The roll out of the president’s “Opening Our Country Council” was rather confusing. It was supposed to be a formal council, but when he finally presented it, it included 17 separate industry groups, including hospitality, banking, energy and “thought leaders.”
He listed 10 minutes worth of companies and their directors and CEOs, but it turned out the list was quite a surprise to some he listed.
Among those who had no idea they were on Trump’s opening the country commission until he announced their names not having spoken to them before doing so were:
- Cisco Systems and McDonald’s learned of their involvement in consulting with the president only when he mentioned their names Tuesday evening.
- Pfizer got a heads-up that Trump might mention the company an hour before the announcement, but was not told how many other companies were involved or what the group’s was.
- AFL-CIO president, Richard Trumka, also wasn’t asked if he would join the group before his name was announced by Trump. He joined the Wednesday call “to see if it’s a serious effort.”
Although some invitations to join the group had come from Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, with at least one from Trump, others said they were given no advance warning that their name would be attached to a White House news release.
While they may not have been contacted directly, the White House had sent an email notification Tuesday afternoon to all the people involved informing them just before the announcement that they had been selected.
That gave little time to consider, accept, reject, or possibly even read the email if the recipient had been busy.
As it was, although some may have been willing to accept the assignment, the announcement that the call would take place the next day ignored the reality that other things those to be included had already planned might cause a conflict.
David Solomon, the Goldman Sachs chief, was leading his own planned quarterly earnings call.
Starbucks chief executive, Kevin Johnson, was committed to address employees. He had someone else sit in for the White House call.
Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase & Co. was also unavailable, and an attempt by a deputy to get connected took too much time, and it finally failed.
When it came to Trump’s congressional task force, he hadn’t bothered to speak to any congressperson or senator before notifying them they had been selected to be on a committee whose exact purpose was unspecified up to that point. He had members of a committee who had no idea what it was they were expected to do.
The email notification said in part,
“I am emailing to inform you that the president has selected you to serve on a task force comprised of senators and members of the House of Representatives. The purpose of the task force is to provide counsel to the president on the reopening of America in the wake of COVID-19. The formal name of this task force has not yet been announced.”
The call with the mostly surprised business leaders was met with some resistance about a swift re-opening of the country.
There were some practical and legal concerns that Trump may not have considered in his wanting to appear heroic for bringing about the re-opening.
In spite of Trump beginning the call by stating that “testing is under control”, the executives and stand-ins expressed concern that more testing was needed before the economy could reopen, and testing was necessary to track who was infected and who might have immunity before having employees return.
After all, there could be a legal liability faced by the participating companies if employees got sick after returning to work in an unsafe environment too soon.
Things may not be as magically smooth as Trump chooses to believe they are.
I guess as far as things will go, to quote him, “no one knows. We’ll see”.