Former President Donald Trump’s return to Capitol Hill on Thursday was marked by him insulting the host of the upcoming Republican convention, fantasizing about a relationship with former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and, according to one report, alienating business leaders who came away from a meeting worried about his mental capacity.
Andrew Sorkin, a financial columnist for The New York Times, told CNBC he received “surprise” feedback from a group of executives who met with the presumptive Republican nominee.
“A number of CEOs walked into the meeting being Trump support-ish or thinking that they might be leaning that direction, who said he was remarkably meandering,” Sorkin told CNBC.
The meeting reportedly included the likes of JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon and Apple CEO Tim Cook, according to CNBC.
Trump “could not keep a straight thought” and “was all over the map,” some executives told Sorkin. That “may be not surprising,” he said, “but it was interesting to me because these were people who I think might have been predisposed to him and actually walked out of the room less predisposed to him.”
Although Trump, in public comments later Thursday, asserted that inflation “is killing everybody” (the rate has been under 3.5% since 2022), he confounded economic experts by proposing an “all tariff policy” in a meeting with lawmakers that would result in massive price increases for consumers.
Despite his increasingly incoherent proposals, Trump has nonetheless garnered support from billionaire donors, recently promising oil and gas executives that he would throw out the Biden administration’s environmental regulations in exchange for their support.