3M CEO resigns from Trump manufacturing council

MINNEAPOLIS (KMSP) - 3M CEO Inge Thulin has announced his resignation from President Donald Trump’s manufacturing council. Thulin is the seventh business executive or labor leader to quit Trump’s council in the wake of the president’s blame on “both sides” for the violence at a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.

With the resignations mounting, Trump tweeted Wednesday that he was shutting down his manufacturing council: "Rather than putting pressure on the businesspeople of the Manufacturing Council & Strategy & Policy Forum, I am ending both," Trump posted. "Thank you all!"

FULL STORY: Under pressure, Trump disbands business advisory councils

Statement from 3M President and CEO Inge Thulin

Moments after Thulin's announcement, Campbell's Soup CEO Denise Morrison became the eighth executive to resign from the council.

"Racism and murder are unequivocally reprehensible and are not morally equivalent to anything else that happened in Charlottesville," Morrison said in a statement. "I believe the President should have been – and still needs to be – unambiguous on that point. Following yesterday's remarks from the President, I cannot remain on the Manufacturing Jobs Initiative. I will continue to support all efforts to spur economic growth and advocate for the values that have always made America great."

AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka and economist Thea Lee resigned from Trump’s manufacturing council on Tuesday, after Trump’s comments that "very fine people" were among the crowd of neo-Nazis and white supremacists in Charlottesville.

“You had some very bad people in that group, but you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides,” Trump said Tuesday.

On Saturday, Aug. 12, hundreds of protesters gathered in Charlottesville, Virginia in opposition to what was estimated to be the largest gathering of white supremacists in a decade. Neo-Nazis and Ku Klux Klan members were among the crowd that came to Charlottesville for a rally against the city's decision to remove a Confederate monument.

Clashes between white supremacists and counter-protesters erupted before the demonstration at Emancipation Park even started. Police forced the crowd to disperse, but violent clashes between the two sides continued on city streets. A Dodge Challenger, allegedly driven by 20-year-old white supremacist James Alex Fields Jr. of Ohio, barreled into a crowd of counter-protesters, killing 32-year-old was a Charlottesville resident Heather Heyer.