Members of a Department of Commerce committee called the Digital Economy Board of Advisors have turned in their resignations after President Trump’s defense of white supremacists in Charlottesville.
Zoë Baird, a founding co-chair of the board and the president and CEO of the Markle Foundation, confirmed that she had submitted her resignation on Thursday in a phone call with VICE News, and that other members had as well. The president said in off-the-cuff remarks Tuesday that there were “very fine people on both sides” of the violent demonstration in the Virginia college town last weekend.
“It is the moral responsibility of our leaders to unite Americans by respecting the diversity and inclusion that enables our country to generate new opportunity and celebrate freedom,” Baird’s resignation letter reads. “In order to preserve these cherished values, there must never be equivocation in denouncing hate, bigotry, violence, and racism.”
