Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, the president of the Yale Chief Executive Leadership Institute, has called into question the narrative being pushed by Republicans that Donald Trump is winning back the support of the country’s CEOs ahead of the 2024 presidential election.
“That is far from the truth,” Sonnenfeld wrote in an essay for The New York Times published Sunday titled “I Know What America’s Leading CEOs Really Think Of Donald Trump.”
“They didn’t flock to him before, and they certainly aren’t flocking to him now,” he wrote. “Mr. Trump continues to suffer from the lowest level of corporate support in the history of the Republican Party.”
“Prominent financiers like Steve Schwarzman and David Sacks” who have thrown their support behind the presumptive GOP presidential nominee are outliers, he claimed.
Sonnenfeld said “the most telling data point on corporate America’s lack of enthusiasm” for Trump, who last month was convicted on all 34 charges in his hush money trial and who remains indicted in three other criminal cases, is that “not a single Fortune 100 chief executive has donated to the candidate so far this year.”
Citing Sonnenfeld’s role leading the institute and frequent contact with CEOs, he acknowledged that chief executives could be wary of a second term for President Joe Biden but were downright fearful of Trump winning back the White House.
“Chief executives are not protectionist, isolationist or xenophobic, and they believe in investing where there is the rule of law, not the law of rulers,” he said.
Sonnenfeld’s analysis came, though, following a series of big-money donations to Trump from billionaires including $50 million from Mellon banking family heir Timothy Mellon and $10 million from Liz and Dick Uihlein.
Trump’s campaign outraised Biden’s in May 2024 by more than $60 million. It received $141 million with tens of millions being donated after his hush money conviction.
