019s aggressive antitrust enforcement, pharmaceutical price caps and progressive tax policy.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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WASHINGTON \u2014 Former President Donald Trump failed to impress everyone in a room full of top CEOs Thursday at the Business Roundtable\u2019s quarterly meeting, multiple attendees told CNBC. \u201cTrump doesn\u2019t know what he\u2019s talking about,\u201d said one CEO who was in the room, according to a person who heard the executive speaking. The CEO also said Trump did not explain how <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4227,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-4226","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4226","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4226"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4226\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4227"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}