I'm no expert in political optics, but I think if the head of the Alliance for American Manufacturing quits your White House Council on Manufacturing, that's a fairly bad look.

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I'm resigning from the Manufacturing Jobs Initiative because it's the right thing for me to do. — Scott (Wear a mask, save a life) Paul (@ScottPaulAAM) August 15, 2017

My god, look at them run away from this guy. It's astonishing. I've always felt that the loyalty of America's corporate class to anything except profits could be knocked over by a gentle breeze, but this looks like a Category 5 panic. Apparently, the events in Charlottesville over the weekend, and the president*'s meat-headed responses to them, has sent our American oligarchs screaming into the streets. Merck? Gone. Intel? Adios. Under Armour? Au revoir. And now this latest refugee. By the time this is over, the president* may only have Russian oligarchs to hang with.

By the time this is over, the president* may only have Russian oligarchs to hang with.

This has to be a kick in the head. After all, before he styled himself as anything else, the president* styled himself as a titan of American business, even though his entire empire was based on a foundation of other people's money and tawdry backroom deal-making. These other guys are real men of business, in the style of which Mr. Dickens reminds us every Christmas. They're looking at a president*—and an administration*—that at the moment more closely resembles an E. coli outbreak, a defective computer chip, a bad batch of male-enhancement drugs, or an exploding gas tank on an automobile. If any of the tycoons fleeing from his side gave a damn about OSHA regulations, there'd already be a class action suit filed on behalf of all Americans, demanding actual and punitive damage caused by a defective presidency. As it is, they're doing what all big corporations do when one of their products goes bad. They're walking away from it.

After all, they willingly joined up with this guy, knowing full well what he was like as a president, and, I suspect, knowing better than most people what he was like as a businessman. More than a few of them, I guarantee you, voted for him, helping to inflict him on the nation. Now they're cutting their losses. The president*, of course, is fighting back in his own inimitable, if impotent, fashion. To the electric Twitter machine!

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For every CEO that drops out of the Manufacturing Council, I have many to take their place. Grandstanders should not have gone on. JOBS! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 15, 2017

They're not listening to you, Mr. President*. They have more important things to do.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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