These Businesses and Institutions Are Cutting Ties With Trump
Several large banks and the P.G.A. are among those that have disassociated themselves from the president and his allies since his supporters stormed the Capitol.
A Facebook logo reflected on an advertisement board outside the U.S. Capitol. Other companies and organizations have begun to cut ties to Trump-related entities since the Capitol rampage.
A Facebook logo reflected on an advertisement board outside the U.S. Capitol. Other companies and organizations have begun to cut ties to Trump-related entities since the Capitol rampage.Credit…Tom Brenner for The New York Times
Neil VigdorAzi Paybarah
By Neil Vigdor and Azi Paybarah
Published Jan. 11, 2021Updated Jan. 14, 2021
A growing number of companies and institutions have taken actions against President Trump and his associates since the deadly rampage at the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday by the president’s supporters.
Universities stripped Mr. Trump of honorary degrees, major banks paused political contributions, and the P.G.A. of America said it would no longer hold the 2022 P.G.A. Championship at the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, N.J.
Here is a list of entities that have severed ties with Mr. Trump or distanced themselves from the president — and in some cases, Republican politicians who supported his efforts to overturn the election. Many were identified by the newsletter Popular Information.
Technology platforms
Google, Facebook and Microsoft said they paused political spending and would reassess their spending in the wake of last week’s storming of the Capitol.
Facebook’s announcement came days after it banned Mr. Trump from posting on its platform at least through the end of his term, after years of defending its hands-off approach.
The online payment platform Stripe will no longer process payments for Mr. Trump’s campaign website, The Wall Street Journal reported. The newspaper, citing people familiar with the matter, said the e-commerce company had cited violations of its user policy, which bars users from promoting violence on its platform.
Shopify, the company that powers e-commerce sites for more than one million merchants, said on Thursday that it closed two online stores tied to Mr. Trump, including those run by the Trump Organization and the Trump campaign.
And several digital platforms — including Snapchat, YouTube, Twitch, Reddit and Twitter — also recently limited or suspended Mr. Trump on their services. The social app Parler, popular among conservatives as an alternative to Twitter, went dark Monday morning after Amazon cut it off from its computing services.
The P.G.A. of America
The P.G.A. of America announced on Sunday night that its board of directors had voted to terminate an agreement to play the P.G.A. Championship — one of golf’s four prestigious global major men’s championships — at Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, N.J., in 2022.
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“It has become clear that conducting the P.G.A. Championship at Trump Bedminster would be detrimental to the P.G.A. of America brand, and would put at risk the P.G.A.’s ability to deliver our many programs, and sustain the longevity of our mission,” Jim Richerson, president of the P.G.A. of America, said in a video statement.
The Trump Organization said it was disappointed with the P.G.A.’s decision. “This is a breach of a binding contract, and they have no right to terminate the agreement.”
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Companies Pull Back Political Giving Following Capitol Violence
AT&T and Marriott were among companies that will stop campaign contributions to lawmakers who objected to certifying the election. Other companies, such as JPMorgan, paused all political donations.
Jan. 11, 2021
Financial institutions
Several of the country’s largest banks said they were rethinking their political donations after last week’s violence in the Capitol.
Citigroup, which gave $1,000 in 2019 to the campaign of Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri, one of the senators who voted against the certification of the Electoral College results, said it paused all campaign contributions until March.
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“We want you to be assured that we will not support candidates who do not respect the rule of law,” Candi Wolff, the bank’s head of government affairs, wrote in an internal memo.
JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, BlackRock, Bank of America and Wells Fargo said they suspended donations through their PACs.
Morgan Stanley said it suspended contributions to members of Congress who voted against certifying the results of the election, but has not suspended contributions across the board.
Deutsche Bank, which has been Mr. Trump’s primary lender for two decades, and Signature Bank, are also seeking distance from him and his business. Deutsche Bank has decided not to do business with Mr. Trump or his company in the future, according to a person familiar with the bank’s thinking.
Charles Schwab went further, saying it shut down its PAC, citing a “hyperpartisan environment. “We believe a clear and apolitical position is in the best interest of our clients, employees, stockholders and the communities in which we operate,” the company said. The company’s PAC will no longer take contributions from employees or make financial contributions to lawmakers.
Charles Schwab said in its statement that it was confident its “voice will still be heard in Washington” even without a PAC, noting that it is a “major employer in a dozen metropolitan centers.” Other companies that do not have a PAC, like IBM, have said they do not think a lack of one puts them at a political disadvantage.
Visa temporarily suspended all its political donations through its PAC as it reviews its candidate contribution guidelines, a spokesman said. American Express and Mastercard said they had suspended political contributions to politicians who had tried to block the certification of the election results.
“Last week’s attempts by some congressional members to subvert the presidential election results and disrupt the peaceful transition of power do not align with our American Express Blue Box values,” Stephen J. Squeri, the American Express chief executive, wrote in a memo to staff on Monday.
New York City
Mayor Bill de Blasio said on Jan. 13 that New York City would terminate its contracts with the Trump Organization because of the mob riot. The contracts are for two ice-skating rinks at Central Park, the Central Park Carousel and the Trump Golf Links at Ferry Point, a city-owned golf course in the Bronx.
“Inciting an insurrection against the U.S. government clearly constitutes criminal activity,” Mr. de Blasio said in an interview on MSNBC. “The City of New York will no longer have anything to do with the Trump Organization.”
The New York State Bar Association
The New York State Bar Association has started an inquiry into whether Rudolph W. Giuliani, Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer, should be removed from its membership, the organization said in a statement on Monday.
The association said it had received hundreds of complaints about Mr. Giuliani’s support for Mr. Trump’s false claims of widespread election fraud. Last week, Mr. Giuliani called for a “trial by combat” in a speech in Washington just hours before the Capitol was stormed.
“Mr. Giuliani’s words quite clearly were intended to encourage Trump supporters, unhappy with the election’s outcome, to take matters into their own hands,” the association said.
The association’s bylaws forbid members from, among other things, advocating “the overthrow of the government.”
Mr. Giuliani, who did not respond to a request for comment, would still be allowed to practice law if he lost his membership in the voluntary association.
Other big businesses
Big businesses donate to both political parties, with many saying their support is tied to narrow issues of specific interest to their industries. The following have said they were adjusting their giving practices in light of last week’s storming of the Capitol.
AT&T, Amazon, Comcast, the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, Ford, Best Buy and Marriott International, Walmart, Airbnb, Dow and Walt Disney Co. said their political action committees had suspended all contributions to any member of Congress who voted against the certification of the presidential election results. Disney called the siege at the Capitol a “direct assault on one of our country’s most revered tenets: the peaceful transition of power.”
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the nation’s largest business lobbying group, condemned Mr. Trump’s conduct that led to the siege of the Capitol and said that lawmakers who backed his efforts to discredit the election would no longer receive the organization’s financial backing.
The political action committee for the greeting card company Hallmark Cards has asked two Republican senators — Mr. Hawley and Roger Marshall of Kansas, both of whom voted to overturn election results — to return all of the committee’s campaign contributions. Representatives of the senators did not respond to requests for comment.
American Airlines, BP, ConocoPhillips, UPS, General Motors and the Coca-Cola Company said they would pause all of their political donations.
“These events will long be remembered and will factor into our future contribution decisions,” Coca-Cola said in a statement.
Hilton, which had already suspended its political contributions because of the impact of the pandemic, said that, because of the Capitol Hill violence, it would suspend its PAC indefinitely. “We commit to any future donations being shared equally across the major parties and only after careful assessment of the recipient’s voting record,” a spokesman said.
FedEx, CVS Heath, Delta and Exxon Mobil said they would review their future political contributions.
Higher education
Two institutions announced that they had rescinded the honorary degrees they had previously awarded to Mr. Trump, and another said it had stripped Mr. Giuliani of an honorary degree.
Lehigh University in Pennsylvania awarded Mr. Trump a degree in 1988, after its president called the real estate developer a “symbol of our age — all the daring and energy that the word tycoon conjures up.” On Friday, two days after the attack on the Capitol, the university said in a statement that its board of trustees had “voted to rescind and revoke the honorary degree.”
Wagner College on Staten Island also said on Friday that its board of trustees had voted to rescind the degree it gave to Mr. Trump in 2004. No explanation was given.
In 2017, both Lehigh and Wagner considered revoking the degrees after Mr. Trump said there were “very fine people on both sides” who violently clashed in Charlottesville, Va. The schools later decided to let Mr. Trump keep the degrees.
Middlebury College in Vermont on Tuesday revoked an honorary doctor of laws degree it had given to Mr. Giuliani, citing his role in “fomenting the violent uprising against our nation’s Capitol building.”
Jacey Fortin, Jenny Gross, Alan Feuer, Eric Lipton, Lauren Hirsch, Alan Rappeport and Kate Kelly contributed reporting. The New York Times